Wellness Journey

by Martin Collis, PhD

I've been a moving target for the past few months and I'm beginning to know the security guards at the local airport by their first names. In many ways my most interesting stop was in Dallas, Texas at the Cooper Aerobics Center.

One of our 'regular features' in past issues of WELL has been 'Cooper Watch' in which we've reported on the cutting edge information which has emerged from the Cooper Research Institute on physical activity and other wellness related behaviors (see Summer 2000, Spring 2000 and Fall 1999).

I'm always taken by surprise when someone asks me "Who's Dr. Ken Cooper?" I assume that everyone is familiar with a man who I think ranks as one of the great Americans of the past 50 years. It was Ken Cooper, MD who took the adjective aerobic added an 's' and gave us the word 'aerobics'. Ken Cooper more than any other person made jogging acceptable to millions of North Americans and others around the world. In Brazil people talk of doing their 'Cooper' and I smiled a couple of years back when staying in a small hotel in Iguassu on the Brazil/Paraguay/Argentine border. I went out to swim and noticed a sign for 'Cooper'. Here among the tropical vegetation under the watchful eyes of multi-colored parrots the guests were doing their 'Cooper' on a little fitness trail.

Back in the 60's Dr. Kenneth Cooper was a young physician in the U.S. Air Force. He developed a concern for the lack of physical fitness among the recruits and started a program primarily of cardio-respiratory fitness that subsequently formed the basis of his 'Aerobics' points concept. Against the advice of virtually everybody Ken left the military to set up a preventative medical practice in Dallas. When someone has a new idea and tries to put it into practice they typically engender hostility, ridicule and opposition from the establishment. The Texas Medical Association was not impressed by the young man who had the temerity to have post-coronary patients on monitored exercise programs. He was warned that people would die, and that he was putting his career as a physician in jeopardy. But, Dr. Cooper is not an easy man to dissuade and he methodically went about the business of collecting the data that would ultimately reveal that it was not movement that threatened people recovering from heart attacks, but lack of movement. (In the old days you could almost say that if the heart attack didn't get you then the bed rest would.)

During this time Ken wrote his book 'Aerobics' and was informed by the potential publisher that no one would be interested in a book with such an obscure title. The book was published, and it was called 'Aerobics' and proceeded to sell literally millions of copies around the world. The book provided growing recognition for Dr. Cooper; and person by person, organization by organization the young man from Oklahoma began to be acknowledged as a visionary and a leader in the field we now accept as preventative medicine. (search for Dr. Cooper's books at Amazon.com or Chapters.ca)

There have been many inspirational speakers and leaders in the field of physical activity, but one major factor separates Cooper from the rest. Ken Cooper has passionately collected data that allowed him to create programs that are founded on the bedrock of facts. The Research Institute at the Aerobics Center has access to millions of hours of recorded physical activity by the patrons of the Fitness Center, which is an important part of the Aerobics Center campus.

You need a significant ego to take on the medical establishment, and put your life savings on the line to create a center that deals in wellness when all the big dollars are invested in sickness. But what impresses me about Dr. Cooper is his humility in modifying and refining his beliefs and his message as the data told a story that might vary from his own. I've always liked the Greek myth, in which Procrustes had a bed into which he'd fit each partner. If the person were too tall, the legs would be cut off; not tall enough, then a little stretching would be in order. So many of the fitness gurus use Procrustian thinking where they take selected parts of the research to fit their own theories, and are not averse to stretching a few truths of buffing away some facts-not so with Dr. Cooper.

The Cooper Research Institute at the Aerobics Center under Dr. Stephen Blair has produced information which has changed the way we council people about some aspects of exercise. For instance, Dr. Blair and his co-researchers discovered that quite modest amounts of physical activity were almost as effective as intense exercise in terms of their impact on longevity. It was also discovered that being overweight is not a significant risk factor if an individual has good cardio-respiratory fitness. (And that's a big 'if')

The reason I was at the Institute with my partner Nancy Wardle was to take part in the first major conference on Physical Activity and Cancer. We have long known that lack of activity was a significant risk factor for heart disease and diabetes, but the connection was less clear for cancer. Two of the problems in discovering whether exercise has a protective effect in preventing cancer are, the variety of different cancers and the inadequate self-reporting that has often been used to assess people's activity level. If actual objective fitness data are used, we see that exercise has a significant protective effect against colon cancer and a measurable positive protective effect on breast cancer and prostate cancer. Stephen Blair noted that the major studies in which people self report their physical activity and fitness are not very useful in clarifying the preventive impact of movement on the prevention and treatment on specific forms of cancer.

There is a growing amount of anecdotal information that physical activity is an important part of cancer treatment. Because of the devastating impact of chemotherapy and radiation treatment on the human body, doctors have been hesitant to prescribe exercise as part of the healing process. But we have a genetic imperative to move, and all musculo-skeletal and cardio-respiratory benefits of exercise can still be accessed by most people with cancer. Although it is hard to measure, movement sends a message to your mind that cancer has not taken control of your active life. An excellent example of post-cancer physical activity, are the increasing numbers of breast cancer survivors who are dragon boat paddlers (see Abreast In A Boat).

The U.S. Presidential elections took place when we were in Texas and for the duration of the conference Nancy and I occupied the Presidential Suite where the Bush family, including George W., stays when they have their annual physical. Dr. Cooper is George W.'s personal physician and one can speculate that the new President Bush might want Dr. Cooper as his Surgeon General. (I liked Don Ardell's idea of having a Wellness General, instead of, or at least to compliment the rather ominously named Surgeon General, which sounds like something from the 19^th Century.) Whatever your political affiliations, you can take some comfort knowing that President Bush is well informed on the value of lifestyle and exercise and their role in prevention.

The Cooper Clinic is a preventative medicine center with a staff of 19 physicians and numerous other health professionals. I took advantage of being at the Aerobics Center to have myself assessed.

After being treadmilled, underwater-weighed, CT scanned and checked for everything from homocysteine to various cholesterol measures, I wished this form of evaluation were available and affordable for all North Americans. (The reality is that if our health care system was wellness, rather than sickness, oriented we could save money and lives with regular health maintenance checks. But we still operate along the lines of 'Fix the sick, and to hell with the well.')

One of the positive features of my exam was that all my results were available within an hour of my testing and I was able to sit down with my physician Dr. Larry Gibbons and discuss the meaning of my results in detail. (Ross Perot claims that he can accomplish in less than a day at the Cooper Clinic what takes 3 days at the Mayo Clinic.)

There was good news and not-so good news. The good news was an 'excellent' score on the treadmill test and no significant risk factors for cancer. However, I need to address my cholesterol, with my LDL cholesterol above the acceptable range. My weight at 186lbs (85kilos), and body fat at 22.6% are higher than they need to be and the CT scan picked up a significant amount of plaque around my coronary arteries. I was reminded of my school report cards which said, "Could do better", and I can.

Over lunch, I told Dallas Maverick's basketball player Steve Nash about the testing program and he immediately signed up both his parents as a Christmas gift. What better gift than wellness?

The Cooper Center now offers residential Cooper Wellness Programs for individuals and professional groups. My good friend Charles Sterling arranged for me to address a group with employees from Harley Davidson and Texas Instruments. There is no question that companies see the Cooper experience as a cost-effective investment in looking after key employees. (For information call 1-800-444-5192.) In the words of Red McCombs owner of McCombs Enterprises of San Antonio:

As a study in contrasts, I went from the urban sophistication of Dallas, to Poundmaker's Lodge north of Edmonton, where I worked for a day with the Cree addictions councilors. I checked out the sweat lodge and traded songs and quotes with some very wise and insightful people, one of who gave me my quote of the year:

So now it's back to my personal and geographical journey, which, as you can see from my itinerary, is extensive. Be WELL.