Shigeaki Hinohara: The 97 year old's physician's advice on how to live well
Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009
WORDS TO LIVE BY
Author/physician Shigeaki Hinohara
At the age of 97 years and 4 months, Shigeaki Hinohara is one of the world's longest-serving physicians and educators. Hinohara's magic touch is legendary: Since 1941 he has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing. After World War II, he envisioned a world-class hospital and college springing from the ruins of Tokyo; thanks to his pioneering spirit and business savvy, the doctor turned these institutions into the nation's top medical facility and nursing school. Today he serves as chairman of the board of trustees at both organizations. Always willing to try new things, he has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including one "Living Long, Living Good" that has sold more than 1.2 million copies. As the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life, a quest in which no role model is better than the doctor himself.
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| Doctor Shigeaki Hinohara JUDIT KAWAGUCHI PHOTO |
Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It's best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.
All people who live long — regardless of nationality, race or gender — share one thing in common: None are overweight. For breakfast I drink coffee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great for the arteries and keeps my skin healthy. Lunch is milk and a few cookies, or nothing when I am too busy to eat. I never get hungry because I focus on my work. Dinner is veggies, a bit of fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat.
Always plan ahead. My schedule book is already full until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital work. In 2016 I'll have some fun, though: I plan to attend the Tokyo Olympics!
There is no need to ever retire, but if one must, it should be a lot later than 65. The current retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when the average life-expectancy in Japan was 68 years and only 125 Japanese were over 100 years old. Today, Japanese women live to be around 86 and men 80, and we have 36,000 centenarians in our country. In 20 years we will have about 50,000 people over the age of 100.
Share what you know. I give 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500 business people. I usually speak for 60 to 90 minutes, standing, to stay strong.
When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doctor would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a procedure. Contrary to popular belief, doctors can't cure everyone. So why cause unnecessary pain with surgery? I think music and animal therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.
To stay healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. I take two stairs at a time, to get my muscles moving.
My inspiration is Robert Browning's poem "Abt Vogler." My father used to read it to me. It encourages us to make big art, not small scribbles. It says to try to draw a circle so huge that there is no way we can finish it while we are alive. All we see is an arch; the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the distance.
Pain is mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. If a child has a toothache, and you start playing a game together, he or she immediately forgets the pain. Hospitals must cater to the basic need of patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke's we have music and animal therapies, and art classes.
Don't be crazy about amassing material things. Remember: You don't know when your number is up, and you can't take it with you to the next place.
Hospitals must be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every patient who appears at their doors. We designed St. Luke's so we can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I was crazy to prepare for a catastrophe, but on March 20, 1995, I was unfortunately proven right when members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. We accepted 740 victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly we lost one person, but we saved 739 lives.
Science alone can't cure or help people. Science lumps us all together, but illness is individual. Each person is unique, and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people, we need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones.
Life is filled with incidents. On March 31, 1970, when I was 59 years old, I boarded the Yodogo, a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and as Mount Fuji came into sight, the plane was hijacked by the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. I spent the next four days handcuffed to my seat in 40-degree heat. As a doctor, I looked at it all as an experiment and was amazed at how the body slowed down in a crisis.
Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. My father went to the United States in 1900 to study at Duke University in North Carolina. He was a pioneer and one of my heroes. Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the problem.
It's wonderful to live long. Until one is 60 years old, it is easy to work for one's family and to achieve one's goals. But in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society. Since the age of 65, I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours seven days a week and love every minute of it.
Judit Kawaguchi loves to listen. She is a volunteer counselor and a TV reporter on NHK's "Out & About." Learn more at: http://juditfan.blog58.fc2.com/
aaahhh ohhhh ahhhh
http://anilnetto.com/accountability/what-is-usm-trying-to-do/
USM builds R&D park
GEORGE TOWN: Universiti Sains Malaysia will spend RM450mil on its science and arts park in Bukit Jambul here, which is expected to be ready in 2014.
Vice-chancellor Prof Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak said the park would have apartments, a hotel, an international school, incubator laboratories, galleries, a mini theatre and research centres.
The centre, dubbed SAINS@USM which stands for Science and Arts Innovation Space, would serve as a research centre, tourist attraction and public park, he said.
“It will represent an innovative space that promotes integrated research with dedicated incubators and laboratories.
“SAINS@USM will not only represent the ideal space for academia and businesses to thrive, it will also reach out to communities near and far in a truly comprehensive and holistic manner,” he said at the launch of SAINS@USM at Dewan Budaya, USM here yesterday.
It was launched by the university’s chancellor Raja of Perlis Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Syed Putra Jamalullail.
Also present were his consort Tuanku Fauziah Tengku Abdul Rashid, Yang di-Pertua Negri Tun Abdul Rahman Abbas and his wife Toh Puan Majimor Shariff.
An MoU was also signed between the university, Khazanah Nasional Bhd and six corporations to collaborate on SAINS@USM.
At the function, a representative from the Malaysian Technology Development Corporation (MTDC), Norhalim Yunus, presented a RM24.35mil mock cheque for the funding of eight research projects at SAINS@USM
i know this is old news but i baru dapat tau. Good for USM!
however i wish they would spend some money on improving the facilities for disabled students or improving the quality of the library. clean up tasik harapan (sometimes smells like vomit.) or hiring better english lecturers who can actually speak english. maybe renovate the toilets around foyer DK. they're really OLD k. or inviting Real speakers to speak in USM, not dodgy 9/11 conspiracy theorist-pro-Taliban extremists.
I should make a list.
But im secretly proud that we have our own research centre. Unlike UNIMAS. Hihihiihiii
Arabian Woman - A wake-up call
from http://www.sistersinislam.org.my
When the call to prayer was sounded, people of the Muslim faith heeded. But this was no ordinary call. It was one for the first salat (prayer) sounded by a women, the courageous Amina Wadud.
A highly-criticised move, she was repeatedly turned down by the different mosques they approached, before finally settling on holding the prayer at an Anglican Church.
On March 18, 2005, over a hundred men and women, dressed in head scarves and robes attended the traditional Muslim form of prayer, salat. The group included activists, scholars and journalists, but that was not what was special about it. What set this day apart form the rest was the fact that, for what is probably the first time in history, a woman sounded the call and lead the prayers.
With an aim to renew and encourage discussions about the age-old Muslim tradition of separating men and women during prayer, as well as the sole right of a man to be a prayer leader, the group drew angry responses. Even though they were in the United States of America, the land of the free, who has etched “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” on their doorway, the move was met with much protests. One of protesters even went out to say that if the prayer was held in a Muslim state, Wadud would have been hanged.
With such extreme and violent reactions, one can be forgiven for assuming that this is the first time in history that a woman has dared to voice the ‘salat’. Historically though, female imams, or prayer leaders, are allowed if the congregation is also composed of women or a small group of family members. However, some argue that the restriction on women has been put in place not because of the spirit of the Qur’an or the true meaning of Islam, but because of the sexism in a previous medieval environment.
Wadud is one of those to express and fight for this belief. ‘The issue of gender equality is a very important one in Islam, and Muslims have unfortunately used highly restrictive interpretations of history to move backward,” she said in a BBC report. “With this prayer service, we are moving forward. This single act is symbolic of the possibilities within Islam,” she asserted.
In October last year, Wadud recreated the event and became the first female in the United Kingdom to hold the Friday prayers. The event was attended by a handful of people, and like in the US, was met with protests. Yet, the medieval scholar and Qu’ran commentator Al-Tarabi, who maintained that he is a traditionalist and never an innovator, also believed that it is permissible for women to lead optional prayers. His belief is shared by other scholars such as Ibn Arabi, but not by the majority of Muslims today.
Kia Abdullah of the Guardian.co.uk wrote after Wadud’s UK prayer, “Instead of tempering the verses of the Qur’an with good judgment, some men use them as a vehicle for controlling women. The fact that Islam allows room for this type of behaviour is a problem, yes, but rampant sexism is more a product of patriarchal ideology than religion itself. Men can practice Islam and treat women as equals- the two ar not mutually exclusive.”
She believes that Wadud is the catalyst that will bring about changes and modernism to the religion. “We do need women like Wadud who are willing to take dramatic action and face protest in order to change established practices,” she adds.
So who exactly is this woman creating an uproar within the Muslim and feminist world? Amina Wadud is retired professor of Islamic Studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She is considered by many as a controversial Islamic feminist, a form of feminism that deals with the role of women it Islam and promotes equality among all Muslims regardless of gender, in both public and private life.
Before VCU, Wadud was based in Malaysia as an Assistant Professor at the International Islamic University. Her research specialities include gender and Qur’anic studies. She wrote ‘Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective’, a book, which when AW checked with booksellers a few months ago, was banned in the UAE. This book however, is being used by Sisters of Islam in Malaysia as a basis of both activist and academic study. Her second book, ‘Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam’ was published 2006, and details the experience of a Muslim woman in all aspects of her life-as wife, mother, daughter, activist and scholar.
"The Qur’an is emphatic that since Allah is not created, then He/She/It cannot be subject to or limited by created characteristics, like gender. That Arabic grammar carries gender markers has led even the best Arab grammarians to erroneously attribute gender to the things referred to therein. Modern feminist studies have analysed this gender bias in language," she explains in an article she wrote with Newint.org.
With such strong convictions, it’s easy to imagine Wadud being born and brought up in a liberated, albeit religious Muslim family. Yet, her family is of mixed faith. Her father is a Methodist minister and her mother is a descendant of Muslim slaves of Arab, Berber and African ancestry. Not really fully knowing her maternal ancestry, she turned to Islam, and converted in 1972, when she uttered ‘na shahadah’ and accepted the religion into her heart.
“I converted to Islam during the second wave feminist movement in the 1970s. I saw everything through a prism of religious euphoria and idealism. Within the Islamic system of thought, I have struggled to transform idealism into pragmatic reforms as a scholar and activist. And my main source of inspiration has been Islam’s own primary source— the Quran,” she relayed in her paper ‘A’lshah’s Legacy’ published in Newint.org.
“It is clear to me that the Qur’an aimed to erase all notions of women as subhuman. There are more passages that address issues relating to women-as individuals, in the family, as members of the community— than all other social issues combined. Let’s start with the Qur’anic story of human origins. ‘Man’ is not made in the image of God. Neither is a flawed female helpmate extracted from him as an afterthought or utility. Dualism is the primordial design for all creation: ‘From all (created) things are pairs’ (Q 51:49),” she explains.
Wadud’s views are indeed supported by groups and individuals, both men and women, all over the world. But as can be seen by the violent reactions against her call to ‘salat’, she definitely does not lack detractors either. Maryanne Ramzy, one of the protesters in last year’s prayer, told BBC News Online that, “what she is doing is against Islam”.
Some have also claimed her fight for a female imam as a mere frivolous activity in the face of more serious issues concerning the sisters of Islam. A blogger who calls herself Sister On a Mission wrote, “Wadud and her cohorts might really believe that women leading prayers would somehow improve women’s status, but that’s because for all their advanced degress, they lack a basic understanding of Islam. They are chasing after the feminist dream of erasing gender roles— but that’s not a Muslim dream. Not because Muslims are backward, but because it’s not a healthy goal. It is a dream born of a sick society where only men and men’s roles were valued. Their answers are not our answers.”
The asssembly of Muslim Jurists in America has reportedly declared that women cannot lead the Friday Prayers, and that anybody who partakes in such a prayer will have their prayers nullified. Wadud’s call to prayer has clearly been heard. Yet whose voice in response will be great is yet to be seen.
