The rest of my life

This interview with Ron Kastner was recorded remotely on March 4, 2024 and transcribed using Sonix AI. Please check against audio recording for absolute accuracy.

Ron Kastner: [00:00:01] Just the feeling of being alive is just so visceral and so joyous, and it doesn’t need to be a beautiful sunny day. It doesn’t need to. It’s just, ah, here I am. My breath. My heart’s beating. The wonder that is our bodies is just, almost like a ceaseless source of amazement for me. .

Peter Bowes: [00:00:28] In his mid-fifties Ron Kastner became the father of two daughters. A dad for the first time during a decade when most people are beginning to contemplate retirement. But for Ron, in many ways, life was just beginning. Hello again. Welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast, I’m Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the science and stories behind Human longevity. Ron, it’s good to talk to you. I can hear the sirens of London Town in the background already.

Ron Kastner: [00:00:57] I’m sorry about that. Yeah.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:01] That’s all right.

Ron Kastner: [00:01:02] That’s where I am. I split my time between New York and London, and this is. This is the end of the time that I’m in London, sort of the winter. And I spend most of the summers in New York at Long Island.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:14] Sounds good. Well, look, Ron, really good to talk to you. The book is is fascinating. It’s A life yet to live: Finding health, vitality and joy. After 60.  You wrote this book because you had something of an epiphany, didn’t you? In your maybe it’s fair to say in your late 50s, after the birth of your daughters. 

Ron Kastner: [00:01:33] And my late 50s, I was going through a troubling time when that the company I started 20 years before was in trouble because of the financial crisis. And I, I was on my way to a business meeting on a train and a whole bunch of serendipitous things,happened. And I just said to myself, whoa. Actually, what happened was the universe grabbed me by the lapels and gave me a big shake and said, Hey, buddy, you’re, almost 60 years old. You’ve got two little girls. They were six months and three and a half years old at the time, and they need a dad to be healthy and functional for quite a ways. Quite a quite a long time to come. And it, it was a very personal thunderclap because I lost my own father when I was seven and grew up without a dad in my life. And it’s a very I like to say, it was a hole that was left in my life. And I resolved there and then to do whatever I could to be a vital, functioning, healthy dad into what I knew would be my 70s or 80s. And here I am. I’m just 74 on Friday, so. And celebrated all weekend with with my daughters who are 16 and 19 now. So you know, it’s been.

Peter Bowes: [00:03:07] A congratulations and how time flies. Yeah, it’s really interesting to hear your story. And we’re going to delve into it in some detail. Just before we do that though, let’s just talk a little bit about you and your life before your daughters and your career. And your career has been interesting to say the least. It’s been a very varied, fascinating, you could almost say eclectic career.

Ron Kastner: [00:03:29] I was a Woodstock hippie. I screwed around a lot in my 20s. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I found myself in the printing industry. It turns out I liked it. I was a very good salesman. I found this niche little industry called financial printing, which printed for Wall Street and the City of London. And, it was very, very high pressure. And it was also very, very high paying. I eventually I was very successful at it. I eventually started my own company. I had more more money than a blue collar kid from Newark, New Jersey would ever know what to do with. So, one of the things I did with it was I became a theater producer as well, and I used it. I was a typical New York poster child. I spent most of the day on the east side of town doing my business, and most of the night on the west side of town in the theater world. And I won a bunch of awards for being a theater producer as well. So. And all that. I mean, I was looking for a family along the way. It just never happened. But it did happen in my 50s. So, that’s what. That’s how I ended up having kids late. You know, I always thought I was going to have plenty of time. And thanks to all the health stuff that I began doing in the late 50s, I think in my late 50s, I think I will have plenty of time. My whole attitude has changed towards, towards, living long and being healthy and increasing by health span and all that other stuff. Stuff feels great.

Peter Bowes: [00:05:20] So let’s start with what you did. First. You you had your daughters. You had this realization that you had to change. You had to change your attitude, I guess, towards your longevity and change your lifestyle as well. So where did you start?

Ron Kastner: [00:05:36] I had been I had been doing some exercise and some yoga up until then, but the real first deep dive was a detox. There’s a book. Doesn’t have to be this book. It can be any book. But there’s a book called Clean by Alejandro Younger, and it’s basically a three week elimination diet. And it taught me so much about, you know, I had to get rid of, caffeine, alcohol, sugar, anything with gluten, most processed carbs, all processed carbs. So you basically out of paleo, you know, some kind of pale version of paleo diet. And there was also intermittent fasting involved. For c 12 hours a day. and a lot of smoothies and this, that and the other thing. But the point of it is to restore your immune system, which took three weeks. And I have to say, after those three weeks, I lost 15 pounds. I felt I had more energy that than I had. After, you know, I mean, after I was just feeling, like, completely lit up all the time. And I said, if my diet can make that big of a change, there’s got to be a lot more that I can learn about this stuff. And I take it that that whole journey ended up going into the gym and movement and evolution and stopping drinking and all kinds of other things, all of which is in the book  so lots of interesting issues there to to dive into, especially stopping drinking. But let me ask you a more general question. First of all, because I think what you did initially, you tackled what I actually see as some of the most simple things you can do in terms of lifestyle, that is diet and exercise. There are lots of different longevity interventions these days that we can apply to ourselves, and some are quite expensive. Some are out of the reach of of many of us. But changing your diet and and your exercise regime are amongst the most simple to achieve, perhaps arguably with the best results.

Ron Kastner: [00:07:50] It’s it’s 90% of the journey I think I have, I have, trust me, over the past 15 or 16 years I have experimented with just about everything. And it’s all, you know, all the stuff that’s out there in terms of hacks and, you know, this product, that product, there’s no one product or one exercise or one this or one that is going to fix your life. It’s the same stuff that our bodies evolved on. It’s healthy food, natural food and a lot of motion, a lot of movement. You know, our ancestors are cavemen. Their ancestors moved 10 to 15 miles a day. And, you know, you can imagine all the movements that they did from all the hunting things they threw, they, they pull, they climb, they ran, they, you know, all this, all the stuff that we watch in sports now. And, those were the movements that our bodies grew up on. And in modern life, especially the past 100 years or so, in the quote, age of comfort. We don’t do any of that anymore. We just don’t do any of that anymore. And it’s so tempting. I see my daughters, I see their friends. It’s so tempting to just plop down on the sofa, eat crap, and watch television. You know? It’s just it’s it’s what it’s what the consumer world wants us to do.

Peter Bowes: [00:09:24] So it brings a whole different meaning to the phrase modern living, doesn’t it? Modern living in so many ways isn’t the best way to live.

Ron Kastner: [00:09:33] Look up until a certain point if people are starving. It’s fine. You know, improving their, their means and their food intake and everything else. But past that, once you get into all this comfort that everything else, I don’t I just don’t see the point. I just don’t see the point. You know, I do it too, you know, and I did it too. BuT it doesn’t have any returns from a health standpoint. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of negative stuff that comes with it.

Peter Bowes: [00:10:09] So let me dive into your exercise regime now almost in your well, you are in your mid 70s now. How do you divide your time between resistance training and let’s say aerobic training, where you might be walking or hiking or running as opposed to lifting weights in a gym? What is the balance for you?

Ron Kastner: [00:10:29] UI try to do four or so zone two aerobic things a week. Sometimes that’s including a high intensity session, and sometimes it’s a high intensity session. In addition to that.

Peter Bowes: [00:10:49] Just explain what you mean by zone two.

Ron Kastner: [00:10:51] Zone two means like 60% of your maximum heart rate, and it’s comfortable. Elevated heart rate, you know, for a good a good guide is 180 minus your age somewhere in that somewhere. So for me that’s about 110 a little bit less than 110, although my maximum heart rate is a little bit higher. So it’s more like 110 to 115. And it’s comfortable. You know, I go I call I wrote an article for my website which is RonKastner.Com I’ll give myself a little plug, which just says hanging out in zone two. You know, when you do it for 40 minutes or 15 minutes or an hour, it’s nothing taxing. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I, you know, just think. Sometimes I partially meditate. And many times I go for walks, things like that, you know. So it’s, it’s a and then the, the strength stuff is really important, especially legs, because there’s all kinds of balance issues and all kinds of strength issues. As you get older, muscle loss and all kinds of other things that, so I try to do 2 or 3 sometimes it’s tacked onto an aerobic session at sometimes it’s on its own. And then I supplement it all with yoga, which I do in the morning. So when I get up. So it’s a lot. It’s a lot. Most people go, oh, I couldn’t do that. But I find try. Trust me, I tried doing less. I just don’t I can feel the I can feel the strength and the energy going away when I do less so.

Peter Bowes: [00:12:44] And do you enjoy it while you’re doing it?

Ron Kastner: [00:12:47] I enjoy the results. Sometimes I enjoy doing it, and. But I definitely enjoy the results. All right. You know, we are a species that is unique in the planet, in that we can see the results of our actions. Yeah. No other animal species can do that. We can also predict that if we don’t do something. You know, something, some benefits or some other things may not happen. So there’s a whole interplay of things there of expectation and rewards,and all kinds of other things. I mean, I feel great when I come out of the gym, I feel great, I feel, you know, just long, you know, I just want to say, okay, job well done. And, and that I had a little game that I played with myself when I first started saying, for every hour I spend in the gym, I get to live an extra day. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it certainly motivated me. I said, I’ll take that, I’ll take that. You know that risk.

Peter Bowes: [00:14:05] And you’re doing this not just for yourself. And clearly a big part of your motivation was the birth of your daughters. Your daughters are much older now, but for that extra day that you’re achieving, or whether it’s an extra week or month because you’re going to the gym, that is big picture, isn’t it? That is so that you can be here with your daughters and helping your daughters and nurturing their lives.

Ron Kastner: [00:14:28] And I have to say, a lot of it’s now for me. You know, at first it was all them, and a lot of it is now. I had. I had such a good time today. I want to do this again tomorrow. You know, and I’d see people. I see people who are my age or younger. They don’t do this. And I know what’s going to happen. I just know what’s going to happen to them. And I feel bad for them and I and it and it just, I don’t want to be a, you know, you should do this kind of guy, you know? So what I do is what I’ve done in the book, it’s I say in the book, this is not an advice book. I am just telling you my story. Just so you know. It’s possible. And that’s it, you know? That’s it. It’s pretty extensive. This stuff in the book, I mean, you know, I hope people. Yeah.

Peter Bowes: [00:15:26] No, I’ve read I’ve read the book in detail. And what you say is what I always say as well, that I’m not giving advice. I’m just sharing stories here. And hopefully, perhaps people are inspired by hearing other people’s stories. I think if and the best advice always is that if you have a real issue, you should go to your doctor. Your doctor knows you medically, you should seek their expertise. But I think it is. It’s great to be inspired by the lives of others. And that’s what that’s why I’m talking to you now. And I want to talk about your diet as well, because the two, the two big pillars for me are exercise and diet. Sleep is the other one. But let’s talk about diet. Did you change your diet? In your 60s?

Ron Kastner: [00:16:09] Yes using the detox diet as a. As a springboard, I now practice. Probably it’s a combination of low calorie,low carb and intermittent fasting. The thing about the detox diet is that. You learn how your body reacts to food. We’re all different and everybody’s body is different. Everybody reacts differently. Had I always knew that bread and pasta for me were not good, I felt bloated. It didn’t feel right inside. And I learned that in a big way on the detox. Because the first thing you do when you reintroduce some foods is listen to your body. And I did not like that at all, especially once he got really clean. So the low carb thing has always been, you know, it’s kind of like a paleo. You know, I eat mainly fish as protein a few times a week, occasional meat. I’m not big on pulses. Simply there again for digestive comfort. It’s just too it’s just too much food to eat to get the amount of protein that I need. And then mainly salads and vegetables. So, you know, I, I do a fairly strict 12 to 14 hours a day of not eating, usually from 6 or 7 at night till the following morning and it seems to work.I have not gained an extra pound since the detox. You know, I’m I’m six foot tall and I weigh 75 kilos or 6,065 pounds. So I, you know, all my body, you know, BMI and all that stuff is all within range, you know, and and so when the doctor, the doctor likes it. You said one thing before about medicine. Go and see the doctor. I definitely agree with that. But I have found I have a chapter in the book called Four Doctors, and I have found that modern medicine is changing, but modern medicine does not do a great job with prevention. They do not, you know, this stuff that we’re talking about now, most people would go most modern doctors would go, yeah, if it feels good, do it. It’s not going to change anything. There are people out there, like Peter Attia and Mark Hyman and people like that who are who are much better at the preventive side.

Peter Bowes: [00:19:05] I would agree with you that there needs globally to be a seismic shift between that attitude of simply treating disease and preventing disease. And most health systems around the world live by that, that they see patients when there’s a problem, when they’re hurting somewhere, when they’re sick, and then they attempt to treat the condition, the focus on preventative medicine is there if you look for it, but it’s it’s not thrust upon you by the system. And that’s, I think, the big problem that people go through their lives, they get sick, they seek some sort of remedy without really focusing and thinking on the preventative side.

Ron Kastner: [00:19:44] And this is why this is why I was going to say this at the beginning, and I’m glad that we came back around to it. For your listeners. And it’s how I, I every time I give a little talk or something to a group of people, I usually start out by saying your health and your later life are guided by you and what you want out of your, you know, later life. If you’ve got health for, you know, those 20 or 30 years that we now call later life, you will be, um, you have plenty of time to live a dynamic, changing, energetic life. And you can do lots of things that you’ve always wanted to do in life and everything else, but you have to spend time looking after your health. So what you want and what matters to you or who matters to you, um, really becomes the central question. And and while the medical establishment is not seeking prevention, uh, we can substitute for that and do it ourselves, you know, and all the stuff I, all the stuff I have in the book, I learned from public sources, none of it’s, you know, none of it’s doctors, none of it’s it’s studies, it’s books. It’s all kind of stuff.

Peter Bowes: [00:21:11] So you mentioned giving up drinking earlier. Giving up alcohol. Just tell me about that experience. How much did you drink before and what was the transition like?

Ron Kastner: [00:21:23] I lived a pretty plush life. I was flying back and forth to New York and London. I had offices in both places. I was entertaining a lot. I was producing theater in both places. I was drinking like incredibly expensive wine, and I could hold alcohol really well all my life, you know, and it made me feel good. It made me the life of the party and, you know, it sort of. I was always a timid kid, and it. I got rid of the inhibitions and everything else. When I started doing my health stuff, I went, you know, all the people, all the, all the studies I was doing, they were saying, what? So if you could point to one thing that would, you know, that would, hurt your health journey, what would it be? And without a doubt, it came back. I said, I can’t square that circle, I can’t. So I tried cutting back. I tried cutting down. It didn’t work. I was just I was I was a heavy social drinker. How much? At least a half a bottle of wine every night, but more often a cocktail or two before that half the bottle of wine and more than a half a bottle of wine, you know. And that was, you know, that’s quite a bit, you know, and I tolerated it well, more than a few hangovers in my life. And I just said to myself, if I can’t stop, I got to find a way. And then there was one night, I have to say, it was one night after a cocktail party. And I just didn’t remember what happened. And I didn’t go. I went to the cocktail party saying, I’m just going to have one glass of wine tonight. And before I knew it, it just, you know, my wife said, I said, you know, did we have a good time last night? And she said, yeah, you know, you were fine and everything. Yeah. She didn’t even know. And I was and I just didn’t remember what what happened after a certain point. And I said to myself, okay, this is it. And out of the blue, I just I knew it had been building for a while. I knew, and I just stopped cold turkey. Now that I that does not mean I don’t drink now, but for a good 7 or 8 years I didn’t touch a drop. So I learned what it was like not drinking. And now I do stop after one glass of wine.

Peter Bowes: [00:23:58] And explain to me what that difference felt like from being quite a heavy drinker, to not drink and stopping cold turkey, to not drinking at all for several years. How did your body respond to that?

Ron Kastner: [00:24:11] My digestion improved dramatically, my energy improved dramatically. It was a real, as I say in the book, it was a really tough adjustment to be timid at cocktail parties again, you know? But what I found out was there’s a lot of other people who were timid at cocktail parties, and they were hanging out on the outskirts of the action, too. And I would just make, you know, new friends. And they turned out to be a little bit more interesting than the ones who were all lit up from alcohol. It was difficult at first. It was very difficult at first because the alcohol for me was a was a real crutch. And if I knew I was going someplace that didn’t wasn’t going to have alcohol, I would have one before. You know? But you cannot you cannot, square that circle. You can’t live a long life and and be a drinker. It’s not going to happen. You know. Well, it can happen if you’ve got extraordinary DNA, but not that level. You know.

Peter Bowes: [00:25:19] So what’s interesting to me about your story is, though, that you have actually gone back to some drinking after several years of not drinking any alcohol. You do occasionally have a drink now. What was the thought process there? Was it a conscious decision that you you actually like alcohol? You’d like to taste it occasionally or what was it?

Ron Kastner: [00:25:39] Hey, it was just there once and I said, ya know what? It’s been so long. Let me see what it’s like again. And it was like. It was like having a, you know, a cigarette for the first time at 12 years old or something or 16 or whatever it was. And, you know, I was all dizzy and, you know, my body was like, whoa, this is weird. And I said, I don’t want to do this, so I didn’t. After that first one, then sort of slowly. You know, I just sort of had. I just started doing it again. It’s not. There are some times I will have a glass of wine and regret it the next morning. And sometimes I don’t, you know, I just say to myself, why did I, did I really need that? It never goes more than the glass, you know, sometimes another half a glass or something like that. Because there’s a I now have a, I now have a stop which I didn’t have before. So and the stop is the health stuff, you know, the health stuff and bad sleep. So of course it really affects your sleep.

Peter Bowes: [00:27:03] Let’s talk about the psychological side of what you’ve been doing. Clearly, there are physical changes that you’ve been able to bring about because of your change of diet and your increased amount of exercise. But what’s it done to your mind and to your brain and to your outlook on life?

Ron Kastner: [00:27:22] Well, you can’t you can’t spend as much time in the health space as I do. And not. Health is health and healing are powers that were given to us at birth. They’re not. We don’t make them happen ourselves. They are, you know, fundamental with how life works. The whole health thing. Okay and you can’t I don’t I personally don’t believe that health is only a physical thing. And once your body starts healing and you get stronger and you have more energy and you’re and physically you are more capable, the healing process. Doesn’t stop there. The healing process goes into the emotional side. The healing process goes into the spiritual side. And at least that’s that’s the way it it has happened with me and, um, and with me, I had to go back and do a lot of work about. Uh, well, in psychotherapy with my in my childhood and what that was like and what, you know, I had a I got hit by a sledgehammer when I was seven years old. The the my father died. I was an only child and my mother kind of fell apart, you know, so I, I was basically without parents or effective parents for much of the time after that. And I had to go back and explore some of that stuff and get rid of some of the anger. And I don’t know about getting rid of it, but at least acknowledge it. And some of the, um, some of the hurt and all the other stuff, you know, we live, uh, we like to live our lives as if we’re in control of them. But, you know, our childhood experience is, are usually are looming in the background and in a degree that we don’t, we don’t really want to admit to entity like day to day life.

Peter Bowes: [00:29:37] And have you learned about self-respect, about being thankful for what we have every day? Is there a new appreciation of life? And I certainly get this from reading your book that you have. Your mindset has evolved in that respect.

Ron Kastner: [00:29:53] Absolutely. I mean, I have a morning routine. It’s mostly movement, but it’s also some meditation and, and just the just the feeling of being alive is just so visceral and so joyous. And it doesn’t need to be a beautiful sunny day. It doesn’t need to. It’s just, here I am, my breath. My heart’s beating. The wonder that is our bodies is just almost like a ceaseless. Source of amazement for me, you know, and it’s 90% of the energy we expend every day, and we completely take it for granted. This sort of humming, you know, visceral, um, organism that’s directly in touch with the universe of the world around us, you know, for instance, if we were walking down the street and looking to cross the street and a speeding car would come by everything we were thinking about doing and everything else, we’d stop and pull that. Because that part of us, there’s always an alert, there’s always working. You know, we are the most amazing things on this planet, and we don’t treat ourselves that way.

Peter Bowes: [00:31:16] And is that in part the reason why you wrote the book? You’ve gone through these experiences and you wanted to share what it’s like with other people. 

Ron Kastner: [00:31:24] Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, I wanted to share with my daughters. I wanted them to say, here’s here’s why I did what I did. And here’s who your dad is, okay? But I also, uh, said, you know what? There’s a lot of other people out there who I see that don’t. Know what the possibilities are at this time of life. And the wider we circulate that information, the more people tell their stories about, um, about how they do things and why they do things. You know, the why. Peter, Attia makes a really good point. Saying the why of your later life is much more important than the how. Of your later life? No. You know, why are you doing this? And that’s going to be all your motivation. And once you do that, the house will come into place. They all fall into place because there’s so much advice out there that you couldn’t possibly follow all of it. You have to come to terms with some. How’s that work for you? You know.

Peter Bowes: [00:32:30] Yes, I often say that that there is the amount of advice out there is bewildering, but ultimately it is up to you. And that’s why hopefully talking to people like yourself, talking to other experts, especially in terms of what I do, is just part of the process of navigating all of that information to figure out, because we’re all individual, to individually decide what is best for us. Ron, your book is fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing it. It’s called A Life Yet to Live: finding Health, vitality, and Joy after 60. You’ll find a link to it in the show notes for this episode, along with a transcript of this conversation. Ron, let me just ask you in closing, what do you see in your future? What are your aspirations for the future? Mid-‘seventies now, do you think about your own longevity? Do you have a plan for how you’re going to navigate the years ahead?

Ron Kastner: [00:33:23] I don’t really, you know, life is just is pretty joyous day to day. I mean, I think there might be another book coming. I felt some stirrings. I don’t know what that book is going to be yet, but it you know, it felt good writing. It took a long time, but it felt good writing it. the website that I do is ronkastner.com, there’s I do two posts a week on a newsletter, so that is kind of like always updating what I’m learning and things that are on my mind and things like that. That’s a lot of fun. My daughters are getting older so the time with them is different. It’s different quality. They’re sorry that lives of their own. And, so I don’t know, but I, you know, that every day is pretty wonderful. So I’m just sort of taking it one day at a time, you know, it’s really, you know, the joy. The joy is in the title for a reason, because it does feel pretty good being mobile and energetic and healthy at this time of life.

Peter Bowes: [00:34:33] Ron, really good to talk to you. Good to be inspired by what you’ve achieved and what you’re working towards. The book is a really good read. Thank you so much.

Ron Kastner: [00:34:41] Thank you Peter.