Standing tall at the lectern, dressed in a navy-blue blazer, grey trousers, white shirt, pink tie and matching pink pocket handkerchief, he’s immaculate. A man of a previous time. I’m watching Charles Eugster, a retired dentist with a terribly posh English accent, giving a Ted Talk lecture, ‘Why body building at 93 is a great idea!’ Charles is ninety-three. His words are delivered with energy and passion. The video has had more than 2 million views.
Fact after fact. ‘Soon there will be more people over 65 than under 16. In North America 26% of the population is obese. 92.2% of the over sixty fives have one or more chronic disease. 40% of the sixty plus take 5 or more medications every day.’
The audience are mostly young, few older than forty.
‘Natural healthy ageing is covered by a blanket of disease. It is commonly believed disease is your natural consequence of aging. We are over nourished. over medicated, under exercised. Society is mentally and physically inactive.’ He pauses for effect, ‘Inactivity is now a major cause of death.’
For fifteen minutes he talks of age and the restorative power of the body through diet and exercise. “You can rebuild your body at any age!” his voice strong, his enthusiasm palpable “for the sake of future generations, we have to transform what it means to be old.” It is a personal passionate appeal. The standing ovation that follows is the longest I have ever heard after a Ted talk. I realized I’d joined in, a tear in my eye. What a star!
Charles was in his eighties when he first started to exercise, the change in his body amazed him and changed him. He started winning medals, cups, setting world records for rowing, sprinting and weight-lifting. In his autobiography ‘Age is just a number,’ he writes ‘I have simply made the most of what I have left and I intend to share everything I’ve learned along the way, so that you might follow in my footsteps and even overtake me. I’d like to show you how to make the rest of your life the best years you’ve ever had ………. this isn’t about having unique genes or a lifelong commitment to a purist existence. I’m just an old boy who refused to shuffle into decrepitude. At a time when I might have faced what I consider to be the horror of old age, I chose to reinvent myself.”
“I may not have known it … but my best years were ahead of me.”
Charles wanted to change the world, to make advanced old age a different experience, one that could be exciting, useful and fulfilling. He led by example and magnificently over-achieved until the very end of his remarkable life.” A remarkable man, truly inspirational. An Age Star!
Charles Eugster who in his words ‘refused to shuffle into decrepitude’ is the first DiscoverAge ‘Age Star!’ His lifestyle in the deep years inspire and motivate. Age Stars are aspirational role models, men and women whose lives exemplify healthy, active, successful, ageing.
Age Stars inspire. Role models who will change age perception and expectation who are changing the world.