It Is Never Too Late to Start Exercising

A statistic released by China's National Health Commission is rather embarrassing: among Chinese adults, only 18% keep exercising. Diseases related to inactivity are therefore becoming more common.

Many young people lack exercise because work is too busy. Had it not been for a pandemic, I might never have stopped and given myself more time to exercise. After the outbreak I had plenty of time, so for the past year-plus I have kept at it.

Over this year I lost more than ten jin, and the low-back and leg pain previously caused by excessive epidural fat has not recurred. I have not gone back for a check-up, but the fatty liver is probably gone too. Now I do five hundred push-ups a day—not all at once, but in sets of forty, twelve to thirteen sets a day. I am starting to have chest and abdominal muscles; I used to carry a lot of belly fat.

I feel much stronger. Early yesterday, after finishing housework at home, I cycled to the foot of West Hill to plant and water vegetables; by the time I finished it was almost eleven. I then spent six hours cycling from West Hill through Badachu and Jinding Mountain all the way to the summit of Miaofeng Mountain.

The route is about 80 km, more than half of it uphill, with about 20 km of winding mountain road; cycling it took great effort and time. My provisions were only a few flatbreads left over from breakfast, an apple, and two tomatoes. After reaching the summit I took a shortcut home (about 60 km), arriving in only about two hours. My average speed reached about 30 km/h, a record—though the downhill helped. I rode fiercely the whole way, overtaking many electric scooters.

In my twenties I probably did not have this level of fitness; my own feeling is that I am now at the peak of my strength in the past forty years. This year I plan to continue. When I started push-ups last year, forty was a struggle; now three sets of forty are not tiring, and I do at least twelve sets a day. I built up gradually: at the end of last year I could still only manage 200-plus a day; now I do 500. This year I will gradually increase according to my strength, aiming for about 1,000 a day by year-end, and then stop.

Exercise solved my long-standing overweight problem. I plan to lose another ten jin and then stop dieting. I used to excuse myself as having no time, squeezing out exercise time. After actually exercising, I found that working time did not decrease at all; on the contrary, greater vigor raised my efficiency—all I cut was phone-scrolling time.

I remember Daoist master Zhang Zhishun, interviewed at age 100, saying that one must begin exercising by at least sixty, or it will be too late. There is some truth in that, but it should not be taken rigidly. My father was found to have coronary heart disease in his seventies, with chest tightness; this is a chronic disease, and I knew medication could not solve the root. So I had him wear gloves and practice crawling at home every day. After three months, his coronary symptoms disappeared.

Of course this does not mean his coronary disease was cured—curing coronary disease is not that simple, and medication cannot cure elderly coronary disease either; we medical people prescribe for such patients only to relieve symptoms. Since exercise achieves the same result, why take pills?

I had my father crawl because I had read literature showing that both crawling and push-ups greatly benefit the heart. Push-ups in particular: doing more than forty a day can extend life by at least ten years. But my father was already in his seventies, and large numbers of push-ups were unrealistic, so I had him use crawling to train his heart.

At 100, Zhang Zhishun walked briskly on Zhongnan Mountain trails, outpacing a crowd of young followers. If he were given a full physical, I believe many problems would still show and many markers would be abnormal. But so what? It did not prevent him from living past 100, walking briskly and crossing mountains as if on level ground.

So I often tell consultors with abnormal check-up markers not to worry; almost nobody has completely normal markers. If an abnormal marker is not life-threatening, ignore it; not every abnormal marker requires medication. As long as we keep exercising, our condition can be excellent.

I have urged many patients to exercise (especially moderate-intensity exercise such as running, cycling, bars, ball games, swimming, and hiking), but few really take it to heart. Modern people are too fond of ease; modern epidemics are mostly related to overnutrition and inactivity. Sadly, many patients, rather than correcting this, eat tonics, avoid exercise, and prefer quiet rest. Their illness comes from "eating too well and moving too little"; after falling ill they pursue "eating even better and moving even less"—such patients are delusional to expect recovery.

A mesothelioma patient once took my orders seriously. While taking medicine, I had him keep walking with weights or running to help his ascites; for several years he followed this advice faithfully. After years of training, his body could not be called "healthy" but "robust." He is from Weihai, Shandong, and ran along the beach every day carrying 10–20 jin weights in each hand; before he knew it he had become a martial-art strongman, muscular and powerful. Many ask me: "When cancer has progressed to ascites, is it too late to start exercising?" This patient's experience proves it is not too late; starting exercise at any time is not too late. Many people are not defeated by disease but by their own willpower.

Only later did he decide he must already be cured, refused my advice to take a few months of medicine each year to prevent relapse, and could not maintain the dietary restrictions he kept when he first came; he ate a lot of seafood I had strictly forbidden (another Ewing sarcoma patient of mine also relapsed after eating seafood). In the seventh year the tumor recurred.

When he came to me after the relapse, he himself admitted he had stopped taking preventive medicine, stopped exercising and keeping to his diet, and had a dispute with someone and fretted; that is when it recurred. Both he and I regretted it deeply; most of the fellow patients he met after falling ill died within a year or two, and he had lived the longest—I had thought he would not relapse.

Lack of exercise is widespread; in Chinese cities people often only start exercising after retirement or illness, and urban sports equipment is mostly used by the elderly. Sometimes in a park fitness area I meet a white-haired, robust old person doing tricks on the horizontal and parallel bars, while young people lack such fitness.

There is no secret to longevity; the principles have long been published, though few can follow them. The renowned Chinese scholar Zhou Youguang lived to 112, born in 1906 and dying only in 2017. His greatest lifelong trait was a simple, bland diet—he ate no meat or fried food, and four foods were indispensable daily: milk, eggs, vegetables and tofu. Added to this were his open mind, calm disposition, and love of labor and exercise. Though he lived through war and was labeled a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, living in a cowshed through labor reform, he still reached such an age.

After 100 he was still clear-headed and quick-thinking, writing a book every year. As a scholar he had no religious faith, yet learned from extensive reading simple ways to adjust body and mind, and followed them. He was always open-minded; many rightists, unable to bear cowshed life, died of illness or committed suicide, but he faced the era's headwinds calmly, worked cheerfully, and waited for the light, with not a trace of depression.

He once said: "There are no miracles, only routines." His long life, seen by many as a miracle, was in fact only the result of following simple routines.