Brian May - "Very healthy" but "near death"

[Ron Put]

@Todd Allen

OK, in your case, the MRI seems to make sense. 

I did a cheap DEXA a few months ago to essentially check against my Withings Body Cardio scale and it was quite close for fat and right on on bone and muscle.

[Todd Allen]

4 minutes ago, Ron Put said:

I did a cheap DEXA a few months ago to essentially check against my Withings Body Cardio scale and it was quite close for fat and right on on bone and muscle.

My electrical impedance smart scale needs inputs like age, sex and height to report body composition.  I speculate smart scales which need those inputs use them in look up tables or formulas based on typical body compositions at a given BMI for men and women by age and the impedance measurement plays a modest role in the result.

My smart scale was telling me I was 17% body fat when I got a DEXA which gave 31%.  I've done tests of my smart scale such as taking a reading doing a brutal sauna dropping my weight by 5% and taking another reading.  Losing water mass should increase my body fat % as my fat mass is unchanged and now a larger % of my total weight.  But my "smart" scale stupidly reports the opposite, a sharp decrease in body fat %, probably because my BMI dropped significantly and for an average person that would suggest less body fat.  I consider my smart scale useless for measuring anything other than weight.

 

[Saul]

I have an old Tanita "smart" scale.  I also find it useful only for weight.

  --  Saul

[Ron Put]

On 5/28/2020 at 5:13 PM, Todd Allen said:

My electrical impedance smart scale needs inputs like age, sex and height to report body composition.  I speculate smart scales which need those inputs use them in look up tables or formulas based on typical body compositions at a given BMI for men and women by age and the impedance measurement plays a modest role in the result.

Well, when you go for a DEXA scan they ask exactly the same questions :) Virtually every health tracker would ask you to input the same information. Heck, when you go to the doctor they ask the same thing....

I had wondered about the Withings Body Cardio's measurements, which is why I did the DEXA. 

I posted elsewhere about my DEXA experience, but will list the comparison of measurements taken on the same day, within a couple of hours of each other here, to illustrate:

Body Fat:   
-- Withings: 11%
-- DEXA:  13.5%

Bone Mass:
-- Withings: 6.4 - 6.5
-- DEXA:  6.4

Lean Mass:
-- Withings: 123.5
-- DEXA:  124.1

Withings also estimates muscle mass, which also seems to track relatively accurately, since I can see differences based on what I've been doing.

I'd say that Withings Body Cardio is pretty close to DEXA,  overall.  I find it useful to track changes -- I am about 9 lbs lighter now, but my muscle tone is probably a little better.

I am hardly an average case for my age, as I am 6'1" and 141.4lbs today.  So Withings is definitely taking impedance into a strong consideration.  Based on how the numbers have changed over the last few months, it makes sense that Withings is tracking correctly (relatively):

For those in Europe, the Withings Body Cardio also track Pulse Wave Velocity, which I really wish wish they'd be allowed to do in the US.  It's apparently pretty accurate.

 

[Todd Allen]

22 minutes ago, Ron Put said:

Well, when you go for a DEXA scan they ask exactly the same questions :) Virtually every health tracker would ask you to input the same information. Heck, when you go to the doctor they ask the same thing....

But each uses the info differently.  It looks to me like my smart scale places much greater emphasis on the age, sex and height.  Due to having a muscle wasting disease I have significantly less lean mass than would be typical for a man of my age, height and weight.  I also have much greater bone mass than would be typical because I built up my bone mass when I was younger and had much greater lean mass before the wasting set in.   I believe DEXA which saw my high bone and fat masses and low lean mass is much closer to the truth than my smart scale which reports numbers matching a typical person without a muscle wasting disease.

Although your BMI is lower than typical your composition of fat, lean and bone are probably close to typical for someone of your age, height, sex and weight.  If you dramatically changed your body composition say dropped your body fat 6 lbs while adding 6 lbs of muscle or if you were completely immobilized in a body cast for a year but stayed at the same weight I'd bet you would find the smart scale would see a fraction of either change as would be reported by DEXA or an MRI.  Or do a water weight change, drink 6 lbs or sweat 6 lbs and DEXA will report it as a change in lean mass but the smart scale will show it largely as a change in fat mass. 

[Dean Pomerleau]

Here is a video from a few days ago by Brian May talking about his recent health ordeal. It is nice to see he is doing much better after getting three stents to clear blockages in his coronary arteries.

--Dea

 

 

[TomBAvoider]

Dean, did you run out of energy when it came to the "n" in your name there :)... but yes, glad to see Brian doing better. I must say for 72, he looks about his age - and not "better". 

The experience of aging is very deceptive - certainly for me. Teenagers and young people famously regard getting old as such a distant time that it almost doesn't apply to them. I always thought that I was hyper aware of aging, health, death and so on, since I've dwelled on it from an early age. But still psychologically, it felt safely "in the future", hopefully distant future. Here's the bizarre part - when I was 20, to me 50 was firmly in the "over the hill" and not applying to me as a 20-year-old. Now that I'm past 50, I somehow fail to see myself as "over the hill", but I don't extend the same courtesy to other past 50 year olds - very hypocritical. I look at someone in their late 50's and think "on the downward slope of life" - but fail to think that of myself, except abstractly/intellecutally... I acknowledge the number but don't take on everything else that it means. 

This is just a long way of saying - I know that I'll be 72 (unless I die tragically before) very, very soon - time passes so quickly! Yet, I look at Brian May, and "feel" (not "think") "oh, he's old!" and I feel like when I was 20 I felt about 50 year olds... yet 72, objectively is just around the corner for me. When I look at Brian May, I should think "tomorrow" - instead, I think (or more accurately FEEL) "one day, in the distant future". And so I listen carefully to what he says, because this is how someone that age expresses themselves, and experiences their reality... this is not how a 20 year old speaks... this is an old man talking. One day - VERY SOON - I'll be an old man... how will I sound to someone of my age today? Psychological self-image is an odd thing. 

Edited May 30, 2020 by TomBAvoider

[Sibiriak]

36 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

 One day - VERY SOON - I'll be an old man..

And very soon after that, you will be dead and gone.  For all eternity.

[Dean Pomerleau]

58 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

Dean, did you run out of energy when it came to the "n" in your name there :)...

I didn't notice it until you pointed it out. Maybe my eyes are going :-). I'll leave it that way to avoid ruining your clever quip.

58 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

I must say for 72, he looks about his age - and not "better".

Except for the white hair I didn't think he looked too bad especially for someone who recently had a heart attack. But I'll grant you he doesn't look significant younger than his chronological age.

From his seemingly upbeat attitude (although I know he does have a history of depression) and lack of physical disabilities, I suspect that like you, he doesn't consider himself to be "over the hill." That's why he was so surprised when he learned of his heart problem. 

58 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

Psychological self-image is an odd thing. 

I think it is gift of human psychology that allows us to "spin" all kinds of things to make life bearable - including our own self-image in the face of inevitable aging. Like your advice to Clinton on how to be resilient by not dwelling on the setbacks but instead finding positives ("well I've still got my health...") when things go pear-shaped in life.

--Dean

[TomBAvoider]

And very soon after that, you will be dead and gone.  For all eternity.

And completely forgotten. It's a rare human who is remembered by history. And more rare yet by any contemporary society at large. I was talking to a friend recently, and I remarked upon how Al Jolson  was at a certain point considered the world's most famous entertainer, known to all, and today, the vast majority of people don't know who he was - he's remembered only by those who are aware of, or read about singers from a hundred years ago. I imagine that Brian May might be even more obscure in due time - but he at least will leave a trace in the history of popular entertainment, for future historians... whereas I, and millions like me, will leave no such trace.

When I travel in Europe, I like to visit cemetaries that were completely abandoned - overgrown by forests - for 150-200 years. You can still make out some graves with writing. In one such cemetary in the north-eastern part of Poland in a forest close to the border with Lithuania I came across an abandoned cemetary that was very strange indeed - because it had both graves that were Jewish and Christian, something I thought never happened, as those communities always had separate cemetaries. I looked at all those graves with names and dates - some with quite imposing sculptures indicating "important" people in the community, and all completely forgotten. I wondered whether any of these names even lived in the memories of family lore of still extant descendants today. And at least they had a visitor - me - who looked at their grave and wondered about their lives. Yet, the vast majority of humans don't even get that.

[paula]

I found this thread inspiring to start today. Other than most of you are men, genetically, I feel quite similar to all the posts. Luckily my cholesterol is ok by kaiser I don’t consider statin worth the risk. At 67 I do bow down to cozaar, amlodopene and losartan for my isolated systolic hypertension. Imagin my dismay in the pandemic after it being predicted when I was 30 that I will die of pneumonia even though my only inkling has been bad pneumonia at age 2 and a low score on spirometer. All my life I have no problem with daily huffing and puffing cardio. 
so I shall join the parade when it’s my time. I equate it to jumping off a high dive, only one jump each.

[Ron Put]

 

Sadly, Mac Miller is gone, too :(  Everybody's gotta go.... Sooner or later.