Healthy living: What 85-Year-Old Doctor Does To Stay Young

An 85-year-old doctor is doing the best thing for his body and health in order to stay fit and free from ailments.

The 90 minus five years man does not joke with workout and exercise.

According to Hoosier Times, Dr. Richard Carl might be quite over 80 years, however, he knows how to stay young.

Even though he’s had two knee replacements and one hip replacement, he works out every day.

Three days a week, his workouts take place at the Owen County YMCA in Spencer. The other days, he rides 10 miles on the stationary bike he keeps in his Ellettsville home.

Carl — known to many as Dr. Carl — is no stranger to the effects aging has on his body. He can no longer see well because of macular degeneration, an eye disease that blurs vision.

His wife, Judy, 83, does all of the couple’s driving. Some days she stays and does water aerobics in the pool, something she’s been doing for the past 30 years.

Getting exercise

On a balmy Wednesday morning in early July, Carl’s wife dropped him off at the family-friendly gym while she ran errands. It was time for another one of his workouts with Laura Gentry, program manager at the Owen County YMCA who acts as Carl’s personal trainer.

“She is always examining what’s working and what’s not working. She’s a professional, she really is,” Carl said. “She watches how I do things and a lot of time determines from that what’s next. You know, what I need to work on the most. That’s really the beauty of having somebody like Laura.”

Another replacement

Nearly three years ago, Carl had his second knee-replacement operation. It didn’t go as smoothly as the first one.

But, Carl said, all the doctors thought his knee looked fine. He was in pain for more than a year and he couldn’t use his left leg. The muscles atrophied.

He went to several doctors and received several different opinions.

“I, being a retired dentist, understand this,” he said. “If a patient comes in and says, ‘Doc, it’s that tooth right there.’ Well, that’s the tooth you concentrate on.”

Out of desperation, he went back to the doctor who did his knee replacement.

“I don’t know how you feel about divine intervention, but I feel very strongly,” Carl said. “He said ‘Did we ever check your hip?’ and it was like a light came on.”

Carl had another X-ray.

“It turned out the hip was almost totally destroyed,” he said. So, he got the hip replaced, and now his pain is nearly nonexistent.

“I classify pain in a different way than I guess most people do,” Carl said. “I classify discomfort as anything other than you know, not a big problem. Pain to me is if somebody stabbed you in the back — that’s pain.”

More workouts

What he and Gentry are doing now is helping Carl bring muscle tone back to his left leg. They do plenty of standing stretches on the rubber mats in the Owen County YMCA’s upper-level, which overlooks onto the gym floor of the second level.

Carl does a lot of the same stretches at home, but he likes that Gentry will show him how to do them correctly and guide him if he’s having trouble. He also uses the different exercise machines available at the YMCA, as well as dumbells.

“I’ve been blessed with reasonably good health, so I can do all these things,” Carl said. “I tell people who are fit and able to do things — do them. It’s like so many other things, if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Carl likes to encourage others to do their best. He said he sees so many people who think they’re aren’t able to exercise due to physical limitations, but they’ve got to find what works for them.

“If you can do it, keep doing it. Try to push yourself beyond — you shouldn’t push yourself too much — but you need to find out what your limitations are and try to exceed them.

Photo used as illustration

A full life

However, Carl doesn’t spend all of his time in the gym. He loves to play the trumpet at church, which he said is unusual for an 85-year-old to still be doing.

“I just think the good Lord has blessed me with the ability and the desire,” he said.

Carl said there’s nothing wrong with having fun in church. In fact, he likes to jazz up hymns but, because of his vision, he has to memorize every new song he learns.

When he retired from his dental practice and Judy retired from teaching, the pair did a lot of traveling. They’ve visited 42 countries, but now they’d just like to see more of the United States.

The two have two children and plenty of grandchildren and great-grandchild but they also have Mai Ling. They’ve visited her in China three times.

“She was a post-graduate student at IU and she wanted someone to help her with her English. We fell in love with each other,” he said. “We call her our Chinese daughter, and we keep in touch with her every Saturday by Skype.”

Besides traveling, Carl listens to audiobooks on Amazon Alexa and helping Judy with the gardening.

However, there’s one thing he loves to do most of all. “I love to cut grass,” Carl said.

From time to time he cuts his neighbor’s grass as well as his own. He drives a zero-turn mower, which is the only thing he can still drive since he doesn’t have a driver’s license.

“I really enjoy cutting grass, and I always have enjoyed that,” he said. “There’s something cool about it.”