Open-Minded Healing
Find ways to heal yourself and become your own best advocate with Open Minded Healing. Marla interviews everyday people that overcame serious health conditions outside of their MD's office, and a variety of Health practitioners that offer effective, unconventional healing modalities.
Open-Minded Healing
Eileen Kopsaftis - Debunking Myths About Ageing: Reverse Chronic Pain Often Associated with “Getting Older”
Send us your desired health topic or guest suggestions
What if the aches you’ve blamed on age are actually fixable? We sit down with physical therapist and nutrition educator Eileen Kopsaftis to rethink pain, and the beliefs that quietly drive decline. Eileen shares consistent shifts that can change everything: how your back feels, how your bones adapt, and how your strength returns. We start by challenging the cultural script that normalizes a shoebox of prescriptions and shrinking horizons.
You’ll learn about practical routines she gives clients, and when McKenzie-based movements can settle disc-related pain without surgery. Drawing on research linking impaired lumbar blood flow to degeneration, she makes the case for a whole food, plant-forward approach that supports endothelial function, increases nitric oxide, and calms inflammation. We also unpack bone density myths, T-scores vs Z-scores, and why calcium from leafy greens and almonds beats pills that often pass unabsorbed.
On muscle, the data points to inactivity—not age—as the culprit. By incorporating adequate hydration and complex carbs to fuel your workouts, people in their 70s and 80s build strength, stability, and confidence. Expect clear steps, not platitudes, and a hopeful reframing backed by stories of people who avoided surgery, shed pain, and reclaimed their independence. If you’re ready to swap decline for design, hit play, take notes, and try the free movement assessment Eileen shares to personalize your plan.
Enjoyed this conversation? Follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help more people find practical, science-informed ways to move pain-free.
You can find Eileen Kopsaftis at:
Website - https://havelifelongwellbeing.com/
Book: Aging Culprits!: 12 Myths That Sabotage Your Future and Steal Your Joy
- https://www.amazon.com/Aging-Culprits-Myths-Sabotage-Future/dp/1966395051
Book: Pain Culprits!: Surprising Truths Behind Pain, How to Uncover the Cause, and What to Do about It
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRPTG9N/
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Welcome to Open Minded Healing. If you're feeling more aches and pains as you age, which I know I feel that way at times for sure, and assume it's just part of getting older, you'll want to hear what my guest today has to share. Eileen Kapsoftis has spent over 30 years working with individuals who believe their pain was just part of getting older, only to discover that small shifts in movement and nutrition could overcome limitations they thought were permanent. Eileen is an international best-selling author and a nutrition educator holding advanced certification in applied functional science. And she's here today to debunk myths surrounding aging and offer actionable steps that will allow you at any age to move pain-free and stop relying solely on medication and surgery.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Welcome, Eileen. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here and looking forward to talking about some really good stuff that will help people.
Marla Miller:I'm excited to hear about these actionable steps. That usually means it's something simple enough that everyone can do and also to be educated on this topic because I do agree that as we get older, when we get sick or the bones ache, we tend to jump to the conclusion that it's because we're aging and that's just the natural progression of things. So I'm excited for this conversation and to hear what you have to say after working with people all these years and what you've actually seen.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, yes. And you bring up a very good point. We do tend to blame pretty much everything that happens to us after a certain age, 40 plus, 45, 50, whatever time frame you've believed in the narrative that's been fed to all of us most of our lives, that it's all aging related. And we hear it all the time. I mean, it happens in the healthcare world, the medical professions, all kind of follow that same mantra. Well, you are 63, you know, or you are 72. What do you expect at your age? Well, at your age, you just have to learn to live with it. Everybody thinks they're supposed to have a shoebox filled with medications at a certain age. Like it's the pharmaceutical industry's job to hold us together once we hit a certain age until we go below ground. And it's not accurate. The human body was not designed to decline. Yeah. And yet, when we believe that's what's supposed to happen, that influences our choices, our lifestyle, our activities. It influences everything because our brain is designed to cooperate with what we believe. And so, yeah, we have to change that belief system, we have to change that mindset before we can really make a difference in how we move forward with our candles on our birthday cake. Yeah.
Marla Miller:Yeah, that's so true. What you believe matters so much more than most people have even begun to understand. So, how did you get into this field of working with people in this way? What drew you to this?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yeah. So it's kind of an interesting path. What happened? When I was a really little, I wanted to be a doctor. And then when I got to the age where it was time to start looking at colleges and starting after high school, I started to question the medical model, not doctors. When somebody spends 12 years and a lot of time and resource to help people, they're a good person. So this isn't, you know, attacking people. It's the medical model that I question because you just end up with these treatments that are sort of medically manipulating these blood biomarkers, but it's not really restoring health, it's just addressing a symptom. And very often those medical treatments have side effects that require another medical treatment and it becomes this full-blown cycle. One example is my dad. He was given medications for one thing, and then that led to a need for a medication for another thing. And before you know it, he's on like 14 meds. And he got to a point where he was alone and needed assistance, and he was pretty much homebound. And when I went in to work with his doctor, who was a wonderful man, spent 45 minutes with us going over all of his medications. And some of them had been prescribed by other doctors that my dad was seeing. And he worked with us to get him off all the meds. He was 83 at the time, and we got him off every single medication, except for a blood thinner. And he ended up needing emergency surgery because of the blood thinner, because it had a blood vessel had given way. And he was on no meds. Wow. And he passed at 93. And he lived life large for that 10 years. And I firmly believe had he continued on all of those meds, I don't think he would have lasted another year or two. His quality of life was really poor. Now, this isn't me telling people to, you know, throw away your medications. You've really got to work with your prescribing practitioner and make sure it's safe and whatever you're doing. But a lot of the times we think they're helping us to age longer, but ultimately they could be literally shortening our lifespan because of all the side effects.
Marla Miller:Yeah.
Eileen Kopsaftis:And they're not addressing the cause.
Marla Miller:So yeah, yeah, I agree completely with that. And I agree with you. It is important to work with the doctor, you know, to get off them properly and be working to build up your body in the meantime so you don't need those medications, but to find the right doctor that will work with you to get off those medications instead of just keep you on it for life. So that is so important.
Eileen Kopsaftis:How to have a conversation with your doctor is is critical as well.
Marla Miller:Yeah. Well, I'm so impressed with your dad's story. So you said that that was one thing you saw. And so that drew you to the work initially.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Well, what had happened was, you know, I decided I didn't want to become a doctor. And I really had this strong calling, so to speak, about the influence of food and health. I mean, I used to study a nutritional almanac just for fun. And so I thought, well, I guess I should go into the field of nutrition. And when I looked at the college catalogs and I looked at the coursework, I disagreed with most of what they were teaching. Now, at the time, they were teaching the four food groups, which we know has fallen by the wayside a long time ago. However, at the time, that's what they were teaching. And I thought, well, if I'm if I'm disagreeing with the professors, I'm probably not gonna pass. And the college program also had the physical therapy program in there. And I've always been fascinated with the human body and how it works and how it functions and how it moves. And the more questions I asked the college about the program, it was like they were trying to talk me out of it. Well, it's a very challenging program. They just kept saying that, kind of like you might not be able to do this. And of course, I'm you give me a challenge and I'm, you know, the bull, I'm seeing the red cape, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get it. So that's how I ended up being a PT. But the the interesting part is it ends up going full circle because I was exposed to the Wellness Forum Institute for Health Studies, who started a nutrition educator diploma program based on data and not industry support or influence. And people don't realize there's a lot of education out there that is funded by the food industry. And so if you're going to tell people not to consume those foods, you're gonna lose your funding. So this particular program was amazing. It was full circle. Now, when I started working with people, especially the older population, I ended up doing home care because I had a couple of babies and didn't want to work full-time in a clinic setting and how home care could work around. And I got so fulfilled working with the older population because they have so much to share. They have so much life, they have so much experience and wisdom. And I really enjoyed working with them. And I saw that it doesn't matter how old you are when you treat people according to their ability and not the number on their birth certificate, it's phenomenal. I had people over a hundred years old doing squats in the parallel bars in the nursing home setting. And I saw them improve their strength and improve their ability, which they're still in the nursing home. However, and and this is information that people might be interested to know if you're in a nursing home setting and you need two people to assist you for toileting, very often, because a lot of times it's short-staffed, you're gonna wait a long time if you ring the bell and need help for toileting. And if you can get them to be a one-person assist, that can radically increase the quality of their life in that nursing home. But they've got to get stronger, they have to be safe for that. I've been able to help people where they could go home and not be admitted into a nursing home. And these are people in their 80s who maybe fell and broke a hip. And and that's another thing, not to get off on a sidetrack, but I think this is important for people to know too. And it's mostly women that have this concern about their bones dissolving as they get older and that fear that's instilled, even again, from the medical field. Well, if you fall and break a hip, you know you'll end up in a nursing home, and a lot of people die that first year in the nursing home. And I can tell you that that information is extremely inaccurate because it's taking things out of context. I spent a decade working with home care and working in the nursing home setting. I've also worked very many years in an orthopedic outpatient setting and in acute hospital care. So I've seen pretty much every environment that there is to work with patients. And what I saw is the people who were admitted to a nursing home because of a fall and a broken hip, those that passed within a year were already, and this might sound kind of harsh, but they were already probably going to pass within a year because they had a lot of medical issues. They were on 12, 14, 18 medications. They were already using a walker at home. They were already at high risk of injury and fall. I also saw the flip side to that. I remember one person, she was 86 years old. She had broken her hip. She was in there for rehab, planning to go home. She lived alone on a farm. Do you know how she broke her hip? She slipped on a ladder because she was cleaning the snow off her roof. She was in her 80s. Now anybody can slip on a ladder with snow. It's slippery. So it wasn't her age that caused her to fall. And she recovered from that fracture and she went home completely restored to her independent life.
Marla Miller:I'm so glad you brought that up because that is something you hear all the time. You know, you slip and fall, you break a hip, that's it. Yes. And to know that there's a much bigger picture there and what was their state of health before that happened.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, completely out of context. It's a fact, yes, 10%. Well, it's a fact, 25%. But you have to have the context. If you have an active lifestyle and you are not in that population, you're gonna heal, you're gonna go home, you're gonna get your life back.
Marla Miller:Well, that's so great to hear that. So there's a lot of back issues that pop up, you know, 60s, 70s, and beyond. So, what are ways people can mitigate that? Yeah. So you're talking back pain, chronic back pain. Yeah. So I guess you have such a variety of issues, right? Whether it's osteopenia or bulging discs or stenosis, or I forget the other main one. But as you get older, what are ways people might be able to mitigate that better? That it's not just aging bones, you know, it's not just everyone gets these things because you're getting older.
Eileen Kopsaftis:So there's a few things I can speak on that that I think are important for people to know. A lot of my passion is to share things that are it's not mainstream knowledge, but it should be. We hear the different narrative, and I'm here to share a lot of it is is myth or out of context and doesn't serve us at all. So when it comes to the back, specifically there's there's a few things, as you'd said, the degenerative disc disease. Everybody thinks they're supposed to shrink as they get older. They're gonna lose height. That's not really accurate. A lot of the times, the reason people are shorter is because their posture has altered. I've automatically shrunk an inch or two just because my head's forward and my shoulders are rounded. And so a lot of the times that's posture related. Now, yes, discs can degenerate, but what I've seen, I there was a conference that I went to, it was a PCRM conference, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. It's held every year in Washington, D.C. And there was a specific speaker with a title that she was going to talk on, and it was cardiovascular disease and back pain. And so I was fascinated. I'm like, okay, I've got to find out what this woman has to say. Dr. Lina Koppila from Helsinki, Finland, and she has published prolifically on this topic. And what she's determined is that what she sees related to disc degeneration, to pretty much anything that goes on in the back, can be very much related to the blood supply to the lumbar spine. And she has found that she actually terms it lumbar artery disease. And most people, when they think of blood supply, they're worried about having a stroke, they're worried about having a heart attack. They don't think about the blood supply to their body as much. And the lumbar spine in particular has three main branches. And she has done the research so specific that she can tell you which branch has impaired circulation and what symptoms you'll have, whether it's deep hip pain with exercise, or it's degenerative disc disease, or it's sciatic pain, or it's lateral back pain, basically just on both sides of the spine. She has seen this correlation in all of her research. And most people don't understand that impaired circulation typically happens because of our food choices. And as I tell people, food either promotes inflammation or it fights inflammation. There are no neutral foods that are either good for you or they're not good for you. Now it doesn't mean you have to be perfect, but you want to be 90% good for you if you want to have healthy circulation. And I've seen this over and over. I mean, I I've consulted with people and seen them improve in their pain by changing how they feed their body.
Marla Miller:Well, so how is she determining, or how does someone determine whether they do have a lack of circulation or blood flow to those specific areas? Like you said, the three different branches in the back.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, yes. So the challenge is as I got the chance to speak to her, it happened that I ended up sitting right behind her during the conference. By it was it was a God thing, I think, because I didn't know what she looked like. But I got to talk with her and she said that imaging those particular blood vessels is challenging because they kind of hide behind the mesenteric and they're hard to get at, they're hard to image. And your your typical doctor isn't even going to know to request to image that. So what I tell people is if everything you've tried doesn't work, and when I use the term everything, that's kind of loosely because a lot of the times people say they've tried everything, but it's been more medical-minded everything and not learning how to move the body correctly, everything. So, I mean, I've seen people alleviate back pain by restoring hip function, trunk function, because everything's connected, and we can talk about that in a minute. But doctors aren't going to order that test. They're just not. And so what I found is when I work with people and when I do private consulting, or they enter my programs and they learn how to move their body, if nothing changes, if nothing improves, we can pretty much guarantee it's circulatory. And the cool thing is, is changing your diet will improve your circulation. Dr. Caldwell Esselston wrote a beautiful book on reversing heart disease, and his book is excellent. I recommend it to anyone who's concerned about their circulation. And he goes into some pretty good proof that diet will improve your blood vessels and clean up any issues. So the human body will repair when you're doing the right things the right way. Doesn't matter how old you are at all.
Marla Miller:So, as far as people you've worked with, what have you seen in regards to that specifically? When you said, okay, nothing else has worked, so let's assume it's circulation, and then you change their diet. What does the movement look like? And then what was the success story?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Right. So one particular person, he was a retired pediatrician and he had some very chronic back pain. And I had met with him, I had done some manual work, we I had showed him movements, I had taught him some strategies that are really aimed at improving overall uh health of the body physically. And nothing was working, no changes whatsoever. And I talked with him about his diet, his food intake, and he wasn't willing to make any changes. And I had introduced him to some other people that I think continued to influence him in a good way. And I it was about three months later he reached out to me and he said, My pain has decreased from an eight out of 10 to a two out of 10. He goes, and I changed my diet two months ago.
Marla Miller:I wonder what he did. Do you know?
Eileen Kopsaftis:As far as dietary, it's whole food plant-based. Yeah. You want to minimize animal food intake. You don't need to be 100% vegan, but you need to minimize it to 10% or less. And a lot of that is based on T. Colin Campbell's research. There's a beautiful book called China Study that explains a lot. It was the largest study ever done worldwide. But it's whole food plant-based, minimize animal food, no dairy, and no added oils. And that goes against everything we're told about olive oil and salmon and you know, all those omega-3 things. It's not about giving up everything, it's about uh focusing on the right things. When you focus on the right things, and there's tons of studies where people have stayed with those diet changes because their symptoms have dramatically improved. I mean, there are studies of About diabetic neuropathy, which is very painful, extremely painful. And they've done studies. PCRM, actually, Dr. Neil Barnard, who's the founder of that, did studies as well. He wrote a book on it, but they saw that it eliminated the pain. And those people, they contacted them seven years later, they were still eating the way they'd been taught because nobody wanted that pain back. Yeah. So when people make changes and they experience getting their life back, they're going to stick with those changes. They just have to see it work. The animal foods, because of the cholesterol levels and the saturated fat, that's what impairs the circulation. You've got these little cells that line all your blood vessels called endothelial cells. And those little cells, they produce something called nitric oxide, which dilates the blood vessels. So when they get injured, when they get damaged, the blood vessels constrict and it will create gaps in the blood vessel wall. And the blood isn't supposed to contact the blood vessel wall. Those endothelial cells are kind of like a Teflon coating. And if that Teflon coating gets gaps in it because of injury, the blood hits the wall, and that's what triggers the immune system. So it starts to send all of these white blood cells. You know, it's trying to heal. It's the cholesterol is sort of like I call a human spackle. Its job is to fix the gaps that are happening in the blood vessel walls because of injury, because of damage. And certain foods are what cause that injury. And the oils have been seen. I could wallpaper my office with studies that have shown that oils will injure those cells.
Marla Miller:So what about the oils that they say are good for the brain? The, you know, getting the omega-3s, especially and sixes.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Well, it's interesting because when it comes to nutrition, T. Colin Campbell wrote a book called Whole, and I love his perspective on this. He said we always want to take pieces out of food and say, okay, this does this, and that's why we want this. It's the whole food. We don't have a supplement deficit. We have a whole food deficit. We need to be eating the whole foods. However, the animal foods, because of the saturated fat, because of the cholesterol, they can wreak havoc. The data shows if you consume 10% or less animal foods, you've radically reduced your harm from consuming them. So it really comes down to knowing what foods promote health in the body and what foods promote inflammation and damage. And then you can make an informed choice, but you need to know which foods will do that. And fruits and vegetables, antioxidants, they protect those endothelial cells like there's no tomorrow.
Marla Miller:So it's not that people don't need those omega-3s and sixes for the brain health. It's that you need to get it in a whole food, not just siphon it out. Yes.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes. And they're really the omega supplementation, the data doesn't really support that it prevents events. So in other words, you're still seeing people have heart attacks and strokes and all of that who are taking those supplements. So it's the whole food that does it.
Marla Miller:Yeah. Yeah. Well, so as far as the back issue, before we wrap that up, what types of back issues were resolved through the movement and the particular diet?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yeah. So the diet obviously for the impaired circulation, but not everybody has that specific issue. Most people have a movement issue and specifically a function issue. The low back is the lumbar spine, those five vertebrae between the trunk and the pelvis, have a very specific job. They're very, very strong the way they're stacked. They're very, very strong at bending forward and bending backward. And they will do a little bit of side bending, but they do very little rotation. They only rotate seven to 13 degrees, which isn't much. And so I don't know if you recall this or not, but many years ago, they used to tell people don't twist when you exercise because you can injure your back. The interesting part is we need to rotate. You need to rotate to get out of your car. You need to rotate to work in your kitchen and cook a meal. Mojy Feldenkrais says we are rotatory beings. We need to rotate. And so here's the thing: the lumbar spine's job is to translate that rotation from your hips to your trunk or from your trunk to your hips. And I'll I'll explain that. If I go to turn with my upper body, that's rotation. Now, what happens is my lumbar spine will translate that rotation down to my hips. And if I go to turn with my feet to turn around, the lumbar spine will translate that rotation from my hips up into my trunk because that's its job. Now, the kicker is if the trunk has lost rotation, which is very common as people get older because they're not training to keep that rotation. Or if one or both hips has lost the ability to rotate fully, now the low back can't send that rotation down or up. It gets stuck in the low back, and now we get injury to the low back. We get pain, we get problems. And there's also a strength issue. Our gluteus maximus is our power source. And most of us are sitting on our power source all day. And when you sit on your power source, it weakens, it shrinks, it atrophies, it loses function, and it's the largest, most powerful muscle in the body. And if you've lost power there, if you go to sit down and you find that you're plopping instead of sitting with control, you've already lost some max function. And you don't want to wait until you start to restore that function because that's just that's an imminent decline. If you're plopping down into a chair, and the cool thing is, again, it doesn't matter how old you are, and that's another age-related myth that you can't get stronger when you're older. That is not true. I had a guy come in again in his 80s who was sitting in the chair, as his wife was telling me, this was in the clinic. Yeah, he used to walk every day and he'd go get the paper and he was very active and he's kind of stopped doing any of that. And now I need to help him get up out of the chair. So the doctor sent him here to get stronger. So I looked down at him and he looks up at me and he says, Don't you think at my age I should be allowed to rest? And my response was, Well, if you want your wife to dust you off once a day, he he looked a little surprised at that one. But within two or three weeks, he was leg pressing 200 pounds and he could get out of the chair like a shot. And he was in his 80s. So you can always get stronger. But that back pain thing, a lot of that has to do with weakness. People are sitting, they're sitting on their power source. And when you're sitting, the front muscles in the front of your hip kind of lock short. And so when you go to stand up, if you struggle to stand up straight after sitting, if you feel stiffness in your low back after sitting, it's not your back. It's the front of your hips that they've locked up. And so if you go to get treatment for your back and they're seeing you as a back that walks through the door, they're going to be limited in how they can help you because they need to make sure your hips are functioning well. They need to make sure that your trunk is functioning properly. And it's we're not talking hours, you know, in the gym or 25 exercises to do, because a lot of the movements that I teach are whole body movement and it impacts everything from your ankles to your neck a lot of the time. It can be a streamlined workout, but most people aren't aware of any of this. And you'll even get imaging done. You'll get MRIs, you'll get x-rays, and you'll be told, oh, you have this in your spine, you have that in your spine. Now, here's another very interesting fact that's not mainstream knowledge, but should be. The last 10 or so years, a lot of data has come out that imaging and symptoms are not lining up. So, what I mean by that is there was one specific study that comes to mind, Dr. Modick in in Cleveland, he looked at hundreds of clinics, and a lot of people would have imaging that said they had a herniated disc. And if they had the pain from that herniated disc, they did this check on all of these people. And what they found was some of them, the imaging showed that the disc worsened over time. However, their symptoms improved despite what the imaging showed. And some of them showed that the herniated disc resolved. And a lot of people don't know this, but a herniation will resolve on its own in one to two years without any intervention at all. However, these people, even though the imaging showed it improved, their symptoms worsened. So the conclusion to that is, and this is true of imaging for knees, for hips, for necks, the symptoms and the imaging are not lining up. And so what that conclusion to me, as somebody who understands the movement of the human body, the biomechanics, usually the cause of the pain has nothing to do with what's seen on imaging. And there are people who could be having surgery because of what's seen on imaging. Yeah, if their problem is a weak power source, max, has just stopped working, their hips have locked short, their trunk doesn't rotate, and they go in for back surgery. That's kind of scary because nobody fixed what was happening in the trunk or the hips, and now they've got to recover from surgery and they're gonna get some therapy, some rehab, but so what are some things people can do for that gluteus maximus from sitting?
Marla Miller:What are some things people should be doing?
Eileen Kopsaftis:So a lot of what I tell people is if you just set your cell phone to go off every 30 minutes and you get up and you do just a little gentle where the hips go forward, kind of like you're pretending you're going to do a belly bump with your best friend. Just let those hips come forward. Not enough to cause pain. If you do have pain when you come forward with your hips, you can sort of, you know, if a drawer gets stuck and you can't pull it out, you push it all the way back in to get it on track, and then it'll come out. So if you have a little pain with the hips going forward, just focus on the hips going backward and then come forward as far as you can without pain or symptoms. I tell people, you don't want to cause repetitive pain because your brain thinks it has to protect you from you, and your brain will cause you to compensate and do weird things you won't know you're doing. Your brain will say, Well, maybe if we do a little side bend and a little turn when we come forward, maybe it won't hurt as much. Your brain's trying to protect you, but you won't know it's happening. So you'll literally be training in dysfunction. So you want to modify your movements so that you're not causing pain repetitively. If going forward is painful, then go more backward and then just come forward to where it's comfortable. But if you're okay with going forward, just do that nice forward. I tell people every 30 minutes, do a good 10, 15 of them and then do little chair squats. You can hold on to your desk, you can hold on to your kitchen sink, and you can go back like you're gonna sit down. Don't let your knees go over your toes because you're trying to build max. Doing a squat where the knees go over the toes is okay. It's just that that works more your front. It works your quads, it could strain your knees if you've got knee issues. But if you want to build max, you want that bottom to go backward. Tell people it's like a seat-seeking missile. You want that butt to go back as you bend your knees. Um, and do 10 or those or so. You do that every half hour at the end of your work day. You've done a ton of squats, you've opened up your hips, you're gonna leave the office and feel fabulous.
Marla Miller:That's great. What a great idea.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yeah.
Marla Miller:And to set the alarm on your phone is a good idea because it's so easy to let time get away from you. So that's smart. Absolutely.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yeah.
Marla Miller:So have you seen someone prevent surgery because they worked with you?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Oh, yes, absolutely. Um, oh, I could tell you lots of stories, but one comes to mind right away. This was a fairly younger person. He was only in his 30s, and he had injured himself lifting something heavy in his job. His job was very physical. He was maintaining this large apartment building and he was doing a lot of heavy work. And so he came to me and he said, The doctor wants to do surgery, and I don't want surgery. I'm not going to have surgery. I don't care what he says. So he was determined. Now he had very serious pain going down his leg from a disc that it was not happy. Well, there's a beautiful, it's called the McKenzie program. McKenzie, uh, Robin McKenzie is the person who did this. So if somebody has pain from a disc issue, the McKenzie program can be life-changing. And that's just very specific movements and things that you don't do as you're healing. And he followed the orders very well. He came in. I mean, this young man was in so much pain. He was leaning over, he could barely walk. Within three weeks, we had him completely out of pain. And I think it took another two weeks to be sure that he could lift safely. And he was back to work unrestricted. No surgery.
Marla Miller:Wow.
Eileen Kopsaftis:So in my book, I actually quote this there's a neurosurgeon who teaches in a university. And he said only 5% of people with back pain actually need surgery.
Marla Miller:Only 5%. That's incredible to think about that. Yeah. I'm glad there is this education that you're putting out there, anyway, to let people know even these daily things they can do to vastly improve back health. Yes. Yes. So, what are some other myths regarding aging that you hear of and you know that they're myths?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, yes. So that your bones are meant to dissolve. That is not true. Typically, what happens as we get older, it's a natural fact that we no longer need our bones to be as dense as they were when we were in childbearing age, because you're no longer going to be bearing children. So the body works as hard as it needs to work. And so that slight loss of bone density is not a disease. And yet it can be treated like one. And I don't want to get into too many of the details, but when you're having your bone density tested, the data actually I could go on for hours, but there's a Z-score and there's a T score. And the T score compares a woman in her 60s or 70s or 80s to the bone density of a woman in her 30s, in her prime. And so, of course, it's going to be less because she no longer needs that much density. Now, there are some caveats. If you're very sedentary, if you have a really horrible diet, if you don't ever exercise, you know, those are not good things. But overall, just generally speaking, now the Z-score compares a woman's age to another woman in the same age. So now, of course, if you're a lot less than everybody else your age, then there's some reason to be concerned. But if you're pretty much the same, yeah. And diet radically can impact the health of the bones as well. A high acid low diet will cause some calcium loss. I have some colleagues who've spent their entire profession working with women in that population and able to get women, even with severe osteoporosis, who've maybe even had a history of a fracture where they work them correctly, safely, can get them to lift a 50-pound weight safely. So a lot can be done.
Marla Miller:So you mentioned what was it, a high acid low diet.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, yes. So what happens is certain foods will cause your body to have to neutralize proteins, for example. So if you're consuming a lot of animal food, that's a protein. And a protein, nutritionally, has nitrogen, whereas a carbohydrate does not. Carbohydrate is carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. A protein has carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. And it's the nitrogen that has to be neutralized in the body. And so the byproducts of that are acids. And your blood pH has to be a very narrow range in order to sustain life. It's 7.35 to 7.45. So it's just slightly alkaline, just over neutral. And so when you're eating those foods and you get all that acid load, your body has to neutralize that to maintain life. And it neutralizes it with calcium. And that can come from the bones. Again, that's the reason to minimize that food intake to 10% or less.
Marla Miller:So speaking of the calcium, so that's another thing where people talk about taking calcium supplements to build stronger bones. But I want you to speak on that if you can.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yeah. Well, there's a little more to it than that. Um, there are other organs and other things at play. And a lot of the times those supplements are not absorbed because the body knows what to do with food. A lot of the times the supplements might be coated with something that makes them slippery. The million-dollar word is esophageal transit time, but can it go down your throat without getting stuck? And so, because of that coating, the body doesn't perceive it as food and it will just eliminate it. There's something called the bedpan phenomenon where you'll actually see whole supplements in a bedpan. Portigeon companies will tell you they see tons of supplements in their portigons. So uh you're not absorbing. Yes.
Marla Miller:Who's looking?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Well, yeah, that's not a visual I've ever spent time on trying to create. But the thing is, we know what to do with food. And so we really want to get it from food. There's a lot of plant sources that will give us calcium. And as I tell people, cows don't make calcium, they're the middleman. They consume calcium and then they pass it on through dairy products that are created.
Marla Miller:So, what are good sources of calcium for people?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Oh, dark leafy greens, almonds. There's a big list. You can do an internet search and say foods that contain calcium. And obviously, you're gonna see the dairy, but look at the the plant foods. Just say plant foods that contain dairy, and you'll see there's a lot of them. And it's absorbable. The body knows what to do with it. Very good.
Marla Miller:So, are there any other areas of the body that people think as they age they worsen? Is there anything, say, for example, like eyesight? Yeah.
Eileen Kopsaftis:So it's interesting, you know, in my academy, I have an online academy and I call it an academy. My students are mostly women. We do have guys in there, and they're like 50, a lot of them are like 70s, 80s, 60s, and they love to learn. They want to age well, they don't want to end up in a nursing home, they don't want to decline like they've seen their Loved ones decline. And so they're determined to do what is going to help them to do that. And so I have had a lot of guest speakers in my academy, and there are some amazing people out there that are doing phenomenal things. One of them happens to be Dr. Mila Casey, who teaches natural vision improvement. And I attended her coursework. She does it online. And there are people who improve their vision. It's such a natural thing to do. It's phenomenal. It's based on the Bates method, which was kind of altered after he passed. And now you've got people who are going back to what he actually taught. But whether you have cataracts, you know, macular degeneration, all of those things that we see as age-related vision issues can be improved naturally. It's phenomenal what can be done.
Marla Miller:What are some of the things that can be done?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Well, I can't really go into teaching it because I'm not an eye health expert. She's an ophthalmologist. I'm not an ophthalmologist, but it's specific strategies that you use. There's something called palming, which will create heat and help the eyes to heal. There's different strategies that you do. They're not really exercises because you're not wanting to wear out the muscles of the eyes. It's really more these very specific things that you do to improve your vision, like making sure you're looking at your peripheral. You know, if you're on the computer a long time, you change from close to far away. There's eye charts that you practice with and you learn how to improve your vision that way. It's really more about relaxing the eye muscles than it is working the eye muscles because they're overworked and strained most of the time. And so when you learn how to relax them, the vision literally restores. It's phenomenal. I mean, our bodies are designed so amazing. But other aging things, you know, people think joint pain is normal as they get older. That is not true. There's either an inflammation problem due to diet, or there's a weakness or a biomechanic problem. A lot of people have a history of an ankle sprain or an ankle injury, maybe when they were in college in sports or gymnastics or, you know, whatever. And the ankles are key at what happens to our body from the ground up. And I've actually taught this in my YouTube channel. I've got a great series on planar fascitis. You don't have to have plantar fasciitis to learn because I show the foot model and I explain what has to happen from the time we land on our heel to the time we push off our toe. And what happens in that ankle impacts what happens in the body physically, joint-wise, all the way up to the neck and all the way back down with every step we take. So if the ankle is off, you can have knee pain, you can have back pain, you can have shoulder pain, you can have neck pain. I had one guy who I worked with him. This is one of my favorite stories that how everything's connected to everything else. He ended up on my schedule because the person who was treating him was on vacation. And he'd had eight or nine conventional treatments with hot pack and ultrasound and range of motion. And when I looked at his notes, it didn't look like anything had changed. And I asked him and he said, No, nothing's changed. And so I'm saying, Well, when do you get this pain? And he said, In the morning when I take my morning walk. I love my walk. I don't want to give it up, but I always end up with neck pain and a headache by the end of my walk. So I said, Well, do you mind if we look at something different since what's been done hasn't really helped you? And he was open to that. He wanted to get better. So I looked at his low back because I know that can impact the neck. And I saw a couple of little things and made a couple of little changes, but I didn't think that was it. So I asked him, I said, Well, have you ever sprained your ankles? And he said, Constantly in college when he was in sports. I looked at his ankles and they were lacking a very specific motion that they need in order for a healthy gait in order to walk correctly. And so I did a couple of mobes to try to get that motion back. I taught him how to stretch out those muscles that had shortened over the years, and he never had to come back. We spoke on the phone and he said his neck pain was completely gone when he took a walk. A great story. There was just this stress that was happening up his body, and his neck was getting the end, this little micro whiplash kind of a thing because the ankles weren't doing their job. I had a football quarterback, 22 years old, rock solid muscle from head to toe, who had a diagnosis of shoulder tendinitis, and he had pain when he was doing his three-man throw practices as a quarterback. And there was nothing wrong with his shoulder. He had full range of motion, full strength. I asked him to throw a football and I saw his ankle was unstable. We did exercises to stabilize his ankle, no more shoulder pain. Because what was happening was when he was releasing the ball, because the ankle was unstable, it wasn't keeping him stable, and he was going a little too far, and the shoulder was getting this extra because the ankle wasn't stopping the motion and it was straining the shoulder. But it was the ankle causing it. So the most important thing for people to know, I don't care what their age is, is that they're a whole person. They're not a knee, they're not a shoulder, they're not a neck. And if the person that they're working with to help them doesn't know those connections, they're going to be limited in how much they're helped. You know, they might get some injections or some medical treatments or whatever that might alleviate some of the pain, but the problem was not resolved. And it can be resolved so easily with movement.
Marla Miller:Well, what about if someone had an injury and so one leg is shorter than the other? And say, you know, now they're older and they didn't have a lift in their shoe. Is there anything that could be done for that? Does it pay to put a lift in their shoe now, years and years later?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Right. So, you know, it's interesting you bring that up because a true leg length discrepancy is not as common as people believe. A lot of the times it has nothing to do with the length of the bone in their leg. It has to do with their pelvis. Because you could be sitting at a red light, your foot's on the brake, somebody rear-ends you. That force is going to push your foot really hard onto that brake, and that force is going to cause you to get what's called an upslick. Your hip joint is going to kind of jam up in there because of that impact. So now you're going to be off on the pelvis, and it's going to look like you've got one leg shorter than the other, but it's not. It's the pelvis. So I tell people the easiest and quickest way to know if you have a true leg length discrepancy is to lie on your back, bend your knees, and put your feet on the floor, make sure your heels are completely even and see if your knees are level. And a lot of the times they're like, oh yeah, they're level. As a matter of fact, I consulted with somebody just yesterday who has been using a lift because she was told by a medical professional, I won't name the profession because I'm not here to bash anyone. And we had her lay down. I go, you don't have a leg link discrepancy. But she's been getting serious chronic back pain and all kinds of things, and she's been using this lift for years. So that lift has been throwing you off. So it's important that we actually need what's recommended. That's a simple, easy way to know.
Marla Miller:Well, that's very interesting. And it, like you said, an easy way to check that out. So if someone did have one leg shorter than the other, is that helpful even years later to suddenly start wearing a lift?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, yes. You want to gradually increase the lift. You don't want to shock the body. So usually you go one eighth inch and then a quarter inch and then three eighths. And you don't ever want to go, well, it depends on you might actually need to have your shoe built up. It depends on how much leg length discrepancy there is, whether a heel lift will work or the shoe has to be built up. But because the human body is so resilient, it's never too late to do the right things.
Marla Miller:Okay. Well, that's great to know. So is there anything that we have left out that's a common myth about aging?
Eileen Kopsaftis:A big one is you can't grow muscle. That age-related lean muscle loss. I've done like 37 online events in the past five years, and I did one on power aging. And I always do a deep dive into the current data to make sure I'm updated in what I'm sharing and I'm accurate in what I'm presenting. And the age-related lean muscle loss, every single study that I looked at showed the same thing. The only reason those people had muscle loss was because they were sedentary. They weren't exercising. Now, you can take a 20-year-old and put them on bed rest and they're going to get weaker. The body works according to the stresses placed upon it. And if you do nothing, your body's going to get weak. I don't care how old you are. So all of that age-related lean muscle loss, age-related is not accurate. It's activity-related lean muscle loss. Because there are just as many studies that show that people in their 70s and 80s do not lose muscle when they're active, when they're physically active and they exercise. And the best part is if you have lost muscle, you can still gain muscle no matter your age. And I there's a lot of stuff out there that says, oh, but if you're older, it's harder. It takes longer. It depends on how long you've been weak. How much have you lost? That's why it takes longer because you're kind of starting off like you got nothing. You know, there's something called sarcopenia, which is the circumference of a thigh. If I divided the thigh and you kind of took the top off and looked down, you see the quads, you see all the muscles, but you're going to see a lot more fat tissue and a lot less muscle if somebody's been sedentary. You can change that. You can build muscle, you can get stronger. In my online academy, like I said, a lot of the women in there, you know, are 60s, 70s, some in their 80s. We do squats, we do, we do some pretty challenging exercises. Now, some of them, because I work according to everybody's ability, I teach a lot of modifications. Some of them are dealing with some pain issues, they're resolving. It's the reason they joined the academy. And so they're not able to do a lot. Some of them are a lot more fit. And so we make sure that everybody's able to participate in the work. But I've seen, you know, women in their 80s or 70s who 90 squats in seven minutes. I mean, these women get stronger and they tell me, you know, I went for a hike and I would lose my footing because I'm on this very uneven ground. The terrain is really rough to navigate. And I know because of my training in the academy, there were so many times I would have fallen, but I didn't fall because I've gained strength and I've gained stability and I'm a lot more sure footed. And these are people that are way up there in years.
Marla Miller:So yeah, I had heard something about once you're 70 and older, you lose, I don't know, it's muscle or protein.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yeah. So again, we're taking things out of context. Once again, the people who end up in the nursing home dying a year, they would have been there anyway, even if they didn't fall. The thing here is these studies that are being done, if they're done on the general population, the majority of the general population has believed they're supposed to decline. They haven't stayed active. That tends to be the minority. And so, of course, you're going to see all this stuff in these studies.
Marla Miller:Well, what about protein intake as you get older?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes. So believe it or not, when you look at the data, which I've done, if you want to grow muscle, it's more important to be consuming complex carbohydrates than it is to increase your protein intake. And there's a very real reason for this. There was one study that was financed by the Cattlemen's Association, and that study said that people did not need to increase their protein intake to build muscle. So if even the people who are selling meat tell you you don't need to increase, we know that's a fact because they wouldn't admit that otherwise. So here's the thing: people are increasing their protein intake, which of course you can only consume so many calories in a day, you're now decreasing your carbohydrate intake. And that's what you need for the energy required to work out hard enough to build muscle because it takes energy to do enough work to stimulate muscle growth. And so if you're starting to fatigue in your workout and you haven't eaten enough complex carbs, your body will start to use the protein that you're consuming for energy and it won't be used for muscle. So it's this dichotomy that people are being taught that's not really accurate. And also water intake, a lot of the times when people get older, they're not drinking enough water because they don't want to use the bathroom. And I tease them and I say, that's how it works. Water in, water out. Now, if they don't want unwanted leakage, that's another thing that I talk about in my book, Aging Culture. So I got a whole chapter on that. Very easy to resolve. The issue is muscles are 78% water. So if you're even slightly dehydrated, you're not going to be able to grow muscle because it needs the water. And you've got to do enough work. And that's, I think, what it comes down to a lot of the times. If people have gotten really weak, if they've got joint pain, they're not really working hard enough to build muscle. It's not because of their age. It's not because they're too old to build muscle. It's other reasons.
Marla Miller:So as far as hydration, what are you telling your clients?
Eileen Kopsaftis:I recommend that you consume whatever your body weight is in pounds, you consume half of that in ounces of water. And it's really easy to do because sometimes people say, Well, I can't drink that much water. Some people say they don't like water. And I'm kind of like, well, do you like what your life is like right now? And then some people say, Well, I'm never thirsty. I had a really good friend in her 80s who never drank water and she worked in her raspberry patch out back in the sun for hours. I was so afraid she was going to have a heat stroke. Yeah. And so I told her, you know, I just kept kind of nagging her. Well, she loved me, so she gave in and she started drinking water. She was like, I'm never thirsty. I'm never thirsty. Well, it was a few days later I stopped to visit her and she yelled at me. She goes, What did you do to me? I'm thirsty all the time now. And what happens is our thirst mechanism literally stops working. And sometimes people think they're hungry when they're actually thirsty. So we we really do need the water. And you don't have to chug it all at once. I tell people if say you're 120 pounds and you know, 60 ounces of water would be good, unless it's hot and you're working out and you're sweating a lot, you'd want more. But just typical day, 60 ounces. And so you don't have to chug a whole lot of water at once. Uh again, you can use your phone. And when you're getting up to do your backbends and your squats, just drink a couple ounces of water. Before you know it, at least two hours before bedtime, you've consumed all the water you need for the day.
Marla Miller:And this is the other question does it need to be plain water? Do other fluids count, say herbal C or something like that?
Eileen Kopsaftis:And that's again, that's a very good question. So what happens is, and this is, I think, where the confusion is, and hopefully I can make this simple and everybody will get it. When you drink water and it's plain water, your body does not have to digest anything, it just absorbs the water. There's no work involved at all in your digestive system. So water, you know, it's just working. If there's anything in the water, now your digestive system is triggered to work. So the premise is if you think of that logically, if there's something in the water, every time you drink water, your digestive system has to kick in and start working. So you're kind of like making a system work that you don't really maybe want to have it working every five minutes or 10 minutes or however often you're drinking something. So you let it rest, you know, and drink plain water. If what you're drinking has caffeine or alcohol, that's a natural diuretic. It tricks your body into losing fluid. So you'll be dehydrated from that. And you're definitely going to want extra water intake to make up for that.
Marla Miller:A last question I have for you. So if someone is going to be working out, what do you suggest they eat before the workout?
Eileen Kopsaftis:The best thing to eat before a workout is fruit because it digests very quickly. So you're not going to have your body challenged to provide the blood supply for the food to digest. Some of the best trainers I know, sport trainers, always have their athletes eat fruit before workouts, before competitions, that kind of thing. So watery fruit usually digests in 20 to 30 minutes. A banana, because it's less water, might take about 45, but that digests quickly and gives you a good amount of energy. I've actually had when I did home care, I had some patients who were very fatigued all the time. And I told them, you know, why don't you try eating some fruit or some grapes? And yeah, they noticed an increase in their energy just from consuming the fruit. And not drinking enough water can make you very fatigued as well. And increasing your water intake can give you energy. If you're dehydrated, your muscles are screaming for water and they'll literally spasm. You can get muscle pain if you're not drinking enough water.
Marla Miller:So I just want to add a little inspiration, and then I'd like you to add your inspirational stories. But I have a brother who's 71 and he is still mountain climbing and he still works out every day, plus all the mountain climbing, plus yoga. And so he hasn't missed a beat. And I also just saw where an 80-year-old woman finished the Iron Man triathlon in Hawaii. Yes. So she made it to the end of that grueling race. So just to put that in people's minds so they can be inspired instead of looking at all the more negative news of people deteriorating and falling and ending up with nursing homes. It's like look toward the people that are inspirational and are doing it. Like you're capable of it as well. So, do you have any inspiring stories?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Well, I can give stories of the people that I actually know. I mean, I've seen so many powerful people on YouTube who are in their 80s still doing ballet on point. And the list goes on and on. But one of the people that comes to mind right now is someone who's in my academy, and she's 83, and she climbs 14 flights of stairs every day to stay in shape. And this is a woman who has battled a history of some pretty serious stuff. And uh, when I met her, and I don't, in case somebody listens to this and they know who I'm talking about, I don't want to share too many details, but she's had some serious medical issues that she has overcome. And when I met her, she had chronic neck pain. And we were able to eliminate that to the point where she even had a minor vehicle accident and it did not cause the neck pain to flare up. She's been doing fabulous. But she does. She climbs 14 flights of stairs every day. She lives in an apartment building. She takes the elevator down and she climbs the stairs every day. And she's got a history of medical issues where she's got some respiratory limitations, and uh she's doing fabulous.
Marla Miller:Well, that is one thing we didn't mention was the idea of stairs and how beneficial that is for people.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, yes. And they're actually telling people to get rid of the house with stairs so they can. Age in place. That's another mindset thing. You're believing you're going to decline. So make sure your house, you can navigate it when you decline. Here's the kicker people decline without the stairs. And I've seen this and I've had other people tell me this. You know, their neighbor or their friend or their family member ended up going to a facility with no stairs, and now they need a lift chair to get up because they've gotten so weak in like three months. We need the stairs. Yes.
Marla Miller:Very good point. Yeah.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Is there anything that we've left out? Well, the one thing that I did kind of want to mention, because I think this is good for people to know, is if you are dealing with chronic pain, obviously addressing your food intake, making sure you're consuming enough water, making sure that you're doing the right movement training. A lot of the videos nowadays on the main platforms, I won't name any names, are AI generated. And everybody wants those titles. Oh, the five exercises you need to not lose muscle. We are each unique as a fingerprint. And whatever would work for you might not work for your sister or your neighbor. And it doesn't mean that everybody can't follow a similar strategy. You just might need to fine-tune it for you when it comes to pain specifically. So I do have a free pain assessment on my one platform. It's my movement performance assessment. It's a 23-minute video and it walks you through how to see how your body's functioning, the big rocks of the body, and the three planes of motion that we need for a healthy, pain-free, functional life. And they can get an idea of, oh, yeah, my hip doesn't turn that way, or yeah, that ankle's coming up. And it can really give people some insight to uh what's going on. And then there's a free movement class that goes with that that can introduce them to the three-plane training. And I give lots of modifications. And just starting that training, I've had people email me that even just the free class has gotten them out of pain. So I know it helps and it's free.
Marla Miller:Well, that's great you offer that. Why don't you share with people the books that you wrote and then your website where they can find you or possibly work with you?
Eileen Kopsaftis:Okay. My books are Pain Culprits, which I wrote based on how everything's connected. I've got chapters in there on the risks and benefits of the medical treatments for pain, because people really need to ask that million-dollar question. How much will this help me? And what are my risks if I choose this? And you really need to know that so you can make an informed decision on whether or not you're willing to take those risks. Because a lot of the times the benefit doesn't outweigh the risk. I've got whole chapters in there on that. I've got chapters in there on the back and the shoulders and the knees and so on. So that's really good if somebody's dealing with a lot of pain. My book, Aging Culprits, I focus on a lot of the topics that we talked about. I've got chapters in there on posture and incontinence and joint pain. But I start off with that all-important chapter on mindset and belief, because we know now hopefully people have heard enough where they're going to start to question that mainstream mantra. And if you've got a healthcare person telling you, well, at your age, what do you expect? You might want to say thank you very much, but get up and walk out because you need somebody who's willing to help you and not just tell you it's because of your age. So my main website is have lifelongwellbeing.com. I know it's a long title, but that's what I want people to have lifelong well-being. And I've got a quiz on there. It's just five simple questions, and it will aim you at whatever content might benefit you the most based on your own specific concerns. And uh I also have my YouTube channel, if they just type in my name, which is a handle, Eileen Cupsoftis, K-O-P-S-A-F-T-I-S. They will find me on there. I've got hundreds of videos on movement and healthcare facts and things like that. So yeah, that should be enough for people to get started anyway.
Marla Miller:Well, definitely you've provided enough to get started with. And even those simple things like setting the timer every 30 minutes and doing the squats and the sort of hip thrust movements, I think is great. And then also drinking the water. And like you said, you can do that at the same time. That timer goes off. Just drink a couple ounces. So even those two actions, I'm sure, can have a big effect. Sounds like a lot of free information, too, on your website.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Yes, yes. I would do everything I do for free if I didn't have to keep the lights on. I love what I do. You know, I don't consider it work at all. I love what I do. Yeah.
Marla Miller:Well, it's great because I'm sure it's benefiting so many people. I appreciate you coming on here and sharing all of this information you've picked up over the years and success stories that you shared as well of people that have really been able to avoid surgery and avoid medications and really live a more fulfilled life. So thank you for all of this.
Eileen Kopsaftis:Well, thank you for what you do so that people can hear from myself and others who are experts in their field who can give people information that will benefit them. Yes. Thank you.