Charlotte (00:06):

This is the XBHS Radio Network.

Skip Orem (00:10):

From the Nashville Studios of the XBHS Radio Network, I am Skip Orem, and this is The Anchor Pointe podcast. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the May 12, 2023 episode of The Anchor Pointe Podcast. I’m Skip Orem recording this final episode of season one of The Anchor Pointe Podcast at the XBHS Radio studios here on Printers Alley in Nashville, Tennessee.

(01:06):

And first off today, thanks to all of you who took the time to email me about last week’s guided meditation episode. And everybody, if you have not had an opportunity to listen to that episode, it’s available in The Anchor Pointe Podcast feed and then also at theanchorpointe.com website on the Audioburst page. And yes, this is the final episode of Anchor Pointe before we take our summer break. And then after our summer break, a new season of The Anchor Pointe Podcast will begin on Friday, September 22nd, with new season two episodes released every other Friday.

(02:00):

You can make sure that you don’t miss any Anchor Pointe podcast episodes by subscribing to The Anchor Pointe Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on all of the major podcast platforms, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio. Wherever you get your podcasts, we’re there. Search for The Anchor Pointe podcast. Remember, we spell Anchor Pointe with an E, that’s T-H-E A-N-C-H-O-R P-O-I-N-T-E, or you can search on my name, Skip Orem.

(02:44):

Next season’s Anchor Pointe podcasts are going to have a couple of exciting new changes. First and probably most important, Anchor Pointe’s going to remain a faith and fitness podcast, helping all of us baby boomers increase our faith, stay fit, stay healthy, stay happy, and live a long life. That’ll continue to be the overriding mission of The Anchor Pointe Podcast, and we’re going to continue to feature important content in all of the seven elements of the Anchor Pointe disease-fighting and fitness model, faith, diet, exercise, attitude, guided meditation, music and research. And new beginning with the new episodes in September, thinking about exploring and talking about our faith will play an even larger part in each episode. Perhaps as much as half of each week’s podcast next season will be devoted to faith.

(03:51):

And this other cool change, I’ll be adding a new segment, especially for us older folks, baby boomers. Interesting stories from back in the ’50s and ’60s, focusing on our history, music and the arts. The new segment will be called Recollections, and I’m going to preview one of those new recollections segments a little later in today’s episode. And for next season, because I want to make sure that each episode has valuable content about our faith, our fitness, our overall health, because of that, we’re going to change the podcast release schedule to have a new episode released every two weeks. That new schedule of an episode dropping every two weeks will help me ensure that every episode of Anchor Pointe has new and meaningful content. Three significant changes for next season. Faith gets an upgrade. The Recollections segment. And new episodes will drop every two weeks, beginning on September 22, 2023.

(05:29):

All right. Let’s talk about today’s episode. Our Medical News for Seniors segment today will feature information on dealing with those medications that most of us take every day. And as I mentioned, later in the podcast today, I’m going to do a preview of the new Reflections segment, and we’ll also talk today about preventing falls, one of the leading causes of injuries among us baby boomers. And then for a couple of minutes later in the podcast, Messages in the Bible. Enough of me talking about the podcast. Let’s go right now to Medical News for Seniors.

(06:19):

Medical News for Seniors for today comes from the US News and World Report. A new study has found that Americans over 50 are very interested in cutting back on prescription medications. 67% of us older Americans said that we would seek our doctor’s advice before stopping a medication. Yet more than one-third of older adults said they had stopped taking a medication that they’d been using for more than a year without talking to a doctor or a pharmacist. Everybody de-prescribing, stopping medications, which can include both prescription medications as well as any over-the-counter supplements you might be taking, stopping those medications should always be based on a dialogue between you and your healthcare provider. Almost 80% of the respondents in that same poll said that they would be open to stopping one or more of their prescription medications.

(07:31):

It seems that most of us older folks would like to reduce the number of pills we take each day. The average adult over 65 takes over four pills per day. Some of us take a few more than the average of four. The Anchor Pointe Medical News headline and advice for today, review your medications regularly with your healthcare provider and don’t, do not stop taking any medication without first consulting your doctor or other healthcare provider. Many of those medications we take require a step-down procedure, and so stopping any medication cold turkey can cause serious health problems. Everybody, keep your doctor or healthcare worker and your family in the loop with every medical decision you make.

(08:35):

This surprised me, everybody. Do you know that about one in four of us older folks, baby boomers in our 60s and 70s and beyond, one in four of us fall at least once every year? And falls, they’re the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries among us older folks. This is important. Falls are not a normal part of aging, so why do we all start to fall down at an increased rate as we start to get older? Some of the common causes for that are poor eyesight, hearing loss, decreased strength, chronic health problems, and some medications may also make us more susceptible to falling. So we all need a plan to help us reduce our risk, control our risk of falling. Why don’t you take these steps today, if you can?

(09:41):

Remove clutter from your floor, especially in walkways, and keep it removed. Remove throw rugs or secure them to the floor. Remove and keep items off the stairs. Remove electric cords from walkways. Keep a clear path to your light switches. And clean up those spills right away, right after they happen. Everybody, do each of those things. Do it right now today, and then in the next few days, make sure you have lights in your bathroom and along the route from your bed to your bathroom. Keep a lamp at your bedside so that well, so that you can turn it on before getting up. Make sure that you have a light switch at both the top and the bottom of the stairs. And place anti-slip treads in your shower and your bathtub.

(10:43):

And then let me bring this all back to Anchor Pointe and our disease-fighting and fitness model. Stay healthy and as fit as you can. Practice the seven elements of the Anchor Pointe disease-fighting and fitness model, faith, diet, exercise, keep a positive attitude, practice guided meditation, listen to your music, enjoy the arts and keep up-to-date on the latest research on health and fitness for us older folks.

(11:15):

Our goal at Anchor Pointe is for each and every one of our listeners to live a long, healthy and happy life. And you’re not going to do that, you’re not going to be healthy and happy if you take a bad fall. All of these tips will be in the transcript for this episode. You can listen to episodes as well as view the transcripts for each and every Anchor Pointe episode by going to our website, theanchorpointe.com, and then clicking on the podcast and transcripts page.

(11:55):

Beginning on September 22nd, when we start season two of The Anchor Pointe Podcast, a regular feature of every one of next season’s Anchor Pointe episodes is going to be a look back at events and things we’ve thought about over our long lives. As we get older, we seem to spend time every once in a while looking back at special events in our lives, and I was thinking that the good fortune of us baby boomers is to have had parents who were part of the greatest generation, that went through the depression and lived through and fought in World War II, and then after the war, they contributed so much to the building of this great nation of ours. And yes, we certainly didn’t agree with them all the time. Often we saw them as our enemies. After all, we’re the baby boomers. We knew everything back then.

(13:15):

Now, so many of us, we miss our parents. Sometimes we long so much to talk with them. All that advice they could give us. So many problems they could help us with if we only had the chance to talk with them one more time. Mother’s Day is this weekend and Father’s Day is coming up next month. I miss my mother and my grandmother so much. I was fortunate to be raised by a stepfather, who I remember as the gold standard in stepfathers. I love him and miss him so much. My father died at a very young age. He was only 28. A couple of years ago, just after I had defeated prostate cancer, I recorded a story about my father, about one terrible night he went through in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. I recorded his story as a tribute to him on Father’s Day in 2020, and I want to play that recording for you now as the first of our Recollections segments on Anchor Pointe.

(14:50):

My father’s story, the night of December 11, 1944. For some reason, this Father’s Day more than others, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad. Perhaps this cancer battle that I fought earlier this year, maybe that’s what’s making me think more about my dad than I normally would on Father’s Day. You see, I didn’t know my dad real well. He died when I was a little boy, eight years old. The doctors at that time, their thought was that maybe the scarlet fever that he had as a child contributed to his very sudden death at the age of 28. I have only a few memories of him. My brother, he was not even two years old when my father died, so most of our memories of him, our knowledge of him, they came from stories my grandfather and especially my grandmother would tell us.

(16:13):

I remember how sad they were at the time, but I can’t even imagine what they must have been feeling. They were just barely in their 50s, and here they were losing their only son suddenly, not too many years after he came back from the war. I knew that my dad was in the Navy during World War II, I knew he was on a ship which was destroyed by Japanese Kamikaze planes in the South Pacific, but I didn’t know the details of what he went through. When my grandmother died, one of the things that she left behind was a handkerchief that my dad had in his pocket while he was trying to survive in the waters of the Pacific fending off sharks and Japanese air fire after his ship was destroyed. Out there in the cold December waters of the Pacific with some of the other men who had survived the initial attack, fighting off not only Japanese guns that continued to attack them but sharks in the water, trying to keep each other alive until they could be rescued by the other ships in the convoy.

(17:40):

His ship was the USS Reid. During the Reid’s final two weeks in the water, they’d been attacked every day by some pretty heavy Japanese firepower. They were in constant combat, able to sleep only one or two hours a night in shifts. The men on that ship, they fought hard and were tired during that long two-week period of combat. And then during that ship’s final night, December 11, 1944, the Reid, the men on the ship, they were attacked by seven Japanese suicide Kamikaze planes. The ship, the USS Reid, was mortally wounded. It rolled over violently and sunk. That Kamikaze attack, the sinking of the ship, it was over in less than two minutes. 103 heroes, US sailors, died. The survivors, which included my dad, they were out there in the water. They were continually being straked by Japanese planes, and not only were they under attack by the planes, but they were also under attack by and fighting off sharks. They were out there in that water helping each other to stay alive until they could be rescued.

(19:35):

I was never told that story. I suspect my dad never told the full story to either my grandmother or my grandfather. Those World War II guys were the strong and silent type. God bless them all. Almost 50 years after the sinking of the Reid, there were some audio recordings made from interviews of the survivors that were still alive at the time, and it’s from those interviews that I was able to understand what my dad had experienced during those two weeks that winter in 1944. This Sunday night, on Father’s Day, when I break out a bourbon on the rocks for the first time, first drink I’ve had since my cancer surgery in March, before I take that first sip, I will be toasting my father. From all of us who really never had the chance to know you, Dad, here’s to you, Joseph Charles Orem. Happy Father’s Day. Thank you for your service.

(21:38):

A preview of Recollections, a new segment of The Anchor Pointe Podcast, and it’ll begin with our episodes starting on September 22, 2023. Many of our listeners have been with The Anchor Pointe since the very beginning, and I’m proud to say that some of you have been with me since when I began my first fitness podcast, the Get Fit Pod back in 2007 at the very beginning of podcasting. And we continue to gain new listeners every week as the audience for The Anchor Pointe Podcast continues to grow. And I’m so proud, and I’m so thankful for all of that. If you are one of the listeners who have just recently started listening to the podcast, this summer might be a good opportunity to catch up on some of The Anchor Pointe’s previous episodes you might have missed. All 29 of this season’s episodes are available to listen to whenever you want, wherever you want.

(22:47):

Just go to theanchorpoint.com website and click on the podcasts and transcripts page. Every one of the 29 episodes are available right there. If you don’t want to listen to each podcast from the beginning to the end, another way to catch up is to click on the Audioburst page. The Audioburst page contains short segments from all the episodes, focused and sorted by the seven elements of The Anchor Pointe disease fighting and fitness model. And just like this podcast, there are no ads on our website, just good faith and fitness information available for you to listen to or read whenever you want. When going to the website, we spell Anchor Pointe with an E, so the website address is T-H-E A-N-C-H-O-R P-O-I-N-T-E dot com.

(23:50):

Until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never read any parts of The Message. That’s Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible. It is even actually more of an American translation of the Bible because it does use some American slang. I grew up on the King James version, and if I didn’t have really good Sunday School instructors helping me study the Bible, I’m not sure that I would have ever been able to really understand that old King James version. Thank God for those adults who volunteered their time every Sunday and every Wednesday night to teach us kids about Jesus. My go-to hard-copy Bible, which I carry with me to church, is the Holman Christian Standard Version, which is more of a traditional translation.

(24:40):

I have two awesome Bible apps that I use, the Tecarta Bible app, which is a really good phone app, and it has over 30 versions of the Bible to choose from. It’s cool because if you’re sitting around waiting on a doctor’s appointment or really any situation where you have to wait by yourself for a while, it’s really convenient to open up your phone and just read from the Tecarta Bible app. The other app which I use is an audio bible for your iPhone. It’s cool because you can listen to it while you’re in your car, just sitting out at the beach or anywhere where it’s easier to listen than to read. The name of the app is Dwell. It has four or five different versions of the Bible. With some versions, you can actually choose which voice you want to have reading to you, so that’s pretty cool.

(25:34):

So anyway, using the Tecarta Bible app, I’ve started to read some of the Bible books I love with The Message translation, and I’m convinced now that if you were going to introduce someone to the Bible for the very first time, that Message translation might be the way to do that. Of course, if you’re going into some actual Bible study, I would definitely choose one of the more traditional studies. I’ve gotten myself off track here talking about Bible versions, so let me ask you this question. Can you have a favorite book in the Bible? I don’t know the answer to that. All the Bible books, they are important, very important, all of them, in understanding God’s overall plan.

(26:21):

Speaking about favorite books in the Bible, I can even get into arguments with people about which book of the Gospel is best. They all tell the story of Jesus’s life in different ways. For me, I like reading Luke the most because it comes at you similar to reading a history book or a historical biography. Some folks will say it’s less inspirational than, say, the Book of John or Mark, but if you look at it overall, that’s the beauty of God’s written word. It appeals to so many people on so many levels in so many different ways.

(27:01):

The first book that I turned to when I started to explore and read The Message version of the Bible was Acts. Acts of the Apostles is one of my favorite Bible books. It was probably written by Luke, and it starts right there after the resurrection and Jesus’s ascension into heaven, right there at the very beginning of the spread of Christianity. In the Book of Acts, you’re there at the very beginning. Jesus’s disciples still alive. The Holy Spirit descending on them. Paul as Saul hunting them down and punishing and jailing Christians. And then Paul’s amazing conversion, and then he starts spreading the Good News.

(27:49):

What a wonderful adventure story Acts is, too. When you think about it, Jesus’s disciples, who learned so much from him when he was alive and then became apostles, Paul becoming an apostle, all of them messengers, delivering the message of God’s grace and love throughout the world. This very small group of Christians there in the first century, spreading the word, and because of what they did, Christianity becoming what it is today. And I realize this a lot from reading the book of Acts.

(28:30):

I think the word, the message at the heart of Christianity, the reason for its growth, here it is, God’s unconditional love. He loves us so much, and he wants us to love him in return. God’s love, isn’t it so great that, well, he sacrificed his son so that we can be forgiven of our sins? Not just our sins now, but our sins in the past and the sins that we will most definitely commit in the future. We are forgiven now and forever. What a gift that is, eternal life, if we only just believe.

(30:03):

Perhaps you’re like I was before cancer came to take me out. I knew all of the Bible stories. I knew about Jesus. I certainly believed in his life and his resurrection, and I believed in the eternal life he offered, but I became lost trying to live my life. At one point, I was even somewhat ashamed to talk about my belief in the cross, too much going on to really commit my life to Jesus. Jesus, he stayed in the back of my mind because the devil was telling me to not worry about it, I needed to enjoy my life right now. Jesus will be there. But don’t worry about it right now. There’s too much to do, too much going on. You need to live your life right now. The words of the devil, “You’ve got plenty of time.” And then I didn’t.

(31:20):

Something came to destroy me, and then what came to destroy me brought me back to Jesus, and I’m never going to leave him again. Everybody, if you really think about it, you know this, you know that you want to be more than what you are right now, then give your life to Jesus. Please do that now because the devil, he’s telling you that you’ve got so much time left. Don’t be in a rush. Take more time to think about it. The purpose of The Anchor Pointe Podcast is to help you get healthy, to enjoy your life, but most importantly, I want Jesus to be in your life.

(32:06):

If you know him but haven’t been with him for a while, pray to him now. Ask for forgiveness. Tell him you love him. Promise him you are with him. Start reading the Bible again. You can start anywhere in the Bible, maybe one of your favorite books or chapters of verses. Open up your heart to Jesus again. And if you don’t know a lot about the Bible, about Jesus, you maybe have all of these questions about how to get started, well, do this right away. Walk into any church any time, any day. Tell the first person you meet you want to learn about Jesus. You’re going to put a smile on their face, and they will help you take the first steps in making Jesus part of your life. There is no time. You don’t have the time that you think you have. You need to do this today, right now.

(33:32):

All right, everybody, until September 22nd, for the XBHS Radio Network and for The Anchor Pointe Podcast, from Nashville, I’m Skip Orem, and I will see you in September. Bye, everybody. (singing)

Charlotte (34:06):

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