About Coach RicK
Coach Rick's Transformation
2021 Emerald Cup Masters 60+
My Story, and My Journey
Today I am very healthy, strong and fit at 68 years old… and looking forward to how well I can age into my 70s, 80s, and beyond. I have the strength, vitality, energy, sex drive, flexibility, and mental acuity of a man nearly half my age. If you don’t believe it, come to the gym and work out with me, and then come to the office and keep up with me. However, this was not the case when I was 50. In 2006, at the age of 50, I suffered from daily chronic hip pain that was very debilitating.
I woke up with this pain, and experienced it continually throughout the day at work, day after day after day. I could no longer go jogging in the mornings along the beach with my wife. I had lost all hope of ever going backpacking into the mountains again, in fear that my hip pain would be so severe that I would be paralyzed and unable to walk home. I was no longer able to jog on a treadmill or use an elliptical, and because of this lack of exercise and mobility, my metabolism and self-esteem declined and I had gained significant fat and accelerated muscle loss.
At the age of 50, I felt physically and mentally crippled, with my biological age significantly older than my true age. I felt like an old man - much older than 50.
Now fast-forward 18 years, and look at me now in 2024. No more hip problems. I go jogging and hiking, and I am living a very active and healthy life again. At the age of 68, I have regained the strength, vitality, energy, and sex drive of a man nearly half my age. How? Well that is exactly what I want to share with you, because I believe all men can do it if they know - I have. However, before I tell how I regained my health and fitness, it is important that I tell you how I got into trouble in the first place. The year is 2001 and I was 45 years old, and during an annual visit with my doctor for a physical, I had complained to him about recent problems with my hips and severe pain. He asked me a few general questions and then he diagnosed me with having sciatic nerve problems in my hips. I asked him what I could do about it and he said take some pain relief medicine and I could get physical therapy, as this was just part of the normal aging process. Over the next several years the pain grew worst and more frequent. It was during this time that I stopped jogging and conducting other activities that would increase the pain in my hips. I learned to live with this problem and it became a part of my daily life – after all it was normal aging… right? So for 5 years, from initial diagnosis in 2001 to 2006 at age 50 my sciatic nerve pain got worse and worse. Each year during my annual physical, my doctor would remind me that I had a sciatic nerve problem, so that continually reinforced it in my mind that it was something I would just have to live with.
In November 2006, everything started to change for me, and my eyes were starting to opening up. I decided to take things into my own hands and be proactive with my own health. As an Aerospace Engineering Executive for 44 years today and a real world rocket-scientist, having supported several space launch vehicle and rocket programs, including the Planetary Deep Space Missions; Magellan, Ulysses and Galileo, I became renowned for problem solving. I decided to approach my own health care with a proactive problem solving approach. Follow some research I decided to see a Naturopath doctor. I made an extensive list of items that I wanted tested. Following this first set of lab work I determined that that my testosterone, progesterone, and my DHEA hormones were all very low. Most notably, my vitamin D hormone level was significantly low, and because of this my Naturopath took another blood draw to run an extended Celiac panel screening. During my next visit with my Naturopath, it was confirmed that I had Celiac disease, so I was instructed to eliminate everything containing gluten.
Celiac disease, is an autoimmune disorder in which eating foods that contain gluten, sets off an immune system response that damages the small intestine. Specifically, the villi of the small intestine are damaged, which can significantly interfere with the body's ability to absorb certain essential nutrients; like Vitamin D. Gluten is a protein most commonly found in wheat, barley and rye. A person who has Celiac disease must follow a strict gluten-free diet or they risk the development of severe health complications.
I was then instructed to set up a visit with my regular healthcare provider to have a biopsy conducted on my small intestines to confirm if I had Celiac disease. The biopsy was conducted and did indeed confirm Celiac disease and that I had significant damage to my small intestines. Following this confirmation, I was then instructed to have a bone density DEXA scan to determine how much bone loss had resulted from the Celiac disease. The DEXA scan confirmed I had accelerated bone density loss in my hips, and it was at this time that I was told that I never had sciatic nerve problems. For the past 5 years, my doctors had been guessing, and guessing wrong. The pain in my hips was actually due to arthritis because of my lack of vitamin D which was caused by the damage in my small intestines due to Celiac disease. The light-bulb came on, and it all made sense. I never had sciatic nerve problems. I had early arthritis in my hips from Celiac.
I was told by my Naturopath that I probably had this problem for most of my life and it was slowly destroying my small intestines and causing my system to not absorb essential nutrients. Celiac, like other chronic illnesses, causes internal infections and damage that will not go away on their own; unless they are discovered and treated. This is like rubbing sandpaper on your skin until it is raw, day after day after day. An infection sets in, and does not go away. This was happening in my small intestines due to Gluten.
Immediately learning that I had Celiac disease, I started a strict Gluten-free diet, and within a few weeks the constant pain in my hips started to dissipate. After a few months the pain completely went away, and I started to jog again and lift weights again – I was on my way to recovery. I had a new and fresh outlook on life, and through gluten-free diet changes and strength exercising, my waist reduced from 36 inches to 31 inches, and I dropped significant body fat and increased lean muscle mass. I have been on a strict Gluten-free diet for nearly 13 years, from 2011 and 2024. You can see from my before 2006 and my after 2024 photos the significant change in my body composition and overall health. Had I not been proactive in 2001 and sought out a Naturopath to discover my Celiac disease, I would be crippled today and living in constant pain daily.
This is my story, but the key take-a-way is that most of us have hidden chronic diseases or problems in our body, and left undiagnosed and unchecked for several years or a lifetime, they can become killers. We must be proactive to find and treat them. Unlike a cold or the flu, a chronic autoimmune disease will not go away on its own.
You must be proactive and take personal control of your health. In the book, “The Life Plan,” by Dr. Jeffry S. Life, M.D., Ph.D – Chapter 1 says: “Every day I witness firsthand how our current medical system creates obstacles that keep men from receiving the best care possible. Instead of preventing disease, traditional medicine actually can interfere with and even delay proper treatment and diagnosis, ultimately lowering the quality of our health. If you let today’s medical system make decisions about your health, you have little or no hope of living a higher-quality life with optimized health and reduce risk for disease. Now more than ever you have to take charge of your own health, become better informed, and be an advocate for your own well-being. These are the tenants of my kind of medicine: where disease prevention based on a treatment paradigm and sustained quality of life are my primary missions. We are all going to age, but we don’t have to get old. Getting old means the deterioration of health, declining energy levels, loss of sexual function, and loss of your zest for life. I don’t want any part of that, and I’ll bet you don’t, either”.
I highly recommend to any man over 40 to read the book and embrace “The Life Plan,” by Dr. Jeffry S. Life. When I am at the gym and guys ask me, “what do you do to stay in such good shape at your age?” I tell them one thing; read the “The Life Plan,” by Dr. Jeffry S. Life – it changed my life forever. I tell them to go to the bookstore and sit down and read the first ten pages. If it doesn’t resonate and catch your interest, put the book back. However, if it does, then buy the book and follow it; it will change your life. Armed with this knowledge, take personal control and proactive accountability of your life, fitness and age management. I have patterned all that I do to stay in shape after these principles. Based on my experience, and I’m sure yours too, we cannot rely upon the current healthcare system and doctors to help us find our hidden and chronic illnesses. They are great for treating trauma and providing medication for problems, but they were never trained nor incentivized by insurance companies and big pharama to diagnose and treat chronic diseases early in their development, and provide hormone replacement therapy.