How My 90-Year-Old Father Stays Healthy (5 Daily Habits That Work)
My father turns ninety this year. He still walks every morning.
Not ten thousand steps. Maybe two thousand on a good day, three thousand if he's lucky. But he walks. In the worn leather shoes my mother bought him fifteen years ago — the ones he refuses to replace — he shuffles down the apartment hallway, out the front door, and around the small park near his building. The loop that takes me twelve minutes takes him forty. He doesn't care. He just walks.
Watching him walk, I see two things at once. I see the miracle of a body past ninety that still moves, still breathes, still insists on going outside every morning despite everything that age has taken from it. And I see the cruelty of a mind that is slowly forgetting why it goes outside at all.
My father has dementia (치매, chimae). Not the dramatic kind you see in movies, where a parent suddenly doesn't recognize their child. The slow kind. The kind where he asks the same question three times in ten minutes and doesn't remember asking the first two. The kind where he calls me by my older brother's name, then catches himself with an embarrassed laugh. The kind where he can walk to the park but sometimes can't remember the way back, so my mother follows thirty steps behind him every morning, pretending she's on her own walk, gently redirecting him when he stops at the wrong building entrance.
The Genes He Gave Me
My father is ninety and still mobile. His father — my grandfather — lived to 87. My mother, 85, still cooks dinner every night and manages the household with the precision of a retired general. On my mother's side, my grandmother lived to 91. Longevity runs in my bloodline the way some families pass down wealth or musical talent. My family passes down a stubborn refusal to die early.
When I was diagnosed with fatty liver at 53, when my blood pressure hit 145/95, when my fasting blood sugar crossed into pre-diabetic territory, my first thought wasn't "I need to change my lifestyle." It was "This doesn't make sense. My family lives forever."
That thought nearly killed me. Because I used my genes as an excuse to abuse my body for thirty years. My father drank and made it to ninety, so I drank. My grandfather never exercised and made it to 87, so I didn't exercise. My mother eats whatever she wants and is healthy at 85, so I ate ramyeon (라면) at midnight. I treated my genetic inheritance like an unlimited credit line and spent recklessly for three decades.
What I didn't understand until my doctor beat it into my thick skull: there's a saying in preventive medicine. "Genetics loads the gun. Lifestyle pulls the trigger." I inherited a very good gun from my family — a constitution favoring longevity, strong cardiovascular baseline, dense bone structure, resilient organs. But I had been pulling the trigger for twenty-five years with corporate drinking, overeating, sleep deprivation, and physical neglect. The fact that the gun hadn't fired yet didn't mean it wouldn't. It meant I'd been given more chances than I deserved, and the chances were running out.
A 2021 study in the New England Journal of Medicine tracked over 350,000 adults for an average of thirteen years and found something remarkable. Among people with high genetic risk for cardiovascular disease, those who maintained healthy lifestyle habits — regular exercise, healthy diet, not smoking, moderate alcohol — reduced their risk by nearly 50 percent. The genetic risk still mattered, but lifestyle choices were powerful enough to cut it in half. Conversely, people with favorable genetic profiles who lived unhealthily lost almost all of their genetic advantage, ending up with disease rates comparable to those born with the worst genetic hand.
That study described me perfectly. I was born with a royal flush and played it like a fool.
What My Father's Dementia Taught Me About Body and Mind
My father's physical health, for a ninety-year-old, is remarkable. His heart is strong. His blood pressure, managed with medication, hovers around 130/80. His liver function is normal. His kidneys work. His legs still carry him around the park every morning, even if they move slower than they used to. By every physical metric, he is a miracle.
But his mind is drifting away. Slowly. Gently. Like fog rolling in from the sea — you don't notice it approaching until you can no longer see the shoreline. And watching it happen has taught me something that no blood test or health checkup can measure: physical health without mental health is a house without windows. The structure stands, but no light gets in.
I used to think health was about numbers. Blood pressure under 120/80. Fasting blood sugar under 100. Waist under 34 inches. BMI under 25. I chased those numbers obsessively after my diagnosis, and I still track them. But watching my father walk to the park and forget why he went there has fundamentally changed what I mean when I say "I want to be healthy."
I don't just want my body to last until seventy, eighty, ninety. I want my mind to last with it. I want to remember my grandchildren's names. I want to recognize my wife's face. I want to know why I walked to the park. Those are health goals that don't appear on any checkup report, and they terrify me more than any number ever has.
A 2022 meta-analysis published in The Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention found that up to 40 percent of dementia cases worldwide could be prevented or delayed by addressing twelve modifiable risk factors. The top ones included physical inactivity, excessive alcohol consumption, hypertension, obesity, social isolation, and depression. I read that list and realized that every single item had been part of my life for decades. Physical inactivity — I sat at a desk for thirty years. Excessive alcohol — I drank five nights a week for twenty-five years. Hypertension — my blood pressure was 145/95 before I started walking. Obesity — my waist was 37 inches and visceral fat was wrapping my organs. Social isolation — the day I retired, I lost my entire social network. Depression — I stood in the hallway in my dress shoes with nowhere to go.
I wasn't just risking my heart, my liver, and my blood sugar. I was risking my mind. Every bottle of soju (소주), every skipped walk, every night of broken sleep wasn't just shortening my body's lifespan — it was increasing the odds that even if my body made it to ninety like my father's, my mind might not make the journey with it.
That realization hit harder than any diagnosis.
The Sunday Phone Call
Every Sunday at 10 AM, I call my father. It is the most important phone call of my week. It is also the most painful.
The call always starts the same way. He picks up cheerfully. "Yeoboseyo (여보세요)?" — the polite Korean phone greeting his generation still insists on. I say, "Abeoji (아버지), it's me." And there's always a pause. Half a second. Sometimes less. But inside that half-second lives an entire universe of fear. Because in that half-second, I don't know if he knows who "me" is.
I tell him business is good at the shop, even during weeks when it isn't. He asks about my health. I tell him I'm walking. He says that's good. Then, five minutes later, he asks how the shop is doing again. I answer in the same tone, as if I'm hearing the question for the first time. Because for him, it is the first time.
Some Sundays, he doesn't know my name. I say "Abeoji, it's me," and the pause stretches from half a second to one second to three. Then he says, "Ah... yes, yes," but I can hear him searching for my name in his voice. Sometimes he finds it. Sometimes he doesn't. On the Sundays when he doesn't, I hang up and sit quietly for about five minutes. I don't cry. Fifty-nine-year-old Korean men don't cry easily. But I need a moment to breathe.
The Words My Father Never Said
My father was a typical Korean father of his generation. He worked silently, endured silently, and provided for his family silently. I cannot remember him ever saying "I love you" directly to me. I never heard him say "I'm struggling" or "I'm in pain." For men of his generation, saying those words was weakness itself.
But dementia is breaking down that wall. Among the things my father says now are words he would never have spoken thirty years ago. Last month, he called me and suddenly asked, "Your father wasn't good to you, was he?" I said, "No, Abeoji, you were good to me." But he said, "No, I didn't have enough time to play with you. I'm sorry." Dementia is taking his memories while opening the door to emotions he hid for a lifetime.
After hanging up, I sat thinking for a long time. Am I becoming that kind of father? How many of my children's school events did I attend during my corporate years? How many times did I tell my children "I love you"? How many times did I tell my wife "thank you"? My father is ninety years old and it took dementia for him to finally say those words. I'm fifty-nine with a perfectly clear mind — so why can't I say them?
I changed after that day. Now whenever I call my children, I always end with "saranghae (사랑해)" — I love you. It was awkward at first. They were confused at first. Now they say it first. I tell my wife "gomawo (고마워)" — thank you — every day. Thank you for making doenjang-jjigae (된장찌개). Thank you for walking with me. Thank you for being here. Small words. But the difference between saying them and not saying them is as vast as the sky.
Gammab-seumnida — Why I Invented a Word That Doesn't Exist
My health supplement shop is called "Gammab-seumnida (감맙습니다)." This word does not exist in the Korean dictionary. I created it by combining "gamsahamnida (감사합니다)" — the formal way of saying thank you — and "gomapseumnida (고맙습니다)" — the warm way of saying thank you.
Why this name? The answer goes back to my father. Watching him lose his memories to dementia taught me that gratitude must be expressed while you still can. Tomorrow you might forget. Tomorrow you might not even have the chance to be grateful.
Gammab-seumnida. I am thankful and grateful to God. I am thankful and grateful for a father who still walks at ninety. I am thankful and grateful for a wife who walks with me every evening. I am thankful and grateful for a grandchild who runs toward me shouting "Harabeoji (할아버지)!" I am thankful and grateful for the customers who visit my shop seeking health. I am thankful and grateful for readers who send messages saying they started walking after reading my posts.
"Gamsahamnida" alone wasn't enough. "Gomapseumnida" alone wasn't enough. So I combined them into one word. It doesn't exist in any dictionary, but it is the most accurate word in my heart.
The Responsibility of a Man With Good Genes
Watching my father at ninety, I realize I was given good genes. But gifts come with responsibility.
My father's body held up to ninety, but his mind began failing before his body did. I want to take both with me — body and mind, all the way. That's why I walk. That's why I cut my drinking. That's why I eat mixed-grain rice (잡곡밥, japgokbap). That's why I take omega-3, magnesium, and vitamin D. That's why I write. Writing itself is an act of using the brain, and using the brain is the most fundamental activity for dementia prevention.
My father's genes might carry me to ninety. But if I rely on genes alone, I might end up at ninety walking to the park and not knowing why I'm there. Not pulling the trigger on the gun that genetics loaded — and filling the time that genes gave me with a mind that's still whole — that is my job at fifty-nine.
Next Sunday at 10 AM, I'll call my father. I don't know if he'll say my name. But I'll call every week. Because even if he forgets, I remember.
Abeoji, gammab-seumnida.
Choco Papa, walking in his father's footsteps.
See you in the next inning.
초코파파의 건강 정보
감사와 건강 노트 시리즈 — 7부작 완결편
01 내 휴대폰이 조용해진 날
02 ▶ 90세에도 여전히 걸으시는 아버지 (현재 글)
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