Resistance and flexibility training — the use of light weights, bands, yoga, Pilates and tai chi are all helpful to reduce sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass, which occurs in all people after the age of 40.
Physical fitness is not just about lifting weights or running marathons; it’s about discipline, resilience, and continuous self-improvement. Fitness champions help coach and inspire others to achieve their fitness goals. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr Joseph Maroon.
Dr. Maroon is a Clinical Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and Heindl Scholar in Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center. He completed his Graduate Degree from Indiana University School of Medicine, with residencies completed at Georgetown University, Indiana University, Oxford University, and the University of Vermont. Dr. Maroon is the author of seven books and has served on the editorial boards of eight medical and neurological journals. Additionally, he has served as a neurosurgical consultant for the Pittsburgh Steelers for 39 years and was the first neurosurgeon directly team appointed in the NFL. Dr. Maroon became a consultant for Aviv Clinics after completing the clinic’s medical program and is a member of the Global Aging Consortium, an exclusive panel of leaders in the field of aging.
Thank you so much for joining us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?
Igrew up in Bridgeport, Ohio next to Wheeling, WV in the upper Ohio Valley region. There were three options after high school for any young man: work in the steel mills, work in the coal mines or get an athletic scholarship to escape the Ohio Valley.
I was fortunate to get a scholarship in football to Indiana University where I started as a running back for two years. I was a Scholastic All American at IU before entering med school.
The real back story began when I was 15 playing on the American Legion Post 227 baseball team in Bridgeport. On the same team was John Havlicek, who subsequently was an all time great for the Boston Celtics and is in the Basketball Hall of Fame. The pitcher was Phil Niekro, one of the greatest baseball knuckle ball pitchers of all time, and also in the Baseball Hall of Fame. All three of us are in the Lou Holtz Hall of Fame.
On the fields of friendly strife, we learned the principles of never quitting, perseverance in all things, loyalty to our teammates and others, getting up when you fall and also being humble when victorious and gracious in defeat.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career and the lessons or takeaways learned?
After completing my neurosurgical training at Indiana University, Georgetown, The University of Vermont and the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England, I joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh as a fledgling neurosurgeon. During those first few years, while on call for neurosurgery, five quadriplegic high school athletes came into the ER, and I was responsible for their care. Struck down at the zenith of their young career and having played football myself at the college level, I was devastated by the futility of so little to be done to return them to a healthy life.
Hippocrates said the first responsibility of a physician is to prevent disease. If that be impossible, to cure it. If that, too, be impossible, to relieve pain. These young athletes stimulated me to initiate a preventive medicine program for coaches, trainers, athletes and families teaching the principles of head and neck strengthening, proper tackling techniques and more in an attempt to prevent serious brain and spinal cord injuries.
This resulted in me being invited to be the first neurosurgeon working full time as a consultant to the NFL and in particular, the Pittsburgh Steelers. At the urging of four-time Super Bowl champion, Coach Chuck Noll, I and a colleague, Mark Lovell, a neuropsychologist, developed the Immediate Post Concussion and Cognitive Test (ImPACT) for assessing concussions. We eventually baselined the entire Steeler team and, subsequently, this has been extended as the standard of care in the NFL, most major contact sports, and we have tested over 25 million athletes with this 20-minute PC based neurocognitive test .
I learned from those tragically disabled young men that indeed an ounce of prevention is much better than many pounds of cure. I also was struck by how a serendipitous challenge from Coach Noll to provide a better system for evaluating concussions in athletes resulted in a new standard of care for managing concussions in sports.
You are a successful leader. Which three-character traits were most instrumental to your success and share a story for each?
Perseverance. General Douglas MacArthur had a plaque placed facing the playing fields at West Point when he was commandant. The plaque reads, “On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days, on other fields will bear the fruits of victory”. From the little league baseball field to high school and college football and basketball, I learned never to quit. To play through pain. And, to get up when you fall. In neurosurgery, these traits have been invaluable when dealing with surgeries that could last 8 to 12 hours and sometimes even longer. You just can’t stop because your fatigued, your back aches or your late for dinner with the responsibility of a patient’s future life.
Curiosity. Throughout my career being “curious” about how the brain and body “work” has led to over 300 scientific publications and six books dealing with improved diagnostic and surgical methods and advances in patient care. Early on, I was curious about using the operating microscope in neurosurgery and was fortunate to develop new minimally invasive surgical procedures due to that curiosity.
Humility. The margin of error in neurosurgery between a patient having a functional life or a serious disability, or even death, is very small. I still have PTSD from operations in which there was vision loss, paralysis and even fatal hemorrhages from trying to save the lives of patients with brain tumors, aneurysms and traumatic brain injury.
I learned early that it is essential to not soar too high with success, like Icarus, nor to sink too low with failure and depression. Like Aristotle said, “Strive for the mean between extremes” and always for kaizen or continual improvement and peak performance.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that might help people?
I am presently collaborating with Dr. Pravat Mandal, former director of the National Brain Research Centre in India. Dr. Mandal is an international expert in imaging the brain with magnetic resonance spectroscopy. This technique enables one to accurately measure various chemicals and even the pH in the brain non-invasively.
We have demonstrated that glutathione, the main antioxidant in the brain, is markedly deficient in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. We are now undertaking experimental studies, in cooperation with the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, at the University of Pittsburgh to evaluate patients with MCI with neurocognitive testing and MR spectroscopy as a baseline. They will then be administered a special precursor compound for glutathione that we believe has significant potential to possibly arrest and even reverse some neurodegenerative diseases of the brain. We believe there is a direct relationship between chronic traumatic encephalopathy as well as postoperative cognitive impairment with a deficiency of glutathione in the brain due to oxidative stress and various disease states including age.
What inspired you to pursue a career in fitness?
At age 40 when I was indeed soaring a bit like Icarus with my neurosurgical successes, my father died suddenly at age 60 of a heart attack. My family broke up primarily because of my “success” in neurosurgery, but not in my family, and because of severe depression, I could no longer perform neurosurgical operations. All of this occurred within a week. I had to quit neurosurgery and move into a farmhouse in Wheeling, West Virgina, adjacent to a very worn, old truck stop my father bequeathed to my mother.
I went from one day doing brain surgery on awake patients with brain tumors in eloquent parts of their brain to working at a truck stop in the middle of winter filling up 18 wheelers and flipping hamburgers.
Severely depressed, feeling a failure, doubting if I would ever be able to return to neurosurgery, I floundered for several months. Subsequently, the banker who held the mortgage on the truck stop called me one day and asked if I wanted to go on a run with him. I was 20 pounds overweight, short of breath walking up a flight of steps and pathologically depressed. However, he cajoled me into finding a pair of scrubs and an old pair of sneakers, and we went to a local high school track. I made it around four times. I said never again. But that night something strange occurred. It was the first night I slept in months.
I went back myself the next day and did a mile and a quarter. Then, a mile and a half, then two, then three. I began reading about cross training with swimming and biking and learned to do both. As an unintended side effect of regaining my physical strength, my diet changed, I lost weight, and my brain slowly began to “work” again.
A friend invited me to do a small triathlon, and I felt like Roger Banister breaking the four-minute mile when I completed it. This subsequently led to a commitment to regular exercise, adhering to the healthiest diet I could, and participation in over 75 triathlons and 8 ironman distance races (swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 and a 26.2 marathon) — five in Hawaii at the World Championship and others in New Zealand, Germany and Canada. The last triathlon was in Chicago a year and a half ago when I came in first in my age group, 80–85 — but I was the only one in my age group!
Based on your research or experience, can you share the five things anyone can do to improve their fitness routine?
Health and longevity come down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors.
First, cultivate a healthy mindset. To initially open the door to the gym, one should be aware that physical exercise resets feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and endocannabinoids in our brain. These increase the formation of new brain cells, markedly enhance mood and increase resilience. Without a healthy, positive attitude and mindfulness of the benefits of exercise, it’s very difficult to open that door to the gym.
Dietary control — a healthy anti-inflammatory diet of vegetables, fruits, nuts, berries, lean protein and appropriate supplements are essentials for building on any exercise program.
Cardio — 30 minutes a day, five days a week of brisk walking, swimming, water aerobics, biking, elliptical, dance and gardening are all ways to increase cardiovascular fitness and reduce the incidence of heart attacks and strokes, as well as some cancers.
Resistance and flexibility training — the use of light weights, bands, yoga, Pilates and tai chi are all helpful to reduce sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass, which occurs in all people after the age of 40.
Sleep — proper rest and sleep is restorative to the body as well as the brain. Poor and inadequate prolonged loss of sleep leads to earlier cases of dementia and markedly reduced peak performance in work, play or exercise.
What role do you believe mental health plays in physical fitness?
It is well known that our mental state can markedly affect the body in terms of heart attacks, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, etc. What is not well recognized is that the body can heal the brain. It was that single run around the high school track that stimulated the “rebooting” of my neurotransmitters, the improvement in my mood, the reduction in my weight, the enhanced physical and mental fitness that has led to the very best part of my life.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I believe that the breakdown of the family and the loss of dual parental input is one of the greatest causes for many of the crises we have today in our country. Children born out of wedlock for Caucasians amounts of 21.9%; for Hispanics 41.6% and for Blacks up to 69.3%. In New York City, 50% of all births are out of wedlock and in some neighborhoods, it is 80%.
The absence of a father, and a mother working two or three jobs leads to negative environmental influences on the children that will lead to destructive behavior because of the “wiring” that occurs in the executive, salience and emotional circuits of the brain.
How to change that?!
More organizations like Big Brothers and Sisters of America which provide mentorship for youth 6 and older are needed. Another is Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Both of these recruit for volunteers that will be role models, guidance counselors and help to provide a more enriched environment for the development of less fortunate youth.
I don’t have new ideas in this area but would urge much more support and education for those deprived of a traditional mother/father example.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com.
