On film, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been tough to take down. But in real life, the actor and former governor of California has had his share of health issues that required surgery and replacement parts as he has aged. Through it all, he continues to work out — a daily regimen that includes a bicycle for an hour, and 45 minutes with weights — and Schwarzenegger says that movement is the key to remaining healthy in our 50s, 60s and beyond.
“Do something,” Schwarzenegger said at the CNBC CEO Council Summit on Monday evening in Arizona. “It doesn’t matter to me if you play tennis, if you go skiing, if you play soccer, or if you lift weights … but do something.”
That seems simple, but he says it is a huge issue in a world where hundreds of millions of people suffer from arthritic conditions that may require surgery, physical therapy, or body part replacement, or some combination involving all three. And too many people, according to Schwarzenegger, are afraid of taking the steps necessary, including replacing body parts, as they age even though the medical science has come a long way.
The alternative to getting past the fear of technology is one that Schwarzenegger put in Terminator-like terms: “If you stop movement, then, this is the first step to death,” he said. “If you rest, you rust,” is another statement he has been fond of making since he took up the role of Chief Movement Officer at medical device company Zimmer Biomet last year.
According to Zimmer CEO Ivan Tornos, who appeared alongside Schwarzenegger at the CNBC event for CEOs, there are 600 million people around the world living in pain, and that was a primary reason he sought out Schwarzenegger for the role in creating more awareness about the advances in medical devices. Zimmer, which was founded in 1927, is now moving into areas far beyond “plastic and metal,” Tornos said, with health monitoring tech through companies including Apple and Microsoft, AI, mixed reality and robotics solutions, and 50 products launching over the next 36 months, he said.
According to the Zimmer CEO, every day in the U.S. there are between 10,000 and 12,000 people turning 65, and Tornos told CNBC last November that many of these people are “waiting on the sidelines to get treatment,” or are afraid to get treatment. Of the 600 million people in the world with arthritis, Tornos has estimated only 5% are doing something about it. Joint replacement survivorship was eight to 10 years on average three decades ago, and is now 25 to 30 years, or higher, he said.
Getting Zimmer’s board to endorse the executive role for Schwarzenegger as the messenger on how much the medical science has changed, from surgery to therapy and body part replacement, wasn’t easy at first. Tornos recalled that he told the board, “I want to get The Terminator to be the spokesman of the company, and they wanted to send me to get drug screening. Some went as far as to say it would never happen, he will never listen to you.”
But the message resonated with Schwarzenegger, who sees the medical science available to humans as we age as part of his broader “movement” philosophy.
“My business is to make people move,” he said. “All over the world, to go and to pump them up and to say you can exercise, train every day.”
Even people who know about body part replacement technology are afraid, he said.
“I see it firsthand in the gym,” Schwarzenegger said. “People come up to me and say ‘I can’t do this lift anymore, my shoulder hurts and my surgeon doesn’t want to operate anymore, now wants to do shoulder replacement, but I’m afraid of it. I hear all theses stories,” he said. “We have to convince people it is possible to do this,” he said. “I had my hip replaced. I had valves replaced in my heart. … All these people complaining about problems in knees, hips and shoulders, they stop moving,” he added.
Tornos said there are now millions of people engaging every day in the campaign that Schwarzenegger leads for Zimmer — called “You’ll be back” — an idea he said was Arnold’s. “I wanted to call it ‘Terminate your pain today,’ and he said, ‘That’s a stupid idea. It’s not about you. It’s about them,” Tornos recalled.
The former governor, who remains active in various efforts including environmental policy and recently authored the book, “Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life”, also linked his message on action over living in pain to the current political moment.
“I don’t have patience when people come to me with excuses,” Schwarzenegger said. “I think that the environment always changes. The key thing is to understand that for every attack, there’s a defense. And so instead of whining, I think you have got to go and move forward. … I don’t want to hear the excuse where now that Trump is in office, we cannot move forward with the environment. … It’s garbage. It’s a cheap excuse.”
Misunderstandings about keeping our bodies healthy as we age and body part replacement, specifically, are another type of fallacy he wants to fix. “It is extremely important to not stop moving when you’re 50 to 60 just because of joint problems,” he said.
Schwarzenegger stressed that surgery should never be the first choice if therapy can be effective, and body part replacement may not be necessary. But the message too often missed is that the technology does exist today that allows people to “walk out” of hip surgery, he said. “When I did it, I had to stay in the hospital for days and had months of therapy,” he said. “I want to let people know and give them the courage to get those things fixed and continue moving.”
“Don’t let anything get in the way,” he said. “Exercise, exercise, exercise.”
