Crayton Webb

Welcome to Reputation Matters. Our guest today is a living legend in the health and medical community, widely known as the “father of aerobics” and a true pioneer in preventive medicine. For over five decades, he’s inspired millions around the world to embrace fitness and healthy living. He is Dr. Kenneth Cooper. Dr Cooper, what an honor to have you here today.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

My pleasure, thank you.

Crayton Webb

Why are you known as the father of aerobics?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Because I coined the word in 1966. It wasn’t Jane Fonda in 1981, it was me in 1966.

Then wrote my first book in 1968. I was preparing the manuscript of my first book, and got to that chapter dealing with endurance exercises and aerobic activity is really what you need for cardiovascular fitness, because we know that fitness can be used, exercise can be used in various ways. It can be used for rest, relaxation, muscle building and figure contouring and cardiovascular conditioning, but the one that can save your life is the last one: cardiovascular pulmonary condition. So I got to aerobics, talked about that in some detail, and the publisher at that time was from New York. And so he said, let’s- I said, aerobics. He said, let’s call the book “Aerobics”. And I said, “No.” I said, people can’t understand that. They can’t spell it. It certainly can’t be translated to foreign languages. That was a true statement too that came out. But he was right and I was wrong, because the book is in many, many languages, and it’s all over the world, and there’s been about 30 million copies have been sold around the world in all these various languages over the years. But no, the word was very appropriate, because aerobics means living in air, living with oxygen. The aerobic concept is a method of physical exercise for producing beneficial changes in the respiratory and circulatory systems by activities which require a modest increase in oxygen intake, and so it can be maintained. So that’s the official definition of aerobics in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1986.

Crayton Webb

But at that time, people weren’t exercising in the way they do now. I mean, do you ever go to the gym and see all these people on the treadmill and say they’re only doing this because of me? Does that go through your mind?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, now you see someone jogging the street, and they say you see one. There may be 50 behind the scenes, but no, it was an amazing thing to me. In fact, I didn’t think when the book came out in 1968

that people would join the jogging movement. And a lot of people thought I’d be killing people. In fact, such statements that streets can be full of dead joggers if people follow Cooper, I had to fight that.

Crayton Webb

What? Sorry, but because people thought it was bad for you?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, you have to keep in mind that exercise has been attributed to athleticism. It hasn’t been listed to health. And so even as an athlete in high school in Oklahoma City, where I went to Putnam City school for a period of 12 years there, and as a senior in high school, I made, won the state championship in the mile run. It’s almost a new state record. I was in all state in basketball, and my father, a practicing dentist in Oklahoma, never accepted my concepts of exercise, because this is back in 1949, that the feeling was – among the medical profession at all – if you exercise too much, you get an adverse effect, and you get what’s called the Athletic Heart Syndrome. And we didn’t know back in those days that you get a chest x-ray and you see an enlargement of the silhouette of the heart on the chest x-ray. The feeling was that was because the heart became muscular. And we have echocardiograms known to determine that wasn’t just the heart increases in muscle. And what my dad thought, and even taught in medical school that heart gets muscular, and then, you stop exercising, it converts into fat, and you die early. And so he thought I was shortening my life by doing all this extensive exercise, scholarship, University of Oklahoma. So all the years I exercised and ran competitively, he never saw me run one time. He never saw me play basketball one time. He would never endorse my concept of exercise and training. My mother did. My mother was my strongest supporter. She tried to share with me everything she possibly could. My father just said, “I’m not going to stop you, but I’m not encouraging to do it, because you’re gonna die early.” I’ve outlived him by 18 years.

Crayton Webb

And here you are, 90-

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

I’m 94. I’m in my 95th year now. But that’s a shame, because I wish I’d known then what I know now. Because that heart wasn’t just a muscular heart, it was a dilated heart, because we found with the echocardiograms is that muscle increases some, but it dilates so it can pump out more blood with each stroke. It’s called the ejection fraction, and so it’s the conservation of energy. Because why do you think the resting heart rate goes down in endurance athlete? Average American male, 72 beats per minute. Average American female, 78 beats per minute. But they drop into the 40s and 50s. Mine runs about 55 in my advanced stage because I’ve maintained this fitness over the years. So that means every time the heart beats, it’s beating less. There’s that concept at one time. And this is one of the critics I had. You only have a certain number of heartbeats. If you burn them up by running with the heart rates of 150 or so exercise or what it may be, you’re shortening your lifespan. That’s what they thought.

Crayton Webb

I want to talk about the critics in just a moment. But, back on your personal experience, was there something in particular that happened to you that led you down this path? Obviously, you were an athlete, but what led you down the path to discover the term “aerobics” and to defy the science, or at least the common thinking of the time?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, I was going the routine route when I was in medical school that I don’t need exercise anymore because I’m not an athlete. And I realized back in the 1950s when I was in medical school, that exercise is a very important part of your health and your wellness. It’s also learned in when I was in high school, in college and running track competitively, my body weight was around 165, 68 pounds. But then I got into medical school and discovered a very important point, that obesity is the most common manifestation of stress, and the stress of going through medical school, the stress of internship. I didn’t have time to exercise. I didn’t need to exercise. I know the value of exercise, and so by the time I got through medical school and internship, I’d increase my body weight from 168 up to 204, 204 pounds. So 29 years of age, being totally sedentary for a period of six years, I stopped exercising, didn’t think I needed it, and decided to go water skiing for the first time in many years, up in Lake Texoma. I’d done that many times during my youth. Got about halfway through the course, a slalom course, I had severe chest pain. My heart was racing out of my chest. 29 years of age, never had any signs of heart disease, any of that type. So they got me over the side. I got over there. And I stretched out in the sand, and the heart rate came back to normal. The pain disappeared. And so I was evaluated at the hospital the next day in San Antonio. I was on the Air Force, and they said “There’s nothing wrong with you, Doc, you’re just out of shape.” I couldn’t believe it, at 29 years of age, I was hypertensed. I was pre-diabetic. I didn’t have any energy. I told my wife I felt like I was dying in mental stagnation. And so all of a sudden, I somewhat changed that. So I lost the weight within six months, and I ran my first marathon a year later. I ran for 40 years, 30,000 miles, I had to stop when I broke my leg snow skiing. But all that, all those symptoms disappeared. The blood pressure came back to normal, the diabetes, pre-diabetic conditions disappeared. I thought, this is a field of medicine that needs to be pursued, because I was taught in medical school that preventive medicine is the Cinderella of the medical special, because there’s no profit in health, right? And still, we have no recognition. I was looking at D Magazine, the list of doctors and all the special- there’s no specialty for preventive medicine.

Crayton Webb

It’s all reactive.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

It’s all, it’s too much care too late. And so that’s what I’ve been trying to do with do with this series we have on the preventive effect of exercise and preventive medicine in general. And so, we’ve been able to show that we can do all sorts of things by doing this. People get Cooperized. They follow our guidelines. They’re living longer than the national average. They’re squaring off the curve, living a long and healthy life At an age that average, our women are 90.4 years, our men are 88.5 years, and then average, then is 88.6 years. For men and women, that’s 10 years longer than our national average. So I can tell people now, is it gonna make you feel good? Because what motivates people to keep exercising over the years? It isn’t because they think it’s going to have some cardiovascular benefit. It’s because it makes them feel good. And this is published in my new book, talking about the reason people exercise, because it makes them feel good. And we’ve proven by publishing peer reviewed journals, people are less depressed, they’re less of a hypochondriac, improved self-image, much more positive attitude towards life. So they’re a different person. Psychologically, the effect on the brain is dramatic, because what is good for the heart is good for the brain.

Crayton Webb

But that wasn’t the reaction in 1968.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

It was just the reverse. Streets are going to be full of dead joggers and kill more people than Hitler did in World War Two.

Crayton Webb

And of course, being a physician, your reputation and images is everything. How did you react to the criticism?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, the criticism was great. Even at the extent that I pioneered treadmill stress testing is, you know, and we did this in the Air Force, Bill Thornton and I, because I had transferred from the army to the Air Force. I spent 13 years in military, two and a half years the army, and 10 and a half years the Air Force. And I did that when I was 29 years of age, to seek a career with NASA being assigned as astronaut.

Crayton Webb

Now, for people who don’t know, describe quickly what the stress test is.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

The stress test is a stress of your heart, and it has two important points. Number one is determine your level of fitness. Talk more about that later. But number two is to pick up early coronary disease, because the most common first symptom of severe heart disease is a sudden death. People don’t realize until it’s too late. Of the 300,000 treadmill stress tests that we’ve now done in the last 55 years at our center, 16.1% have been abnormal. Only 5% knew they had a problem. So 11% of the people coming to the clinic have heart disease diagnosed by the treadmill stress test. And keep in mind, the first symptom may be death. So about four or five times a week, we see about 200 patients per week up the clinic,

Crayton Webb

And this is at the Cooper Institute,

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Yeah, at the Cooper clinic, and we have a six-month waiting list for people coming to the clinic, but they come back, 74% are returning patients. But by doing this, the people are helping us to get the accumulation of data. We publish the scientific literature that’s been able to bridge that gap between fadism and scientific legitimacy in using exercise in the practice of medicine. Now, with over 700 articles published in peer review journal, we have bridged that gap, and the results are too impressive to be ignored. But this is very, very difficult at first, because I first came to Dallas, and even though that I’d done work with Bill Thornton, the scientist. He became a scientist astronaut. Finally, in 1970 realized that I wasn’t going to be achieving what I wanted to achieve, because it would take too long to get a flight into space and so but one of our responsibilities, Bill and I worked on this, was to develop a technique that we could read an EKG on an exercising subject. Early 1960s, that didn’t exist. You had even the old Harvard step test that we used when I was in medical school. You have to take the leads off and walk them down some steps back and forth, and plug it back in. They could not read an EKG on exercising subject, and that was very critical for the astronaut in space, extravehicular particularly, be having a cardiac arrhythmia. They wouldn’t even know about that. You couldn’t read the EKG. It was too much artifact. So we had that response, and we developed that. Bill Thornton and I did. And then the other thing we did, we did the bed rest studies to develop a conditioning program that’s now used by the astronauts. And that’s all in the book. We talk about how we use the bicycle ergometer, which they’re using in space. So that weightless, weightless in space is different. So those two things, Bill and I were able to develop that from NASA, and he stayed in the program, but it took him 17 years to fly into space.

Crayton Webb

But before NASA, before the Cooper test, the Cooper Clinic, the Cooper Institute, the success, amidst all the criticism, what gave you the confidence to stand firm that you were heading in the right direction, that you knew that preventive medicine, that cardio, that, as you call it, Cooperizing, or as people call it, I think, I think don’t they call cardio in Brazil, don’t they call it Cooperizing?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Doing the Cooper.

Crayton Webb

What made you stick to it?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Because the response I had to my own body, because I didn’t realize that. And so once I saw if it happened to me, this can happen to millions of people. And the problem we have in America now is we spend so much money for health care too late. We’ve been spending so much of our health service dollar on desperate measures that often prolongs death, not life, a miserable few days. We spent $3.4 trillion a year on health care. What do we rank in longevity? We rank 35th in longevity worldwide. Too much care too late. And that’s what I’m trying to change. See, I think the book will do two things. It’ll motivate people to rely upon themselves, to try to achieve a high level of fitness and live as long as active and healthy life as I’m living. Because your health is not the government’s responsibility, and not about they make America healthy again, that’s what we’re trying to do. The way to do that is in the book, it’s not by somebody in politics trying to do something, to tell you what you should do, but there is a way. But you have to accept that there’s no drug can replicate the benefits of an active lifestyle. You have to understand that’s the key. Let me tell you an example of how important it is to have an active lifestyle, because I made a famous Medicare study. We did a study on 28,000 people we followed for 25 years. And they came to the clinic at average age of 50. We fought for 25 years at the Medicare date from 65 to 75 years of age, and the only variable we looked at was their time on the treadmill. Very poor, poor, fair, good action, period, age and sex adjusted. For the top 20 percentile versus the bottom 20 percentile. These people, top 20%, had 36% less Alzheimer’s and dementia than the bottom category. They had 40% less chronic kidney disease requiring dialysis than the bottom category had, and they had a 25% reduction all types of cancer, and 25% reduction in congestive heart failure. And the big thing they had was the cost of medical care, Medicare, the top category from the bottom category was 40% less than the top category on bottom category. Now listen to that, this is proving one thing. That it’s cheaper to prevent disease than to find a cure, no question. And you can reduce the cost of healthcare. People embrace this concept of getting Cooperized, and I think hope that with God’s direction, that we will have this book that will affect not only millions of people around the world, but change the way that medicine is practiced in the future. I think it will.

Crayton Webb

Now you talk about your influence, or the influence around the world, and we mentioned Brazil. So I understand that the Brazilian soccer team, right, adopted cardio early on in the 70s. And then there have been two movies: “Alive,” in 1993 starring Ethan Hawke, and then “The Society of the Snow” that told the story of the, I think it’s the 1973 Uruguayan rugby team that crashed into the Andes. Nando Parado is known to say that Dr. Cooper saved his life. This was the Ethan Hawke character in the 1993 movie. How did you save the life of the captain of the Uruguayan rugby team who crash landed into the Andes in 1973.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, they’re so physically fit that he could tolerate the stress of being isolated up there in the Andes and and that’s what he talked about. He we had him speak in one of our presentations here in Dallas. It’s amazing story that he has. Going back to Brazilian team, that happened in 1968. Because I was in the Air Force at the time, and when the book came out, I was invited to speak at the Congress international sports military in Fontainebleau, France. And at this meeting there was a man by the name of Claudio Patino, and he was a captain Brazilian Army. And he heard about  this presentation I was making about aerobic conditioning and he said, “Well, I’m training the World Cup team from Mexico City at 7200 feet. It wouldn’t be a value for me to train at sea level, to play better at altitude.” I told him, “Yes, it would. And you could expect, if they were highly conditioned, you think these things to occur.” Number one, because international soccer is 45 minutes of playing, then 30 minutes of rest, then 45 minutes of playing. And you can, you can, you can, if you’re highly conditioned, you can reduce injury because it delays the onset of fatigue. That’s one thing. That’s what the second thing is, all teams go down compared to 45 minutes, but you’re a highly conditioned up here now, 7200 feet versus people the bottom, you’ll be better at the end of the game. The third lane, you better at games this season because you reduce injuries. Vince Lombardi once said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” We know that. Football players know that for sure. And so with that concept, he came to our home in San Antonio, I was still in the Air Force, and stayed with us. We developed a program for the Brazilian team, and we made that they had to go through a conditioning program, and they had to use now the Cooper test. The Cooper test is as famous as aerobics around the world, and that’s the 12 minute test. And so we use the 12 minute test to document the improvement. So we tested them, and these world class athletes average 1.68 miles in 12 minutes on the first Cooper test, the 12 minute test. But they went into a program they had to run 20 miles a week from April 1969 to April 1970. They hated me at first for doing that, but then, by the time we tested the last time, up to 2.3 miles in 12 minutes. They were like cross-country runners, the Brazilian team, and they wiped everybody in the six consecutive matches in the World Cup in Mexico City. And the six of those matches, they were tied to half the other two matches, they were one goal ahead, and they were tied one to one in the finals with Italy, and they won the second half of score four to one. So I became an icon in Brazil well. And then, of course, other Latin American teams, like the Uruguayan rugby team adopted. They all did that. In fact, FIFA accepted that, the Federation International Football Association for soccer. Soccer is a whole lot more popular worldwide than American football is, I can guarantee you. But they made it mandatory that their linesmen must run 2400 meters and that and the referees must run 2800 meters. That was a standard for FIFA internationally. So people hate the Cooper test. Let me tell you an example. I had the privilege of meeting John Grisham one time when he was here in Dallas, speaking at a meeting. And I said, “Mr. Grisham, I’m a fan. I read all your books.” And he said, “Just a minute.” He said, “You’re Dr Cooper.” And I said, “Yes.” He said, he asked me, “Did you write ‘Aerobics’?” I said, “Yes, I wrote ‘Aerobics.’” He said, I hate you. I hate you. I’ve had to take that darn Cooper test so many times, obviously in college, I hate you, hate you, but you know what? I’m still running,” and I’m going to give him a signed autograph book and be saying that to him. “Remember what you told me, that you hated me, but you’re still running.” That’s the kind of stories I’ve heard from the beginning of all this.

Crayton Webb

What’s it like? You don’t seem to me like someone who gets especially starstruck, but what’s it like having folks come to the Cooper Clinic from I mean, I know you’ve worked with four presidents, LBJ, Nixon, both Bushes, Roger Staubach, Dallas Cowboys quarterback, famous folks come to you. What’s that like?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

It’s an honor and it’s a responsibility, and I respect that too.

Crayton Webb

Do you ever get intimidated?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Yes, I do. I get intimidated, but the Lord has helped me overcome some of that, for sure. But people ask me, “How can you go from ground zero to my own offices to employees?” I have to go to the Board of Sensors in Dallas because I was doing something as dangerous as treadmill stress test, and Dallas County tried to take my license away, the Texas State Medical Board, all these things.

Crayton Webb

When was that?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

That was the very early days. That was back in 1970, 71, 72. Because treadmill stress testing was not accepted by my profession, exercise is not accepted by medical profession. So I was out there all by myself in this field, the stress testing recommending exercise. So it’s an uphill battle. So I was on way, I gave a very erudite presentation to the board, and I wasn’t censored, and they just slapped my wrist, and the second person challenged to have a treadmill for stress test was the Chairman of the Board of Sensors. Now it’s ubiquitous all over the world, so we pioneered that number one and made it a very critical part of a preventive medical examination. But again, as I said, preventive medicine as a center of other medical specialties, you can’t make a profit off of health. And they told me when I came, “Doc, you can’t live out your practice taking care of just healthy people. They won’t come to see you. They see their physician only when they’re sick.” First couple of years, I thought they were right. I didn’t see many patients. But now we have a waiting list, 150,000 patients our database. The largest database in the world, in which we’ve made fitness something objectively by treadmill stress testing.

Crayton Webb

So now you’ve written your 20th book. “Grow Healthy as you Grow Older.” Let me play devil’s advocate. You’re 94, you’ve written 20 books. What else do you have to say at this point? You’ve made your, you’ve made the difference! You’ve done it, right? You’re successful. What else do you have to say now in book 20?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, as my wife said the other day, why am I still alive if 90% my medical school class has already died? I said, “Because I guess the Lord’s not through with me yet.” I’ve been writing articles since January 2021 for Franklin Graham in the Decision Magazine. That’s been a one, it’s been a great thrill, because I’ve written those every other month. He has a section in Decision Magazine. It goes around the world, in Decision Magazine, he talks about body and soul. He talks about the soul. I talk about the body. I’ve done that every, it’s been amazing to me. The number of people responding to the articles of writing Decision Magazine. Give them the routine recommendations how to improve the quality and quantity of their lives. That’s our goal. And so people want to listen to that. I think they’ll listen to the book, because we have undeniable evidence. I established my research institute six months before I saw my first patient in December the 6th, 1970. Because my first two books written in the Air Force, average age of population in the Air Force is 28, but the majority of people that read the first book were over 40 years of age. So I started to read the new aerobics and aerobics way, all these things, aerobics for women, because I still had the whole series of books there because I hadn’t planned on such a wide diversity of people participating in this program. I wanted to make it safe as possible. You’re going to have lawsuits filed against you. People have exercised and died while exercising. Every time someone died while exercising, oh, here’s the possibility of a lawsuit. I never had one, but people realize, yes, there’s going to be problem, you get, we went from 150,000 joggers – my first book was written in 1960 – to 24 million by 1994. So there was exponential increases. Everybody’s going to die. You’re going to be amazed. Heart disease went down. Instead of going up, it went down. I even had one of those situations where Jonathan, this physician in New York, was interviewing me on live, on live television, and he was a very strong critic of my work, and you’re going to kill people, all that. And he risked, he misrepresented, he took my data and then multiplied like the point is 0.3 people per 100,000 will die. He liked that six-point overview. And so you’re taking my data and you’re trying to prove a point that isn’t true. Yeah, and he was in New York. I was in Dallas. My son said he wanted to hit him. I couldn’t, because he was in New York, but that was how vicious that people were at that time.

Crayton Webb

But let’s go back a couple of beats. I mean, just, just think about what you’re saying. I mean, and I said it a little half kidding at the beginning of our conversation, but you can’t go into any gym in any state in America, let alone around the world, and not look at the treadmill filled with people who are walking at an elevated or flat level or running or jogging, and that’s all because of you, right? I mean, that’s insane. It wasn’t done before. It wasn’t done before. And what a tremendous, I mean, what a tremendous honor you said, but a responsibility as well.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, I’ve saved their lives, made them have more quality lives, because what they’re doing is condensing the time of senility and senescence into a short time immediately prior to death. That’s what we call squaring off the curve. If I die tomorrow, praise the Lord, I’ve had a good life, I wouldn’t be any concerned because the number one reason we’ve been successful over the years and overcome all this criticism is divine intervention. And that theme is throughout the book, that Lord has had His hand on my life. And that was the first article I wrote in Decision Magazine. That’s what Franklin Graham used, how God has had His hand on my life. Number one, God has had His hand on my life. Number two, and that fantastic staff. And I tell people around the world, CEOs particularly, be just as successful as your staff make you. Number three, we’ve proven super effective prevent disease and find a cure, and I’ve shown you that. And number four, if people realize they have a need and you provide a service, get the results they want and they make you successful, any of you, and that’s why 74% of our patients come back.

Crayton Webb

So let’s go back to the book for a minute. Grow healthy as you grow older. What’s the number one thing that you want people to get out of this book different than the 19 before?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

I want them to realize that their health is your responsibility. It’s not the government, it’s not the insurance company, it’s not your physician, unless he’s qualified in the field of preventive medicine or lifestyle medicine. And so we have four documentaries along with this book that we produced, and they are anywhere from 22 minutes to 42 minutes. You go to our Cooper Aerobics website, and you can get information about these documentaries and all. The one, the last one is 42 minutes. We released that back in November of 2023 at the Bush Library. We had a reporter from CNN. They came down to not to video me but to interview me. You can still go to CNN and type in Cooper and exercise and see that interview. They told me several months ago, it’s been downloaded by 729,600,000 people around the world. I’m getting places, getting texts like in Uzbekistan, places like that all over the world, I’m getting people coming and contacting me. So we’ve got a movement here that’s gone worldwide. So my goal with this book, as I said, to Cooperize the world and to make professionals, medical professionals realize that the greatest responsibility you have is try to prevent this disease, not delay it, and to try to treat it the tail end, but prevent it so people can enjoy quality and quantity of life. And that’s the goal we have people coming to the clinic. We want you to enjoy long, healthy life to the fullest.

Crayton Webb

Aren’t many people who have had their last name become a verb, right? It just doesn’t, it doesn’t happen very often. How throughout what has been your philosophy, because you’re you, you won’t you run a business, you’re a physician, you’re a scientist, and you’re famous, right? So you’ve got something to say. You do speaking engagements, you travel around the world, you write books. What has been your philosophy in keeping yourself grounded and in being able to do it all, plus have a family?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

I want to help people help themselves. I want you to realize that something as simple as just avoiding

inactivity. You need 30 minutes, collective or sustained, most days per week, 150 minutes per week. Well, that’s recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine. I recommended that years ago, if I guess, you move up one block on the fitness scale from very poor to poor, just one block. We published this first. It was a legendary article, we published November the 3^rd, 1989 in the German American Medical Association entitled physical fitness, all cause mortality. And that article has been referenced over 10,000 times by other authors now. So what was controversial in the beginning, I became the answer from that original article. We’re now associated with Texas Tech University Medical Organization, and we have our Research Institute, and under their umbrella, we made that move just recently because I was concerned about if the future of our research has been the key to our success. If I hadn’t had the research, all this data, I wouldn’t be where I am today. We had to have that, and so it’s getting progressively harder to achieve funding for that. And so they took, took over the responsibility. Dr. Ted Mitchell is the Chancellor of Texas Tech, my wonderful friend who worked for me for 17 years, CEO, and he is a top person with Texas Tech. And so we now join them, and they have Texas Tech and branches all over West Texas. They’re located in Lubbock, but they’re also in Abilene, and they’re in El Paso, and they’re in Odessa, and they’re in Amarillo, and all these places. The School of Public Health is in Dallas now, right across the street from Southwestern Medical School, by the way. And so we have moved our research institute down to join them. And so they’re taking the financial responsibility to keep this thing going, because the data is still coming in every day. I mean, we see 200 patients per week, and that data goes into our database. So it keeps building and building and building, and now, with the assets that they have there at the School of Public Health, with the statisticians and more researchers, we’ll have more people to work on the database that’s going to make this explode. So I think what we’ve done so far, with our 700 papers already published in peer reviewed journals. That’s going to double or triple in the future with this combination. I think it will have an impact in the world, and my hope is it’ll change the way the people practice, that physicians practice medicine in the future,

Crayton Webb

Well, and that’s, so that’s a, that’s different. I mean, right? That’s a step up from people, people making choices. But then to even say this is going to be how medicine is practiced differently.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

I’ve got to get the two together. I’ve got to get the physicians together and learn something about preventive medicine. I didn’t learn anything in preventive medicine. One of the four documentaries we have is the physician, physician’s number one, try to get them some information how to become certified in preventive medicine. The American Academy of Lifestyle Achievements. You go that route, you’d be certified in that now, but it still isn’t a recognized specialty. I said the D Magazine and talk about the specialties and physicians, they don’t have any, any specialty for preventive medicine, yet. It’s still an unknown quantity out there, and it should be the primary specialty for medicine, because if you can prevent disease in the first place, you’re going to live longer to reduce the cost of healthcare, all these things we’re putting our data is undeniable.

Crayton Webb

So I asked you how you do it all. Run a business, be a physician, be a speaker, have a family, and what I heard you say is just the steadfast determination in your personal mission. But is it ever overwhelming to be, just from an image and reputation perspective, to be, you know, the father of aerobics, the father of Coopering, right? I mean, that that’s a heavy responsibility. Ever back up on you?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Yeah, it kinda backs up on me here lately, because I promise all the staff at my organization of 550 members, if they want a copy of the book. I’ll be happy to personally autograph them. And so I’ve passed 300, I’m going to 350. You can’t write that. You can’t read their signature. I gave them that point, but no, that’s been kind of overwhelming, but I love to do it though. Yeah, I couldn’t work as hard as I work if I didn’t enjoy it. There’s no question about it, but I start my day with prayer and Bible study. I did that this morning, and I finished my day by working out. I use exercise to rub the stress of the day so I can sleep at night. I have no problem sleeping at night. I don’t have any problem at all with that. My weight now is around 155 to 160 and at one time it was 204, as you know. But by getting the benefits myself and sharing that with the public through my books and through my, and through the articles and through the videos that I do, and the response I get from it. It’s just a warm fitting. It’s a good fitting. I’m doing something. I think that’s because the Lord has had His hand on my life.

Crayton Webb

And you’ve just ventured into the world of social media, right? You’ve got your own LinkedIn page.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

I don’t even know about LinkedIn.

Crayton Webb

Yeah, from a from a reputation perspective, has it been, has it been strange to dip your toe in that water? I mean, you don’t seem like someone who is faint of heart or scared of anything, but social media is the Wild West. What’s it been like to be out there in that way?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, I haven’t paid much attention to it, really. I just get the rebuttal from it trying to, well, we get all the full focus, the things you want me to do for it. But again, I’m hoping that with I’ll be able to travel, and I know how much international travel I’ll be doing on promoting this book. But all the books before I’ve I’ve traveled all over the world with them. So that’s why we’re in, or we have 15 languages were translated into but there’s 42 total translations. Five of my books been translated to German, for example, several been translated into Russian. And so all over the world. And we, I’ve been to China 13 times. I’ve been to Brazil 21 times. Just on the trips. I love to go to Brazil. I love to go to China. And so it’s something I’ve been going there because- strange thing happened, I was 18 years of age up at Falls Creek Baptist assembly up in southern Oklahoma. I born and raised Oklahoma, as I mentioned, and I, under conviction, I dedicated my life one night to be a full time medical missionary to China. I was 18 years of age. I don’t know why I did that. I kept that back in my mind, but I never felt the calling to go in the seminary and become a real physician in China in a hospital. But I had realized the Lord had a different plan for me. In 2013 I met with President Xi in China, and I’ve had a very close connection there. And the last time I was in China was 2019 and they had signs on the highway speaking at suburbs of Beijing. Be walking with my little dog, because I have the famous statement, walk your dog, whether you have one or not. Have a little Maltese, you can’t keep up. So I walk my dog in the evening, carrying her in my arm. And that was for every 300 miles from Beijing to Hong Kong, was my picture in  downtown Beijing, the big sign of my picture of my book. And it’s just an amazing thing to see that I say, Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

Crayton Webb

What’s it been like to, I mentioned four presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson, of course, from Texas, Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and George W Bush, you’re good friends with President George W Bush, I understand, but-

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Yeah, he was a patient. His father was a patient before he was and then George came, George W Bush here at Dallas. Then he became a very adamant responder to our program. He went to Washington, at times, to do his examinations, and he insisted on having the treadmill stress test in Washington at Bethesda Naval Hospital, but the first time we did the stress test at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and George W. wanted to have it done like he done all the years coming to the clinic, because he always ranked the top five percentile level of fitness. He’s very proud of that. He was the most high conditioned president we ever had, I say that. And so the hospital, they never done it before, at Bethesda. So the Chief of Cardiology was there. He wanted to be sure this was done properly, because he’d never seen it before. I had the staff up with me. And so as we’re going up on the treadmill, it increased the incline, not the speed, and the heart rate was going up. And the Chief of Cardiologist and I were standing at the back of the treadmill, and he said, “Don’t you think it’s time to stop? George, you want to stop?” “No, I don’t want to stop.” And so he kept going up and up and up and up, getting up there, going out to about 22,23 minutes. He said, “You’re going to kill the president of the United States!” And I said, “George, you want to stop?” He said, “No.” I didn’t know whether to hate the wrath of the Chief of Cardiology or the wrath of George. So I waited, he’d set a new record. And so I guess that was the first experience I had in Washington in the stress, I don’t think the stress test was done by any other president.

Crayton Webb

You were stressing them out as what you were doing. And when you say, just to clarify for our listeners and viewers, when you say up and up and up, you’re talking about on the treadmill-

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

It goes up every minute. Every minute. It starts on the flat, but it goes up to a size 25 and then, if you go along with that, it increases speed from 3.3 miles an hour, you keep going up. You got about 25 minutes. You’re running on the treadmill, finally, but you walk it first.

Crayton Webb

What the question is, is, what goes out first? Your legs or your cardio? I know, yeah, but it’s a very accurate test and a very safe test. That’s what we had to overcome the resistance criticism, because it can be done safe if physicians know how to do it. And that’s the need. So I’m trying with these, these videos we’ve done. Number one is to physicians teach them more about preventive medicine. What I learned in preventive medicine I learned at Harvard School of Public Health. It was not in medical school at all. The second is for medical schools, and we want to get this information into medical schools. And the third one is, is for people throughout the world, the last two.

Crayton Webb

So tell me your relationships with the White House in the past. Do you feel like it’s led to policy change, policy impact?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Well, I was offered chance to be Surgeon General twice when I was working with George Bush, but I’d had to sold their sell Aerobics to the highest bidder. Said I’m not going to do that. The second time that when Kimono had retired, and they asked me again if I would consider it. And they wanted to concentrate on AIDS, Navy and fluent bioterrorism. I don’t say anything about that. Yeah, I want to concentrate on child obesity and diabetes, adult obesity and diabetes, the cost of health care. I’ve got things I know can improve the health substantially, a whole lot more than I could ever be Surgeon General. I’m going to concentrate on what I’ve been doing. So I had that chance, and again, God has said His hand on my life that was on those other epiphanies that I’ve had. So again, it’s just been a fabulous life. I’ve got a wonderful wife, and I have two children. I have a son and daughter. We have five grandkids. I’m a family man and I enjoy my family very much. I have, unfortunately, I’ve had difficulty when I was trying in the early days to overcome all the resistance and criticism it run me out of town. I didn’t have that much time to spend with my son, Tyler, because he was born six, eight days after I saw my first patient in Dallas, and so I was just trying, I was just trying to survive. So we’ve made up with that over the years by having father and son trips, and we’ve made 12 of these around the world.

Crayton Webb

And he works with you now.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

And he’s now the president, CEO of the operation. Let me tell you an amazing story. But this is one that happened not too long ago, it was 1989 and one of our trips, we went to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro, and that was with three other fathers and sons, there were six of us total going over there. So we trained in Kenya for about a week at 10,000 feet, because it’s 19,600 feet. So I climbed to 14,410 feet. I never climbed to 19,000 feet. But they needed me at the base of the mountain. They were giving us a briefing on the climb, and they said you have to worry about cerebral edema, you know, headache at altitude, and you can die. If you don’t get off the mountain or get oxygen, you will die. And so I thought I had some exposure altitude. When I was a flight surgeon in the Air Force that I’ve had a lot of exposure, I said, Tyler, I don’t think I really should go on this, this climb, because you start losing bed cells, your brain cells, so you get exposed at high altitude without oxygen. And so I abandoned the trip. Well, they left the next day, and I had a day to at least climb up to 7,000, to 14,000 feet. I did that. I got a guy take me up to 14,000 feet. But the next day I was going back to the airport and got back from Tanzania, but going into Tanzania too. I couldn’t get into Tanzania because in trying to cross the border from Tanzania, they wouldn’t let me across because I had a, I had a stamp in my passport from South Africa, and that was back in an apartheid area. You cannot legally be in Tanzania and so but the guy came back later, said “I think I can help you.” I said, “What’s it going to cost me?” He said, “$35,” said “I handle that.” I bribed myself to get across the border, $35. And then they left. I was there. I had to get back to them by myself. So I was getting back to the border. You probably won’t believe this, which is true. It’s like it happened yesterday. But getting across the border, I realized I don’t have money to help me now, I found a guy that had a but he could speak a little English. He said he became quite, he was quite enthusiastic about because I was from Dallas, and he was, he had some seen the Dallas television series, and I told Linda Gray’s been my patient. I really made an impression upon him. But so getting close to the border there, and I realized I’m in deep trouble. Lord, you got to help me. I was sweating blood standing in line. I remember this like it was yesterday, and there were two people standing in front of me, and then of a clear blue sky here was this beautiful white woman came up beside him, and perfectly said, “Dr. Cooper, I’ve been waiting for you, give me your passport.” So I gave her my passport, and she walked up with me, opened it up with a stern voice, said, “Stamp it.” So I stamp it. Made me close it back. Give it back to me. I wanted to thank the woman there. No one there, no one there. I tried to find her. Did someone see that woman? The Lord provided an angel for me. I’m convinced. That’s how God has had His hand on my life. That’s fantastic.

Crayton Webb

So as we conclude, let’s be honest, the state of health care in this country does not have the same reputation you do. It’s terrible. What is going to have to change in order?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

You’re not going to do it with the government. Just take it. You’re not going to make America healthy again by Health and Human Services, you’re not going to do it. You have to realize, in your own mind, your own body, you’re going to do that. Because if you want to live a long and healthy, and active life as I’m living, you would have to, you’d have to understand that no drug can replicate the benefits of an active lifestyle. You’ve got to understand that. I hope the big audience realizes that if you go from this point forward, and I’ve had so many people tell me, I wish I’d known 15 years ago how much better I could feel, how much more enjoyment I could have of life, because I had, hadn’t realized what I had missed, but just try it. I know young people never get the message. Older people look back and say, can I go ahead and do this? We have people that at 75, 80 years of age, are improving their fitness. One thing that we have in the midst of aging is one of the books I talk about that you can’t build a muscle mass past 50 years age because you get sarcopenia, and that is the muscle mass starts disappearing, so you have to do something to keep that from going down. But you can build up muscle mass. One example of that was in Tufts, where they had a group of men doing some leg lifts, because building quadricep muscles, that gets weak and you fall when you get older. And they found a period of eight weeks, is that a dramatic improvement, and they were 90.4 years of age. So some of these myths that I was taught in medical school, we’ve overcome those in the book, and that’s one of the things we talk about, that don’t relap on something is stupid. And I get so depressed when I hear of women decide they’re going to use some alternative therapy for trying up, a case of right now trying to treat breast cancer, for example. You’ve got the problem. We’ve got answers. Don’t ignore it. Don’t die of something stupid.

Crayton Webb

Let’s, let’s finish where we started, as the father of aerobics now at 94 years old, as you write this last chapter, right? This last book, this 20th book, what’s, what’s the thing that you want to be remembered for? Is it the father being the father of aerobics? What’s the clarion call, the action item? That he was an honest man. He was a Christian, he was dedicated, and he gave an example himself as to what the person should do to live a long, health and active life to the fullest.

Crayton Webb

Dr. Kenneth Cooper, you understand and exhibit the notion that reputation matters perhaps more than anybody I’ve ever met before. Your 20th book, “Grow Healthy as you Grow Older” is coming out. Congratulations.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper

Thank you.

And thank you. Thank you for not just your time today, but for your tremendous contribution. It is rare that I have met someone or have a guest who, whose work and life and livelihood has truly impacted as many people as yours. So thank you for joining us on Reputation Matters, and thank you for being with us. Be sure to check out this podcast on your favorite podcast platform, or, of course, at sunwest pr.com and we’ll see you next time.