My Story

At 70, I discovered that eating healthy did not automatically mean my body was getting everything it needed.

A little background may help put my story into perspective. I am a man in my seventies, originally from Central Europe, and I moved to Thailand in 2007. I mention that I am male because some nutritional and health needs differ between men and women, particularly as we get older.

Health had already been part of my story from an early age. At about 10, a school doctor told me that I had been born with a “hole in my heart.” As I understood it, this was an atrial septal defect (ASD). Many years later, a doctor could no longer find the defect and told me the hole was no longer present.

As a teenager, I also had epilepsy. At 22, during the same period when I radically changed the way I ate, I eliminated added sugar from my diet. My epileptic episodes stopped soon afterward. I cannot say that removing sugar caused this; it was simply my experience, and it had a profound influence on the way I thought about food and health.

At 22 I also moved toward a predominantly plant-based, minimally processed health-food diet. I was never completely vegetarian, but plant foods became the foundation of the way I ate. So by the time I reached 70, I had been thinking about food and health for nearly half a century.

Then, in August 2024, an extensive health assessment in Thailand surprised me. My vitamin B12 measured 173 pg/mL, below the laboratory reference range of 211–946. Selenium was 77.96 µg/L, also below the stated reference range, and vitamin C was 15.44 µM, which the report classified as “Very Low.” Several other antioxidants were classified as low.

How could someone who believed he ate a very healthy diet still be missing important nutrients?

That question changed the way I thought about healthy eating. Instead of only asking, “Is this food healthy?”, I started asking: “What does my body actually need, and am I getting enough of it from the food I eat?”

Later, when I discovered ChatGPT, I began investigating whether I could correct those shortcomings primarily through ordinary food rather than simply reaching for a collection of supplements.

That became the beginning of Healthy Retired — The Healthy Aging Project.