REALAGE #3
by Dr. Roizen
Age Busters: The Three Most Important Factors That Affect Aging
So, exactly what are those behavioral changes that will help keep you young? Essentially everything you do contributes to or prevents aging. Eating a diet low in saturated fats, exercising, and quitting smoking are probably lifestyle choices you already know are good for you and, although you may never have thought about it exactly this way, prevent aging..... And did you know that folate can help your arteries stay young? Folate reduces arterial aging and can make a person's RealAge as much as three years younger (see Chapter 7). Many of the choices that help prevent aging are easy and simple to do. Learn to think about the wide variety of choices in your life as they relate to your health currency—your RealAge. Through RealAge, you are able to weigh the relative values of each and decide which changes are worth it for you. Best of all, it is much less work than you think.
Aging of the Arteries
In no uncertain terms, you are as young as your arteries. Aging of the arteries is the most important factor in the overall process of aging. When your arteries are not taken care of properly, they get clogged with fatty buildup, diminishing the amount of oxygen and nutrients that can get to your cells. When this happens, not only your cardiovascular system, but your entire body, ages more quickly. Cardiovascular disease is the leading killer of adult Americans, killing more than 40 percent of us and seriously afflicting more than half of us. Having high blood pressure (a blood pressure reading over 140/90 mm Hg) can make a person's RealAge more than twenty-five years older than having low blood pressure (a blood pressure reading of 115/76 or below). The better you take care of your arteries and the younger they are, the younger you will be. (modern science now says 140/90 is safe and norma - KEITH HUNT) This book lists a whole range of things for each individual to do—everything from taking folic acid supplements —that will make your, arteries younger and healthier, and that will make you feel stronger and livelier.
Aging of the Immune System
Don't let your immune system make you old. As you age, your immune system begins to get sloppy, ignoring important warning signals and becoming negligent. You can end up with cancer or another disorder caused by a malfunction of your immune system. For example, when you are young-—except in relatively rare cases—genetic controls in your cells protect your cells from becoming cancerous. If one of these cellular controls slips up, your larger immune system identifies precancerous cells in the body and eliminates them. Thus, your body has a double block against cancer, one on the cellular level and one on the organism-wide level. As you age, both the cell-based genetic controls and your immune system become more likely to malfunction, and you are more likely to develop a cancerous tumor; Many types of arthritis are examples of a breakdown of the immune system, which is why arthritis is a disease associated with aging. By keeping your immune system fit, you do your best to avoid such diseases and prevent premature aging. This book tells you which vitamins (and at what doses) help protect your genetic control systems and immune system. The program also describes ways to reduce the stresses in your life that can upset the balance of your immune system, and such practices as strengthening exercises that will help keep your immune system mnning young.
Social and Environmental Factors
How we react to our environment biologically, psychologically, and socially has a lot to do with how young we stay. The environment in which we live, the substances we put info our bodies, the risks we take, and the stresses we undergo can all contribute to aging. Breathing secondhand smoke, eating foods high in saturated fats, working in an unsafe environment, or using a cell phone while driving can all increase the likelihood that our lives will be shorter or more ridden with illness than they would be otherwise. When we think only about disease, we forget about other factors that are outside our bodies that can make us healthy. Some choices—for example, becoming a lifelong learner by enrolling in classes, reading, or otherwise stimulating-your mind-—can help keep you younger longer. Having fun with your friends can do the same. In subsequent chapters, I detail the impact of these choices and show you how interacting with your environment in a particular way can keep you young.
From Science to You: Living Young
RealAge is a.way of measuring the pace of aging. By adopting the suggestions in this book: you are slowing the rate of aging and sometimes even reversing it. In Chapter 2,1 explain how we are able to calculate RealAge and discuss the science behind the numbers. I give you two options for calculating your own RealAge (using the charts provided in this book or, for a more accurate calculation, using the computerized survey on the RealAge Web site, www.RealAge.com). Both options not only provide you with an individual calculation that distinguishes you from everyone else around you, but also compare you with the health and youth average for your age group. Your RealAge calculation will weigh the risks you face against the health-related behaviors you choose. The end product is a RealAge that is uniquely descriptive of you. As you adopt behaviors that change your RealAge (for example, eating breakfast every day), you can recalculate your RealAge. With each new calculation, you can chart your progress and watch the years disappear.
How young can you become? When I told one fifty-year-old friend of mine all the things she could do to reduce her rate of aging, she asked me, "Mike, if I did all of those things, I could have a RealAge of twelve, couldn't I?" Well, for those of us who don't want to relive our teenage years, fortunately, no. In this book, all of the chapters use calculations that reflect the greatest possible effect of each behavior when no other mediating factors are considered. Both the worksheets in Chapter 2 and the RealAge computer program use a multi-variable equation that balances each factor in relation to all the other RealAge factors. This equation evaluates how all these factors interrelate.
The more Age Reduction habits you adopt (the specific plan is described in Chapter 3), the less likely you will be to gain the maximum effect from adopting any single practice by itself. But the more good habits you adopt, the better your across-the-board protection from aging will be, and that advantage will have a cumulative effect over time. Although none of us can be twelve again, it is relatively easy for individuals in their mid-fifties or mid-sixties to reduce their RealAge by five to eight years and only somewhat more difficult for them to reduce it by fifteen or sixteen years. The maximum amount a person can reduce his or her RealAge below his or her calendar age is about twenty-five years over an entire lifetime. And remember, the effect magnifies with age: At fifty, you may have a RealAge of forty-five, but by seventy-five, if you continue on the RealAge program, your RealAge may be only fifty-five. That means that in twenty-five years, your body may have aged as little as most people's do in ten.
Clearly, RealAge is not a guarantee of longevity. In health, there are never guarantees. But RealAge is an accurate reading of your risk. The lower your RealAge, the better the odds that you will have more years left-—-not to mention a younger, healthier, and more energetic life. The calculation of risk is the best approximation we have of the body beneath: The lower the risk, the younger the body. Think of your RealAge as your aging speedometer; it is a reading of how fast you're going. With aging, faster is not better. By making simple decisions, you can take your foot off the gas pedal and slow down your rate of aging. How you age is largely controlled by you.
(YES, DOING THE GOOD WAY TO HEALTH OVER MY LIFETIME, HAS REDUCED MY AGE, OR MADE MY REAL AGE 21 YOURS YOUNGER THAN BT BIRTH CERTIFICATE AGE; AND HENCE REAL AGE IS 21 YEARS LESS THAN BY BIOLOGICAL AGE - Keith Hunt)
Getting Younger All the Time
Since I developed the RealAge concept, I haven't been able to keep quiet I talk about RealAge to doctors and others all over the country. I have encouraged patients to take the RealAge computer program and have seen them make the decision to take their aging into their own hands. I have joined people as they have celebrated "year-younger" birthday parties and observed them becoming younger in front of my very eyes. While the response has been, for the most part, overwhelmingly positive, there have been a few naysayers. On occasion, after presenting a talk about RealAge, I have heard people grumble, "We Americans just don't have any respect for old age. It's just youth, youth, youth." These criticisms leave me dismayed, not to mention disappointed in myself, for not communicating the essence of RealAge so that everyone in my audience understood.
The whole point of RealAge is to promote old age. Healthy, vibrant, and young old age. RealAge shows you how you can live at eighty with all the energy and vigor of a fifty-five-year-old, how you can be the ninety-year-old who still lives on your own, travels, and forcefully expresses feisty opinions—the person who leaves the "kids" marveling, "How does she do it?" Having respect for old age means wanting to end the suffering that so often goes along with it. No one wants to be bedridden, afflicted with heart disease, or undergoing cancer treatment Everyone wants to be able to do all the things he or she has always done and more. And that means staying young biologically, even as you get older chronologically. The data from the Fries Study of University of Pennsylvania alumni, the MacArthur-Mount Sinai study on differences in aging between twins, and Fogel's study of longevity statistics in national health databases show that people who live healthier live longer and with less disease and disability. Those who adopted healthier behaviors not only lived seven years longer on average, but also did not suffer the onset of old-age disability until five to seven years closer to death. In other words, the period of disease and disability was shortened.
What science shows us is that enjoying a healthy and vibrant old age depends on taking the proper steps to take care of yourself all along the way. Until RealAge, health recommendations were more like promissory notes or junk bonds—something that might have a payoff in the distant future but with little or no guarantee. And who was convinced? Certainly not the 85 percent of Americans who don't get enough physical activity even though they know better. When you take steps to change a behavior now—taking the right vitamins, learning to relax, or taking up exercise—the payoff is not just that you will live longer, but that you will live younger. You slow the rate at which your body ages. The payoff is not thirty years down the line, but now. Why get old when you can stay young?
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TO BE CONTINUED
YES REAL BODY AGE IS BEST TO BEGIN WHEN YOU ARE A TEENAGER; WHAT YOUR DIET IS, GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP AND EXERCISE; KEEPING A HAPPY POSITIVE MIND-SET; KEEPING YOUR WEIGHT UNDER CONTROL; AS THE WEATHER TAKES A TOLL ON THE SKIN, USING FACIAL CREAMS [BUT A CANADIAN INVESTIGATIVE PROGRAM BROUGHT OUT THE FACTS THAT IF YOU SPENDD MORE THAN 25 DOLLARS ON FACIAL CREAM YOU HAVE SPENT TOO MUCH]. Keith Hunt
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