REAL AGE
Environmental Hazards
JUST BECAUSE IT'S A TOUGH WORLD OUT THERE DOESN'T MEAN IT HAS TO MAKE YOU OLD
Living young means living smart. And that means planning ahead to avoid situations that can cause ageing. Simple decisions like choosing the nonsmoking section of a restaurant or having safe sex help you to stay young. Accidents and unintentional poisonings are the third leading killer in the United States. Even though we don't equate traffic, domestic, or work-related accidents with ageing, they can temporarily or permanently disable you and cause a decline in your quality of life. In RealAge terms, accidents will age you. Environmental toxins—whether from cigarettes, pesticides, or air pollution— are major contributors to cancers and other diseases. Learn to be proactive in spotting potential dangers before they make you older. Whether it's quitting smoking, avoiding drugs, or having safe sex—lots of it!—you can help keep yourself young. Learning how to live safely in the world around you will make your RealAge as much as twelve years younger.
No surprises: Smoking makes you get old fast. Indeed, smoking can add eight years to your RealAge. Secondhand smoke causes ageing, too. Just one hour in a smoke-filled room is the equivalent of smoking four cigarettes. Whatever the source, smoke increases your risk of heart and lung disease, weakens your immune system, and is a proven carcinogen. If you're a smoker, learn tricks that can help motivate you to quit once and for all. Celebrating 'year-younger' parties, taking walks at lunchtime, and making bets with other 'quitters' can help you resist the urge. Learn how to manage the roller coaster of stopping and starting while on your way to becoming smoke-free. The Real Age benefit of quitting smoking: You get back seven of the eight years that smoking has taken from you. Heavy exposure to secondhand smoke can age you almost seven years, too.
Difficulty rating: Most difficult
Eighty percent of all accidents are avoidable. Taking proper safety precautions in everything you do, whether at home or on the job, can help make your RealAge one to six years younger.
Difficulty rating: Moderately easy
What, you ask, do seat belts and helmets have to do with staying younger? By taking routine safety precautions, like wearing a seat belt when driving, or wearing a helmet when biking, you can make your RealAge 0.6 to 3.4 years younger. Although avoiding accidents has nothing to do with biologic ageing per se, it has a lot to do with the length and quality of our lives.
Difficulty rating: Quick fix
Air pollution, exposure to toxic chemicals, and living in houses with high levels of radon or asbestos can increase your cancer risk to the level of someone five to ten years older. Learn how to recognize potential environmental hazards and how to avoid exposure to toxins that can make your RealAge 2.8 years older.
Difficulty rating: Moderately difficult
Sex and drugs, the symbols of wild youth, can keep us young or make us old, Fast. By enjoying sex within the confines of a mutually monogamous relationship or practicing safe sex during casual sexual encounters— avoiding high-risk partners and knowing their sexual histories, and always using a condom, and using it correctly—you can make your RealAge as much as 0.9 years younger. Better still, having lots of sex may prevent ageing even more. Having sex more than once a week, the national average, can reduce your RealAge, too. Although these data are preliminary, several studies indicated that having sex frequently is associated with a RealAge that is two to eight years younger. By not using drugs and seeking counseling if drug use is a problem, you can make your RealAge more than eight years younger.
(FOR THE CHRISTIAN SEX IS ONLY IN MARRIAGE. YES SEX CAN MAKE YOU YOUNGER, THE EXERCISE AND FLOODING THE BODY WITH GOOD HORMONES, HELPS TO KEEP YOU YOUNG; BUT AS THERE IS MUCH MORE TO STAYING YOUNG THAN HAVING SEX. YOU CAN STILL BE YOUNG WITHOUT SEX. I'VE BEEN SINGLE SINCE 1987, AND NO SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH ANYONE [A CHRISTIAN CANNOT UNTIL MARRIED] AND I'VE STAYED MIGHTY YOUNG FOR BEING NOW AS I WRITE, 71 YEARS OLD - Keith Hunt)
Difficulty rating: Moderately easy to difficult
Anything that keeps you healthy keeps you young. You don't exist outside the world but in it, and everything with which you come in contact affects the rate at which you age. The three leading causes of death and disability are arterial ageing; immune system ageing; and environmental hazards, such as accidents and unintentional injuries. It is easy to understand how damaging your arteries or weakening your immune system may make you older. But how do preventing accidents, avoiding environmental hazards, and reducing the risk of injuries keep you young?
Environmental factors affect your health and the length of your life much more than inherited genetics do. Your environment consists of everything that is not the body itself: the air you breathe, the city or town you live in, the food you eat, and the people you know. Learning to navigate through the world around you so it doesn't harm you is one of the keys to staying young. And that means using some common sense.
Although we don't tend to think about things like wearing seat belts or bicycle helmets as factors related to ageing, I think they should be regarded as such. The ageing caused by accidents isn't cumulative but sudden. Many accidents, particularly auto accidents, are fatal—and these fatalities can often be avoided. This is the kind of 'instant ageing' all of us hope to avoid. An injury from an accident can trigger a chain reaction in which you give up other Age Reduction strategies as well. For instance, you get into a car accident. Because you don't wear your seat belt, you injure your back. That prevents you from staying active and exercising. When you quit exercising, you gain weight, so your cholesterol and stress levels increase and your arteries begin to show signs of age. The injury prevents you from keeping active and involved. All of a sudden, you are living the life of someone much older. Just because you forgot to buckle that seat belt.
The same is true for toxins in the environment around us. Whether it's cigarette smoke in the office or radon in your home, these toxins can lead to increased ageing. Avoiding exposure to known carcinogens, whether they are pesticides or asbestos, can help keep you young longer. Not smoking, abusing drugs, or having unprotected sex are all behaviors you can adopt to keep yourself from ageing too fast. By choosing to protect yourself against the risks you face in the world around you, you are building your own youth-protection plan.
Tobacco:- Where There's Smoke, There's Fire
Not even the tobacco companies deny it: Smoking kills. There is not a soul who doesn't know smoking is bad for health, not a soul who doesn't know that it causes cancer and lung disease. Smoking can be blamed for nearly half the premature deaths each year, more than four hundred thousand. Smoking remains the greatest public health hazard we face.
Even if it doesn't kill you, smoking will make you older. A lot older. The effects are not something that show up thirty years down the line. Smoking makes you older right now. Today. You see it as new wrinkles in your face; tobacco smoke ages the skin prematurely. You notice it as shortness of breath; smoking decreases the amount of oxygen that gets to your cells, causing them to age faster than they should, causing emphysema and a high incidence of respiratory illnesses. You also feel it as a loss of stamina and energy. Smoking damages your cardiovascular system, causing high blood pressure and clogging of the arteries.
If you look at the American population as a whole, smoking makes us more than 250 million years older than we need to be. At 350 billion dollars in settlements, the tobacco industry is getting off cheap. If we valued each year of life lost to cigarettes at fifty thousand dollars, the tobacco companies would owe us fifty times that amount. If you're a smoker and have a pack-a-day habit, stop right here and add eight years to your RealAge. Think you're fifty? How does fifty-eight sound? Think you're forty? Try forty-eight on for size. Even if you smoke just four cigarettes a day, barely any at all, your RealAge is 2.6 years older. Even if you don't smoke, but live with a smoker or work in a smoke-filled environment just four hours a day, your RealAge is almost seven years older.
To start smoking is easy, to quit is hard. Cigarettes are both physiologically and psychologically addictive, and the habit is very hard to kick. That's why nearly one out of three Americans smoke—some 33 percent of men and 28 percent of women—continue to smoke despite the warnings and despite repeated attempts to quit.
If everyone stopped smoking tomorrow, 30 percent of all cancer-related deaths, 30 percent of all cardiovascular disease-related deaths, and 24 percent of all pneumonia and influenza-related deaths would be eliminated. Unfortunately, it's not easy. Of the 50 million Americans who smoke, 70 percent want to quit, and more than a third of them try each year. Only about 3 percent actually succeed.
Why? In large part, because of the highly addictive nature of cigarettes. But that is only part of it. We often see the risk of cigarettes as something far off in the future. 'It may hurt me some day, but what's one more cigarette today?' smokers often say. That's the wrong way to think about it. Thinking about the diseases or risks associated with smoking makes the job of quitting too onerous.
Instead, start thinking about smoking as a choice—a choice you make about how fast you will age. Every cigarette you smoke is a choice you make to get older faster. Every cigarette you don't smoke—every time you fight that urge and win—is a choice you make to get younger.
As I mentioned in Chapter 1, 1 first developed the RealAge concept to help a friend quit smoking. Those eight extra years caused by smoking were enough to make him sit up and take notice, and he kicked the habit. In the past thirteen years, Simon has gone from a RealAge that was fourteen years older than his calendar age (when all factors, including smoking, were considered) to one that is five years younger than his calendar age. Back then, he was forty-nine with a RealAge of sixty-three; now he's sixty-two with a RealAge of fifty-seven. And the effect: He lives younger now than he did thirteen years ago, with much more vigor and energy than he ever could have imagined. If you are a smoker and give up the habit, you will get younger, too.
Miraculously, the effects of smoking are largely reversible. Although smoking a pack a day makes a person eight years older in RealAge, the cessation of smoking can win back seven of those years. The net effect of being a former smoker is that a person is only about one year older in RealAge. And the benefits of not smoking start almost immediately. Within just twelve hours of quitting, the body begins to get younger. Carbon monoxide levels decrease, and the blood can carry more oxygen to the cells in the body. In only a few weeks, damaged nerve endings in the mouth and throat begin to regenerate, and the bronchial tubes begin to open.
Go just two months without a puff and you can celebrate your first year-younger party. After five months, you pass the point where you feel worse because you quit, since the nicotine cravings subside, and you start feeling better overall. The immune system will show signs of being stronger. You will be at a lower risk of getting colds and other kinds of respiratory tract infections. The gain: two years younger. Within eight months, your lungs will be clearer and your stamina will increase. After one year of not smoking, you will be three years younger. How's that for a New Year's resolution? Three years younger in just one year. In two years, your risk of having a heart attack and stroke will decrease considerably, and after five smoke-free years, your level of arterial ageing will return almost to that of people who have never smoked. The risk of developing cancer and other forms of immune system ageing will equal the average risk of nonsmokers. Another way of saying it is this: If you give up a pack-a-day habit, you will become a year younger (and can celebrate year-younger parties) at two, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-two, thirty-two, and sixty months from the time you quit.
When Mary Jane came to run the library in my department, she had been a smoker for thirty-five years. Her smoking habit was causing her enormous harm. She was asthmatic, diabetic, and sixty pounds overweight. Her once-an-hour run for a smoke outside had slowed to a walk, with lots of pauses to catch her breath. She also routinely missed more than her allotted number of sick days, suffering recurrent bouts of upper respiratory tract infections.
As often as she considered the idea of quitting, she couldn't actually quit. Many mornings she'd say, 'I'm never going to smoke again.' Usually by the next day, she'd be puffing away again. Then she found she needed to have a major operation. Her diabetes and asthma were both out of control, and her health was in a crisis state. Finally, she decided she had to quit. 'In life you have to make choices. I had to make the choice: Was I going to live or die? When you realize that the alternative is dying, quitting's not that hard.'
Mary Jane had her doctor prescribe nicotine patches and pills that helped ease her cravings. She walked a lot. She avoided situations in which she knew she might encounter smokers.
Giving up smoking was one of the hardest things Mary Jane ever had to do. Those first few months were especially difficult. Today, she hasn't even had a puff in more than three years. No longer smoking made her RealAge six years younger. And this is not even the best part. She's also managed to get her diabetes and asthma under control, and she lost sixty-five pounds. 'I feel one hundred percent better,' she told me proudly. 'I can't imagine going back to smoking again.'
We celebrated Mary Jane's first year-younger party just two months after she smoked her last cigarette. A year later, at her third year-younger party, the department gave Mary Jane some of those days she used to take as sick days as vacation days—her reward for all the new energy she was putting into her job and for sticking to her commitment to kick the habit once and for all.
Beyond the Smoke Screen: How Smoking Ages You
If you're a smoker, you don't want to hear preaching. You know it's bad for you. Maybe you've even tried to quit. Most of all, you're tired of the self-righteous attitude that nonsmokers can have. I don't blame you. My intent isn't to preach, but to give you the facts and let you decide. That's how I've helped seventeen of the last eighteen smokers I've worked with kick the habit. I'll simply present the studies and explain scientifically how smoking ages you. The choice to quit is yours, and all the credit for quitting will be yours, too. The whole point of RealAge is that the age you are—how young you are and can be—is in large part controlled by you.
So, what are the facts? How, exacdy, does smoking cause the body to age? Smoking affects the whole body, ageing all of its major systems and organs. It causes arterial and heart disease and is responsible for more than 80 percent of all deaths from heart disease in those under fifty. And, of course, as we all know, it causes cancer, lung disease, and emphysema. In addition, smokers have more colds, cases of pneumonia, and other infections than do nonsmokers.
Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease
To understand the physiologic effects of tobacco smoke, let's consider one example—cardiovascular disease. For decades, doctors have known that smokers suffer considerably more heart attacks than nonsmokers. Heavy smokers are ten times the risk of a heart attack as nonsmokers. Studies have reported that as many as 40 percent of all stroke victims are smokers. How exactly does smoking cause cardiovascular ageing?
Cigarettes contain more than four thousand identifiable contaminants besides nicotine, which is generally considered to be the addictive component in tobacco. Since cigarette smoke increases carbon monoxide levels in the blood, the delivery of oxygen to the heart and other tissues decreases. Cigarette smoke also inhibits the ability of the breathing tubes to clear secretions properly, increasing the number of infections.
As I discussed in the chapter on arterial ageing, the elasticity of the arteries (their ability to dilate) is directly tied to their youthfulness. The more elastic your arteries, the younger you are. Components of tobacco smoke inhibit the ability of the arteries to dilate. When exposed to the contaminants in cigarette smoke, the arteries are unable to expand properly and remain unnecessarily narrow, a condition that increases the likelihood that they will become clogged. Why does this happen? Scientists speculate that the toxins in cigarette smoke damage the lining of the arteries (the endothelium) and may inhibit the body's production of the chemical component that allows the arteries to expand when the flow of blood increases—for example, when you're exercising. Even in 'passive smokers'—people who don't smoke but are often exposed to secondhand smoke—the ability of the arteries to dilate is less than 50 percent of that in people who are never exposed to tobacco smoke. But this is just the beginning.
To make matters worse, smoking also increases the amount of atherosclerotic plaque, the fatty buildup that clogs arteries. Exposure to the toxins in cigarette smoke makes the platelets in the blood more prone to clotting. As if all that were not enough, studies have found that plaques are more likely to rupture suddenly in smokers than in nonsmokers. If a plaque ruptures, it can create a rough surface on which a clot can form or flow through the bloodstream, potentially causing a heart attack or stroke. In addition, the nicotine in cigarette smoke, when present in the bloodstream, raises blood pressure, significantly affecting the rate at which the arteries age. For reasons that are unclear, smoking reduces the level of HDL ('healthy') cholesterol in your bloodstream.
One study found that women who smoked a pack and a half a day had five to seven times the risk of heart attack as women who had never smoked. But don't kid yourself: No level of smoking is safe. Even women who smoked only one to four cigarettes a day had a risk of heart attack that was 2 times higher than that of nonsmokers. Keep in mind that the impact of cigarette smoking is not gender specific: Both men and women suffer from the arterial ageing smoking causes.
Smoking and Cancer
Then, of course, there's cancer. Lung cancer is the most common cause of deaths from cancers, accounting for 34 percent of the fatal cancers in men and 18 percent of the fatal cancers in women. Smoking can be blamed for nearly 90 percent of all lung cancers in the United States and more than 130,000 deaths from lung cancer deaths annually. Among the four thousand chemical compounds that are commonly found in cigarettes, more than 40 percent are known to interact directly with DNA to cause genetic changes that lead to cancer.
Many of the components of tobacco smoke are oxidants, which increase the number of free radicals in the body. Free radicals, you will remember, are the waste products of 'oxidant' metabolism that have extra or unbalanced electrons that damage our organs and DNA. These free radicals accelerate ageing by causing premature cellular ageing and by promoting cancers. Exposure even to low amounts of cigarette smoke can measurably increase the amount of free-radical damage to the DNA within your cells. For example, in animal studies, dogs that were exposed to the smoke of just one cigarette—not enough to increase their heart rates, blood pressure, or other physiologic measures—had twice the amounts of free-radical damage as dogs not exposed to cigarette smoke. Hamsters exposed to the secondhand smoke equivalent of just six cigarettes a day had twice the number of antioxidant enzymes in their lungs—an indication that their bodies were gearing up to repair significant free-radical damage.
Tobacco ages the immune system in two ways. First, it contains toxins that damage DNA, causing cancers. And, as I mentioned in Chapter 5, two protective systems fight ageing of the immune system and cancer in particular. Smoking knocks both of those systems out of kilter, making the immune system less vigilant about catching cancers. And it is not just lung cancer. Smoking increases the risk of mouth, throat, kidney, and bladder cancers, as well. A Danish study found that women who had smoked for more than thirty years were 60 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than nonsmokers.
Some people seem to be more susceptible than others to the carcinogenic effect of smoke because they have higher levels of specific enzymes that activate the carcinogens contained in smoke. Nitrosamines, by-products of cigarette smoking, interact with the body's own enzymes to create a new chemical that is highly carcinogenic, or damaging to DNA. Some people have much more or much less of the human acetylator enzyme that helps the body remove certain carcinogens from the body. The people who produce less of this enzyme than others, called 'slow acetylators,' are predisposed to breast cancer, as well as other kinds of cancer. Don't bank on the fact that you may have better genes for fighting cancer. The ingestion of any tobacco products, whether through smoking, chewing, or inhaling secondhand smoke, increases immune system ageing.
Smoking and Emphysema
To add to the list of dangers associated with smoking, it is also the primary cause of emphysema, the premature ageing of the lungs. More than 2 million people in the United States (and possibly many more than that) suffer from emphysema, the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Emphysema occurs when the air sacs in the lungs die. Scientists have long suspected that emphysema is caused by an autoimmune response, a chemical reaction in the smoker's body that causes the body to kill its own lung cells and air sacs. Normally, the immune response is well gauged to react to the low-level assaults of everyday living. The immune system habitually kills off single cells that show signs of distress. When the lungs are exposed to the constant irritation of cigarette smoke, this normally protective system overreacts. When many, many cells show signs of distress, the body begins to kill off its air sacs en masse. And when many of the cells needed for taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide are gone, the smoker is barely able to breathe.
Smoking and Other Ageing Effects
As if cardiovascular disease, cancer, and emphysema were not enough, smoking has been tied to other kinds of ageing effects as well. For example, since smokers have a decreased immunity to disease, they suffer many more respiratory infections. Smokers were more than twice as likely as non-smokers to become impotent or unable to experience orgasm, and report reduced sexual pleasure. Heavy smoking also leads to an increase in macular degeneration, an eye disease commonly associated with old age, at a rate more than 2V2 times that of nonsmokers. Smokers are twice as likely to get diabetes, and diabetics age at twice the normal rate if the disease is not properly managed (see Chapter 12). For people with mild thyroid disorders (more than 10 percent of Americans), heavy smoking can trigger failure of the thyroid gland, seriously raising cholesterol levels and further accelerating arterial ageing.
Unfortunately, smoking amplifies other risk factors disproportionately. For example, in families with a history of heart and arterial disease, smokers have fifteen times the risk of heart attack as nonsmokers from the same families. When people with high cholesterol levels are compared, the smokers have thirty-five times the rate of heart attacks as the nonsmokers. Alcohol and cigarettes are another deadly combination: People who drink alcohol and smoke are at a much higher risk of mouth, throat, and liver cancers than people who do either one or the other. Alcohol causes the body to make enzymes that metabolize tobacco smoke into highly carcinogenic substances.
Not a very pleasant picture, is it? By triggering all these responses in the body, cigarette smoking is triggering an ageing response. Most of what I have just described is probably a restatement of facts you already know, but there is still the big sticking point that keeps most smokers smoking: How do you beat the addiction?
No More Cigarette 'Buts': Kicking the Habit
If you are really serious about quitting, this book is probably just the beginning. Or, better said, one more beginning. For most smokers, quitting is an on-again, off-again routine. You stop. You struggle with it for a few days, weeks, or months. Then the craving gets you, and you decide, 'What's one cigarette?' You light up, and you're back to square one, a smoker once again. Since this book is about the effects of ageing, rather than the techniques for beating an addiction, I am not going to go into all the details here. There are many, many services and information sources that help smokers quit—everything from high-priced inpatient clinics to free support groups at community centers. If you are serious about quitting, talk to your physician, search for smoking-ces-sation programs and support groups in your area, buy a few books about kicking the habit, and consider nicotine patches or chewing gum and pills to help ease your cravings. Different methods work better for different people. Thinking about quitting in terms of ageing may be just the ticket for you: Eight years is a lot of time to give up to just one habit.
There is no question that cigarettes are psychologically and physiologically addictive. For example, laboratory mice used in smoking studies learn what times of day they will be exposed to smoke and race expectantly to the side of the cage where the smoke comes out at the appointed hour. They need their smoke! To be fair, it's hard for me even to imagine what it's like to quit since I've never been a smoker. But having watched friends and my patients struggle through it, I know that it's a major battle. People who successfully quit and stay away from cigarettes deserve a lot of credit.
Years of research on cigarette smoking have brought us closer to understanding the biochemical processes by which the body becomes addicted to nicotine. Brairi-scan studies have shown that smoking triggers a release of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine, a chemical that dulls the body's response to pain and makes you feel pleasure, is involved in everything from muscle control to emotional state. Many addictive drugs, including cocaine and even caffeine, trigger a dopamine reaction, too. The more you smoke, the more your body adjusts to a higher level of dopamine release. These elevated levels become your body's normal state. When you quit, the body goes into withdrawal. The question is, How can you beat the cravings long enough for your body to readjust to its smoke-free state?
If you are a typical smoker, you will quit smoking. Again. And again. And again. You will kick the habit, start up anew, and then have to kick it all over. Almost no one can quit in one try. But don't become disheartened—just keep trying. One of the problems with quitting is that at first you feel worse. For the first several weeks, you feel intense cravings and, since nicotine is a stimulant, rather sluggish. After a few weeks, those feelings will subside. Just stick to your guns.
Only 2 percent of smokers can successfully quit the first time. Using nicotine patches doubles the success rate to 4 percent. One study found that combining the patch with anticraving pills boosted the effectiveness to almost 60 percent. In my own practice, the success rate has been much higher—seventeen of the last eighteen patients who tried to quit did so. Many had been pack-a-day smokers for a decade or more. By combining the patch and the pills with RealAge planning, they stopped smoking and started getting younger. (For my patients, I prescribe bupropion—100 mg of the slow-release formula of Wellbutrin, twice daily, the dosage adjusted to body weight. Three days later, I advise them to apply a nicotine patch, throw away all cigarettes and cigarette items, and begin additional exercise. Talk to your doctor about the best regimen for you.)
If you are a smoker, don't try to quit 'cold turkey.' See your doctor and develop a plan. Ease the physiologic cravings by getting patches and pills and ease the psychologic urge to smoke by developing a support system that will keep you away from cigarettes. And don't forget to include 'year-younger' parties in your plan: You need to celebrate your successes.
Changing little day-to-day habits can make quitting easier. For example, increasing the amount of exercise you get helps reduce the craving for cigarettes. Avoid environments where smokers congregate and, instead, frequent places where smoking is prohibited—museums, libraries, or theaters. Regimented programs provided by smoking-cessation clinics and community support groups give some people the willpower and supportive environment they need to stop smoking.
Smoking and the Weight Gain Blues
One of the biggest fears that people have about quitting smoking is the weight gain that often follows. On average, men gain about ten pounds within six months of quitting, and women, about eight pounds. Weight gain should be the least of your worries. The risk of smoking is far greater than the risk of being overweight. And the weight gain is often temporary. For example, women commonly lose six of the eight pounds that they gained in the first six months within the next eighteen months. With careful planning you can prevent the weight gain altogether. Here are some tips:
Chew sugarless gum. It can help ease the oral cravings.
Have lots of chopped vegetables and low-fat snacks on hand. Popcorn without butter is good to munch on. Fruits, especially small ones like grapes or berries, are another great snack.
Integrate regular exercise and walking into your daily routine. It will help fight the cigarette urge, as well as help keep off the weight.
Don't quit smoking during the holidays. All that rich food will only increase the temptation to overeat.
Find something to do with your hands. Many smokers find comfort in having something to hold. Buy yourself a bunch of desk gadgets or other objects to fiddle with and divert all that nervous energy.
When you feel the temptation to smoke, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Remember all the reasons you quit smoking in the first place. Keep a list of those reasons and add the new benefits of being a reformed smoker to the list as you discover them: more energy, fewer colds, years younger.
Don't downplay your accomplishment. Reward yourself for quitting. You deserve those year-younger parties. Buy yourself a present or give yourself a special treat. Being smoke-free is something to celebrate.
Other tips: Stay busy. It will help keep your mind off cigarettes. Also, throw away all cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia. Avoid coffee, alcohol, and other drinks or food you associate with smoking. Instead, drink lots of water, fruit juices, and herbal teas. Eating small meals instead of one big one keeps blood sugar levels constant, which helps quell the nicotine craving. Avoid behaviors and situations you associate with smoking. If you used to smoke after meals, try to do something else at that time—take a walk, do the dishes. Do positive things that boost your self-image. Go to the dentist and have your teeth cleaned. Have your smoky-smelling clothes cleaned at the dry cleaners. Reward yourself.
If you start smoking again, don't become disheartened. It's not a catastrophe, just a temporary setback. Remember that each time you quit, the easier it will be to quit the next time. And each time you'll get closer to your goal.
One final note: It's never too late to quit In fact, the older you get, the more important it becomes to quit. Smoking causes relatively more ageing among smokers aged forty to seventy-five than younger ones. Smoking is to ageing what putting the gas pedal to the floor is to driving. Smokers in their fifties have more than seventeen times the risk of having a major health event than smokers in their thirties because the rate of smoking-induced ageing has accelerated. That acceleration is measurable at least through age seventy-five. (Beyond that age, there may not be enough smokers still living to say with any accuracy what happens to ageing.) Even if you've smoked for ten, fifteen, or twenty years—or especially if you have—you should quit. Do not think, 'Well, I've smoked this long, why quit now?' Quit now, precisely because you've smoked this long.
Cigar Smoking
Cigars have become the new chic. In the past several years, cigar smoking has tripled in the United States; more than 3 billion cigars were sold in 1996 alone. Cigar bars are opening all over the country as baby boomers take up a habit that was once reserved for the 'old fogy' set.
Since cigar smokers smoke less frequently and do not inhale to the same degree, they believe they are at a lower risk than cigarette smokers. But they are wrong. Cigars are a particularly dangerous form of tobacco. They produce more carbon monoxide and more particulate matter than cigarettes do. Just like cigarettes, they produce benzoapyrene, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia. Cigars produce more particulate matter, making them more dangerous, not just for the smoker, but for those around him or her as well. Cigars produce a more toxic form of secondhand smoke than cigarettes, so don't think that sitting in that cigar bar without smoking is not doing you harm. Although cigar smokers claim not to inhale, this claim is often untrue. Most former cigarette smokers continue to inhale when they take up the cigar habit.
Cigar smokers are at greater risk of cancers of the lip, mouth, pharynx, and esophagus than cigarette smokers and at about six times the risk of nonsmok-ers. Such cancers are often fatal and, even when nonfatal, can age and disfigure you. No comments, please, about long-lived cigar smokers like Winston Churchill or George Burns. Although we don't know why these people lived so long (good genes or good habits), we do know that other cigar smokers, such as Babe Ruth and Ulysses S. Grant, died young from throat cancers caused by cigar smoking. Smoking one cigar a day makes your RealAge 2.6 years older. Smoking five cigars a day makes your RealAge eight years older.
Passive Smoking
You should not tolerate an environment in which you are exposed to passive smoke. If you live with a smoker, ask that person to go outside to smoke. You'll be giving the message that it's time to quit. Although it may feel like you're being intolerant or uncaring, what you're really saying is that you care enough to make it a whole lot of hassle to smoke. Remember, you're not doing you or your partner any good when you become the passive recipient of that person's smoking habit.
If people smoke around you at work, talk to them to see if there is a way for them to smoke somewhere far away from you. Generally, a solution can be worked out. If your office doesn't have a provision to ensure that you are not exposed to secondhand smoke, talk to your boss or office manager about implementing some kind of policy to ensure a smoke-free environment. If there appears to be no solution to the workplace smoking problem, talk to your local board of public health or Better Business Bureau to find out if there is a city or state no-smoking ordinance. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide a work environment that will accommodate employees having a variety of disabilities. That means employers must provide a smoke-free environment if they have employees who have either asthma or allergies to smoke.
If you work in certain environments—restaurants or bars, for example—it may be hard to avoid secondhand smoke. See about installation of air filters that recycle the air and decrease particulate matter. This will be good not only for you, but for all the customers, even the smokers.
To minimize your exposure to secondhand smoke, avoid smoke-filled bars, and at restaurants ask to sit in the no-smoking section. Many hotel chains now offer no-smoking rooms, and car rental companies offer no-smoking cars. If you spend more than four hours a day in a smoke-filled environment, your RealAge may be as much as 6.9 years older.
(SOCIETY HAS NOW FOR SOME TIME, SEEN THE LIGHT ON SECOND-HAND SMOKE. THERE IS JUST ABOUT NO PUBLIC OR WORK PLACE WHERE SMOKING IS ALLOWED - Keith Hunt)
Smokeless Tobacco
Dip, chew, spit? More than 5 million Americans use smokeless tobacco, and its use is on the rise. Over the past twenty-five years, its use has increased tenfold, making it the fastest-growing segment of the tobacco market.
Many tobacco users think they are avoiding the risk of tobacco by using it in its smokeless form, as snuff or chewing tobacco. They are wrong. Although the risk of lung cancer is lower among people who use chew or snuff, the risk of other cancers is considerably higher.
Smokeless tobacco causes mouth and throat cancers, dental problems, cardiovascular disease, and nicotine addiction, just like smoking does. And just like smoking, it's hard to kick the habit. In fact, the amount of nicotine and other chemicals found in the blood of people who chew is even higher than that found in the blood of smokers.
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TO BE CONTINUED
AIR POLLUTION....STILL a MAJOR problem!!
YOUR REAL AGE
The Air You Breathe: Age Pollutants
According to a report published in 1991 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 164 million Americans, fully two-thirds of the population, live in areas where the air quality does not meet federal air-quality standards. That means that the majority of us are affected by ageing that is due to pollution. Just how much? That depends on where you live.
The effects of pollution are difficult to quantify because air quality varies so much from area to area, even block to block, and day to day. If one were to generalize about the effect by determining the difference in deaths from all causes in areas with heavy pollution versus areas with little pollution, the RealAge differnce would be 2.8 years.
That statistic, though, can be misleading, as different health effects are brought about by different pollutants. (in addition, heavily polluted areas may have other kinds of factors that affect mortality as well, like higher population density or increased crime.) Nevertheless, pollution appears to have a measurable ageing effect. The different kinds of pollutants include sulfates, ozone, large particulate matter, small particulate matter, lead, asbestos, and aerosols.
Air pollution can aggravate arterial and respiratory problems. A study published in the British Medical Journal found that changes in the level of air pollutants, specifically ozone and black smoke, led to an increase in mortality from all causes, primarily because of an increase of as much as 5 percent in cardiovascular and respiratory ageing. Air quality may also significantly influence the development of asthma, a disease affecting as 15 million Americans. Researchers suspect that some people have a genetic predisposition to asthma, which manifests when the body is confronted by the wrong stressors. Asthma rates are increasing in intensely urban areas, such as in the inner cities of New York and Chicago, suggesting that poor air quality may trigger the onset of the disease. Air quality also affects the number of sinus infections and respiratory illnesses people suffer.
Air quality is measured in particulate matter (PM). The higher the concentration of particulate matter of a certain size, the more likely you are to suffer from premature ageing from heart and lung disease. The smaller the particle, the more potentially injurious. Particles that are 10 microns (PM-lOs) or less in diameter are the most easily (and therefore the most commonly) measured particles for analysis of air pollution. (See Tables 6.3 and 6.4.)
Air pollution does not occur only outdoors. Generally, it has been shown that indoor air pollution parallels that of the air outside. Sophisticated air-filtration systems don't seem to make much difference. Sometimes the indoor air quality is actually worse. 'Building sickness,' essentially a malady caused by poor indoor air quality, is a real illness. Those who work in poorly ventilated buildings have more respiratory infections and complain of fatigue, headache, and nausea more often. If you work or live in a building you think could be causing you health problems, have the building checked.
A particularly notorious indoor pollutant is radon, a naturally occurring gas that is a known carcinogen. Radon, the product of decaying radium and uranium in the soil, seeps into houses from the ground below. A 1995 report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute estimated that exposure to radon contributed to as many as 10 percent of the deaths from lung cancer. A more recent report by the National Research Council (NRC) boosted that figure to 12 percent. The report also said that smokers are at a particular risk because smoke and radon interact. The NRC report estimated that 6 percent of American homes had excessively high levels of radon. How do you know if your home is one of them? You can buy a radon-testing kit at your local hardware store for about fifty dollars. Choose one that is certified by either the EPA or the state. The best variety are the 'alpha-trak' or 'electret' versions, which are used for ninety days. These versions give a better reading than short-term monitors that do not track changes in gas levels, which can vary over the year. If your house has high levels of radon (over 4 picocuries per liter of air), call the local public health board or the EPA hot line (800-426-4791) to find out how to fix the problem. The usual remedies include having the basement foundation properly sealed and having appropriate ventilation systems installed.
Asbestos is another indoor pollutant, and one that has been associated with higher incidences of lung cancer and other cancers. Asbestos is found in many houses and apartment buildings, especially those built in the 1940s through the 1970s, when asbestos was a major component of many building materials. It is found in insulation, such as that used to wrap water pipes; in certain kinds of flooring; textured paints; old roofing materials; and other sources. Asbestos is not a risk as long as it is contained in a properly sealed wrapping. However, those protective wrappings can crack with age, causing asbestos fibers to leak into the air. As airborne fibers, asbestos particles are extremely carcinogenic. Since it is so expensive to have asbestos removed from your home, most experts recommend leaving it alone unless it is exposed. There are ways of sealing asbestos-containing materials so they present no health risk. For more information, call your local health board or the EPA at the number provided earlier.
Other air pollutants that can cause ageing are smoke and carbon monoxide. These are a particular risk at home. Some toxic fumes are specific to your choices at home: household cleaning fluids, laundry detergents, exterminator pesticides, garden sprays, and dry-cleaning and rug-cleaning fluids. Others are more generalizable. About 15 percent of all deaths of adults from poisoning are due to the inhalation of such vapors as carbon monoxide and gas. Buy a smoke detector and keep it in good working order, with fresh batteries. Smoke detectors have been shown to reduce the risk of death and injury from smoke inhalation by as much as 70 percent in home and apartment fires. Having a carbon monoxide monitor in the home is another quick and easy way to protect your youth. A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control found that having a functioning and well-maintained carbon monoxide monitor could cut the risk of inadvertent carbon monoxide poisoning in half. Since deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning and smoke inhalation are relatively rare, the RealAge benefit is just six to ten days. Nevertheless, why risk that kind of ageing when having two silent monitors can protect you?
We've considered what you can do to minimize ageing from toxins, pollution, and accidents, but that's no fun! Let's look now at the RealAge risks and benefits of sex and drug use. Although drug use makes you age, sex (safe sex) makes you younger. The more, the better!
(THE ONLY WAY WITHIN THE LAW OF GOD FOR MORE SEX THE BETTER IS WITHIN MARRIAGE. THERE ARE MANY OTHER WAYS TO KEEP YOUNG OTHER THAN SEX. I'VE BEEN DIVORCED SINCE 1997 AND HAD NO SEXUAL RELATIONS SINCE. I'M STILL MIGHTY YOUNG LOOKING, AND VERY FIT. SEE MY FACEBOOK TO SEE PHOTOS OF ME TODAY - Keith Hunt)
Table 6.3
The RealAge Effect of Air Pollution
For Men
Of Exposure to the Following Concentration of Air Pollution Particles per Cubic Meter of Air (ug/m3)* | ||
Less 9 to 15.6 than9 15.5 to 20.7 | 20.8 More to 28.4 than 28.4 | |
Calendar Age | RealAge | |
35 | 34.2 34.7 35 | 35.2 35.4 |
55 | 52.8 54.4 55 | 55.2 55.6 |
70 | 68.8 69.2 70 | 70.2 70.7 |
| For Women | |
Of Exposure to the Following Concentration of Air Pollution Particles per Cubic Meter of Air (uglm3)*
Less than 9 | 9 to 15.5 | 15.6 to 20.7 | 20.8 to 28.4 | More than 28.4 | |
Calendar Age | RealAge | ||||
35 | 34.5 | 34.7 | 35 | 35.1 | 35.3 |
55 | 53.0 | 54.6 | 55 | 55.1 | 55.5 |
70 | 68.9 | 69.3 | 70 | 70.2 | 70.7 |
*In these tables, the concentration of air pollution has been expressed as the amount (in micrograms) of particles that are smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, per cubic meter of air (ug/m'). You can obtain the numbers for your specific area by consulting the PM-10 pollution numbers at the Web site of the Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov/oar/oaqps/greenbk/pr/state.html) or the 1996 publication of the National Resources Defense Council: Breathtaking: Premature Mortality Due to Particulate Air Pollution in 239 American Cities (see Web site www.nrdc.org/nrdcpro/bt).
Table 6.4
The Ten Worst Metropolitan Areas in the United States (1990-94)
Highest Concentration of Air Pollution (PM- 10s | or smaller) |
Average Annual | |
PM-10 Concentration | |
(ug/m3) | |
Visalia-Tulare-Porterville, California | 60.4 |
Bakersfield, California | 54.8 |
Fresno, California | 51.7 |
Riverside-San Bernardino, California | 48.1 |
Stockton, California | 44.8 |
Los Angeles-Long Beach, California | 43.8 |
Phoenix, Arizona | 39.5 |
Spokane, Washington | 38.7 |
Reno, Nevada | 38.5 |
Las Vegas, Nevada | 38.3 |
Highest Annual Per Capita Death Rates Attributable to Air Pollution | |
Deaths Per 100,000 | |
Visalia-Tulare-Porterville, California | 123 |
Bakersfield, California | 122 |
Fresno, California | 115 |
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA | 95 |
Stockton, California | 93 |
Los Angeles-Long Beach, California | 79 |
Steubenville, Ohio/Weirton, West Virginia | 78 |
Las Vegas, Nevada | 76 |
St. Joseph, Missouri | 76 |
Phoenix, Arizona | 74 |
Other cities and areas among the top fifty for premature deaths attributable to particulate-matter air pollution include: Spokane, Washington (ranking, 14); Cleveland, Ohio (20); Reno, Nevada (20); Tampa-St. Petersburg (22); Philadelphia (25); Pittsburgh (28); San Diego, California (28); Providence, Rhode Island (32); Omaha, Nebraska (34); St. Louis, Missouri (34); Chicago (37); Detroit (37); Nashville, Tennessee (37); Atlanta, Georgia (44); and Mobile, Alabama (46).
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THE ABOVE CHARTS ARE OF COURSE OUT OF DATE AS THIS BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IN 2000.
[BUT ON THE NEWS TONIGHT [MARCH 25 - 2014] WAS THE NEWS THAT AIR POLLUTION WORLDWIDE IS EPIDEMIC - 1 IN 8 DEATHS WORLDWIDE ARE CONTRIBUTED TO AIR POLLUTION. EVEN IN A SMALL POPULATION OF CANDA [ABOUT 33 MILLION] THEY SAY 10 MILLION ARE EFFECTED BY AIR POLLUTION; TOO MANY CANADIANS LIKE TO LIVE NEXT TO ROADS - SMALL AND MAJOR ROADS].
Keith Hunt
REAL AGE
Accident Prevention: Protect Your Youth
In 1994, approximately 150,000 Americans died from injuries; 61 percent of these deaths were considered accidental, and 80 percent of those accidental deaths were preventable. For American adults age thirty-five to forty-five, accidental poisoning (primarily drug overdoses), motor vehicle accidents, and firearm accidents are the first, second, and third major causes of death, according to a report by the National Center for Health Statistics. Motor vehicle accidents are the third leading cause of death among Americans under age sixty-five, resulting in over 45,750 deaths and 500,000 serious injuries each year.
(THESE STATS ARE OLD AS THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IN 2000 - Keith Hunt)
Although we tend not to think of avoiding accidents as something we can do to stay young, it is a quick and easy way to do just that. Not only do we risk death in traffic accidents and such accidents as falls (the second leading cause of accidental death), the injuries we sustain are likely to cause ageing because they can make us less mobile, less likely to be active, and more prone to chronic pain. And accidents not only directly cause physical disability and impairment from the injury, they also cause ageing from stress.
As a doctor, what I find maddening about the accident statistics in the United States is that so many accidents are preventable. For example, drunk driving is a leading cause of car accidents, accounting for about 40 percent of all traffic deaths and 9 percent of all injuries (see Chapter 10 on alcohol use and abuse). Although we all know better than to drink and drive, too many of us still do so. The cost of a cab is nothing compared with the cost of your life. But we persist. The question is, Why tempt fate?
I ask that question every time I see a patient who gets hurt because a loaded gun was stored in the house. Or because he thought it would be a good idea to climb out on the roof to clean the gutter but slipped and fell. Or when I see someone in a cast from a ski injury received when playing the daredevil. Although so many accidents are one of a kind in their particulars, they often have something in common: no common sense. If that little voice in your head says, 'Don't do it,' don't do it. If something 'feels' risky, don't risk it. Promptly fix potentially hazardous situations. Don't let the accident-waiting-to-happen become the accident that happened. It's one of the best ways to keep yourself young.
Remember, it's not just at home but at work, too, that you need to pay attention to safety. Most Americans between twenty-two and sixty-five (more than 120 million of us) spend 40 percent of their waking hours at work. Most jobs carry a certain amount of risk from accidental injury. Whether it's the risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome from typing at a computer or lung cancer from breathing toxic fumes in a factory, your job can be dangerous. Each year, 6,500 Americans die from work-related injuries, and 13.2 million suffer nonfatal injuries. Think about the risks you face on the job and what steps you can take to avoid them. Make choices that help protect your youth. No job is worth getting older for.
These are the general statistics, but what about the particulars? What safety advice should you follow? Let's consider the biggest cause of accidents: transportation. Whether it's a car, bike, or motorcycle, you can get younger while getting from here to there.
Seat Belts: Buckle Up, Youngster!
As an anesthesiologist, I think about car safety all the time. Every month, I see the victims of auto accidents as they are rushed into the operating room for emergency surgery, clinging to the last thread of life. Perhaps nothing brings it into focus like seeing one of your own there. This past summer, a colleague of mine almost died. Her child did die. A summer vacation in the mountains that should have been perfect but wasn't. It was raining, and the road was slick. Their rented van was winding up a curvy mountain road when a flash flood hit. The van hydroplaned and plummeted over a precipice. Everyone in the van was wearing a seat belt, except my colleague and her child, who were thrown from the van. The child was killed, and my colleague suffered serious internal injuries and broken bones. The fact that she survived at all was a miracle. No one wearing a seat belt was hurt at all.
This is a shocking story that has a very real point. The moral is to buckle your seat belt. It can save your life. And it will make you younger. A recent study estimated that seat belts and air bags reduce a person's risk of severe injury by 61 percent. Simply using a three-point seat belt—one that crosses over both the lap and shoulder—reduces your risk by as much as 45 percent.
Because seat belts have a proven safety record, most states now require that you wear one whenever you are riding in a car. Strap on a seat belt every time you get in a moving vehicle, whether it's your car or a cab or anything else with wheels. Wear a seat belt even if you are sitting in the backseat and make sure that every seat belt has both a lap and a shoulder harness. Keep all seat belts in good working condition. If you have an older car, make sure that the seat belts are up to standard, even if you have to replace the old ones. If you are under 5 feet 2 inches tall, have a small frame, or have children who regularly ride in the car, check to make sure the shoulder harnesses fit properly. If they don't, go to a service dealer and have them adjusted. Don't deliberately slip out of the shoulder strap, either. The shoulder strap significandy reduces the amount of damage to internal organs that would occur if you get into an auto accident.
Also, have your car inspected annually or every five thousand miles. Have the oil, tires, and engine checked. If you are about to go on a long trip, have a mechanic look the car over to make sure it's in good working order. Finally, by making safety a priority when you shop for a car, you are choosing to get younger. Look for cars with a strong safety record. It's worth a little more money for the added youth protection such a record provides.
New cars are required to have air bags. If your car doesn't have them, consider trading it in for a car that does. Air bags reduce the risk of death by 9-16 percent among drivers who use seat belts and by as much as 20 percent among drivers who do not wear seat belts. Experts estimate that air bags have prevented some 1,600 fatalities from head-on collisions over the past six years.
Despite the recent furor over air bags, they still, car per car, accident per accident, save lives. The concern has been that, in rare instances, air bags have deployed rapidly, hurting and even killing the passengers they were supposed to protect. Air bags have been shown to pose risks for only two groups: young children and adults (almost exclusively women) who are shorter than 5 feet 2 inches. Almost all of the adults who died in accidents involving deployed airbags were not wearing seat belts.
Another auto safety youth rule: Drive within five miles an hour of the speed limit; it can keep you three years younger in RealAge. Although it sounds easy, this one is far easier said than done. In developing the RealAge concept, I have run hundreds of people through the computer program that calculates their RealAge. At the end of the run, the computer gives a RealAge reading and makes suggestions for reducing that age even further. A vast majority of people who have taken the test admit to speeding on a regular basis. When the computer asks them if they would be willing to modify their behavior, most of them say, 'No way!' Indeed, more people say that they would rather give up smoking than speeding! It is amazing that so many people refuse to budge on this one: Slowing down and staying close to the speed limit is a reliable way to keep your RealAge younger. Indeed, for drivers under age thirty-five, the most frequent cause of auto accidents is speeding (see Table 6.2). For drivers over age seventy-five, the most frequent cause is unsafe or ill-timed left turns against traffic. Finally, if you can do so, use a cell phone only when you are not driving. Using a cell phone while driving focuses your attention on the conversation; this diversion of attention increases the accident rate.
(IT IS BECOMING A LAW IN MOST PLACES THAT YOU CANNOT DRIVE AND USE A CELL-PHONE - TALKING AND/OR TEXTING - Keith Hunt)
Motorcycles: Don't Forget the Helmet
We associate motorcycles with wild youth. The truth is, few things can age you so quickly. Five seconds is all it takes to go from 'young' to 'dead.' A motorcyclist is thirty-five times more likely to be killed on the road than the typical car owner. And it is not surprising that most motorcycle deaths and serious trauma come from head injuries. Emergency room doctors have been known to refer crudely to motorcyclists as 'organ donors' because so many victims arrive at the emergency room brain dead, the rest of the body's vital organs intact. Although it sounds harsh, the point is well taken. The risk of death aside, motorcyclists who do survive accidents often endure injuries that are disabling or crippling, including paralysis from spinal cord injury, loss of limbs, and severe and multiple fractures.
Although that youthful urge to hit the road may grab you, choosing to ride a motorcycle is choosing to get older. If you do decide to ride one, try to avoid roads with lots of traffic, go at moderate speeds, wear protective clothing, and make the most important choice for youth—wear a helmet. Comparisons of helmeted and nonhelmeted riders have found that the use of helmets decreased the number of fatalities by as much as 27 percent and that nonhelmeted drivers had two to four times the number of head injuries. Helmets
Table 6.2
The RealAge Effect of Speeding For Men
Driving the Following Miles Over the Speed Limit
Less than 5 mph
5to9mph 9 to 14mph
15 mph or more
Calendar Age | RealAge | ||||
35 | 34.8 | 35.7 | 36.6 | 43.1 | |
55 | 54.9 | 55.2 | 55.3 | 59.2 | |
70 | 69.8 | 70.1 | 70.2 | 72.7 |
For Women
Driving the Following Miles Over the Speed Limit
Less than 5 mph | 5 to 9 mph | 9 to | • 14 mph | 15 mph or more | |
Calendar Age | RealAge | ||||
35 | 34.8 | 35.3 | 35.5 | 42.1 | |
55 | 54-9 | 55.1 | 55.1 | 56.9 | |
70 | 69.8 | 70 | 70.1 | 71.2 |
don't make motorcycle riding safe, just safer. After California passed a mandatory helmet law, serious head injuries from motorcycle accidents decreased by 34 percent. In the year after passage of a helmet law in Texas, the number of motorcycle fatalities due to head injuries decreased by 57 percent, and the number of severe injuries to the head in motorcycle accidents declined by 54 percent.
Other safety tips: Keep your headlights on at all times. The risk of fatal daytime crashes decreases by 13 percent simply by keeping the lights on. You should also wear heavy leather boots and such thick clothing as heavy jeans and a leather jacket when riding, to keep your arms and legs covered. This habit helps prevent injury to the feet, legs, and arms. I was shocked to learn from a television sports producer who had covered motorcycle races that professional motorcycle racers rarely finish their careers without losing at least part of a foot. That's not something to look forward to as you age.
Of course, never ride a motorcycle when under the influence of drugs or alcohol. True to the rebel image we associate with motorcycle riders, the rates of driving under the influence are much higher for motorcyclists than for those who drive cars and other types of motor vehicles. More than half of those injured in motorcycle accidents have elevated blood alcohol levels, and more than 40 percent test positive for marijuana use.
Bicycling: A Hardhead for Youth
So you think that taking your bike out for a ride will help lower your RealAge? Indeed it will. You burn more than 450 calories an hour just riding at a moderate pace. Incorporating this type of stamina-building exercise into your life can reduce your RealAge by as much as six years (see Chapter 9). On that same bike ride, you can do something else that will help make you even younger. Wear a helmet. Wearing a helmet can help make your RealAge 0.4 years younger than that of nonhelmeted riders (when calculated at a rate of fifty days per year of bike riding).
Each year more than half a million Americans end up in emergency rooms because of bicycle accidents. Head injuries account for one-third of these emergency room visits, two-thirds of the hospitalizations, and three-fourths of the deaths. And cyclists who suffer head injury are twenty times more likely to die than are those who are injured elsewhere. A recent study found that the use of helmets by bicyclists reduced the risk of head injuries by as much as 85 percent and reduced the risk of brain injury by more than 88 percent. The 'take-home message'? Choose youth. Wearing your helmet will help reduce your risk of injury and will keep your RealAge young.
Does wearing a helmet mean that you won't get a head injury? No. But it does make it less likely. Communities that have promoted extensive bike-safety education and encouraged the use of helmets have seen a 50 percent increase in the use of helmets and a corresponding decrease in head injuries requiring emergency or hospital care. In the event you do bump your head, with or without a helmet, see a doctor. Many cyclists who fall and hit their heads but don't have any other injury requiring medical care, often do not go to the doctor. Remember, head injuries can be very serious and often don't produce symptoms right away, sometimes not for months or even years. If you receive a hard knock on the head, it is always best to have a physician look you over.
Also, if you have an accident while wearing a helmet, replace the helmet. Even though it may not look damaged, it might be. Many manufacturers have a crash-protection guarantee, agreeing to replace a helmet for free if you are in a crash. Once you buy a helmet, treat it carefully. The helmet can be damaged by extremes of hot and cold. Consider replacing your helmet every five years because helmets can begin to deteriorate internally with time and use. The quality of helmets has improved so much in the past five years that we can assume that the helmets manufactured five years from now will provide even better protection.
Finally, take these extra safety steps for youth: Make sure your bike is in good working order. Have it tuned up regularly and make sure that you have good tires; that the brakes work; and, of course, that the bike fits you properly. Try to ride on bike paths and avoid roads with heavy traffic. Wear reflective clothing when you ride on roads where there is automobile traffic, especially at night, and have reflectors or lights on the bike itself. You might even consider getting a light for the back of your bike. If you're biking to reduce your RealAge, you might as well take a few steps to make your RealAge younger still.
Other Precautions: Making Safety an Issue
Driving, motorcycling, and biking are obvious activities in which we might get injured. Other activities have risks, too. If you participate in an adventure sport—whether downhill skiing or scuba diving—make sure you have the proper equipment and proper training. No matter what the activity, if there is a reasonable chance of a head injury, wear a helmet. If you play a racket sport or basketball, wear eye protection. All you have to do is look at professional basketball players with their wraparound glasses or professional bikers with their helmets on to know that the people at the top take safety seriously. Even sports like in-line skating require safety precautions. Enter an emergency room on any nice spring Saturday afternoon, and you will see it packed with skaters who forgot to put on their knee pads, wrist guards, and helmets. Boating accidents are another common source of injury, often because people forget that drinking-and-driving rules apply to the waterways, too.
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TO BE CONTINUED
REAL AGE
Sexually Transmitted Diseases: The Downside of Sex
Because of the AIDS crisis, we hear a lot in the media about safe sex. When it comes right down to it, most information isn't as explicit as it needs to be. We still have a Puritan streak, which often keeps us from talking about the actual mechanics of sex. But that doesn't help anyone because there are important issues that need to be explained, such as which diseases we are really at risk of contracting or how to use a condom properly.
The safest sex is with a disease-free partner in a mutually monogamous relationship......High-risk groups include men who have sex with men, intravenous drug users, and former prisoners and their sex partners—no matter what their sex..... Remember, too, that younger partners aren't necessarily less risky. Quite the opposite. Two-thirds of STDs are diagnosed in people under age thirty-five.
Although AIDS is clearly the biggest worry, we shouldn't forget about other diseases as well. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 20 million Americans will contract some form of STD each year. Others estimate a more conservative 12 million. A study by the Allan Guttmacher Institute in the early 1990s estimated that one in five, or over 50 million Americans, have had some kind of STD.
How much does having an STD age you? Statistically, only 0.9 years. But this statistic is misleading. Contracting HTV is a way of becoming old overnight. A thirty-five-year-old man who contracts HTV experiences twelve years of ageing from the disease in a short period and more ageing as the disease progresses. His risk profile changes to that of a much older man as soon as HTV is diagnosed. In light of the current improvement in treatment for HTV, the ageing effect correlates directly with the quality of care. Other diseases are more uncomfortable than life threatening, but they can lead to long-term ageing of the immune or cardiovascular system.
Unfortunately, data on the relationship between safe sex and ageing is hard to correlate, partly because STDs are so different. One of the biggest problems with getting statistics on STDs is that it is virtually impossible to do controlled studies on sexual behavior. Researchers can't create the kind of double-blind study populations that we can create for studies like drug tests. We can't tell a group of people that half of them should have lots of casual sex and the other half should be monogamous. We can't even divide the monogamous group into two subgroups and tell one to have sex only once a week, and the other to have sex every day.
More important, statistics are only general trends. For example, although the group having the highest incidence of STD infection consists of unmarried people under age thirty-five, STDs can affect anyone. Either through divorce or widowhood, a lot of people find themselves back on the 'dating scene' when they hit their forties and fifties. If this is you, play it 'safe.' Don't risk an STD.
AIDS-HIV infection is clearly the biggest risk, as it is a fatal disease for which we have not found a cure. Although the new, better drugs have made it possible for many HIV-positive patients to live symptom-free for years after infection, it appears that these drugs only delay the onset of full-blown AIDS; they do not prevent it. Moreover, this delay is achieved only when HIV-positive patients rigorously maintain a complicated and expensive medication schedule. If you believe that you may have been exposed to the disease or are changing sex partners, it's a good idea to get an HIV test. If you think you've been exposed, early treatment can prevent permanent infection (by early, I mean within one to four hours).
Although HTV is a fairly difficult disease to contract, exposure to other STDs reduces the immune system's defenses and increases the likelihood that HTV will actually infect a person who has been exposed. Estimates are that a person with genital lesions (for example, from syphilis or herpes) is one hundred times more likely to contract HIV during a single sex act than someone who has never had an STD......
If you are in a monogamous relationship and making the decision to switch from condoms, first talk about it. Then, both you and your partner should go to a doctor for a full workup of tests. That way each of you will know the facts. If one of you tests positive for an STD, then you can make an informed decision about the best way to proceed.
Women who are pregnant or considering getting pregnant should get checked for the presence of any STDs, since these diseases can sometimes be harmful to the developing fetus or newborn. Usually, an STD doesn't interfere with pregnancy; rather, extra precautions are taken to prevent mother-to-child infection.
Wear It, Wear It Right
Studies of condom use consistently show that people just don't get it right. There are six essential steps to using a condom properly, but most people perform only three or four of the six steps correcdy. Don't assume you know. I admit I felt a little silly when I used a banana to show my son how to use a condom, but, silly or not, I am reassured that he now knows exacdy what to do.
Buy only latex condoms and use a new condom for each episode of intercourse—even if you don't ejaculate each time. Make sure you use condoms that say they protect against STDs. Joke or novelty condoms may not provide protection. Make sure that the condoms have not passed their expiration date, that the foil pack is intact, and that the condoms have not been left too long in some place where they could get damaged (for example, in the sun—or in a wallet!).
Open the package carefully and be sure to avoid damaging the condom with either your fingernails or any other sharp object.
Place the condom on the erect penis prior to any intimate contact (some STDs, such as gonorrhea, can be transmitted even without penetration). Roll the condom down to the base of the penis, where the penis connects with the body. Make sure the fit is snug.
Leave a space at the tip of the condom and remove any air pockets from that space.
Use only water-based lubricants, such as KY jelly or spermicidal foam or gel. Never use oil-based lubricants, such as petroleum jelly (for example, Vaseline), lotions, or mineral oil, because they destroy the latex. Also, many condoms are treated with nonoxynol-9, a spermicide and lubricant that seems to provide some added protection against HTV and other types of STD infection. It is probably a good idea to use this type of condom, since it will give you some added protection just in case.
Withdraw immediately after ejaculation, while the penis is still erect, holding the condom firmly against the base of the penis.
The following are the most common sexually transmitted diseases:
AIDS-HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus infection—the infection that causes or is presumed to cause AIDS—has traditionally been associated with gay men and intravenous drug users. However, its incidence is growing in other sectors of the population. Between half a million and a million people in the United States are infected with HTV, with six times as many men being infected as women. Infection rates are higher in the African American and Latino communities, presumably because of other associated risk factors, such as higher rates of poverty and drug use. In nine major American cities, AIDS is the number one cause of death for women aged twenty-five to forty-four. Since women are more susceptible to contracting the disease than are men, experts expect AIDS to increase among women.
The reason that AIDS spread so quickly among gay men in the 1980s was that many had sex with multiple partners without using condoms, and many engaged in practices that are now known to increase the likelihood of disease transmission, notably anal sex. Studies consistently show that people who have sex with HIV-infected partners but use condoms are at minimal risk of contracting the disease.....HTV-AIDS is a two-stage disease. A person who is infected with HTV can remain virtually symptom-free for years, but nevertheless is infectious. AIDS is the disease stage of HIV infection. By rendering the immune system basically useless, the disease destroys the body's primary line of defense. Infections, cancers, and other immune diseases then can attack the body, causing horrible and painful illnesses. A person goes from a young healthy adult to a disease-ridden old person in a matter of months or years.
Because of recent advances in HTV treatment, people who are infected with HTV who get a proper regimen of medications can stay virtually symptom-free for years. If you discover that you are HIV-positive, seek medical care immediately. Proper management of the disease can add years to your life. Each year, more effective treatments for the disease emerge, so the longer an infected person survives, the better the odds of living until a cure is discovered.
Chlamydia
Chlamydia is the most common bacterial STD in the United States. The greatest problem with chlamydia is that its symptoms are largely 'silent.' Seventy-five percent of those who are infected show no symptoms. Primarily affecting women, chlamydia can cause internal scarring of the fallopian tubes, ectopic pregnancy, and infertility. Symptoms, when they do occur, include painful urination, vaginal discharge, and abdominal pain. Although men are usually not affected by the disease, they should seek treatment if they are exposed because they can transmit the disease to their partners. Ask your gynecologist or general physician to include a chlamydia screen in your routine battery of tests, particularly if you have recently changed sex partners. Fortunately, chlamydia can easily be treated with antibiotics.
Gonorrhea
'The clap' can affect anyone. Although as many as two-thirds of women and 40 percent of men who are infected with gonorrhea are asymptomatic, painful urination, unusual vaginal discharge, and menstrual spotting can be signs of infection. Gonorrhea is highly contagious and can be transmitted simply through genital contact, even without penetration. It can cause ectopic pregnancy or infertility in women and seems to increase a person's susceptibility to HTV. Nonoxynol-9, the spermicide most often used on condoms, helps block the transmission of gonorrhea. Untreated, the disease can cause cardiovascular ageing. Gonorrhea can usually be treated with antibiotics, although some antibiotic-resistant strains are appearing. Infections from these strains can be cured with a more vigorous and difficult series of treatments.
Hepatitis B
Hepatitis B is not officially classified as an STD, but its most common mode of infection is through intercourse. Hepatitis B can cause severe damage to the liver. There is no effective treatment, although many people recover on their own. A hepatitis B vaccine is available (see Chapter 12), and getting vaccinated is a quick, easy way to help yourself stay young, particularly if you are sexually active and plan to have more than one sex partner in your lifetime.
Herpes
Estimates are that one in five sexually active Americans has genital herpes, an increase of 15-20 percent since the mid-80s. This increase has occurred despite 'safe sex' education and programs that encouraged the use of condoms. Many people who have been infected remain asymptomatic and unaware of the disease, yet they are still infectious and spread the disease to their partners. Within the first week or two after infection, symptoms can include fatigue, muscle aches, and itching. Ten days or so after infection, a small blister usually emerges in the genital region. The blister can burst and remain for several weeks, causing pain and discomfort. Once the initial outbreak heals, victims remain infected for the rest of their lives and may suffer recurrent outbreaks. Although herpes can be both painful and embarrassing, it is not life threatening and has no particular long-term health consequences. Creams and antiviral medications can treat the symptoms and reduce the number of outbreaks but cannot cure the underlying infection, which remains within a person for life. Although transmission is most common during outbreaks, transmission can occur between outbreaks as well, in a process known as 'viral shedding.' Women are more likely than men to contract the disease from an infected partner, and herpes can cause more serious consequences if they become pregnant.
Human Papillomavirus
Human papillomavirus is the most commonly transmitted STD. Some experts have estimated that as many as 80 percent of the sexually active population is infected with the virus. However, little is ever said about this disease. In general, the virus is benign. Since it increases a woman's risk of developing cervical cancer considerably, we can say it accelerates ageing of the immune system. Some strains cause small genital growths or warts that can be uncomfortable, but these growths can be easily removed. If you have had more than two sex partners in your lifetime or your partner has had more than two sex partners, chances are you have been exposed to the virus. In general, human papillomavirus infection doesn't do much, and there are no treatments. Once you have it, you have it.
Women who have been exposed to the virus are more likely to develop cervical cancers. In fact almost all women with positive results on a Pap smear show evidence of having been exposed to the virus. For men, exposure seems to have little effect, and penile cancers are rare. Men can transmit the virus to their partners and can develop growths or warts, sometimes inside the urethra, which can cause discomfort. Recent studies have found that the virus may be implicated in some anal and rectal cancers, as well as in some oral cancers. Women should remember to get annual Pap smears, which can detect precancerous cells. Treatments can then be given to prevent the development of full-blown cervical cancer. Positive Pap smear results do not mean you have cancer. Most positive results merely identify an increased risk of developing cancer. If you do get a positive result, you will want to be especially careful about having the condition monitored. Your gynecologist may recommend biannual or quarterly Pap smears or treatments to remove precancerous cells.
Syphilis
If gonorrhea is the 'sailor's disease,' syphilis is the disease of kings. Famous in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of its ravages on the European aristocracy, syphilis is once again on the rise. The incidence of syphilis has doubled since the early 1980s. Symptoms include genital lesions, aches, fevers, rashes, hair loss, and skin and mouth sores. If untreated, syphilis can infect the eyes, heart, brain, and other organs, causing irreparable structural damage. In addition, it accelerates the rate of arterial ageing. Syphilis is easily treated with antibiotics and, if detected early, leaves no lasting damage.
Sex is a great thing. The more, the better. There's no way to get younger that's more fun! Just remember: Be safe. Use a condom, get tested, and pick your partner carefully.
Illegal Drugs: Staying Young Without Them
Illicit drugs may be illegal, but that doesn't mean that people aren't taking them. About 40 to 50 percent of Americans aged fifteen to fifty-four admit to having tried an illegal drug at some point in their lives, and over 15 percent say they have done so in the past year. Estimates suggest that 5 to 10 percent of the population use illegal drugs regularly, and many admit being addicted. The more than $3 billion spent each year on drug rehabilitation programs is just a small part of the major impact that drug use has on our society. Although we tend to associate drug use with teenagers, rock stars, or inner-city poverty, it's not an accurate picture. People from all segments of society use and abuse drugs. And drug use, it is not surprising, accelerates ageing.
Drug addiction is a serious problem that has physiologic and mental effects. The problems associated with drug use are complicated and warrant more discussion than I can provide here. For the purposes of this book, there is only one question: How does illicit drug use contribute to ageing?
Most hard drugs are illegal for a reason: They're dangerous and addictive. Cocaine, crack, heroin, and a whole array of hallucinogenic (mind-altering) drugs can cause serious health problems. Unnecessary ageing associated with drug use can be as much as eight years. Drugs like heroin and cocaine top the list. They can kill a person almost instantaneously. An overdose, if not fatal, is always serious and puts a person's life at risk. Although trying a drug once probably won't do much damage by itself, it may cause addiction. Many people crave more and then are on the path to drug addiction. Addiction affects a person's physiology, making him or her more likely to suffer real physical ageing that is manifested in many ways. The mental effects of drug use tend to disrupt social ties, often causing users to lose their friends, families, and jobs.
People who use drugs are more likely to make bad decisions. They are more likely to get into accidents and have unsafe sex. For example, cocaine and crack use are associated with higher rates of HIV transmission, not because using the drugs increases susceptibility to the HIV virus, but because users take risks (unsafe sex, needle sharing) that make them more likely to be exposed to the virus.
Marijuana, by far the most popular illegal drug, is less immediately dangerous or addictive than other drugs. Smoking 'pot,' even if you 'didn't inhale,' makes your RealAge older. Marijuana contains 50 percent more carcinogens and four times as much tar as cigarettes. Studies show that the heavy use of marijuana can cause residual neurologic effects that decrease cognitive functioning. Heavy users actually experience ageing less from the drug itself than from the behaviors it tends to induce, most notably a lack of motivation. For example, users are less likely to exercise or eat a healthy diet or to maintain the kinds of social networks that can help protect against stress. They are also more likely to engage in risky behaviors, such as unsafe sex or driving under the influence of either drugs or alcohol.
(AS OF 2014 ONLY TIME WILL TELL THE TRUE FACTS ABOUT MARIJUANA. ONE STATE HAS LEGALIZED IT. SO IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS WE SHALL LEARN IF SMOKING MARIJUANA IS AS DANGEROUS AS SOME LIKE TO CLAIM IT IS - Keith Hunt)
When it comes to illicit drugs, the best advice is not to start. If you do use drugs, consider quitting. If you find you can't stop 'cold turkey,' you have an addiction problem and need to seek help. Although overcoming a drug addiction is difficult, addiction is one of the most pernicious agers of the body, and ending a habit of drug abuse will make you younger and, consequently, feel better. It could even save your life.
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ON THE SEX TOPIC. GOD HAS THE ANSWER TO SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES - NO SEXUAL INTERCOURSE OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE, AND OF COURSE REMAINING SEXUALLY FAITHFUL TO YOUR MATE IN MARRIAGE.
Keith Hunt
REAL AGE
Take Your Vitamins
TURNING VITAMINS AND SUPPLEMENTS INTO AGE REDUCERS
Can vitamins make you younger? Yes. The right nutrients in the proper amounts help protect your body from needless ageing. Although we often hear about the recommended daily allowance (RDA), the minimum needed to prevent disease from deficiency, we should start thinking instead about the 'RealAge Optimum' (RAO), the dose you really need to stay as young as you could be.
• Hundreds of vitamins, minerals, herbs, and supplements are available for
sale. Learn some general guidelines for taking those that can keep you
young and avoiding those that will make you older. Taking the wrong
combination of vitamins or needless vitamins can make you 1.7 years older.
Difficulty rating: Quick fix
• Antioxidants are all the rage because of their supposed antiageing effect.
This section investigates those claims. What is oxidation? How does this
bodily equivalent of 'rusting' age your body? Vitamin C and vitamin E,
when taken together, work as an antioxidant team, keeping your arteries,
immune system, organs, and bones young. When taken consistently, these
vitamins can reduce your RealAge by as much as six years.
Difficulty rating: Quick fix
• Frail bones and arthritis are hallmarks of ageing. The danger of these
conditions can be reduced by getting the proper levels of calcium and
vitamin D. Getting 1,200 mg of calcium and 400IU (International Units)
of vitamin D a day can help make you 1.1 years younger.
Difficulty rating: Quick fix
Despite the hype over cholesterol, you may have to worry about something else even more: homocysteine. Homocysteine is an amino acid that is a by-product of various metabolic processes. High homocysteine levels correlate with the early onset of heart and vascular disease more than almost any other factor. But not to fear—by getting adequate amounts of folate (folic acid) daily, you can make your RealAge more than 1.2 years younger.
Difficulty rating: Quick fix
We would all like to eat a balanced diet, but not all of us can or do. The hectic pace of real life interferes. If you do not eat a regularly balanced diet, including six to eight servings of fruits and vegetables each day, you can get all the vitamin and mineral nutrition you need by taking a multivitamin daily in addition to the other supplements recommended in this chapter.
Difficulty rating: Quick fix
Besides vitamins E, C, and D; calcium; and folate, what should you be getting in your diet? Here we consider some of the latest nutrient fads. What are the possible benefits or side effects of such highly touted micronutrients as chromium picolinate and selenium, and such herbal remedies as echinacea? Avoiding inappropriate supplements and fads will make you one to four years younger.
Difficulty rating: Quick fix
Vitamins, vitamins, vitamins. How many times have you been told to take your vitamins? Your mother told you to eat your vegetables to get your vitamins. Now, more than likely, you take vitamins out of a bottle. But do you really know what and how much you should be taking?
Walk into a health-food store or down the vitamin aisle at your local drugstore, and you will see shelves overflowing with vitamins of all sorts, not to mention minerals and a whole panoply of supplements. There are multivitamins, individual vitamins, vitamin cocktails, stress vitamins, energy vitamins, herbs, minerals, pills, capsules, and drops; the same vitamins in different dosages and different formulations; and no clear instructions about what you should take, how much, or how often.
In the 1960s, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling asserted that by taking high doses of vitamin C, you could prevent the common cold. His assertions became a kind of folk remedy, and people readily began to take vitamin pills. Now 25 percent of all adults in the United States gulp down vitamin supplements regularly, and half take them occasionally.
I didn't realize exactly how consuming and confusing all this could be until Frank T. walked into my office one day, opened up a bag, and began pulling out bottles. Brown bottles, blue botdes, small bottles, big bottles. When he was done, he had thirty-five containers of vitamins, minerals, and supplements lined up on my desk.
Incredulous, I asked,' You take all of these every day?'
'Absolutely,' he replied. 'Some of them I take twice a day.' In all, he took some fifty tablets daily. Clearly, here was one organized man. This was a full-time job. At fifty-four, Frank was in good shape. He exercised vigorously and often, was trim, enjoyed a happy marriage, and was at the peak of his career. Recently he'd had a prostate scare, and that made him worry. He began reading up on his health and asking people at the health-food store. The results of his research—all thirty-five bottles worth—were now spread out in front of me like a Thanksgiving feast. Now he wanted to know what I thought.
'Fifty pills a day is too much,' I told him. 'Some of them are good for you, but some of them could be bad for you.' Then I gave Frank some basic guidelines for taking vitamins and outlined a specific plan that could do exactly what he wanted—keep him young.
General Rules About Vitamins
Before getting into the details of what vitamins you should take and which ones you shouldn't, I think it's worth pointing out some general considerations that apply to vitamin usage. To say that there is a difference between the practices advised by medical doctors and those advised by practitioners of alternative medicine would be an understatement. There has been a long history of debate between the two sides. Since this is clearly a controversial issue, let me make some points that can help you understand and untangle the debate. It's not so much that medical practice has dismissed alternative medicine outright—not at all—but, rather, that medical doctors, for the most part, like to have strong and convincing evidence that treatments help their patients before they advocate those treatments.
For doctors, one of the most frustrating aspects regarding the vast array of vitamins and supplements available is not that they don't work, but that we have no idea if they actually do work. With the exception of a few basic vitamins (C, D, E, B, and A) and a few minerals (calcium and iron), we have limited scientific information about the role and optimum dosages of most of the supplements on the market. Although for many minerals and vitamins, we have basic information about the minimum amounts of essential nutrients that we need to survive or prevent deficiency diseases (the recommended daily allowance, or RDA), we know much less about the optimum doses we need for health and youth. Most of what you learn in health-food stores has not yet been proven. It may prove right, it may prove wrong—we just don't know.
There have been few or no scientific studies on the vast majority of vitamins and supplements on sale in any local health-food store. Most of these supplements are sold without any description of what they are, why they are good for us, or how we should take them. Many of them are unnecessary— and some can even be harmful. Comfrey, for example, long given as a cough suppressant, can actually cause severe and irreversible liver damage—a big price to pay for easing a cough. For most herbs, as well as most minerals and other food supplements, the research has just not been done.
Nutritional supplements—because they are classified as food products and not medicines—aren't regulated by the strict standards governing the sale of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, so manufacturers can sell them in any quantity or combination they want. Nor does the law require that they do any scientific studies to back up their claims, as they would have to do for any new medicinal drugs. There are no industry standards or federal requirements. Different brands of the same supplement might contain very different elements. It is not uncommon to find bottles containing ingredients and even contaminants not listed on the ingredient list. When you do buy vitamins or supplements, make sure you buy them from a large and reputable manufacturer. In addition, do not take any supplement without getting a recommendation from a reputable source.
Another caveat: I advise against taking any supplement 'cocktail' sold at a health-food store, from a vitamin aisle at a store, or from a catalog (many are sent from Canada where the laws are even more lax). These supplement cocktails are mixtures of herbs, vitamins, and minerals. I do not object to 'cocktails' in principle, just in practice. For one thing, they claim to provide everything from 'prostate cancer prevention' to 'menopause ease' to 'muscle building' but often don't even list what they contain—or how much of any one ingredient is included—since the companies that sell them aren't required by law to do so. You—the consumer—could be taking all kinds of things that you don't want. Most of these wonder pills are probably harmless, but we cannot say for sure. I can guarantee that they are not 'wonder' pills. If you are trying to be smart about Age Reduction, don't start taking a pill or cocktail just because a store clerk or infomercial tells you to do so. If you don't know what it is, don't take it.
That said, what do we actually know about vitamins, minerals, and supplements? Which ones should we take? And which ones should we definitely not take? In general, if you eat a balanced and healthy diet, with four servings of fruits and five servings of vegetables a day and plenty of grains, you should get all the nutrients you need. However, that's not always realistic. Most of us have busy lives and hectic schedules, which means that it's not always easy to eat a balanced and nutrient-rich diet.
(REMEMBER THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 2000. CANADA HAS LAWS THAT ALL INGREDIENTS IN VITAMINS ARE TO BE PUT ON THE BOTTLE LABEL. UNLESS YOU ARE EATING BASICALLY ORGANIC FOODS, TODAY BECAUSE OF POLLUTED FOODS, YOU NEED TO TAKE A GOOD MULTI-VITAMIN/MINERAL SUPPLEMENT, AND MAYBE SOME OTHERS LIKE D3 IF YOU DO NOT GET MUCH SUN - Keith Hunt)
To make up for such inconsistencies, I recommend taking a multivitamin every day, in case you have missed out on a little bit of one mineral or the other. Choose a multivitamin without added iron, and one that has less than 8,000 IU of vitamin A. If you are worried about whether you are eating a balanced diet rich in vitamins and nutrients, talk to your doctor or schedule a session with a clinical nutritionist to review your eating habits and to develop basic dietary guidelines. Vegetarians and others on special or restricted diets should be vigilant to ensure that they are getting the basics.
What other nutrients and vitamins should we be getting? What do they do for us? What shouldn't we take?
Oxidants and Antioxidants: rustproofing your body
One of the biggest trends in vitamins these days is the use of antioxidants, because they purportedly can help prevent the oxidation damage that has been linked to cancers and other types of ageing. It's true: Taking the right amounts of antioxidants can make your RealAge as much as six years younger. Many people, however, wrongly believe that if a little bit of antioxidant is good, a lot is better. Too many antioxidants—especially of the wrong type—can actually cause oxidation damage. My recommendation: antioxidation in moderation. Eat a balanced diet, with four servings of fruits and five to six servings of vegetables a day. Then, each day, take 600 milligrams (mg) or more (up to 2,000 mg) of vitamin C in divided doses separated by at least six hours, plus 400 IU of vitamin E. That should give you all the antioxidation, antiageing protection you need. Here's why.
To understand antioxidants, let's first think about the oxidant, oxygen. We all know that oxygen is necessary for our bodies to function at all. Breathing is fundamental to living. When we breathe, oxygen enters our bloodstream and is transported to our cells. Once it enters our cells, oxygen forms the basis of many of our cells most fundamental processes. You probably learned these facts in elementary school, but what you probably didn't learn was that this same oxygen, in the form of oxygen radicals, can oxidize our tissues. In a sense, it can cause those tissues to rust. Oxygen waste products, called lipo-fuscins, build up in organs like the heart and brain, leaving brown discoloration on the tissues. These spots are signs of ageing. The older you get, the more prevalent they become.
Why? Imagine apples. If you slice an apple and leave it out in the air, it will soon turn brown. Exposed to air, the surface of the apple oxidizes. The process is similar to what happens when oxygen radicals build up in your body. If you were to take that same apple and sprinkle lemon juice on the slices, they would stay white. The apple does not turn brown because lemon juice is full of vitamin C, which works as an antioxidant. Lemon juice stops the oxidation process and keeps the apple from 'rusting.' In your body, antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E do the same thing.
Think of your body as an exclusive club. Free radicals are the visitors who crash the scene without an invitation. They are so pesky, the body can't get rid of them without some help. Antioxidants function as a kind of security system, the bouncers. They seek out the roving oxygen radicals and bind to them—a kind of chemical handcuff. Bound together, the free radicals and the antioxidants form an entity that the body can then flush out. As long as you have enough bouncers, free radicals and lipofuscins won't build up in the body.
How does this 'rusting' affect us? Mainly, oxidation ages your arteries. As you get older, your arteries are more likely to become clogged with fat deposits. These clogs contain high levels of oxidized lipids—that is, fats that have been chemically altered through interaction with high levels of free radicals. Therefore, oxidation plays a significant role in the ageing of our arteries. Oxidation affects us in other ways, too.
Oxygen free radicals are an unstable form of oxygen that cause genetic damage. Each cell in your body contains DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that instructs the cell what to do and when to do it. Every time your cells divide, DNA is copied into the new cell. Oxidation interferes with this process, causing DNA damage. This can lead to cancer arid the premature ageing of solid tissues. It can also damage the immune system, your body's backup security system to ensure that cancer cells don't spread (see Chapter 5 on immune system ageing). Finally, oxidation ages our eyes. It can damage the lenses (promoting cataracts) and the retina. The gradual loss of sight is one of the very first things that can make us feel old.
There are still many gaps in what we know about oxidation, and a lot of what we do know is based on circumstantial evidence. We do know that people with lots of buildup of oxidized fats in their bodies have much higher rates of heart disease and that their bodies appear to age more quickly in other ways, too. The hypothesis is that there is a connection between ageing and oxidation—although we still can't verify it completely. Regardless of the exact reasons why oxidation seems to age us, we know that people who consume the antioxidants vitamin C and vitamin E at the levels I recommend have substantially lower rates of coronary disease, cancer, and other forms of ageing. Let's consider why I recommend that you take vitamin C and vitamin E supplements, but not vitamin A, for antioxidation.
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TO BE CONTINUED
I WAS BORN IN 1942. GROWING UP IN THOSE DAYS WAS LESS POLLUTION IN THE AIR AND FOODS, MORE ORGANIC. WE HAD FREE MILK AT SCHOOL WHERE THE CREAM ROSE TO THE TOP, AS IT WILL ORGANICALLY.
DURING MY TEENS AND INTO MY 20s I ATE THREE GOOD BALANCED MEALS A DAY, FRUITS, VEGIES, WHOLE GRAINS, ORGANIC MILK, NUTS, SEEDS OF VARIOUS KINDS, BAKED POTOTO A FEW TIMES A WEEK; AS WELL AS PROTEIN IN EGGS, CHEESE, BEEF, TURKEY [PROTEIN IS IN NUTS AND MILK ALSO].
DURING THOSE YEARS I TOOK PRETTY WELL NO VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS.
IN MY 30s I STARTED TO TAKE "BEEN POLLEN" DAILY, ONE OF THE MOST COMPLETE FOODS IN NATURE.
WHEN I REACHED 40 MY BODY METABOLISM CHANGED, AND EATING AS ABOVE STARTED TO GAIN WEIGHT. I REDUCED MY DIET, AND STARTED TO TAKE A MULTI-VITAMIN SUPPLEMENT.
AT AGE 60 MY METABOLISM CHANGED YET AGAIN, I HAD TO REDUCE MY DIET FURTHER AND CUT OUT ALTOGETHER CERTAIN FOODS.
I NOW TAKE OTHER VITAMINS AS WELL AS A MULTI-VITAMIN/MINERAL SUPPLEMENT.
SOME I TAKE FOR PROSTATE HEALTH; OTHERS FOR BONE AND JOINT STRENGTH.
I WAS RECENTLY TOLD BY MY DOCTOR TO INCREASE MY D3 TABLET INTAKE, UPON A RECENT BLOOD ANALIS TEST.
YES I TAKE C AND E. YOU CAN NOW BUY ORGANIC MILK [COW OR GOAT].
MY DOCTOR TOLD ME TO TAKE "OATS" AS A CERIAL.
BLUEBERRIES AND CHEA SEEDS ARE KNOWN NOW AS WONDER FOODS, WHICH I EAT.
YOU CAN NOW BUY ANTI-OXIDENT FRUIT DRINKS WITH NO ADDED SUGAR.
FRIED TOMATOES IN VIRGIN OLIVE OIL OR COCONUT OIL, ARE BETTER FOR YOU THAN EATING RAW; THERE IS A CHEMICAL CHANGE WHEN FRYING, PRODUCING A SUBSTANCE VERY GOOD FOR YOU, THAT IS NOT THERE IN THE RAW TOMATO. FOUND THAT OUT FROM DR. MERCOLA RECENTLY.
YOGUT AND SAUERKRAUT IS GOOD FOR YOUR GUT AND INTESTINES.
I HAVE LOOKED AFTER MYSELF IN DIET AND EXERCISE, 7 TO 9 HOURS OF SLEEP DAILY. I SWIM TWICE A WEEK; RIDE MY HORSE 3 TIMES A WEEK; LIFT MY DUMB-BELLS 3 TIMES A WEEK.
I HAVE NO FACE WRINKLES, NO BAGS UNDER MY EYES; A FIRM NECK [FROM DOING NECK EXERCISES].
PEOPLE GUESS MY AGE [WHO DO NOT KNOW] AT 20 YEARS YOUNGER THAN MY BIRTH-CERTIFICATE AGE.
YOU CAN SEE WHAT I LOOK LIKE ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE, WHICH YOU CAN GET TO FROM MY WEBSITE - keithhunt.com
Keith Hunt
REAL AGE
The Daily Basics:Vitamins C and E
The two most important Age Reducing vitamins are C and E. These vitamins exert powerful antioxidant activity. Taken together, they help keep your cardiovascular system healthy by reducing the amount of harmful buildup on the walls of your arteries. In addition, vitamin C strengthens the immune system, improves both eye and lung function, and helps the body heal. Vitamins E and C, taken in combination, help keep the arteries relaxed and elastic. Taking 600 mg or more (up to 2,000 mg) of vitamin C a day as supplements (in divided doses of no more than 500 mg in any six hours) and 400 IU of vitamin E a day, in addition to eating a balanced diet with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, can reduce your RealAge by more than six years! What could be easier?
Vitamin C and vitamin E are powerful antioxidants that complement one another. Vitamin C is water soluble, whereas vitamin E is fat soluble. What does that mean? Your cells are made up of two components: the cell membrane and the cell interior. The cell membrane, the outer casing of the cell, consists of lipids, or fats. Since vitamin E dissolves in fat, it works to prevent oxidant-induced ageing in the membrane. It is in the cell membrane that you see the buildup of lipofuscins, those brown spots. In contrast, the inside of the cell is made up mostly of water. Since vitamin C dissolves in water, it can enter the center of the cell and collect the free-radical oxidants lurking there. Together, these two vitamins keep oxidants from damageing your cells, both inside and out (see Table 7.1).
Table 7.1
The RealAge Benefit of Vitamins C &E
For Men
Of getting the RAO" dose of vitamin C:
At age 55: 2.8 years younger At age 70: 3.2 years younger
Of getting the RAO dose of vitamin E:
Age 55: 2.5 years younger Age 70: 2.8 years younger
For Women
Of getting the RAO dose of vitamin C:
Age 55: 2.2 years younger Age 70: 2.6 years younger
Of getting the RAO dose of vitamin E:
Age 55: 1.5 years younger Age 70: 2.2 years younger
The Daily Dose, at the RAO Level
Vitamin C:
600 mg or more as a supplement, plus five servings of fruits and vegetables, to total 1,200 mg/day, in divided doses, separated by at least 6 hours (not to exceed 2,000 mg a day)
Vitamin E:
400IU (international units)
*The RealAge optimum, the dose recommended for the greatest Age Reduction.
Vitamin E
As mentioned, vitamin E is fat soluble. That makes it an especially vigorous antioxidant. Vitamin E goes right to work on oxidized lipids that clog the arteries, shrinking their size and preventing the initial buildup in the first place. It hampers the attachment of dangerous LDL cholesterol along the arterial walls.
Vitamin E can lower the risk of heart attack in women by as much as 40 percent and in men, by about 35 percent. If a person already has arterial disease, but not fibrotic or permanently hardened arteries, vitamin E can decrease the risk of heart attack by as much as 75 percent. That's an astounding impact! Something as simple as taking 400 IU of vitamin E a day will give you a younger, healthier cardiovascular system and all the vigor and energy that goes along with it. Moreover, like aspirin, vitamin E thins your blood, making clots less likely to form. The quinone in vitamin E has powerful anticlotting powers.....
Recent claims have also been made for vitamin E as a preventive against lung and prostate cancer and other cancers as well. The antioxidant properties of vitamin E are believed to help stop the immune system from ageing. Further studies still need to be done on the exact details of the cancer-vitamin E connection, but the evidence appears promising. Vitamin E may also help the body build muscle strength. Finally, as I mentioned, vitamin E has been shown to help prevent cataracts, and preliminary studies suggest it might help prevent macular degeneration, the leading cause of visual impairment associated with ageing.
There are several caveats you should be aware of before taking vitamin E. This vitamin therapy works only to reduce the size of fatty buildup before the arteries have become fibrotic, or permanently hardened (that is, when there is fat buildup but no irreversible changes). Vitamin E seems to help reduce the size of small or medium-sized lesions in your arteries but not severe ones. That is why you want to start taking these vitamins as soon as possible—to foil ageing before it begins.
How much vitamin E should you take, and where is it found? Vitamin E is found in fatty vegetables, such as avocados, and in some vegetable oils. It is also found in nuts, leafy green vegetables, and some grains. It is virtually impossible to get the necessary antiageing dose of vitamin E from foods. The RDA is only 12 to 15 IU a day; that is, 12 to 15 IU are all you need to survive without showing signs of deficiency disease. But the RAO—the RealAge optimum—is 400 IU. To prevent ageing, you need 400 IU daily. Since most multivitamins tend to follow RDA recommendations and contain only 15 to 30 IU, do not rely on multivitamins to get your vitamin E; the level of vitamin E in most multivitamins is usually 370 IU short of the anti-ageing optimum.
How often do you need to take vitamin E? Since vitamin E is fat soluble, it resides in your body for quite a while. One tablet a day is just the right dose. There is little risk of a vitamin E overdose unless you ingest more than 1,200 IU a day, and vitamin E is probably safe up to 3,000 IU a day. If you have high blood pressure, get the high blood pressure treated, and start slowly with 200 IU of vitamin E a day. After a week or so, increase the dose to the 400 IU level. One additional note: Several studies have noticed an increase in bleeding when vitamin E and aspirin are used in combination, a condition implicated in both ulcers and strokes. It is rare, but discuss this risk with your physician, especially if you have a history of ulcers or other blood-clotting problems.
Vitamin C
Have you ever noticed that the minute you get a cold, everyone from the checkout man at the grocery store to your mother starts telling you to take vitamin C? That is the legacy of Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling. All of us know that vitamin C is good for us, but most of us probably couldn't say why.
What exactly does vitamin C do? Like vitamin E, vitamin C helps to keep the arteries clear by inhibiting the oxidation of fat in the walls of your blood vessels. It converts cholesterol to bioacids, so they can be washed out of the body easily and not add to the problem of lipid buildup. Since vitamin C is water soluble, it enters the cells that make up the wall of the vessels themselves, binding to free radicals lurking inside the cell, precisely in the place where those free radicals are likely to cause DNA damage. Because of its healing capabilities, vitamin C helps maintain a healthy matrix in the blood vessels, repairing the vessel walls when they become damaged. When it comes to keeping the cardiovascular system healthy, vitamin C seems to help men more than women, and vitamin E helps women more than men. Regardless of your gender, you should take both vitamins (see Table 7.1).
In addition, vitamin C helps reduce high blood pressure, prevents cataracts, and promotes healing. It improves lung function, preventing ageing of the respiratory system. And it really does keep your immune system young. Linus Pauling thought vitamin C helped cure colds. We now know it decreases our risk of the one ager we all want to avoid—cancer!
Since vitamin C is water soluble, it washes out of your body when you urinate. It is important to get several doses of vitamin C a day. I recommend at least two, usually three, doses daily. I do this by combining food and supplements. In the morning, I drink a big glass of orange juice, I take a multivitamin with 200 mg of vitamin C in it, have an orange or a grapefruit at lunch, and then take a 500-mg supplement at night, just to make sure I'm getting enough. I also get vitamin C from other things I eat, just in smaller amounts, such as tomatoes or salads. The RAO for vitamin C is about 1,200 mg a day from food and supplements, taken in smaller amounts spread throughout the day. The RDA is just 60 mg, way short of the antiageing optimum. Vitamin C tends to leach out of packaged or cut vegetables. Moreover, cooking reduces vitamin C levels even more. It is important to make sure you eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables every day. Eat some fruit or take some of your vitamin C one to two hours before you exercise. Exercise causes the buildup of oxidants.
It doesn't matter what kind of vitamin C you take, either natural or synthetic. Your body can't tell the difference. Personally, I stay away from chew-ables because they are hard on the teeth. Although it costs a little more, I prefer taking vitamin C that contains calcium ascorbate, which helps prevent the stomachaches that straight ascorbic acid (vitamin C) can cause. If you have a sensitive stomach, take the calcium ascorbate form of vitamin C. Besides, it's another source of calcium, and, as you will see in the next section, you want to get as much calcium as you can!
Two more comments on vitamin C. A recent headline said that vitamin C caused cancer by causing breaks in DNA. What the headline didn't say was that at the 500-mg dose, vitamin C appeared to prevent, or be associated with repair of, far more DNA damage than it caused. If you take 500-mg pills, take them no more frequently than one every six hours to get the optimum balance.
Finally, I have to respond to the question, Does vitamin C prevent colds? The answer is no. But it does lessen their effect. To get this effect, when you begin to show signs of a cold, increase your dosage of vitamin C to as much as 4 grams (4,000 mg) a day, taken with plenty of water (eight glasses for 4 grams). Although this amount won't cure your cold—Linus Pauling wasn't exactly right—it will lessen the severity of the symptoms. For example, when I have a cold and take my C, I find I can keep exercising.
Now, let's consider the last big antioxidant vitamin, vitamin A. What is it about A that makes it an ageing vitamin, not an antiageing one?
Vitamin A
In 1988 Americans spent less than $8 million a year on vitamin A supplements. Now they spend $80 million on vitamin A, often sold in the form of beta carotene. They may be doing themselves more harm than good.
This is an example of too much of a good thing. In the late 1980s, a study came out showing that people who ate foods with lots of vitamin A in them tended to have lower rates of cancer. People interpreted this result to mean not that they should be eating more fruits and vegetables, but that they should be taking vitamin A supplements. The market boomed. Sales of vitamin A and beta carotene, a substance the body breaks down into vitamin A, went through the roof.
More recent studies have found that we jumped the gun. First, the correlation between vitamin A and the prevention of cancer is not as strong as was once thought. Second, too much vitamin A can actually be harmful. Although it is important to get sufficient vitamin A, you should do this by eating well, not by taking supplements. Especially avoid megadosing. Do not take more than 8,000 IU a day, which is a standard dosage in many vitamin supplements. In choosing a supplement, try to find one that has the vitamin A in the form of beta carotene because the body will not convert beta carotene into vitamin A if it has no need for it.
Vitamin A is a necessary and important nutrient, but taking large doses of it can be dangerous. Why? Because vitamin A is a nutrient that is 'level sensitive.' When levels of vitamin A are moderate, it works as an antioxidant and is important to the functioning of your body. However, when you megadose, the surplus vitamin A does the opposite. Rather than functioning as an antioxidant, high doses of vitamin A work to oxidize tissues. So taking too much vitamin A makes you age faster.
A 1993 study in Finland showed that people who took vitamin A had an increased risk of lung cancer; atherosclerosis; and, for smokers, stroke. Several other studies have confirmed these findings. Excessive amounts of vitamin A may cause liver damage. Smokers need to be especially careful about taking any kind of vitamin A, even the beta carotene form; when combined with smoke, vitamin A can be toxic.
Although health-food stores still push vitamin A and beta carotene, remember that you probably get enough in a multivitamin and in your daily diet. For basic antioxidation, rely on vitamin C and vitamin E. Carotenoids (such as lycopene found in tomatoes) and flavonoids (found in onions, garlic, and grape products such as wine) also seem to have antioxidant power. Likewise, they help decrease ageing of the arterial and immune systems. We discuss them in Chapter 8. As good as vitamins E and C are, remember this: When it comes to vitamins, antioxidants are just the opening act. Another great duo is calcium and vitamin D.
(SOME YEARS BACK MY DAD HAD A CERTAIN HEALTH PROBLEM [CANNOT REMEMBER NOW WHAT IT WAS]; HE FOUND HE WAS GETTING TOO MUCH VITAMIN A; WHEN HE REDUCED HIS INTAKE HIS HEALTH PROBLEM DISAPPEARED - Keith Hunt)
Calcium
Bone weakening, or osteoporosis, affects more than 25 million Americans. It is the major underlying cause of hip fractures and bone breaks in the elderly— about 1.25 million bone fractures, including 300,000 hip fractures, are caused annually by osteoporosis. Although osteoporosis affects women disproportionately, especially small-boned women of northern European or Asian descent, we are all at risk. Twenty million women suffer from the disease, but so do 5 million men. As more men live longer, they, too, will be at increased risk of osteoporosis.
We often forget that our bones are living tissues that need proper care. After we have completed our growth cycles, it is easy to forget about them. Just as we can make our arterial and immune systems younger, we can make our bones younger as well. Doing so protects us for the long term, reducing our overall RealAge. How do we make our bones younger? By making them stronger. We can do that by taking 1,000 to 1,200 mg of calcium a day.
Osteoporosis is a condition involving the loss of bone density. As you age, your bones lose calcium, becoming progressively weaker. Why? Your body stores excess calcium until you reach your early thirties, at which time you reach your peak level of bone density. After that, your body stops storing extra calcium. You must then get all the calcium you need from your daily diet, or you will begin to deplete the calcium stores in your bones. Just imagine your skeleton as the structure of a house. Your bones are the beams that buttress your body. In a house, you have to worry about termites: they hollow out the beams from within until the beams become so weak they collapse. As your body depletes the calcium stored in your bones, they become weaker and weaker, until, finally, like termite-eaten beams, they are almost hollow. Then, snap. They break. And a broken bone, especially a broken hip, is one of the things that can age you the fastest. Just six months of immobility can reverse all your RealAge progress by a third or more. Each day you go without activity, you get older.
Why is breaking a hip so bad? It's not the fracture itself that ages a person but, rather, the complications that stem from such an injury. A hip fracture may be the beginning of a downward spiral, triggering a chain of ageing events. When a person is bedridden, the body weakens, becoming susceptible to pneumonia and other infections that can often be fatal. With less exercise and movement, arteries start showing signs of ageing, becoming less elastic and more prone to disease or failure. Also, the immune system becomes more vulnerable. For older people, the mortality rate from hip fractures is as high as 20 percent (12-20 percent of older women who have had hip fractures die within six months). Furthermore, 40 percent of those who survive that initial six months require long-term nursing care. More than half never regain their former quality of life.
Hip fractures are astoundingly common. Thirty to forty percent of women over calendar age sixty-five have fractured their spine or vertebrae, and twenty-five percent of such women will suffer a fractured hip. Doing what you can to prevent a fracture is one of your best protections against ageing. Remember, it's not just women, either.
Men traditionally have been much less susceptible to bone fractures than women. Just 5-10 percent of men over age sixty-five have these kinds of debilitating fractures. Since historically men have not lived as long as women, however, we know less about the strength of men's bones as they age. It appears that men also suffer bone loss as they get older, although they start out with higher bone density than women. I predict that as more men live longer, bone loss and severe fractures will become an increasing problem for them, too.
If you are working to make all the rest of you younger, you should make sure that your bones also stay young. For the best RealAge advantage, men and women should make sure to get enough calcium—that is, 1,000 to 1,200 mg a day for men and 1,200 mg for most women over thirty (pregnancy and other conditions may change the requirements slightly). Take 500 or 600 mg twice a day. (This refers to the amount of actual calcium, not calcium in combination with citrate or carbonate. If the label reads 1,000 mg of calcium citrate, read on to find the amount of calcium by itself.) Any kind of calcium supplement, even over-the-counter antacid tablets, should fit the bill, just as long as you are getting the right milligram amount. I advise against taking calcium supplements that contain bone meal, dolomite, and/or oyster shells, as these can contain lead or other heavy metals that may be toxic. Calcium carbonate is best absorbed when taken with food. Calcium citrate may be taken at any time (either by itself or with food). Both forms can cause constipation. If you notice this side effect, eat more fruits and vegetables or rely on that old standby, a prune a day. Some recommend taking about 300 mg of magnesium in conjunction with the calcium (see the section on magnesium later in this chapter).
Although calcium is plentiful in dairy foods (milk, cheese, and yogurt), most people do not eat enough dairy products to get adequate amounts of calcium from diet alone. Eat dairy foods for extra calcium, but do not rely on them as your only source of calcium unless you eat and drink a lot of dairy products (and, of course, remember to eat low-fat versions). If you consistently drink three or four glasses of milk a day (most adults do not drink anywhere near that amount), then you can modify the amount you take in supplemental form accordingly. But be very careful to make the 1,000- or 1,200-mg marker daily. And a reminder to anyone under thirty, or even thirty-five, who's reading this: You should get lots of calcium to build bone strength for the future because the calcium the body stores in bone then becomes the surplus stores for the rest of your life.
Not only does calcium help your bones, it may also help lower your blood pressure. A recent study showed that men who took 1,000 mg of calcium a day had a 12 percent reduction in blood pressure. This evidence remains controversial, as other studies have reported no such lowering of blood pressure. Although there is as yet no consensus on this finding, lower blood pressure may be just one added benefit of taking calcium, which is something you should be doing anyway. Another side note for people with high blood pressure: A common treatment for high blood pressure is the administration of calcium channel-blocking drugs. These drugs have nothing to do with calcium supplements, so don't be concerned. Go ahead and take calcium supplements.
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TO BE CONTINUED
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