Can we control our aging processes? Can we live a better quality of life in the future?
There are two primary causes of aging. The first is the loss of human growth hormone (HGH). The second is the loss of telomere length at the end of your chromosome. There are many factors that accelerate, or decelerate these aging processes. Some accelerators of the aging process are obesity, lack of exercise, food choices, smoking, etc. A few decelerators of the aging process are fasting, caloric restriction, exercise and stress relief.
Stress is the genesis of 80-90% of all doctors’ visits. Most of us have no daily stress relief program. Most of the time we ignore the fact that we have stress. We ignore that it adversely affects us. Exercise, meditation and breathing exercises are all good stress relief programs. Smiling is one of the simplest way to remove stress in a stressful situation.
Diets can help us or hurt us. We live in a diet mentality world. We go on a diet to lose some weight. Then, we stop the diet and return to our previous eating lifestyle. We knew that our eating caused us to gain weight. We lost a little, then returned to the same behavior that increased our weight originally. Look at food choices as a lifestyle. It is something that we should be doing each day for the rest of our lives.
It is critical that the foods we choose contain balanced nutrition. Deficiencies in vitamins, minerals and other nutrients can create health issues in the body. For example, a deficiency in vitamin B-12 mimics Alzheimer’s disease. A combination of balanced nutrition coupled with a total reduction in calories has been shown to extend the lifespans of many species of animals.
It is too early to determine if our lifespans can be extended 20-30% as seen in animal studies. However, current studies do show a decrease in the risk of age-related diseases when we adopt a lifestyle that decelerates the aging process. Aging is the Final Frontier. Enjoy it as much as you can!