In the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” the main character Benjamin Buttons is born elderly and lives in a nursing home the first twelve years of his life and the older he gets the younger he becomes until becoming a baby at the later stages of his life. In the Alien movies, members of the crew entercryogenic chambers to suspend their aging process when whiletravelling to destinations that take light years to reach. The anti-aging industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry containing an ocean full of snake oil and an army full of con artists. We are surrounded by Hawkers selling miracle anti-aging products from every corner of the globe. Humanity has been searching for the fountain of youth for thousands of years. The good news is that people are living longer but unfortunately people are sickerlonger meaning that for many the extra years gained are of poor quality. Prolonging life yet having more years of suffering is not my cup of tea.
How does one Anti Age? The phrase does not even make sense.Michael Greger, MD, founding member and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine wrote in his book, “How Not to Age”:
“There may be no such thing as dying from old age. From a study of more than 42,000 consecutive autopsies, centenarians- those who lived at least to one hundred-were found to have succumbed to diseases in 100 percent of the cases examined. Though most were perceived, even by their physicians, to have been healthy just prior to death, not one ‘died of old age.’ They died of disease, most commonly heart attacks.”
The older we become the more vulnerable we are to diseases like cancer, dementia, strokes, heart attacks and other cardiovascular illnesses. Common sense tells you that an eighty-year-old person is more likely to develop dementia than a twenty-year-old, and scientifically, 300 percent more likely. If we can not stop aging then what is the point of adopting a healthy lifestyle?
Research is clear that those who live a healthy lifestyle tend to live longer. Also, those who engage in a healthy lifestyle tend to suffer less from debilitating diseases. Being healthy can increase our lifespan (how long we live) and enhance our healthspan (more likely to be free from chronic illnesses in the years we live). We do not have the ability to Anti-Age but we do have the ability to live longer with more vitality by making lifestyle changes. Being able to live our lives doing what we enjoy and love to do is a strong motivator to make changes.
For example, recently, I read an article describing the health risks associated with eating processed meats cited by the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) Study. The study revealed that people who ate more than 5.3 ounces of processed red meat had a higher risk of death and cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart failure, heart attacks, cancer and dementia compared to those who ate less than that per week.
We cannot stop growing older but we can start living younger while we grow older.
