Live Longer, Better, Wiser!
You Can Stop the “Normal
Aging”
(by Dr. Henry S. Lodge)
From your body’s point of view,
“normal” aging isn’t normal at all. It’s a choice you make
by the way you live your life. The other choice is to tell your cells to grow
– to build a strong vibrant body and mind.
Let’s have a look at standard
American aging. Barbara D. had a baby when she was 34, gave up exercise and
gained 50 pounds. Exhausted and depressed, Barbara thought youth, energy and
optimism were all in her rearview mirror. Jon M., 55, had fallen even farther
down the slippery slope. He was stuck in the corporate world of stress, long
hours and doughnuts. At 255 pounds, he had knees that hurt and a back that
ached. He developed high blood pressure and eventually diabetes. Life was
looking grim.
Jon and Barbara weren’t getting
old; they had let their bodies decay. Most aging is just the dry rot we program
into our cells by sedentary living, junk food and stress. Yes, we do have to
get old, and ultimately we do have to die. But our bodies are designed to age
slowly and remarkably well. Most of what we see and fear is decay, and decay is
only one choice. Growth is the other.
After two years of misery, Barbara
started exercising and is now in the best shape of her life. She just finished
a sprint triathlon and, at 37, feels like she is 20. Jon started eating better
and exercising too—slowly at first, but he stuck with it. He has since
lost 50 pounds, the pain in his knees and back had disappeared, and his
diabetes is gone. Today, Jon is 60 and living his life in the body of a health
30-year-old. He will die one day, but he is likely to live like a young man
until he gets there.
THE HARD REALTY OF OUR biology is that
we are built to move. Exercise is the master signaling system that tells our
cells to grow instead of fade. When we exercise, that process of growth spreads
throughout every cell in our bodies, making us functionally younger. Not a
little bit younger – a lot younger. True biological aging is a
surprisingly slow and graceful process. You can live out your life in a
powerful, healthy body if you are willing to put in the work.
Let’s take a step back to see how
exercise works at the cellular level. Your body is made up of trillions of
cells that live mostly for a few weeks or months, die and are replaced by new
cells in an endless cycle. For example, your taste buds live only a few hours,
white blood cells live 10 days, and your muscle cells live about three months.
Even your bones dissolve and are replaced, over and over again. A few key stem
cells in each organ and your brain cells are the only ones that stick around
for the duration. All of your other cells are in a constant state of renewal.
You replace 1% of your cells every day.
That means that 1% of your body is brand-new today, and you will get another 1%
tomorrow. Think of it as getting a whole new body every three months. It’s
not entirely accurate, but it’s pretty close. Viewed that way, you are
walking around in a body that is brand-new since Christmas – new lungs,
new liver, new muscles, new skin. Look down at your legs and realize that you
are going to have new ones by the Fourth of July. Whether that body is
functionally younger or older is a choice you make by how you live.
You choose whether those new cells come
in stronger or weaker. You choose whether they grow or decay each day from then
on. Your cells don’t care which choice you make. They just follow the
direction you send. Exercise, and your cells get stronger; sit down, and they
decay.
This whole system evolved over billions
of years out in nature, where all animals face two great cellular challenges:
The first is to grow strong, fast and fit in the spring, when food and abounds
and there are calories to fuel hungry muscles, bones and brains. The second is
to decay as fast as possible in the winter, when calories disappear and
surviving starvation is the key to life. You would think that food is the
controlling signal for this, but it’s not. Motion controls your system.
Thought we’ve moved indoors and
left that life behind, our cells still think we’re living out on the
savannah, struggling to stay alive each day. There are no microwaves or
supermarkets in nature. If you want to eat, you have to hunt for forage every
single day. That movement is a signal that it’s time to grow. So, when you
exercise, your muscles release specific substances that travel throughout your
bloodstream, telling your cells to grow.
Sedentary muscles, on the other hand,
let out a steady trickle of chemicals that whisper to every cell to decay, day
after day.
Men like Jon, who go from sedentary to
fit, cut their risk of dying from a heart attack by 75% over five years. Women
cut their risk by 80%--and heart attacks are the largest single killer of
women. Both men and women can double their leg strength with three months of
exercise, and most of us can double it again in another three months. This is
true whether you’re in your 30’s or your 90’s. It’s not a
miracle or a mystery. It’s your biology, and you’re in charge.
The other master signal to our
cells—equal and, in some respects, even more important than
exercise—is emotion. One of the most fascinating revelations of the last
decade is that emotions change our cells through the same molecular pathways as
exercise. Anger, stress and loneliness are signals for “starvation”
and chronic danger. The “melt” our bodies as surely as sedentary
living. Optimism, love and community trigger the process of growth, building
our bodies, hearts and minds.
Men who have a heart attack and come
home to a family are four times less likely to die of a second heart attack.
Women battling heart disease or cancer do better in direct proportion to the
number of close friends and relatives they have. Babies in the ICU who are
touched more often are more likely to survive. Everywhere you look, you see the
role of emotion in our biology. Like exercise, it’s a choice.
It’s hard to exercise every day.
And with our busy lives, it’s even harder to find the time and energy to
maintain relationships and build communities. But it’s worth it when you
consider the alternative. Go for a walk or a run, and think about it. Deep in
or cells, down at the level of molecular genetics, we are wired to exercise and
to care. We’re beginning to wake up to that as a nation, but you might not
want to wait. You might want to join Barbara, Jon and millions of others and
change your life. Start today. Your cells are listening. |
