Aging – What is your fear?

It’s inevitable. We will all age; the question is how. I saw a poster with 2 pictures on it. One was an elderly woman hunched over a walker and an aide was assisting her. She looked frail, had muscle wasting, a sunken face and a blank stare on her face. The other was a grey haired woman walking up a mountain. She had good muscle mass, bright eyes and skin, and everything about her spoke of strength, vigor and vitality. They were the same age.

Most people fear losing their memory, their mobility, their vision and a sense of themselves. They pine for youth. For all of you that attribute this difference to genes, think again. Your genes are like a light switch and need to be turned on or turned off to operate. It’s your lifestyle and environment that turns these genes on or off. This is why I dedicated my career to de mystifying the aging process. I want to help people turn off the accelerated aging switches.

So, if you or anyone in your family has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, a weight problem, declining memory, diabetes, arthritis, autoimmune disease or cancer, an underlying factor in all of these is inflammation.

Don’t fear aging, it can be controlled.

Inflammation can be controlled. Your diet, weight, exercise, stress management, hormones and supplements can play a large role in managing inflammation. Genes can be turned on or off by inflammation and it’s usually the genes you don’t want on that get turned on.

So what to do? Eat a diet low in inflammatory fats by decreasing meat, dairy, saturated fats, and hydrogenated oils.

• Therefore, eat more anti -inflammatory fats to decrease your Omega 6 (inflammatory fats) to Omega 3 (anti-inflammatory fats) ratio. You can do this by eating nuts, oils, and cold-water fish high in Omega 3 such as mackerel, tuna, salmon and herring.
• Fat is inflammatory and weight loss can quiet the slow burn. Take some fish oil capsules, at least 2,000 mg of the EPA+ DHA component since these quiet inflammations.
• Since oxidation accelerates inflammation, eat a rainbow of colored fruits and vegetables that have antioxidants and phytonutrients.
  Stress management is also important since it releases cortisol, a hormone that can age us if chronically elevated.
• Hormone replacement therapy can also relieve stress on your system that will allow the inflammatory response to smolder or burn.
  There may be more that you need and a metabolic anti aging medicine specialist can tailor a regimen to your needs.

In conclusion, Good nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, dietary supplements. You are not at the fate of your genes, so age with and edge.