Living a long healthy life is essentially up to each individual. We all want to live as long as we can, even those of us with health issues and those who make poor lifestyle choices. What happens when you get your wish and live unexpectedly longer than you or your physician ever thought was possible? You still have to survive financially and hopefully remain physically capable. Longevity sounds fabulous for most until they begin advancing in age and those nagging chronic ailments rear their ugly heads. Life gets more difficult as you get older – it just does folks.
If you are going to live a long life you better start planning for it right away. I believe it was Mickey Mantle who famously said “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself” and no truer words have been spoken regarding age! Anyone reading this bit of text just now has made the first step to enjoying optimized longevity. Most folks do not plan ahead for the things that occur as we age that can obscure a once clear vision of growing elderly. Think of it as planning for your 401k, only having the good health to spend it.
You have to plan for living an extended life because even the most passive of us winds up with some physical breakdown over the years. There is available research that states that upwards of eighty eight percent of United States inhabitants over age sixty five have some form of ongoing medical problem. As tough as this is to deal with it is a fact of life for most of us that we will be living with some medical ailment in old age. Would it not be great though, if we could safeguard ourselves from most of these chronic health issues?
Chronic means ongoing and an ongoing medical malady is classified as a condition that lasts longer than three months. The longer a person lives, the more likely they are to experience a chronic medical problem. These medical ailments just do not occur suddenly. Usually these problems are a culmination of other factors that have been happening over a number of years such as smoking, excessive drinking, not exercising enough and overeating.
Ongoing Medical Situations
• Arthritis – Rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and Polymyalgia rheumatica;
• Hearing impairment – Tinnitus, Requiring hearing aids, Presbycusis, Ototoxicity;
• Conditions about the mouth – Periodontal disease, bone loss, false teeth, soft tissue trouble, dental implants, diabetes, gum disease, oral hygiene and health;
• Malignancy – prostate cancer, lung cancer, bladder cancer, melanoma, gallbladder cancer, stomach cancer, breast, mouth cancer, colo-rectal cancer, skin cancer (non-melanoma), liver cancer;
• Cardiovascular illnesses – vascular disease, stroke, myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular illness, angina pectoris, hypertension, peripheral artery disease, heart failure, TIA, arrhythmia;
• Chronic Pain Conditions – Neuralgia, joint pain, shoulder pain, painful feet, hands and hips, back pain and many more;
• Diabetes Mellitus – Type two diabetes causes blindness, limb amputation, circulation trouble, kidney ailments;
It is possible to live an extended life and remain fairly healthy while doing so. The first thing that must happen is to respect our bodies more. This esteem for our body occurs in numerous ways.
• Watching what we eat more closely. Hippocrates, he of the famous oath and ancient Greek healer stated “Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food”. Pretty good advice for an old timer!
• Maintaining a proper bodyweight. When we add pounds to our frame we also add the risk of developing medical complications such as type 2 diabetes, sky high cholesterol, heart disease, hypertension, vascular diseases and other major medical headaches to contend with.
Calorie restriction is now being discussed by experts as a means of living longer as well as healthier. One specific medical pathologist has spent two decades studying how diet and genetic alterations could make the aging process occur more slowly. His breadth of research included monkeys, rodents etc that had experienced caloric limitation and experienced many different physical as well as mental advantages. There was less joint pain, better mental acuity, and fewer eye diseases. There is much to be learned from our diets.
• Quit smoking Tobacco [or anything else!] – When you smoke, you are causing undue stress and harm to each major organ in your system. Stopping the filthy habit will at least give you better odds at an extended life while aiding in the prevention of lung conditions, heart problems and cancer.
• Keeping Physically Active – Probably the most important advice here is to keep moving to keep fit. That includes anything that gets you moving about like walking, riding a bike, hiking, extreme gardening, extreme bowling, you get the idea. Setting up a small home gym could save your life but short of that have some form of exercise you can do at home, like resistance band training.
• Be Sure To Get Adequate Sleep – It has been calculated that approximately forty million Americans have a sleep problem of some kind. They are being deprived of sleep by various disorders which is unfortunate since we need sleep to live an extended life. A lack of sleep will affect us physically by assisting in the development of diabetes mellitus based on a study conducted four years ago. Sleep deprivation affects the glucose regulation. Only sleeping for five hours each night has been linked to eight gain, memory trouble, inability to focus and a higher probability for heart disease [coronary artery calcification].
• Be Sure To Always Use Sun Block – The rays from the sun are quite harmful, especially in the last twenty or thirty years. UV rays will cause your skin to age prematurely causing wrinkles and creases. You will also be at risk from skin cancers – specifically the quite deadly melanoma.
• Maintaining Oral Health – Be sure you floss each day. Research has revealed that poor oral hygiene causes more trouble than just periodontal or gum disease. There is a connection to heart disease, osteoporosis, lung ailments and a huge association to diabetes as well.
• Find A Way To Rid Your Life Of Stress – Experts the world over claim and medical science researchers now verify that stress is a major contributor to aging and certainly therefore an enemy of longevity. Extended periods of stress in one’s life can be hazardous to health contributing to illnesses such as hyperglycemia, high cholesterol, heart disease and you could enter into severe depression.
Some ways to beat stress are to get plenty of exercise, meditation, go for long walks, listening to soothing music, writing in a journal, begin to practice positive thinking and be optimistic about life, try taking up a new hobby.
• Begin Taking A Good Health Supplement With Antioxidants – There is not much good to say about the diets western society punishes themselves with. Even when we eat plenty of healthy foods, they rarely maintain their nutritional value once we finish preparing them. Most of the food in our supermarkets is so highly processed and refined that the level of antioxidants is greatly reduced. It is for this reason that we need to supplement our diets with antioxidants that are missing from the foods we consume.
Free radical activity is stronger than ever before and we are in mortal combat with this minute but eventually deadly foe. We should also be getting a strong multivitamin with minerals to make up for a lack of essential vitamins and minerals also missing from our diet. If our meals consist of thrown together prepared foods or fast food from restaurants, we need to begin supplementing now. Resveratrol is the latest media darling but it has shown itself to be quite an effectual antioxidant.
Medical science is researching resveratrol quite relentlessly and the findings are actually pretty amazing. Resveratrol is responsible for lowering cholesterol, stroke prevention, heart protection and far too many more benefits to mention here. It would behoove the reader to hurry out and purchase a resveratrol supplement. It would also be a good idea to find a supplement that has ample resveratrol properties but also is combined with another antioxidant such as green tea extract or something similar.
Living for a long time does not need to be a harrowing experience and it is not something that you should begin to fret about. You simply must start doing the necessary things today to prepare for tomorrow. From a health perspective we need to focus our efforts on sustaining an appropriate level of fitness so we can enjoy our extended years. Think how great life will be when we have a chance to enjoy it in our golden years when we will be not only financially healthy but physically healthy as well.
Anti Aging Supplements, Gerontology, Health And Aging, Longevity
Fri, Jul 16, 2010
Anti Aging Supplements, Gerontology, Health And Aging, Longevity