How to live longer and reverse aging
Aging is slowly becoming a disease that can be managed
Have you ever thought about how it would feel if you could go back when you were 10 or 20 years younger? There has been ongoing studies and new evidence on aging. While there are no definitive treatments yet on reversing the clock, there are plenty of things you can do that can help you slow down the aging process and help you feel young again.
You might have heard or read names like; ‘’biohacking’’, ‘’longevity hacker’’, ‘’anti-aging’’ and they all have in common the goal of making us not only live longer but also feel and look younger. There is no point of just living longer if the quality of life does not change. A patient that has been diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions will live a few more years with the current treatments that we have but might not fully enjoy them due to its side effects or inevitable complications. That same patient will later be restricted to perform minimum activity, bound to a wheelchair, or worse, bedridden.
Studies have shown that our ancestors did not have many of the chronic diseases that plague us today like high blood pressure, problems with sugar, heart attacks and cancer. All these are responsible for causing early death of men and women at a not so old age worldwide. Most of it is due to our fast-paced modern lifestyle, and technology has moved forward a lot faster than what our bodies can keep up.
Trying to reverse aging is not only about living longer but staying healthier throughout our lifespan. Many of the current drugs that we use to treat these chronic conditions help people live a few more years. The problem of ONLY relying on these medications and their side effects, is ignoring their root cause and the complications that will eventually appear.
There is no doubt that aging is a part of life, but we have grown accustomed to thinking that with age comes also chronic diseases and we will all eventually wind up in a wheelchair wearing diapers and alone living in a home care. This is not true since there is a lot of evidence that shows how healthy elderly people have minimal decline in their mental capacities.
The true process of reversing our time clock has to do with implementing changes in ourselves from many different aspects that will lead to improve brain health. If we protect the health of our brain, we are also improving the health of our body.
Why is brain health important?
Even though we often treat conditions in the brain separately, it has to do a lot with what is going on in our bodies. The brain is sensitive to those changes and is negatively affected when there are imbalances and not getting enough nutrients or excess of harmful products. For example, many studies have shown how there is a gut-brain connection. If our gut health is not in check, many toxins can make their way through the gut to our circulation and will eventually affect the brain. This can sometimes appear as brain fog or depression. That is one example of the many ways a different organ can affect our brain without us knowing it. If this continues for many years and decades, it will later cause disease like Alzheimer.
How do we protect our brain’s health?
Our brain has many mechanisms that allows for the body to prevent harm from many outside dangers. One of them is physical, which is our skull. It is a hard bone that protects us from trauma. Despite the protection, we can still have repercussions which have been shown in athletes in high contact sports. Many represent dementia or Alzheimer’s disease later in life due to repeated head trauma.
Another mechanism for protection is called the blood-brain barrier. These are selective cells found in our brain’s circulation that prevents toxic chemicals or infections to reach the cells in the brain. Despite of this, our brain is still affected by many of them, and this later can cause symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, or mood changes like depression. There is also a type of Alzheimer caused by exposure to various of these toxins.
What other things can affect the brain?
Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid no harm to the brain but there are certain factors that can affect us and accelerate this process.
We had already talked about brain injury. The repeated effect of brain trauma can have complications later in life like Alzheimer’s disease.
Systemic inflammation can be due to many factors like gut or systemic infections, environmental toxins, autoimmune conditions, and food intolerances. These will eventually affect the brain if the inflammation crosses the blood-brain barrier.
Hormonal imbalances can also affect the brain. There are mechanisms that allow the regulation of it but can be affected if there is a mismatch between the over or under production of them.
Blood sugar problems can also affect the brain since it is the main fuel for its correct functioning. Alzheimer’s dementia has been called Diabetes type 3due to insulin resistance inside the brain. (1)
Poor circulation can affect the brain’s oxygen delivery. This can be affected due to problems with the circulation itself or conditions like anemia that will not deliver enough oxygen to the brain.
It is important to point out that brain health equals body health as well. Especially in the context of aging. If we can avoid all these factors, our brain cells will age slower and even reverse with the right treatments.
What can we do to live longer?
To live longer we must focus on our brain’s health. Many studies have found that 20% of longevity is linked to the genes we have inherited. That means if your parents lived a long life, you will also too. Fortunately, the other 80% is up to us. We can live 12-14 years longer by just making a few changes in lifestyle. These are:
Doing enough exercise
Avoid tobacco
Avoid alcohol
Eat well
Sleep well
Control your weight
Many of these changes are nothing new and most of us have heard them at some point in our lives or they just instinctively make sense. The difficult part is how to include them in our modern lifestyle, and how we can make it work for us. We have better results by doing it with the guidance of a professional who is familiar with an integrative approach.
The true guidelines that allow you to achieve overall health and longevity are these:
Don’t just worry about Macronutrients. It is best to focus on the micronutrients instead, like Vitamins B12, D and minerals. (2)(3)
Go for diets that are higher on healthy fats. These will help balance the omega 3s to omega 6s ratio and will reduce chronic inflammation.
Prioritize gut health. Make sure to get your gut tested for any signs of inflammation that can affect your gut absorption of healthy nutrients.
Limit food toxicity by avoiding industrial seed oils, processed foods and sugar.
Stay active during the day. Do not spend too much time sitting down or just exercise at certain times after being inactive all day. (4)
Focus on quality sleep. That means enough hours per day and avoid interrupted sleep. (5)
Keep your mind active by reading or doing brain exercises. There are many new apps now that are user friendly and can be used for just a few minutes a day.
There are also several treatments in the form of supplements, herbs and nutraceuticals that can also provide help in many areas. The goal is not to take them all blindly and in bulk. It is more productive to get tested first to find any insufficiencies or existing infections that would need to be treated first. Then it is easier to just supplement the necessary amount or work on a specific area.
There are many new treatments that aim at repairing our cells and promoting hormone balance. An example of these are natural peptides. These mimic our natural hormones and promote health growth in different areas. Other treatments are with Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. These replace hormones that have stopped being developed in our bodies and have minimized side effects in contrast to the synthetic ones. It has been proven in women with menopause that have received treatment with bioidentical estrogen therapy to improve their cardiovascular health. There are many supplements like Resveratrol, NAD (6) and medications like metformin that have also had an impact on life extension.
All this is just a small extract of what can be accomplished with the guidance of a practitioner knowledgeable in this area. Make sure to work with someone you feel comfortable with and can help you get on your way to a better health and start reversing your age.
References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246646/https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2000/b12-deficiency-may-be-more-widespread-than-thought/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5891641/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1332529/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5449130/https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-022-00002-7