Four Keys To Healthy Aging
by Dr Mercola,
If you had a choice and could either age well – enjoying your “golden years” with energy and vigour, free from disability and illness – or age poorly and be straddled with health issues that keep you from fully living the later years of your life, which would you choose
You do actually have a choice or, at least, can choose to use strategies that will greatly sway your chances in one direction or the other. And I’m sure most everyone reading this would rather experience healthy aging than the alternative.
Research has found four key behaviours that lower your risk of disability, chronic disease and mental health problems as you age: 1) Not smoking. 2) Moderate drinking. 3) Exercising regularly (at least 2.5 hours a week of moderate activity or 1 hour a week of vigorous activity). 4) Eating vegetables and fruits daily.
Now here’s what’s interesting. While each of these was moderately beneficial on its own, increasing the odds of “successful aging” by up to 50 percent, the best rewards came from following all of them simultaneously. Those who practised all four of these tripled their chances of avoiding disability and disease over a 16-year period and experienced good cognitive, mental, physical, respiratory and cardiovascular functioning. “Although individual healthy behaviours are moderately associated with successful aging, their combined impact is substantial,” the researchers said.
Six additional healthy aging strategies
The bottom line is the more healthy habits you embrace, the higher your chances of aging successfully become. And while the strategies listed above are all important, there are several others I believe can benefit most people greatly as well.
1. Avoid sugar/fructose: Limiting sugar in your diet is a well-known key to longevity. Of all the molecules capable of inflicting damage in your body, sugar molecules are probably the most damaging. Fructose, in particular, is an extremely potent pro-inflammatory agent that creates toxic advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which are associated with the development of chronic degenerative diseases associated with aging.
Excess fructose consumption also promotes the kind of dangerous growth of fat cells around your vital organs that are the hallmark of diabetes and heart disease. In one study, 16 volunteers who ate high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs in just 10 weeks.
Sugar/fructose also increases your insulin and leptin levels and decreases receptor sensitivity for both of these vital hormones and this is another major factor in premature aging and age-related chronic degenerative diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Keep in mind that while it’s perfectly normal for your blood sugar levels to rise slightly after every meal, it is not natural or healthy when your blood sugar levels become excessively elevated and stay that way.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what will happen if…