Get your Shit together!
90% of your health is not determined by your genes! But by your inputs!
-Paul Farmer, Power of Accompaniment
Even before CoVid, our life expectancy was going down, and since has gone down even more. Western Medicine is amazing, but we stop at treating symptoms, not the cause, and often too late once discovered. We spend Four Trillion per year in healthcare, and in the next five years we’re projected to spend upwards of Ninety-Five Trillion dollars in chronic disease treatment that’s almost entirely preventable! Every dollar we spend on food, we spend THREE dollars on downstream costs.
That kinda sucks. And what sucks more, for many of us, is the last twenty years of life could be spent in poor health, fighting chronic disease, disease that could have been slowed, prevented, and even reversed.
You know I like perspective, so let’s look at it another way! Peter Attia, M.D., dedicates his life to the study of longevity, likes to think of healthy aging as enhancing our Healthspan to equal our Lifespan. He suggests to age well, we should strive to enhance our quality of life, our healthspan, in these three categories:
1. COGNITIVE: Decline in executive function, processing speed, and memory
2. PHYSICAL: Decline in stability, flexibility, mobility, strength, muscle mass, bone density, aerobic efficiency, anaerobic output, freedom from pain, and sexual function.
3. EMOTIONAL: Decline in social support, relationships, sense of purpose, fulfillment, and relationality.
WHILE DEATH IS ABSOLUTE AND INEVITABLE, A LOSS OF THE THREE ELEMENTS OF HEALTHSPAN ARE NOT.
We need to think of aging differently, we have our chronological age (60) but we also have our biological age (30 years or vice versa!) which is TRUE age, the health of our biology. It is possible to reverse our biological age, even as we grow chronologically older!
I know this sounds like some sci-fi shit based on some book from the future, but this is real, peer-reviewed and researched data we are uncovering NOW!
So let’s talk about what causes harm to our biology?
1. Predisposing factors like environmental exposure & genetics
2. Fundamental LIFESTYLE factors such as diet, exercise & sleep
3. Mental & Emotional health such as loneliness and past trauma
So what are the big rocks we can attack to increase our healthspan, maintain our energy, independence, and thrive as we get older? Let’s visit with Dr. Peter Attia, once again, listed in order of importance:
1. EXERCISE
2. SLEEP
3. NUTRITION
4. MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH
5. MEMETICS (Medications, Supplements, Activation Therapies)
I’d like to add that ALL of these contribute to the real drivers of aging:
CHRONIC STRESS, POOR GUT HEALTH, LOWERED IMMUNITY, INFLAMMATION
Yep, I know you hear it from me all the time. I’m like a broken record, but I’m not wrong! Everything you PUT INTO your body is INFORMATION. Your body reacts to this information by expressing the genes you want or you don’t want. It’s your choice.
1. MOVE. I don’t care what it is, just move your body throughout the day! A lot of us exercise every day for 30-60 minutes, but then we SIT behind a desk for the other 12 hours of the day. NOT GOOD. Get up and fucking MOVE! Park farther from the store, walk to the mailbox, use the bathroom upstairs, clean the house, do some laundry.
2. SLEEP. Seriously, go the fuck to sleep. Why are you staying up until midnight on a weekday? Then waking up at six o’clock for to get the kids to school? Your body needs sleep to heal, repair, and renew. If you’re not sleeping, you are not thriving, your body clock is off and you are living in a constant state of low-grade, chronic stress. And it is slowly killing you. FIND A WAY.
3. EAT. You’ve heard it before, WHOLE FOODS. Stay away from liquid calories, fried foods, processed foods, and alcohol. Here is that word… CONSISTENT. If you eat this way 80% of the time, you can allow some of these other foods now and then with no detrimental effects! But too many of us are eating the crap 80% of the time, and thinking the 20% is gonna save us. It’s not enough. DO BETTER.
4. STRESS. I am sorry, but I am going to say it. Your job, your relationships, your past trauma might be killing you. If you can’t make changes, then you better reframe your views, change your perspective on what you really need to be worrying about. Chronic stress is the #1 driver of inflammation and effects everything downstream. Self-care is a buzz word for a reason, DO IT. Find a way to take breaks during the day, get out in nature, talk to a friend or a therapist, read self-help books, journal, move your body, take a nap.
5. MEMETICS. Artificial ways to induce the repair and renew crew in your body, little tricks to activate those longevity genes. Get your heart rate up really high through hard exercise a few times a week, keep your meal times and sleep times the same each day, go longer periods between eating, find a sauna and then jump in an ice bath, sit under an infrared light, practice nasal breathing protocols, exercise at a higher altitude, and finally look into supplements like Reservatrol, Vitamin D, Quercitin, and Curcumin.
Take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff, and activate your body’s own internal mechanisms for healing and repairing! And then you have the key to longevity!
