Aging and disease are intimately related so focus on preventing lifestyle diseases like cancer and heart disease, otherwise known as secondary aging. Chronic illnesses both cut life short and make it miserable. However, you can prevent that!
Primary vs. Secondary Aging
Longevity really depends on your genes, the length of telomeres , and how well you prevent chronic illness that can cut your life short.
Genetic factors are inherited, but the way they play out IS under your control. You can have more longevity by staying healthy and disease free.
Some strategies for avoiding lifestyle diseases are:
- Avoiding or quitting smoking
- Getting the right exercise
- Eat a nutritious diet and avoid junk foods
- Avoid overuse of prescription medications
- Do not use recreational drugs
- Get the required amount of sound sleep every night
I will outline strategies for doing so on this website, but of course it’s up to you to follow them, or at least use them as a guide as you navigate your way toward better health. As you will see many of these conditions are related and share the same root causes as cardiometabolic syndrome and hypertension (elevated blood pressure).
Good Health Is A Choice
Aging and disease are sometimes taken as being one in the same. Many people don’t understand that disease comes from poor nutrition and lack of proper exercise, not age. While it is true that the body deteriorates with age, aging and nutrition are related so good health can be maintained into advanced age if by making the right lifestyle choices.
Lifestyle diseases involve a choice by people to neglect the proper care of their body. You can make the choice to avoid these by building wellness into the way you live on a day-to-day basis. Believe it or not, it isn’t all that hard. It’s just a matter of habits!
Read about the Okinawa lifestyle and how it allows them to have the highest average lifespan in the developed world!
Many people have misconceptions about health, nutrition, and exercise. They believe it means giving up all of the things that are fun, taste good, ect.
Good health is a choice The truth is that you CAN enjoy life to the fullest and stay healthy doing it! The rate of aging is very much under our control.
My job is to show you how by giving you information on aging and disease and pointing you toward great products and resources to make it possible for you to live a better life, by avoiding secondary aging, such as brain aging, as much as possible.
Focus On What You Can Control
The relationship between aging and disease is sometimes deliberately distorted to make you believe that certain diseases are inevitable with age, like arthritis, heart disease, and dementia. You can prevent these conditions despite what you may have been told.
The impression that the media gives is that genetics is destiny, and that if you have a family history of a certain disease, you are destined to suffer from it.
Or that you have to have a gene for longevity to enjoy a long life. I call this popular mythology. Lifestyle diseases are totally preventable.
While it’s true that secondary aging is “related to your age,” it is not dependent on age. These conditions are more likely to affect older people because years of unhealthy eating and lack of exercise has its consequences.
Take Control of Your Heath
Some of the topics on this site may not seem to be directly related to antiaging, but the relationship between aging and lifestyle diseases makes it necessary to include them, and show you how they can be avoided, or even reversed if possible.
Check out my anti-aging blog as I will be posting items of interest that I come across sometimes on a daily basis. The bottom line about aging and disease is that both are very much under your control, if you have the right information and the will.
The Antiaging Diet – Key To Longevity