September is Healthy Aging Month, so here are 7 anti-aging health tips.
Growing older is not an illness, but the passing years do make the body more vulnerable to disease. Why is this? A significant number of problems faced by people over the age of 60 years may also be attributable to nutritional deficiencies that accumulate as the years pass.
Often aging is accompanied by many, many years of eating the wrong foods and exposure to toxins. From this, the body ages, its systems slow down and become less efficient. As we age, the correct nutrients are more important than ever for the support, repair, and regeneration of the cells. You must remember though that it took years for problems to develop, so it usually takes some time to resolve them as well.
Have you seen older people who look much younger, say a person who looks like they’re forty at the age of sixty? What you would find in that person’s cells are something called antioxidants, sitting in the fatty layer of the cellular membrane doing their job as protector against the consequences of aging.
How do antioxidants slow down the process?
Antioxidants protect your cell membranes from invasion by the “health vandals”. These health vandals are called “free radicals”. They have a nasty habit of stealing electrons from your body’s healthy molecules to balance themselves, in practice damaging cells and their DNA, the genetic blueprint that tells a cell how to do its job. Without a perfect copy of that DNA blueprint, a cell doesn’t know what it is supposed to do. The body is hit tens of thousands of times a day, and whether the cells stay damaged depends on the “cellular repair squads”, or the antioxidants.
There may be an accumulation of damage from the constant cellular bombardment. A cell gets hit once, the cellular repair squad comes to the rescue and cuts out the damage to the cell’s DNA blueprint, and the cell bounces back into action. But when the cell gets hit over and over again, there may come a point at which things can’t be patched back together the way it was. So, the cell continues to do its job, but not as well as it had been.
The body produces natural antioxidants to handle the “free radical damage”, but doesn’t produce enough to handle the bombardment generated by the modern world. Your body’s natural systems were not designed to handle rooms full of cigarette smoke, a diet loaded with processed foods and constant exposure to pollution.
So, the solution is to supplement your body’s natural antioxidants and take actions that will build better health as you age.
7 Tips for Healthier Aging
1) Eat More Health Building Foods
To maintain good health as you age, you need a diet rich in antioxidant nutrients, vitamins and minerals that help prevent the damage caused by oxidation.
Fruits and vegetables supply antioxidants and are excellent for improving the body’s immune system – green salads, brazil nuts, sunflower seeds and other nuts, broccoli, carrot or celery, are just some foods that provide antioxidants.
The immune system helps prevent and fight colds and other viruses, infections and even diseases such as cancer. In the your 50s and 60s, the infection-fighting cells don’t function as well, so they need extra support.
As you grow older, your body may not use the protein you eat as efficiently, so you may need to eat protein from a variety of sources.
2) Go for a walk every day
If you have not been very physically active, then start with a short walk and build up from there.
3) Don’t smoke
4) Don’t drink alcohol in excess
Never drink more than two drinks in the same day, and don’t drink every day. Give your liver a rest. Your liver has to work hard to clear alcohol, medications and environmental pollutants from the body.
5) Don’t sunbathe – ever
You probably get enough sun to produce a healthy amount of vitamin D with moderate outdoor activities, so excessive sun exposure is not needed.
6) Drink two antioxidant herb teas a day
If you’re a heavy coffee drinker, consider replacing two cups with an herb tea. Oregano, rosemary, lemon balm (also known as Melissa), peppermint, sage, spearmint and thyme have significant levels of antioxidants.
7) Take dietary supplements
Provide concentrated, nutritional support for your whole body with plant-based, dietary supplements. As your body ages, it must have concentrated nutrition to protect the health of your cells and tissues, and in turn protect you from degenerative health issues.