No one welcomes those uninvited signs of aging: Wrinkles, gray hair, less personal energy, trouble sleeping… As they say, aging isn’t for the squeamish. But you can fight off the “normal” consequences of getting older when you take control of your lifestyle and put the brakes on aging. The result: you feel on top of your game and you don’t let the vagaries of age slow you down.
Aging And Anti-Aging
Periodically, we all take stock of the state of our bodies. Another New Year comes and goes and a quick look in the mirror reveals bulges, lumps, and other uncomfortable changes in your appearance. If you’re like me you contemplate how your body is holding up after all these years…amazed that your body can keep going like it does, year after year.
In my own personal assessment, I encounter an increasing supply of gray hairs. I see wrinkles creasing the skin on my face that are growing more defined. I feel that little, but persistent, ache in my low back. I notice my skin thinning, my hair thinning, my chest muscles less full and my abdominal fat more prominent.
I want to command my body “Stop aging!”
Of course, it isn’t that easy. I cannot just say a magic word and expect to reverse the aging process. That defies the law of the harvest, you reap what you sow. It is not reasonable to command aging to stop, right?
Well, actually, grabbing aging by the neck and slowing it down is not completely out of the question!
The Power of Fresh Juicing
What I have learned in my medical career is that you begin the anti-aging process by sending the right kind of anti-aging command to your body. The command is not merely a mental note. You make it concrete by putting that desire into action.
For example, are you doing fresh juicing each morning? That’s a quick way to show your body that you mean business. Juicing feeds your digestive system and your body cells with healing nutrition. Plus, it’s delightfully easy and tastes great! At breakfast, I use my juicer to make 3 cups of juice containing fresh apple, orange, carrot, and a green vegetable in less than 7 minutes (this includes clean-up time). This is the simplest initial step for you to stop aging.
Your attention to diet shouldn’t cease with breakfast. Be mindful of all the foods you eat throughout the day. A focus on eating whole foods (not processed) and making raw foods at least half your diet is a vital step toward a do-it-yourself fountain of youth. Raw fruits and vegetables slow the process of inflammation in your body and combat the slow deterioration of the body. Without this dietary foundation, taking dietary supplements is of little help in slowing the aging process.
The Wisdom Of Eating Raw Foods
Ironically, this type of anti-aging wisdom has been around quite a while. Back in 1930, in Paris at the First International Congress of Microbiology, the Swiss doctor, Paul Kouchakoff, M.D., demonstrated the benefits of raw food. His study, The Influence of Food Cooking on the Blood Formula of Man, showed that when you eat cooked food the body produces a white blood cell (leukocytosis) reaction similar to its response to a bacterial or viral infection. He found that this inflammatory process intensifies significantly when we ingest foods that are manufactured, processed, or contain chemical preservatives or dyes.
In contrast, when you eat whole foods that are cooked, the white blood cell reaction (leukocytosis) still occurs but at a much lower level. However, most remarkable is that when we eat raw foods there are no detectable leukocytosis reactions!
How this study got overlooked through the decades is beyond me! Think of the constant inflammation we are causing by eating cooked and processed foods day in and day out! And this type of inflammation may be linked to chronic conditions like arthritis and other auto-immune disorders.
Maybe this scientific evidence about the benefits of raw foods gives us insight into how Father Adam and his early generations could live for many hundreds of years.
Ditch The Daily Chemicals
What you put on your body is almost as important for anti-aging as what you put in it. Reconsider the chemicals you apply to your skin and hair each day: The cosmetics, deodorants, soaps, shampoos, fragrances, etc. Think of these as part of your daily intake of nutrients and anti-nutrients. These substances are frequently absorbed through your skin and admitted to the body. As they infiltrate your cells they can accelerate the aging process.
As a safeguard, use the more desirable soaps and shampoos made from natural herbs that are available in health food stores. If you absolutely have to have a particular fragrance wafting about your person, you are better off applying cologne or perfume on your clothing rather than directly on your skin.
Feeling Younger
The aging process is closely influenced by how you feel and the things you say and think. All of my reading, observing and personal experience have convinced me that being able to “feel good” is a necessary part of every anti-aging strategy. It is a skill that has to be learned. And a large part of feeling good derives from how you cope with stress.
Stress arrives at your body in many forms. Unnatural chemicals in food are one version and when your body confronts the stressful damaged fats and other ingredients in processed foods it reacts with measurable chemical changes. The long-term result of this stress can be cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and nearly all chronic illnesses.
Similarly, mental and emotional stress tests the body. I say the body because although you initially perceive this stress in the mind as thoughts, these thoughts lead to emotions that trigger neuro-hormonal reactions. Science has demonstrated the physiological responses that mirror how we feel when we’re “stressed out.” At those moments, when you know that life just “sucks,” your body’s inner environment is expressing the same distress.
In fact, this effect on the body is so dramatic and prolonged that I see it every day in my medical practice. In nearly all patients I treat who are in their late 30s or beyond, an assessment shows that they have chronic illness that corresponds exactly with their level of happiness in life. The more of a role stress plays in their existence, in their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, the older they look in comparison to their physical age. They also have more physical symptoms of chronic illness.
Examine Your Stress And Calm It Down
To cope with stress, make it a clear and irrefutable point to consider the quality of your thoughts and feelings in every moment. Why? Because those stressful thoughts and feelings are literally aging you!
Remember, the stress is not your stress…it is only what you choose to think of it!
Stress originates in persistent thoughts that give birth to the beliefs that create the stress. So you have to work your way back to that original thought and take away the power it has over you.
For myself, when I find myself falling into a stressful feeling, I remember how it is aging my skin, detoning my muscles and making them sag while attacking my internal organs.
I then shift out of stress, an exciting ability because the good news is that I can!
To cope with stress you can:
- Give thanks for the 10 best things in your life.
- Focus on the one dream you have that makes you the happiest. Visualize it and feel the good feelings that flow from it.
The next thing you know, wow! Your body relaxes. As your tension departs, imagine that a wonderful masseuse or masseur is giving you the best massage ever! You’ll move your body into healing mode! The affirmation I use is: “I am maintaining my youthful body and mind every moment by loving acts to my body and with the loving feelings I enjoy now!”
It doesn’t get any better, or younger, than that.
