Healthy Aging
Aging is inevitable. How we age is open to lots of options. The other day I saw a friend’s family picture taken over the holidays. It showed two generations, the older group being in their 50s and 60s, and the younger generation in their 30’s. My friend was part of the older group, but looking at the picture you would have put her in with her younger relatives. It was quite the pictorial testimonial for what a healthy lifestyle can look like from the outside.
One of the underlying causes of many of the so-called chronic diseases of aging–like arthritis, high blood pressure, adult-onset diabetes, and plaque in the arteries–is inflammation. While inflammation is the body’s natural defense mechanism to protect against threats and help with repair, internal chronic low-level inflammation can wreck havoc with the body.
So how do you tell if this is happening to you? Are you highly stressed, have joint and muscle stiffness, fatigue easily? Do you have adult onset diabetes or high blood pressure? Of course other things could be behind these symptoms and conditions but inflammation is a definite possibility. A definitive way to determine if you have inflammation would be to have a blood test that measures C-Reactive Protein (CRP).
The best way to avoid or eliminate chronic low level inflammation is to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Stay physically active, eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables, get enough sleep, and make time to have fun.
Common causes of inflammation
- Stress
- Allergies
- Sugar
- Processed foods
- Wheat
- Trans fats
- Excessive weight
- Insulin resistance
Ways to eliminate inappropriate inflammation include:
- Manage stress. Exercise, go for a walk, stop and take deep breaths.
- Eliminate allergens. If you are reacting to certain foods, either eliminate them from your diet or try an allergy elimination technique like NeuroModulation Technique (nmt.md).
- Avoid sugar. Decrease (or ideally) eliminate sugar from your diet.
- Avoid processed foods. These foods usually contain high amounts of trans fats that wreak havoc with the body, even to the point of changing the very nature of your cells.
- Get more omega-3 fatty acids. Increase the amount of wild caught fish that you eat. Nuts are also a good source of omega-3s. Or take a good quality fish oil.
- Increase anti-inflammatory foods. Eat more of these foods that have anti-inflammatory properties.
- Fruits especially berries
- Vegetables
- Basil
- Garlic
- Tumeric
- Onions
- Fish (wild caught) For a more complete list, check out Dr. Weil’s food pyramid, http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART02995/Dr-Weil-Anti-Inflammatory-Food-Pyramid.html
- Move more. Exercise is a very important component to decrease inflammation. It can lower the excess stress that actually will cause inflammation. It can help reduce weight, and excess fat actually has chemicals that promote inflammation. It helps decrease insulin resistance. It will increase circulation and better enable the body to eliminate the accumulation of inflammatory chemicals.
So while aging is inevitable, we have some choices about how that will occur. Eating in a way that nurtures the body, decreasing stress, exercise, eliminating allergies will go a long way towards ensuring that we not only get to those golden years, but we enjoy them.
