New Horizon Fitness
Personal Training - for living!
Personal Training - for living!
Live a healthier, longer life!
AGING
The Aging Process
Whether you are a newborn, 50, or 100, the aging process is affecting you. What is especially critical is to take steps when younger to reduce the impact of aging when you are older. The price of a poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and unmanaged stress will often remain hidden for years before the effects are manifest. The time to choose to live a longer healthier life is NOT after you have abused your body for 60-70 years.
The search for a "fountain of youth" continues. A rather controversial biomedical researcher, Dr Aubrey De Grey, has laid out a framework (see reference below) for ending aging by using an engineered approach to repair damages from each of the major mechanisms of aging. Admittedly each individual repair is fraught with huge challenges, but he believes advanced technologies like genetic engineering will get us there some day. His ideas are at least thought provoking, if not entirely feasible. His explanation of the aging process underscores the complexity involved and should dispel any illusions about single, magic bullet cures. No doubt some gains in longevity will come from the research into this subject. However, for now a more practical and applicable approach to longevity is to study the lifestyles of the people presently living long healthy lives.
This page is really just a lead in to my main essay on Understanding the Aging Process, grouped with the two other web pages I composed to cover this subject, see below. I included other references and books to take you as deep into the subject as you would like.
Whether you are a newborn, 50, or 100, the aging process is affecting you. What is especially critical is to take steps when younger to reduce the impact of aging when you are older. The price of a poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and unmanaged stress will often remain hidden for years before the effects are manifest. The time to choose to live a longer healthier life is NOT after you have abused your body for 60-70 years.
The search for a "fountain of youth" continues. A rather controversial biomedical researcher, Dr Aubrey De Grey, has laid out a framework (see reference below) for ending aging by using an engineered approach to repair damages from each of the major mechanisms of aging. Admittedly each individual repair is fraught with huge challenges, but he believes advanced technologies like genetic engineering will get us there some day. His ideas are at least thought provoking, if not entirely feasible. His explanation of the aging process underscores the complexity involved and should dispel any illusions about single, magic bullet cures. No doubt some gains in longevity will come from the research into this subject. However, for now a more practical and applicable approach to longevity is to study the lifestyles of the people presently living long healthy lives.
This page is really just a lead in to my main essay on Understanding the Aging Process, grouped with the two other web pages I composed to cover this subject, see below. I included other references and books to take you as deep into the subject as you would like.
THE BLUE ZONE WEBSITE:
Why are the lessons from the Ikaria, Greece Blue Zone so important? Our team has discovered that over one-third of everyone in the northeastern end of Ikaria reaches age 90. They suffer 20% less cancer and half the rate of heart disease. And there’s virtually no dementia. In other words, they’re living the good years many of us are missing. Years we could possibly have by just adjusting a few simple habits.
Written by Dan Buettner
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:
Mize John, "Understanding The Aging Process" newhorizonfitness.com (2009): 1-5
Anti-Aging Natural Solutions and Exceptional Aging - Make up the other 2 parts of my trilogy on aging.
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American Federation For Aging Research. Website, many good articles.
Blue Zones. A website and also a book of the same name that is an examination of people and environments, "Blue Zones" where longevity is common.
De Grey, Aubrey. Ending Aging. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2007
Elia, E. A. “Exercise and the elderly.” Clinics in Sports Medicine 10 (1991): 141-155
Espel, Elissa, et al. “Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101.49 (2004): 17312-15
Oz, Mehmet and Michael Roizen. You Staying Young The Owners Manual for Extending Your Warranty. New York: Free Press, 2007.
Willcox, D. Craig, et al. “Genetic determinants of exceptional human longevity” AGE 28 (2006) 313-332
