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About anti-aging and health maintainance

The causes of disease and aging

The aging process is for the greater part no mystery anymore. It consists for a great part of daily damages done on the macroscopic, tissue, cellular and genetic levels. These add  up as the years are passing. These damages have specific causes like oxidating agents, sun beams, mechanical wear and tear, psychological stress, lack of some nutritional components and too much of others, like fat.

Another component of aging is the reduction of the telomere chains at the chromosome ends, as each cell division occurs. When these are shortended enough, cells stop dividing. However, the body has means to repair these ends again, with an enzyme called telomerase. The rapidity of the aging process depends on lack of efficiency in this repair process. The above mention aging causes also slow down this repair process.

The factors causing aging, also causes other diseases like cancer and  coronary heart disease. Both aging and these diseases can in great extend be prevented with the knowledge possessed today, and the damages can in great extend be reversed.

General principles for prevention of aging changes and disease

Aging can in a great extend be prevented, and disease can be avoided by applying certain general principles:

- Give your body all the nutrients it needs to work, develop, to use as tools for the immune system and to repair daily damage, that is: Proteins, carbohydrates, the right fat types, vitamins and minerals.

- Avoid over-load of specific nutrients, for example fat and sugar.

- Avoid physical impact and substances that cause oxidation of body constituents or other types of damage.

- Take anti-oxydants to avoid oxidation of body constituents by free radicals.

- Do physical and mental training to stimulate the systems you have in your body and mind for fighting against damage and for repair of damage.

- Stimulate the systems you have for fighting against disease and damage by using approriate herbs and stimulants.

- Give yourself enough daily rest and nightly sleep so your body and mind get enough time to repair damage and keep internal order.

Practical methods to prevent aging changes and to maintain good health

Here are listed practical ways to keep good health and prevent aging, based on the depicted general principles:

a. Advices about the diet

-Adequate dayly food containing whole cereals, peas, beans, vegetables, fruit, fish, mushroms, fouls  and seafood, and with just a moderate amount of red meat.

-You should consume just a moderate amount of fat, but you will need some fat.

-Ideally most fat one eats, should be of the type mono-unsaturated. One also needs some poly-unsaturated fat of the types omega-3, and omega 6, but not too much of omega-6. The consume of saturated fat should be very little.

 - In order to achieve right fat balance, you should cover your need for fat by using a combination of the following fat sources:

A. Mono-unsaturated fat sources: olives and olive oil, canola oil, rape oil, almonds and oil from almonds, peanuts and peanut oil, cashew and oil from cashew, pecan and pecan oil, hickory nuts and oils form these, hazel nuts and hazel oil, pistachio and pistachio oil, macadamia and oil from this source, filbert and filber oil, avocado and avocado oil. Much of the oils you add to the food or use in warm cooking should come from this group. Oils from this group is fairly resistive to heat and can be used for gentle frying.

B. Omega-3 fat sources like fat fish and seafood, fish oil and other marine oils, flaxseeds, flaxseed oil, perilla, perilla oil.  These oils do not tolerate heating and should therefor not be used for frying or during hoot cooking. These oils are best added to the food after heating. You should add some of these oils to your food in order to get enough omega-6 fatty acids.

C. Omega-6 fat sources like soy oil, sunflower seeds, sunflower oil, corn oil, safflower seads, safflower oil grape seed, grapesed oil, cotton seeds, cottonseed oil,  soy beans, soy oil , walnuts, walnut oil, corn oil, sesame, sesame oil, wheat germ and weatgerm oil. These oil types tolerate warming better than omega-3-oils, but they should not be used for frying, even though this is common.

Sunflower seeds, soy beens, sesame, corn and oils extracted form these sources also contain mono-usaturated fat.

-Do not use only butter, soy oil, corn oil and palm oil as your  fat source. A high consumption of these fat sources gives you too much saturated fat or poly-unsaturated omega-6-fat.

-Avoid chemically altered fat (trans-fat), like the fat you often find in margarine and are often added to bread, cookies and snacks. This type of fat is vary dangerous to your health.

-You should use just a very moderate amount of sugar, refined flour or refined cereals. A high consume from these sources will give you a blood sugar content that is swinging from very high to very low. This is very harmful for your body and well being, and can give you diabetes, heart disease and other health problems.

- Some food types enforce the resistance of the body against injury and the ability to reapair manifest damages, and thereby work antiagingly. Thomatos is one of these. Tomatos are especially good for the health an youth of the skin. This effect is probably due to the red pigment on the tomato skin, lycopene.

b. Advices about tranquilizers and stimulants

-You should have just a moderate consume of tranquilizers and stimulants as alcohol and coffeine. However, In moderate amounts these substances are good for your health, and helps to slow down the aging process.

-No smoking or tobacho usage. Smoking is dangerous in any amount. Even passive smoking can give distinct health damage. The dangerous effects of smoking are not proportional to the amount. One cigarette a day will give you significant damage. !0 cigarettes a day will of course be worse, but not 10 times worse. On the other hand, if you smoke 10 cigarettes a day, and you decide to decrease your consume to 2 cigarettes, you will be in a better position, but not very much. The only safe way is to avoid smoking totally.
 

c. Advices about nutritional supplements

-Most persons will benefit from supplements of specific substances like vitamins, minerals, lecitin and some essential fatty acids. The way crops are grown these days make the food deficit in these substances, and a supplement is therefore necessary.

-You will need supplements of anti-oxidants to slow down the aging process and avoid damage that can cause cancer, heart disease and other seriuos conditions. Many vitamins and minerals are also anti-oxidants, like vitamine C and vitamine E. Other anti-oxidants are specific compound found in the nature, like bioflavonides. Anti-oxidants are often found in vegatables or fruits with strong colors or strong taste. Therefore eating such food or using much spices will also help you to get enough anti-oxidants.

The necessary amount of supplements you need to add to your diet, like vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidative agents, depends upon your health condition, how exhausting your work is, or how much noxious impacts you get from your environment.

You will need more than a person in an ordinary situation if your digestive system does not work optimally, if you have an arduous work, if you perform high performance sport activities or if your environment is physically and chemically stressful.

- You may benefit from using special substances that stimulate yur immune system or the repair processes in your body. Human growth hormone releasers are among these.

d. Advices about training, rest and stress reduction

-Adequate and regular training is necessary. The training shall gives both a muscular load, work up your condition and stretch out your body. To stretch out, yoga-exercizes are ideal.

-Adequate rest and stress-reduction is also something you should provide daily. Daily meditation is a method of achieving this. Natural relaxing agents or spesific tools for meditation or relaxation may also be useful.

-A good sleep most nights is a requisite to give your body apportunity to recover from damage. You should sleep 6-8 hours each night, and ideally you should get to bed before 11 o'clock. A siesta in the middle of the day is a good habit, but not many people can do this because of the demands from the employer. If you take such a siesta, 6 hours sleep in the night can be enough, if not 8 hours sleep can be necessary.

e. Protection of your skin

-You must protect your skin against excessive sun exposure. You shall however not avoid sun exposure to your skin alltogether. Some sun exposure stimulate your body and is good for your health. If you expose your skin for a prolonged period, you must use some protective agent upon your skin from the sun rays.

-Use of spesific natural anti-aging agents to apply upon the skin surface can be useful to stimulate the repair process in the skin.  Natural oils that contain fat-soluble vitamins and mono-unsaturated fatty acids , like olive oil, or products containing such oils are useful for this purpose. These oils however, do not protect against the sun rays, but can stimulate the repair from sun damage.

By Knut Holt

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This information is nutritional in nature and should not be construed as medical advice. This notice is required by the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.