Is Age Just a Number?
A recent study by Duke University reported that the process of aging is highly variable among even young people in their teens, early twenties and early thirties.
Young people who are aging rapidly show early stages of physical and cognitive impairment, leading to early dementia symptoms.
This is why improving health through diet and exercise is important from a young age and throughout life. It improves the state of all our organs, leading to a positive imbalance between chronological and biological age.
Biological age is a measure of how quickly your body systems are declining.
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Slow Down Aging: Resistance Training
Drop down and give me 50. No? How about 5 then?
Studies show time and time again that resistance training is one of the most potent weapons against biological aging.
Sarcopenia is the name given to the age-related loss of muscle mass and it's associated with declining strength, endurance, power, vigor, resilience, increased body fat and lethargy. Do any of these sound familiar? Strength training programs can not only halt age related muscle loss, but even result in muscle gains in people in their sixties, seventies and beyond.
It's never too late to start exercises like squats, lunges, deadlifts, pushups, pull ups and bench presses. But always seek medical advice before starting any exercise program.
Slow Down Aging: Take the Stairs
I once spent 3 years doing an IT contract for a company whose office building comprised just 3 levels.
At one time, there was an issue with the elevator that put it out of commission for 3 days.
It didn't affect me, as I never used the elevator. I either ran up the stairs or carried my bike (a small group of us used to go bike riding at lunch time.) But there were four women working on the third level who simply didn't come in to work for those three days.
They weren't elderly, frail or handicapped. Just fat. And guess why?
While consistent, structured, exercise is important, simply living a physical life and taking walks, climbing stairs, doing the gardening, swimming, playing sports or anything else that gets you up and moving on a daily basis is as important as anything else. Simply keeping your body moving is the greatest protector against aging that I know of.
Slow Down Aging: Mediterranean Diet with Fish and Olive Oil
The Mediterranean diet has consistently been linked to aging slowdown and living longer and, most importantly, better.
One of the most consistent findings associated with a Mediterranean diet is that it is protective of the brain and helps slow or even stop the cognitive decline that comes with aging.
In an older population, a Medi-terranean diet supplemented with olive oil or nuts is associated with improved cognitive function.
Foods that are included in the Mediterranean diet are fish, poultry, fruits, vegetables, olive oil, seeds, nuts, legumes and the occasional glass of red wine.
Slow Down Aging with Sex
For one of the best ways to slow down aging, have a look at Sex and Seniors: The Hidden Truth
See also 4 More Ways to Slow Down Aging
Thanks so much for sharing this!
You’ve really put it together in such an easy way to follow.
I’ve heard about taking the stairs before but I didn’t realise resistance training was such a good way to slow down ageing.
The Mediterranean diet does sound like a great way to to do it because of those oils!
Have you written an article about the effects of sex too?
Thanks again
Mike
Yes I have Mike. Check out Sex and Seniors: The Hidden Truth.
Short and simple post! But it covers the basic ingredients to remain healthy – exercise and diet. Age is rightly just a number in the head. Its not age, but how you mature and remain fit with age, is what matters. I agree exercise has to to imbibed early into our childhood and continue doing it and of course seek medical attention to know what kind of exercise regime to follow as we get older, not harming our muscle but gaining muscle strength. It’s not only physical heath but also mental heath that we need to take care of. You could write another post for that! Overall, a good read.
You’re spot on, Rudolph. Exercise and Diet. Diet and Exercise. It’s so fucking simple but everyone wants a pill they can take instead. I will be doing a post around mental attitude as well further down the track.
Wow I can’t believe it, people don’t come to work just because they don’t want to climb 3 levels of staircase? That sounds really ridiculous to me!
I agree with you that exercise, good diet, or healthy lifestyle in general helps to slow down aging. I have read that people who eat too much junk food age faster than those who don’t. Sugar especially, when taken in excess can cause the skin to lose its elasticity too!
Yep, I said 4 people but I think it might’ve been more. And what was the common denominator? They were FAT. They undoubtedly did no exercise and ate plenty of junk food. They probably had kids and will probably die young. I despair.
Thanks for this piece of information, I happen to be a victim of this circumstance, before now i don’t do exercise and don’t care about what I eat and I started seeing me got fat and older, my tummy started getting too big for my age, will exercise alone help me in getting myelf back or I should back it up with supplements?
You don’t need supplements. They can only assist someone who’s well along the strength training path. Your best bet is a combined diet and exercise program. You should get my book 4 Minute Keto: Turn Your Body Into a Lean, Mean Fat-Burning Machine, available on Amazon for $9.99.
Such a great article about aging, continues exercises is a really a great way of slowing down aging process, the Mediterranean diet, exercising always even from a young age we should always learn to practice it, keeping the body moving always is a good aspect, part of exerciseing too, Thanks for this knowledge.
Yes, diet and exercise are the two pillars of anti-aging. And sex comes into both the exercise and relationship happiness aspects.
I didn’t realize having a lot more sex can slow down the aging process. I have heard that doing resistance and weight training can reverse the effects of aging as well as help maintain your body as you get older.
I am curious as to how much strength training one should do in order to see the reversal affects? Will how much you do also depend on ones current age as well?
It really depends on your level of fitness. I’m 74, weigh 67 kg and can bench press 80 kg. The idea is to start with what you can handle and work up from there.
Great ideas in this article about slowing down the aging process! I am interested in the Mediterranean diet you mentioned. Do you have a post on the diet? I do like most of the foods mentioned but would like to know more about that. Taking the stairs has always been the way I like to do it, but I work from home these days and don’t come across stairs as often as I used to!
Thanks, Dave. You could always do a Rocky and find a set of stairs locally to run up. Eye of the Tiger stuff!
Yes, I intend to do a detailed diet post covering Mediterranean, Paleo and Keto.
Hi Phil,
Nice article and easy to understand.
You can’t beat exercise in the end!
I have been thinking of a keto diet for a while. One of my friends has been on it recently and has some great results.
How different is keto from Mediterranean?
Both are appealing to me…
Thanks for the great help.
Tim
Thanks, Tim. Mediterranean is really just eating healthy stuff like fish, nuts, greens and other salad vegetables, olive oil and so on. More the way Europeans eat (ever noticed how few fat French girls there are) rather than the typical American diet.
Keto specifically limits carbs so that your body gets into a state of ketosis, forcing it to burn (metabolize) stored fat for fuel.
You might be interested in my book 4 Minute Keto.
hi Phil – I enjoyed your post and the accurate content it contained. I work in the pilates industry and we get sent ‘older’ people all the time to undertake the body wieght and resistance training that Pilates provides. We see these benefits in not only the elderly but in most people we see. When I used to work in government the health dept. issued challenges to all government staff to take the stairs instead of the lift at every opportunity due to the results of studies in this area that mirror your information.
Is there an age optimum age to start these tips or shoudl be be starting our children as soon as possible?
Paul
Young children should get plenty of exercise through play (as long as we don’t helicopter parent them). Older children should be encouraged to play sport. It isn’t until we get a bit older and a bit more sedentary that exercise for its own sake should be introduced.
And of course it’s never too early to start good eating habits. Probably the most important of all.
It’s not hard to recognize the adults who’ve had a childhood of Big Macs and Cokes!
Excellent tips, and I couldn’t agree more that leading a generally active lifestyle is key. In fact, it kind of comes naturally once you start eating right and adding some regular exercise to your routine.
I’m curious what your thoughts are on cardio. I do strength training, but I do quite a lot of cardio as well (I teach group fitness classes among many other things!) and based on my own personal experience, that seems to be the thing that keeps the body composition under control.
Thanks for the post!
Thanks Jon, yes I’m all for cardio. I generally get mine from bike riding (about to go for a 50K bike ride just now, in fact) and HIIT. A 5 minute HIIT workout can easily leave you puffing and panting.
Well isnt this a great article and the cool part is just recently I have actually started participating in two of the three ways that you have listed. The first one can be attributed to the efforts of my grandson because he forced me to start using the stairs a lot more.The second one is how I have changed my diet. I am eating a lot more salad and have cut out carbs. Lots of the carb cutting came because I am diabetic but also because at my age its time to make some smart changes in my life.Thank you for writing an informative article that could help so many by just making some small changes in their lives.Dale
Good on you, Dale. It’s never too late to start. You might be interested in my book 4 Minute Keto. It combines the low carb Keto diet with a daily dose of 4 minute HIIT.
Hi Phil! Thank you for putting together this post. These 3 things you have mentioned could be incorporated into our lives if we want to.
I enjoy Mediterranean food. This advice is quite easy to follow.
And I have exercised all my life, but in recent years due to busier agenda, I have started to neglect this activity. As you have stated, exercising should be as important as any other activity in our life.
And resistance training is something I have done before but must reinsert into my daily life.
Excellent article. And just in time, since I’ve recently retired, and am struggling to find my routine. Among other things, I want to incorporate exercise at levels that I can maintain, never being one for lots of activity. I used to be in IT, but I did some stairs climbing, on occasion. I thoroughly enjoyed your article; your writing style too. Easy enough to read and follow. My only complaint would be that I found it a bit short; I was hoping for some additional info.Thanks for putting this information together.
I’m currently preparing a companion article “4 More Ways to Slow Down Aging.” I originally intended them as one article, but decided it would be too long!
Your story regarding the women in your building not coming to work reminded me of my neighbor. I live in a 3rd floor walk up and she always complains that there are “so many” stairs (I live on the 3rd floor). Maybe it’s because I am used to walking up the steps and she is not. But overall her lifestyle isn’t particularly active either.
I completely agree that regular exercise and a lifestyle change of food intake is very beneficial to our overall health. Of course, that means not slathering your fish in butter before baking (cause butter is delicious). The Medditeraen diet does have me intrigued. Is one olive oil better than another? For example corn oil vs vegetable oil. Is there a difference in types? can we infuse the oil with herbs without depleting the health effects?
Hmmm… I use only pure extra virgin olive oil for cooking and I scramble my eggs in a generous knob of butter. The best rule to follow is as little processing as possible. I wouldn’t touch any vegetable oil or margarine. You might be interested in my book 4 Minute Keto. It combines the low carb Keto diet with a 4 minute daily HIIT routine and contains my personal go-to breakfast. Eggs scrambled in butter on top of half a fanned avocado on top of 2 or 3 slices of smoked salmon. Three super foods.