I came across an article in a newsletter recently that I finally found a minute to read. It is about sensibly resisting the aging process and I noted that with very little change, it is quite consistent with material already published here in The Health Gazette. Since it’s an important topic I have provided a significant excerpt below.
From "Secrets of Feeling Younger" by Carole Jackson.
CHOOSE YOUR AGE
One example of youth-focused living is the group of seniors who tour in their own rock show (no, I don’t mean the current tour of the Rolling Stones), belting out witty takes on aging like "Stairway to Heaven," "Every Breath You Take" and "Forever Young." These seniors and many like them choose to live not by the calendar or number of candles on their birthday cake but from their heart — and to enjoy all their time on earth.
I came across an interesting book recently and was immediately taken by how much it agreed with what I’ve said for years. That must sound aweful, but it’s true. What is it they say; there’s nothing new under the heavens? Maybe they’re right.
Anyway, this book is about making a good brain great and it employs the deceptively obvious observation that your brain is involved in everything you do. That is almost so obvious as to be trite, but the author, Dr Daniel Amen, draws some very practical user guidelines based on the perfectly obvious.
Here we are finally at Part 6 of our short series on the myths of aging. We will conclude the series with a debunking of the magic bullet to eternal youth myth and a brief consideration of just how you can go about slowing, stopping or reversing the aging process.
Actually, if you have paid attention to the earlier parts of this series you’ll realize straight away that I should say reversing the aging processes. It clearly has to be plural, since there are various dimensions to aging. This is true not merely because aging is an holistic experience, but even in the terms we have already introduced.
Welcome to Part 5 of this short series on the myths of aging. In Part 4 we briefly introduced two theories of aging. One was the free radical theory, a physical theory with a large body of evidence to support it. The other was disengagement theory, a psycho-social theory of aging that happens to have a good fit with observable behavior.
In Part 3 we made five useful observations about aging. Of those, we noted that the details of aging observed in both physical and mental function (items 3 and 4 on our list) were so thoroughly observed and documented as to provide a detailed normative data set that describes what occurs at different ages.
This is Part 7 in our ongoing series exploring the dimensions of health. Parts 5 and 6 have been concerned with the physical dimension and we will now complete that dimension with the elements of exercise, rest and sleep.
The tenth item on our list of the determinants of physical health (from Part 5) was concurrent health in the other dimensions. This covers all of the rest of this series, so I won’t attempt to elaborate on it within the physical dimension. Hopefully at or towards the end of our series we will be able to expand on the holistic nature of all of the dimensions.