Three Forces That Push Back on Aging

Indicators of aging: tree trunk is aging and branches represent biological processes that dull with age. They gradually bring deterioration which is also shown….Totality of decline stems from one disease, aging.

Three Forces That Push Back on Aging. Researchers are now calling aging a disease. The details are, it’s a single disease; what begins as an unnoticeable (microscopic) decline in bodily processes and systems expands and cascades downstream, growing into chronic diseases.

Older adult chronic disease is a consequence of involuntary age-related decline resulting from this singular disease of aging, which is located in different places, manifesting in different ways.

You may have noticed the evidence—pain (the big one), resulting from declining muscles. That also leads to loss of strength. Then there is hearing loss, you need more light to read, darkened areas in the eye lens or cataracts, dry eyes, unsteadiness and difficulty coming up with the right word—nothing to be alarmed about; these are a head’s up, a warning, a message from the Universe–more to come if we don’t adopt better lifestyle habits.   

The CDC reports that over 50% of adults are living with at least one (1) chronic disease.   

As the population of older adults predictably increases, those living with one chronic disease are expected to increase even more!!! The journal Frontiers in Public Health reported in 2023, “The number of people in the United States aged 50 years and older will increase by 61.11% from 137.25 million in 2020 to 221.13 million in 2050. Of the population 50 years and older, the number with at least one chronic disease is estimated to increase by 99.5% from 71.522 million in 2020 to 142.66 million by 2050.”

Protect Your Longevity

How can you ensure you are not part of those downwardly grim statistics? We often think of outliers as special, elite, superhuman; but that is not the case. In this context, you could easily make yourself an outlier. Follow the three forces that push back on aging as explained and you are on your way. Note: you don’t have to follow them to the ‘T.’ Do what you can at your current condition. Just make sure to push yourself a bit…. We are not biologically designed for our overnourished and undermuscled condition.

First, rethink what you already ‘know.’ Educate yourself on the power you have over aging, human biology and improving both healthspan and lifespan.

Recognize that biological aging differs from chronological aging. Chronological aging is static. You grow older by one, every year on your birthday.

Biological aging is dynamic. Your biological age is cellular. It can change; progress and speed up or reverse at any point based on inputs from you; think…lifestyle!!!

Involuntary, age-related decline depicted in the above diagram shows some of the various processes and systems that decline (involuntarily) with age.

The Most Significant Declines: Why We Need Three Forces That Push Back on Aging

• One of the most consequential effects of biological aging is the mid-life involuntary loss of strength and muscle mass; approximately 3–8% per decade. Around age 30, the silent creep toward biological aging begins imperceptibly. The gradual decline of strength, muscle mass and, ultimately, function progresses. After age 60, the decline grows to ~13% per decade.  
• Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) production decreases with age. It is an important chemical used for over 500 processes and reactions in the body for protective functions, energy production, metabolism, turning on/off genes.
• Cellular (aging) senescence increases with age. Senescent cells produce proinflammatory and other degrading molecules that inflame and spread. Like a fire, healthy cells are made inflammatory. “These factors secreted by senescent cells are known as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP).”
• Senescent cells are what is known as ‘zombie cells.’ Instead of dying, they release inflammatory molecules. Their secretions contribute to inflammation that increases with age. Researchers studying inflammation now see it as an active process, a ‘vicious cycle’ that contributes to premature aging. An active process is best described with action words, verbs, so they coined the term, ‘Inflammaging.’ A mild, chronic, age-related inflammation that poses a risk for age-related disease, organ damage and health conditions.
• As you may know, acute inflammation is a natural healing response to injury, illness, or germ. It promotes healing and subsides. Chronic inflammation persists and in the process can trigger cascading diseases such as arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cancer. So, inflammaging increases as a threat as we age. And thus, the heightened need for our attention.
• Your muscle cells are packed with tiny organelles called mitochondria. These are crucial powerhouse energy generators that decline in quality and quantity (along with muscle) with age; part of the reason our metabolism slows. For scale, visualize one mitochondrion is 0.5 micrometers. A grain of salt is 500 micrometers. That’s the infinitesimal scale at which biological aging begins. As the years progress, the process enlarges. The blunting of biological processes that keep you energetic, sharp, firm and strong all fade with the passage of time.

Three Forces That Push Back on Aging: Only the Beginning

Muscle loss, mitochondria decline and inflammaging are the beginning; one could say, the foundation of decline. Your body is its own ecosystem. Nothing happens in isolation. Age-related decline is a long-term downhill development with a myriad of cascading events that act as drivers. Therefore, we are more prone to develop diseases when we are older than when we are young.

When you are dumbfounded over the energy you see in a youngster compared to your energy level, that’s an insightful observation. One reason for the difference you are observing is the decline in quality and quantity of mitochondria.

If you are getting rounder, feeling stiff, lousy, weak and easily out of breath, that is the manifestation of the multifaceted, low-grade wildfire going on below the skin. However, don’t despair. This is a head’s-up from Nature. The Universe is sending you a signal. Noticing is the first step out of distracted contentment and into effort mode. All you have to do is reduce the ‘drivers of decline.’ We we explain the three forces that push back on aging in detail below.

You don’t have to over-stress about taking action to reduce multiple-organ issues or the myriad indications of aging. It’s enough to focus on a lifestyle that builds muscle mass, enhances your mitochondria and reduces the process of inflammaging. All of which are in your control. You have power and agency to influence how you age. Your lifestyle choices and activity influence the daily expression of your genes.

There is a semi-truck load of science and research documenting the natural healing and repairing power of the human body. Exercise is a powerful modulator of gene expression with ‘local and systemic consequences.’

A 2022 Biomedicine peer-reviewed report stated, “Physical exercise triggers numerous changes and metabolic adaptations in the organism, resulting in an improvement in functional capacity and health, as well as decreasing the risk of developing metabolic or chronic diseases.”  

Do Three Things to Push Back on Aging

1-Exercise: is one of the most significant of the three forces that push back on aging.  Aerobic exercise conditions your type-1 muscles with the goal of developing aerobic capacity and endurance. Aerobic capacity is your body’s ability to efficiently use oxygen. Aerobic endurance is how long you can perform moderate exercise. Endurance is important because when you exercise in a specific way, you trigger precise growth pathways. Moderate, long and slow aerobic exercise is what sports physiologists call zone-2. You cruise—run, walk, hike, bike, swim, row or ruck—at a steady targeted heart rate of 60-65% of your maximum for thirty, forty, up to sixty minutes. This is the zone where you optimally burn fat, raise NAD levels and grow new mitochondria; those cellular power plants, ‘energy organelles’ in muscle we talked about earlier. The potency of zone-2 exercise can’t be overstated.

Besides increasing the quality and quantity of mitochondria, you initiate healing. The entire body (brain included) grows, repairs and heals. You gain the most endurance and overall health improvement from this slow, steady aerobic exercise. Speed is not important. Time and mileage are the crux of success. Slow, consistent exercise—over an extended period—weeks, months and years. This drives the deep, growth pathways of NAD, mitochondria health, improved immune function and infrastructure growth of blood delivering capillaries and vessels. Sustained exercise equals sustained, long-term growth.

With extended, consistent effort, you transform your physiological self into the form of an athlete. Every athlete, marathoner, Tour de France and Olympic hopeful incorporates zone-2 training to build a solid base of aerobic capacity. They are going for gold-level performance. You are working toward what I call ‘wealth and fitness,’ becoming functionally younger. You’re in good company.

Add in resistance training twice per week because you need to maintain and build type-2 muscle to address what is involuntarily lost through aging.

2-The second of the three forces that push back on aging is eat a little less, cut calories or fast. However, you do it, doesn’t matter. You don’t have to make a big production of it by not eating for a whole day. Wait an extra hour to break the overnight fast. Don’t eat breakfast as soon as you wake up. It’s easy to extend the morning fast. Do things to reduce caloric intake, even slightly is enough.

What you are doing through exercise and fasting is kicking in ancient survival or longevity pathways through a natural biological process science calls hormesis.

It’s the idea that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Small stresses to our body, the application and engagement of muscle, make those declining processes and systems to wake up and function like they are young again.

Hormesis informs us (or reminds us) that our genes didn’t evolve for a life of pampered comfort.

And, we are more adapted biologically for starvation. We have survival circuits for scarcity more so than abundance because primordial life was not easy.

3-Third, eat whole foods, prebiotics, probiotics and lots of plant-based foods. Stay away from the standard American diet (SAD). Avoid added sugar or ‘free sugar,’ as it is known, and increase the diversity of foods you eat. For example, don’t just snack on peanuts. Mix in hazelnuts, pistachios, walnuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds and pumpkins seeds. This will contribute to the process of repopulating your gut with health-giving and immune system-promoting microbiome.

Try starting your day with a protein smoothie, the make your own, DIY kind where you add protein powder. Note: most grass-fed whey protein powder has little to zero carbs. Add diverse plant-based foods you don’t normally eat. You will be surprised how taste gets lost in the drink. Also, use unsweetened yogurt. Don’t worry, the fruit will sweeten it just perfectly and this is what we want!!!

Seventy Percent of Immune Function is in the Gut.

Way back when, Hippocrates (460–370 BC), the father of medicine, said, “All disease begins in the gut.” Now, finally, we are catching on! Trillions of microbes, 10 times more than your human cells, about 100 trillion microbes, call your body home and a good, diverse microbiome population in your gut promotes optimal health and longevity.

From Frontiers in Microbiology: “The mechanism leading to disease development has a crucial correlation with gut microbiota, metabolic products, and host immune response in humans.” 

Our pampered, marshmallow soft modernity is great, but it doesn’t serve us well for staying strong, vital, and resilient into our later decades. We must push ourselves.

The ‘Push’ Here is Literal

Most people get this part wrong. You can get it right from the start

Motivation, willpower and inspiration all come from the same part of your brain (prefrontal cortex) that manages short-term memory, day-to-day tasks and focus—executive function.  It’s a busy and cluttered area that’s drains your energy. We ignore things. The first to go is the new, difficult stuff like lifestyle changes.

You cannot rely on or trust motivation.

Researchers tested three groups. One group was told to exercise. Another group read articles designed to motivate and they were prompted to ‘get active’ and even asked to exercise. Only 35% of participants exercised.

The third group who read the materials and was required to make a commitment to exercise did so at the rate of 91%.

So don’t rely on motivation. Put it on your calendar as a commitment, just like you did for school and work. Schedule it and follow your schedule. Get up and go to it, like brushing your teeth. This is the most reliable ‘motivation.’

I exercise every day. Not because I am motivated but rather because I create a concrete commitment that I’ll regret missing if I don’t follow through. And remember, small successes create a path for bigger successes!!!

It’s in our best interest to begin new habits as we age. But it’s hard, as there are significant barriers to change. However, if we can do it, evidence shows that you, society and all the world will be healthier and more prosperous. And you will continue to do the things you love to do…like flyfishing!!!

It’s one of life’s curious twists. Indeed, the most powerful age-related disease antidote and longevity medicine in the Universe is available, at your fingertips. But you must make an effort to get it. Fitness, the wealthiest benefit money can’t buy, requires effort from you!

Download my free e-book Quick Guide to Strength, Sturdiness and Stamina.

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Categorized in: General Knowledge