How to stay young (now that I’m 40)
Recently, I watched a 2016 BBC documentary titled “How To Stay Young” where Angela Rippon and Dr Chris Van Tulleken team up with scientists to show what can be done to reverse the ageing process. I also recently turned 40. I know it’s just a number, but it made me start thinking about my own mortality and the ageing process. I realised that now is the time to stop mucking around and really get serious about my health. So in this video, I’m going to step through some of the advice from the documentary (and from my life) to help you stay young.
Step 1 — Test How Well You’re Ageing
A simple test has been devised to see how well you are ageing. It’s called the Sit-to-Rise test. First, take off your shoes and stand cross legged; The goal is to lower yourself down without touching the ground with your hands. Once you are down, you must then try to stand back up again by just using your legs. You cannot change the position of your feet.
Step 2 — Physical Activity
Be more physically active in your daily life. Any exercise that targets strength, agility, and balance will help improve your Sit-to-Rise test score. Whole-body exercises are the best. Things like dancing, running around in the park, playing tennis, or basketball.
Step 3 — Quit Smoking
If you smoke, quit. It is the single biggest risk factor for how well you age.
Step 4 — Relieve Stress and Anxiety
Stress plays a huge effect on how well you age. You must find ways in life to stay cool, calm, and collected. Exercise is a great way to relieve stress. Also, cut down on your caffeine intake. Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, tea, energy drinks, and chocolate. High doses can increase your anxiety, so it’s best to limit yourself to no more than a couple of cups of caffeinated drinks a day. Also, learn to say “no”. Take control over the parts of your life that you can change and are causing you stress.
Step 5 — Maintain a Healthy Weight
It’s a given, but you have to maintain a healthy weight in order to stay healthy and improve your longevity. Being overweight increases your risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes, etc. Obviously, exercise plays a part in maintaining a healthy weight, but by far the biggest contributor to being overweight is how much food you stick in your gob. I control this by fasting everyday. That is, I aim to eat only one meal a day in the evening, and try to only eat quality food.
Step 6 — Eat Healthy
In many areas of the Western World, fast food has replaced fresh food. It has been shown time and time again that processed food is not good for you. Recent studies have shown that ultra-processed foods are particularly bad for us. These include soft drinks, packaged snacks, reconstituted meat, and pre-prepared frozen meals.
Step 7 — Eat a Vegan Diet
A vegan diet, in adults at least, has been shown to reduce your risk of cancer, heart attack, and stroke. For vegans, overall mortality is reduced by a quarter compared to meat-eaters, and they’re only half as likely to get heart disease. When we eat animal protein, it stimulates a hormone in our bodies that we all need for growth. But as we get older, especially during middle age, this same hormone speeds up ageing. So the more you replace animal protein with fruit and vegetables, the slower you will age. Even just a small reduction in meat-eating has been shown to slow down the ageing process.
And the final step, Step 8 — Stay Positive
I guess this is related to relieving stress, but by just being positive and optimistic in your life, studies have shown that this may help you to live up to seven years longer.
And that’s it… The 8 steps to staying young. Test how well you are ageing by performing the Sit-to-Rise test. Stay physically active by participating in activities that exercise your entire body, like dancing, and tennis. Quit smoking. Relieve stress and anxiety by living a more social life, exercising more, and cutting down on stimulants like caffeine. Maintain a healthy weight by eating less and staying active. Eat healthy by avoiding processed foods and increasing your fruit and veg intake. Become a vegan if you really want to put the skids on ageing. By avoiding meat, eggs, and dairy, you prevent your body from overproducing a growth hormone that makes you age faster. And finally, stay positive. There’s no use having a negative outlook in life, especially as you grow older.
MUSIC
Brittle Rille – Reunited by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
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