How to Slow Aging Once You are past Middle Age

AntiAging Tips

Aging can be a be-atch! Watching wrinkles deveop, hearing bones creak, losing strength and losing energy. But everyone ages differently. Some people age "gracefully",  some look like they were "rode hard and put away wet". So what is the secret to aging "gracefully"?

Study after study is showing that older adults can slow the physical and mental aging process with some simple lifestyle changes, such as daily exercise, eating healthy and a positive attitude (meaning less stress).

While genetics also play a factor, there are things you can do to slow YOUR aging process and be a "younger" you. Healthy aging is also defined as living a longer, healthier life.

Many of the physiologic consequences that we attribute to aging can be reverse with fitness training, healthy eating, and some simple lifestyle modifications.

AntiAging Lifestyle Modifications

Get Good Sleep

Older Adults Need More Sleep

Another thing that many older adults try to get by without is sleep. In fact, chronic sleep deprivation is an epidemic with Americans at any age. Researchers have shown that sleeping too little leads to a host of problems from depressed immune function to decreased mental functioning. Skimping on sleep is also harmful to overall performance. During sleep the body secretes human growth hormone (HGH), a powerful agent of exercise recovery. Less sleep means less HGH and therefore less freshness for the next day’s workout. Have an extra half-hour or hour of sleep each night and you’ll feel 10 years younger.

Start Exercising

Exercising definetly slows the aging process, on several fronts. It helps delay/prevent osteoporosis, diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, increases mobility, burns calories, curtails depression associated with aging, increases energy, elevates anti aging hormones, just to name a few.

Older Adults Need to Train More Efficiently

Believe it or not, there are actually advantages to getting older, even for athletes. One of these advantages is accumulated knowledge of one’s own body, particularly as it reacts to various types of training. The more experience you have in exercising the better able you become to determine which exercises, drills, workouts and training patterns work best for you and which ones don’t. Use this knowledge to your advantage. Design an exercise program that minimizes the less useful workouts and maximizes the workouts that gives you the greatest performance.

Strength Training Becomes More Important For Older Adults

One of the more crippling effects of older adults is the gradual loss of muscle mass, and the loss of strength that it entails. The loss of overall muscle mass and muscle strength causes joints to bear greater stress during exercise. This extra stress to the joints commonly leads to athletic injuries such as tendonitis, ligament sprains, musculo-tendinous strains, as well as arthritis. Older adults involved in sports that don’t require tremendous strength are particularly susceptible as they tend to try to get by without resistance training. When you’re young, very often you can get away with it, but the older you get, the more important strength training becomes.

Aging Adults Need to Warm-up Well

As Older adults age, their aging process causes the cardiovascular and muscular system to respond slower to the demands of exercise. Older adults should extend their warm up time to include a slow gradual increase in intensity.

Older Adults Should Include Flexibility Exercises

Loss of flexibility is a natural effect of aging among older adults that can be counteracted through a program of daily stretching. Among older adults any repetitive movements involved in any sport that started from a younger age results in muscular imbalances that gets progressively more extreme. These require targeted flexibility efforts to loosen and lengthen only those muscles that have become short and tight. Stretching all muscles equally will only take the imbalance to a higher level.

Older Adults Should Rest and Recover More

Unless older adults continue to perform training sessions that match the intensity of workouts they performed when younger, older adults cannot hope to perform near the level at which they were able to in their mid-20's or 30’s. While many older adults find that they can continue to perform these tough workouts well into their 40's, they cannot do them as often. Older adults need additional time off for recovery, as older adults age they find that the ‘off days' equally as important as the training days.

Older Adults Need to Practice Nutritional Recovery Clinical research has shown that consuming the right nutrients in the right amounts immediately after exercise can enhance recovery substantially in older adults. Water, electrolytes, carbohydrate, and protein are needed most to rehydrate the body, restore muscle glycogen, and repair tissue damage.

Eat Well

Many aging studies have documented the link between a healthy diet and prevention of age-related or chronic diseases, such as heart disease, osteoporosis, and cancer.

"Dietary choices are critical to delay the onset of aging and age-related diseases, and the sooner you start, the greater the benefit," says Los Angeles based Nutrition expert, Jeff Behar.  Opt for lean protein, fresh vegetables, colorful whole fruits, healthy fiber, healthy fats, green tea, and other healthful foods that are rich in antioxidants and other potentially age-deterring compounds.

As we age, we become more susceptible to the long-term effects of oxidative stress and inflammation on the cellular level. Antioxidants and other age-defying compounds help cells ward off damage from oxidative stress (e.g., free radicals) and minimize the impact of aging. Free-radical damage is now known to be one of the primary components of aging. For this reason, older adults need to be especially vigilant in consuming antioxidants that protect against and repair such damage. Vitamins C and E are especially helpful for older adults as controlled studies have shown. Vitamins C and E can dramatically reduce post-workout muscle soreness in the short term and minimizing long-term oxidative stress.

Beyond antioxidants, there are other compounds in foods can affect aging. These foods can be classified according to their impact on inflammation at the cellular level. "All foods fit into three categories: pro-inflammatory, neutral, or anti-inflammatory," says dermatologist and best-selling anti-aging author, Nicholas Perricone, MD.

Foods classified as pro-inflammatory can accelerate aging. Foods that contain large amounts of saturated or trans fatty acids, sugars, and starches, insulin levels surge and trigger an anti-inflammatory response and accelerate the aging process.

Perricone, like Behar, says you can help to slow aging at the cellular level by consuming foods and beverages that are rich in a variety of compounds, including antioxidants, and are anti-inflammatory, such as cold-water fish and richly colored fruits and vegetables.

Eat Less

While the quest for the proverbial Fountain of Youth is endless and typically fruitless, one method known to extend the human lifespan by up to five years has quietly become accepted among leading anti aging specialists.

The anti aging formula is simple: Eat less. Eating less could add years to your life, several anti aging experts now say.  "There is plenty of evidence that calorie restriction can reduce your risks for many common diseases including cancer, diabetes and heart disease," says Saint Louis University researcher Edward Weiss, who last week announced a new study that brings fresh understanding to how it works. "And you may live to be substantially older."

Evidence that calorie restriction boosts lifespans in rodents is solid. Christiaan Leeuwenburgh of the University of Florida's Institute on Aging showed in 2006 that eating just 8 percent less and exercising a little more over a lifespan can reduce or even reverse aging-related cell and organ damage in rats. Various studies have shown that cutting calories by 20 to 40 percent significantly both extends life and, with a little exercise, leaves old animals in better shape. Eating fewer calories  also reduces age-related chronic diseases such as cancers, heart disease, and stroke in rodents. That's important because it suggests ways to not just make us live longer, but to allow us to age more. Here's a rough rule of thumb that many experts generally agree on now: Eat 15 percent less starting at age 25 and you might add 4.5 years to your life, says Eric Ravussin, who studies human health and performance at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana.

Bottom Line on Slowing the Aging Process

There is no question that older adults can slow the aging process if they styart exercising, eating well, and eating less, while also avoid poor lifestyle habits like smoking, excessive alcohol, over eating, and poor nutritional choices.

 Written by  Jeff Behar, MS, MBA