Are all the signs of aging, inevitable?

I've lost count of how many times I've heard people around me talk about their aching joints or their gradual weight gain in the last few years or their lack of energy and their loss of muscle and the comments are always followed by a sigh and the phrase, "I'm getting old I guess. It had to happen sometime." Have you noticed how some of those people actually seem to feel almost happy that they can blame all of those afflictions on the fact that they are getting old? They always say it with a smile! I guess it probably makes things easier to have a scapegoat. Honestly, I think, the phrase, "I'm getting old," is a bit of a copout. It moves any possible blame off of your shoulders, and onto Father Time's.

There is no question that we are all getting older. We start out, as little kids, with truckloads of energy. Everything we do as kids, we do at 110%, be it playing, eating, sleeping or learning. Kids have a naturally higher metabolism than adults because they are doing some serious growing. That means they burn energy faster and they recover faster and, unless you are feeding them tons of rubbish, they don't get fat BECAUSE they are on the go, all the time. An overweight child is a child being fed too much of the wrong foods and sitting around too much. Kids should be using whatever they eat, to fuel their ever-moving, ever-growing bodies. It shouldn't be turning to fat at this stage of their lives.

As we get older, things start to change. Most people tend to think that the body shape changes we experience over the years, are inevitable. For a lot of people, it is, these days. We are usually at our thinnest, growing up, and that mostly remains when we are in our early 20s. But, as you hit the late 20s, and then the 30s, things start to change without you really realising. You kind of know something isn't quite right, but you keep saying, "It's just because I haven't been eating right. I'll eat better from Monday and things will go back to normal." That doesn't quite sort the problem out, and, all of a sudden you have gained 8kgs and they just won't shift.

Along with the weight gain comes a sudden decrease in energy and fitness. The stairs you used to be able to run up, two at a time, suddenly seem difficult when you WALK them, one at a time. You can't carry as heavy objects as you used to, your muscle definition seems to have gone down a bit. It's a gradual process, and you hardly notice at first, but, eventually, it creeps into your subconscious and the reality can be quite a blow. Suddenly,one day, you think to yourself, "I'm getting older.  That must be it! It had to happen sometime!" And then you carry on because now you have an EXCUSE and that makes it ok for most folks.

As an exercise specialist, we get given risk factors to look out for when we want to train someone. One of the main risk factors is age. If a person is over a certain age, they need a doctor's approval to train. That applies to ALL older, or elderly, people. Given how the last couple of generations have aged, I can see why age would be a risk factor. Most elderly people these days have hyperkyphosis, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease, high blood pressure, alzheimer's and diabetes type 2, to name a FEW. We all consider most of these diseases a fairly natural part of ageing.

But why should we? A few generations ago, these things weren't NORMAL. They weren't even heard of. The weight gain, the loss of energy and muscle mass, the aching joints and the diseases are NOT an inevitability of ageing, they are an inevitability of the lifestyle that most South Africans are choosing to live.

Human beings were meant to move, but very few of us do. A by-product of civilisation is that people don't need to move much anymore. We walk a few metres to our car, we sit and drive to our destination, then we walk the few metres to the lift, catch it to the 2nd floor, and walk to a desk, where we sit for 7 or so hours and then we repeat that in reverse, to get home and sit on our couch watching TV until we lie down on a bed and sleep. Not much movement happening there at all! When we are kids, our metabolism is so fast that, even while we are sitting, we are burning fuel. But, as we get older, that metabolism slows down if we don't give it reason to keep its momentum. The problem with our metabolism slowing down is, we are still eating the same stuff, only, now there is too much of it to be used for fuel, and so it goes into storage, on our hips, thighs and stomach mostly!

Can you say, "Couch Potato?"

To make it worse, the food we are eating is all wrong. A few generations back, we not only moved around a lot more, but we also ate proper food. Not the processed, pesticide-ridden, genetically modified rubbish lining the shelves of grocery stores; we ate meat from animals that were allowed to range free and eat their natural diets. We ate fruit and vegetables grown in a garden without pesticides, in nutrient-rich soil that transferred its nutrients to the fruits and vegetables, and to our bodies. Nothing was made in a science lab, everything was wholesome and natural and real.

The POSSIBLE inevitable signs of ageing are graying hair, thinner skin and perhaps hearing and sight loss due to over-exposure to loud noises and too much computer work or television. Gaining weight, lossing fitness, aching joints, muscle loss, kyphosis, arthritis, high blood pressure, diabetes type 2, heart disease, alzheimer's and osteoporosis are NOT inevitabilities of ageing. They are inevitabilities of your lifestyle. If you don't exercise, if you don't eat real, organic food, if you live on processed food and chemicals, if you smoke, you WILL experience all of those inevitabilities and the only reason it happens when you're older, is because a body can only take so much abuse before it starts to give in. If you repeatedly beat on a wall with a hammer, the plaster will eventually crack. Our bodies are no different. When you look after your body, you give it the tools to repair itself, when you DON'T, it will start to give in.

Sound harsh? I guess it IS a harsh reality. But I think it's better to know the truth because you can WORK with it.

Before you allow yourself to give in to the "inevitabilities" of aging, try a lifestyle change, preferably sooner rather than later. Prevention IS really better than cure!

Prevention IS better than cure

I often hear people say things like, "I did oil pulling for years but I still got sick and I never lost any weight," or "I took apple cider vinegar every day and I still gained weight," or "I eat a smoothie every morning and I don't feel any different." The problem with all of these people is that they are living their lives on an 80/20% basis. ie. 80% of their lives include normal food, normal beauty products and normal household cleaning products and about 20% of their lives is organic, healthy and chemical free.

I always say, do things in baby steps. I'm all for that. If you try to do something cold turkey, there is a bigger chance of failure. However, if you are going to take a year or two to make changes, then all the apple cider vinegar in the world won't be enough to make any difference. Apple cider vinegar alone, is not a cure. It makes things better, there is no doubt, but if you are still smoking 20 cigarettes a day and eating mostly "normal" food, you might as well be drinking a mug of water instead.

There are no miracles cures and there are very few second chances. If you are one of those people who believe that taking a diet pill and drinking a protein shake, will burn all the fat off you and save you from future dread disease, then I'm not sure my blog will be enough to get the message across. There is no quick fix. There is a decision to make a lifestyle change. And that is FOR LIFE. It's not something you do for a few months to lose some weight, or do a quick detox, and then go back to the way things were.

Pretending something doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. It just puts off the inevitable. I'm a procrastinator myself, I get why you would do that;) It's easier to pretend the horrible truth doesn't actually exist. That way you don't have to accept it. Each day you compromise your health and your future by convincing yourself that you're just not cut out for the healthy life, or the active life, and you're ok with that. You're doing just fine. You really believe it too...

Until the day your doctor tells you that you have diabetes, or high blood pressure, or you're infertile, or worse, you have cancer. Suddenly you think, "Why me?! I was fine!" But were you really? Part of you knows that some of the things you do, are bad for you. I know it. We all know it. We just somehow think that we are invincible. We take for granted that the body we have will never let us down. And then we are always so shocked when something bad happens to us, or someone close to us. I'm not sure what it is in human beings that allows them to be so destructively fearless regarding themselves. It's almost like we are looking for ways to bring the end on faster. But when the end threatens, we gasp in shock and horror that it could actually happen to us.

I'm a rally driver. Seriously, I've competed and won a few of them! I love to drive and I don't dawdle about it;) I used to ignore speed limits and take all the gaps. How I wasn't killed I'll never know! I was young and stupid. I'm older and wiser now, but I still love to take the gaps. I just do it more carefully these days. My eyes are always on every part of the road that I can see. I don't ignore blind spots. But I see it as a challenge, getting from A to B, legally, as fast as I can! I KNOW it's a stupid thing to do. At any point I could hit a pothole, blow a tyre or just not see something, and yet I do it. I just love driving and the challenge it poses for me. I tend to save my rally driving for the actual rallies now though;)

I think a lot of people play games with their lives in much the same way. We just keep thinking, "It'll never happen to us." In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the thought of something bad happening doesn't actually even enter our heads. We don't even consider it because we feel untouchable. I'm not sure why that is. There is enough death and destruction around us to convince us that life is short and every day that we are here is a privilege. But we continue to play with our lives as if we have many of them left. Unlike our cats, we don't get nine lives though. We only get one (depending on your beliefs you may come back to ANOTHER life!)

Some might argue that it makes sense, then, to live your life to the fullest. What does that mean though? I have a wonderful, happy life, but I do everything I can to preserve our health and wellness. I even slowed down my driving;) We go out and have a few drinks now and then with friends, but it's not often and the rest of our lives are lived cleanly. We never stop doing all we can to be healthy, even if we are out having fun with friends. That's not the case with most people I've noticed. Somewhere along the line, people bought into the propaganda that happiness was found in copious amounts of alcohol, foods, beauty products and cleaning products, and cigarettes and other drugs. (Cigarettes are considered a drug in case you were wondering) The propaganda told us that, if anything went wrong with our bodies, we could just take a few pills, or cut out the offending organ, and carry on having fun! 

My question is, why on earth would you want to play russian roulette with your life that way? Already we increase our odds of things ending, every time we get in a car, or cross a road, or fly in a plane. If I'm perfectly honest, I'd take a quick death over a dread disease any day. I have seen too many people suffer through awful diseases, in such terrible pain, only to die, to EVER want to be in that position. There is nothing I can do about planes, trains and automobiles but I CAN take charge of my health. We all could, if we realised just how easy it actually was, and how essential it was.

It IS a lifestyle change though. And it may take a couple of months to get used to it but, if you can convince yourself that this is actually normal, and everyone else is crazy, it makes it a lot easier;) Honestly, I DO think most people are crazy to eat and drink half of what they do. It doesn't make sense to me, that people could allow themselves to be so ignorant about their own bodies. If we didn't have these bodies, we wouldn't exist. Doesn't that mean we should treat it with respect? 

As I said in the beginning, you can do one or two things to be healthier, and "experts" might say that's fine, as long as you do something. But "experts" are not entirely right, there. If you are a healthy individual, if you go for all your tests regularly and you know everything is perfectly in order, THEN living your life 95% healthy and 5% not, is acceptable. Incidentally, if you are healthy, you are exceptionally lucky. These days it's getting harder and harder to find 100% healthy people! And that is the whole point of maintaining a clean lifestyle. The aim is continuous maintenance so that you DON'T end up getting sick. It's all about prevention. Most people who don't live a clean, healthy life, only decide to become clean and healthy AFTER they find out they are sick. It's a lot harder to fix things ONCE you are sick. The sad thing is, most people don't even realise they are sick, and they do more and more damage without realising. Prevention is BETTER than cure.

If you are NOT healthy, if you already know that you have high blood pressure, or you're grossly overweight, or you have diabetes or cancer, or some other dread disease, there can't be ANY half measures in your life. You need to be in it 100% until you are healed. If it's not the type of disease that CAN be healed, you STILL need to be in it 100% if you want to get as close to better as possible. This is your life you are playing with and NO amount of smoothies or apple cider vinegar will help if you are drinking and smoking every day and filling your body with chemicals. All the nutrients you are taking in are literally being destroyed before they can do any good. It's like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. If you don't want to do it for you, then do it for those who love you and need you in their lives. There is always a reason to look after yourself. Read back through any of my blogs and start doing your research!

The amount of people in the world, who will actually consider any of this, is minuscule, which is scary to me. If I could, I would make it my mission to change the world, one person at a time. I love the thought of helping people become healthier, of lessening the amount of suffering through disease. That's one of the main reasons I started this blog. I hope that, over time, I can reach more and more people and I can do that with YOUR help. Share it on your pages, become a subscriber and favourite the posts if you like them. I would really appreciate the help, and in return, I will do my best to post things that, I believe, will add value to your life, and to those of your nearest and dearest.

Until tomorrow!