How healthy is your lifestyle? Healthy Aging Tips

Do you have difficulty sleeping?  Do you eat a lot of processed foods?  Do you have, what society effectively calls, a spare tire?  Are you finding it difficult to find the energy to make it through the day?  If you answered yes to any or all of the questions above, your body is telling you something.  Why do people blame aging for their ailments?  We all age.

When do we start aging?  Some would say that we start aging at conception; others say we start aging when development stops.  But when do we stop developing?  We all decline at different rates and start declining at different ages.

With all of these philosophical questions, what is the question that we should be asking?

How do we prolong a healthy life that includes our wits and functioning bodies?

There are a million studies that show both sides to any topic.  What we do know is that the nutrition that we put into our bodies, frequency and intensity of exercise and how we live our lives affects our health and quality of life.  The sooner that we take ownership of our lives and start making conscious decisions to make a healthy lifestyle change, your quality of life will increase.

To better understand how we live a happy, healthy, fully functioning life we need to take a hard look in the mirror.  Stress truly is a killer.  When our stress levels are increased our bodies secrete norepinephrine, which is the flight or fight hormone, and cortisol, which is secreted when an individual feels a sense of defeat.  These are normal responses in our bodies, but when we are unable to “de-stress” our bodies continue to secrete these hormones; and the effects of cortisol being secreted in the body over long periods of time leads to a variety of damaging circumstances.  Our bodies start breaking down tissues,   producing visceral obesity (which is VERY dangerous), and suppresses the immune system.  After a prolonged period of time in this hyper state our bodies will eventually not produce an adequate amount.

In order to avoid these damaging effects of stress we need to learn to “de-stress,” eat a healthy well balanced diet to promote a healthy immune system, and get our stress hormones under control.  Without getting our hormones balanced and working in harmony we start experiencing symptoms such as depression, anxiety, weight gain, sexual dysfunction (lack of desire, impotence, dryness) etc.

Stop blaming fatigue, weight gain, and a general feeling unwell on aging and take a positive step to de-stress, eat healthy, and exercise.