Thursday, April 9, 2015

A - Aging

There is no such thing as "aging" - it is nothing more than accumulated damage.
Each day that passes, we do in fact add a chronological number to our "age" but our bodies have to balance out the amount of damage done to the amount of recovery we do.
The "cure for aging" would then be to figure out every single damage that is done to us daily from exposure to toxins to the act of working out (muscle breakdown) and how to counterbalance that with things like "antioxidants" or simply "ungluing the tight tissues" that result from sitting at a desk typing all day.

"We do not slow down as we age; we age because we slow down"
Motion is lotion! Our joints would agree, tight joints that don't see their full expression of range of motion are the ones that usually have arthritis. As a PT I see many OsteoArthritis cases of the hips, knees and spine, joints that we tend to stop stretching through a full range of motion around the age of 6 or so... yay chairs and sedentary lifestyles.

Sleep is crucial in the act of recovery. We release so many healing hormones with deeper and longer sleep, including Human Growth Hormone - invariably steroids - sleep better and you get free natural steroids and can live forever :)

We need to figure out a ratio of work to recovery. Working out hard may require a 1:1 amount of recovery, sitting at a desk all day may require 20 minutes of recovery for the full 8 hours of sitting - we can play with the math on all this but the point should be driven home. We can also try to control the damages that come our way (the idea behind the Paleo diet aka an anti-inflammatory diet - eliminate grains, legumes and dairy because they cause us damage that does not outweigh the nutritional benefit).

So after you are done seizing the day, be sure to seize the recovery and you may find yourself living a lot longer and happier life :)

No comments:

Post a Comment