Healthy Anti-Aging Resources

I am a baby boomer and I am feeling great. However I see other boomers who are starting to crumble. Just recently a friend of mine, who is well under 50, has been diagnosed with pre-cancerous cells and will shortly be undergoing an operation. Her youngest daughter is 6 years old. Who do you know who has suffered from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and stroke? I have had two friends my age die from breast cancer and ovarian cancer in the last two years. What can we do to stay younger longer so that we can live life to the full?

There are lots of commonsense things that we know about and can do (and should do).

Here are 10 healthy aging strategies:

1. Enjoy sunshine! We need to spend 15 to 20 minutes in bright sun to allow our bodies to make the hormone Vitamin D. If you live in temperate zones (37 degrees north and south of the equator) consider topping up with a good quality Vitamin D3 product 1000 to 5000 iu daily.

2. Eat fresh non-processed food. Eat a variety of fruit and veggies every day. Cut out sugar. Eat good quality protein in small amounts. Here is a few smoothie and juice recipes that are easy to make.

3. Drink plenty of good water. Some people say they don’t like the taste. I have installed a reverse osmosis water filter and it not only makes the water taste delicious, chemicals and toxins have been removed. On top of flushing toxins out of the body, a major BENEFIT of drinking water is to carry NUTRIENTS into the cells of the body. In addition to helping nutrients get into the cells where they are needed, the benefit of drinking water in adequate amounts also helps to keep the CELLS well …hydrated so they can FUNCTION properly and efficiently. Cut down or stop drinking sugary drinks.

4. Exercise. Find something you enjoy – walking, dancing, cycling, gardening, jogging, pilates, zumba, playing golf…add a comment and tell us what you do for exercise and why you like it. Click here for more ideas.

5. Rest. Find something that gives you peaceful enjoyment that releases you from life’s stresses. It may be meditation, listening to music, curling up with a good library book. What do you do for quiet enjoyment?

6. Sleep soundly – Click here for more information

7. Take advanced quality nutritional supplements. Taking once-a-day supplements will not make you healthier. Nor do supplements that are at Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA/RDI) doses. They are a waste of money. The best ones are at optimum levels. Everyone needs to at least take a mega antioxidant, a multi-mineral, a calcium/magnesium and omega-3 supplements.

8. Check your attitude. Do you look for solutions or do you focus on the problems? Do you look for good in people or do you enjoy criticising? Do you work at being positive or negative? It’s your choice what you think – so choose wisely. This is a video of man who is making the most of what he has got.

9. Have fun! Look after your friends and family. Make new friends. Share, laugh and cry together. Contribute to your community – giving is far more rewarding than receiving.

10. Last but not least – visit your dentist. Yes, attractive looking teeth make us look younger and not only that, good oral health is vital for our health. This is a tip that is often overlooked. My journey over the last nine years has awakened me to the health benefits of good oral health. And on top of that, I am married to a dentist who has also been educating me about the toxic nature of mercury amalgam fillings. By going to your dentist regularly you will be helped to keep gum disease and tooth decay at bay. Bacteria in the mouth contributes to inflammation which may lead to heart disease and diabetes. If you have mercury amalgam fillings consider having them removed safely and replaced with natural white coloured fillings for younger looking teeth. Click here for more oral health information.

For women 40+ who want to live life to the full and stay younger longer

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Our skin’s appearance can make us look younger or older than our real age. How do we prevent our skin from aging?

A baby’s skin takes 14 days to turnover or replace skin cells.
20-30 year olds take up to 28 days to replace cells.
Those of us over 40 can take up to 90 days to experience cell turnover.

The struggling dermis needs more nutrition to help skin turnover, especially dry skin and all the problems of aging skin.  Over doing exfoliating will cause more harm than good, therefore, only exfoliate when required and dry skin requires it less since it is already in distress. Oily skin might require it more often. Knowing your skin is really key here, but over exfoliating is never the answer.  Nutrition from skincare and supplement products is really important for all skin but especially dry skin and aging skin.

There are 6 causes of skin aging according to Bea Kinnear (Your Skin and You).

1. Moisture – hydrated skin fights off toxic products and a toxic environment.
2. Caffeine – as caffeine is a diuretic, it dehydrates our skin. To balance the drying effect, drink three glasses of pure water to one cup of coffee, tea or soft drink.
3. Smoking – this also is a dehydrator but also reduces the necessary oxygen flow to the skin. Smoking reduces the body’s supply of Vitamin A and the absorption of Vitamin C, which are both vital to protect our skin.
4. Sun exposure – ultraviolet radiation damages the many layers of our skin and promotes skin cancer and wrinkles. However we do need to either expose our skin very carefully to the sun so that it does not burn and/or take a vitamin D3 supplement, as vitamin D3 is an important factor in our body’s health.
5. Soap – it can dehydrate the skin, affecting the PH factor.
6. Skin care products – one of the major contributors to premature aging are products made with inferior and questionable ingredients. Barrier type products suffocate the skin and inhibit its ability to function properly.

There is a big push in marketing skincare to make it ‘natural’ and ‘organic’. It up to us consumers to be aware that there are some ‘natural’ ingredients that are irritants to our skin and we do need to avoid them.

Natural ingredients can be made up of known and unknown ingredients. The two types of natural ingredients are a) essential oils and b) botanical.

Essential oils are also known as volatile oils and are from the plants that produce fragrances which may cause skin irritations. Some of the many essential oils to avoid are witch hazel, peppermint, jasmine, lavender extract and menthol.

Botanical ingredients are from the part of the plant that offer a vitamin source. They provide good antioxidants to the skin.

We also need to be aware of the types of preserving agents used in skincare. Many preservatives have the potential to cause allergic reactions on sensitive skin, and some preservatives do not support the product. Products that come in jars that require finger-dipping may become prone to bacteria.

Two preservatives to avoid are formaldehyde-releasing preservatives and parabens. The most common names are: Diazolidinyl Urea, Quaternium-15, Imidazolidinyl Urea, DMDM Hydantoin, Methyldibromo glutaronitrile, butylparaben, Ethylparaben, Methylparaben, Propylparaben.

All that might sound like a science lesson to you and you may be thinking that this is just too hard. It is reassuring that there are now products on the market that are self-preserving without any nasty chemicals and irritating essential oils. We just have to be on the look out for them.

If you would like to find about the anti-aging skin care products that I use and recommend, please use the contact form on this site.

And if you would like to learn more, you can download this document that helps you to understand why the technology of cosmetic scientists and nutrition experts need to have the same goals when developing a state-of-the-art skin care products.

I also recommend Bea Kinnear’s book ‘Your Skin and You’

Find out which self-preserving skincare products I use and recommend.

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Vitamin D is under the microscope and a huge amount of information is emerging. Most of you would know that we get this hormone (it’s not really a vitamin) by the sun’s interaction on our skin and from some foods.

The trick is to get the balance between getting too much sunlight (and risking skin damage and skin cancer) and getting enough sunlight for adequate Vitamin D production.

How is Vitamin D3 antiaging? When our bodies are tall and straight we look younger than when we are hunched over.

What does Vitamin D3 do?
• Helps to maintain healthy bones. A study reported in the Annuls of Internal Medicine in their August, 2008 issue showed that those women who had the lowest levels of vitamin D had the highest risk of hip fractures. Nearly 40,000 women were followed and the vitamin D status was measured by looking at their 25-hydroxy vitamin D level. They were divided into four groups depending on their vitamin D level. Those women who had the lowest vitamin D levels had the highest incidence of hip fractures.
• Supports efficient calcium absorption
• Necessary for normal bone mineralization
• Important for the maintenance of muscle strength
• Supports robust and healthy immune function (eg flu prevention)
• Supports a healthy heart. A study reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Conference in Orlando (March 2010)reported a strong association between reduced vitamin D levels and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Brent Muhlstein, MD and his colleagues followed over 27,000 subjects for a little over one year. Those with very low vitamin D levels were 45% more likely to develop heart disease, twice as likely to develop heart failure, 78% more likely to experience a stroke, and 77% more likely to die than those with normal levels. This is just another reason to check your vitamin D status via a 25-hydroxy vitamin D level and make sure it is greater than 60 ng/ml.

It wise to get your levels of Vitamin D tested. Vitamin D deficiency has become a serious nutritional problem throughout the world. In fact, the more we are learning about the health benefits of vitamin D it is becoming apparent that we need to get our vitamin D levels above 60 ng/ml, rather than above the 30 ng/ml most researchers are using as normal. 2,000 IU/Day or More Needed for Optimal Health.

If required, I do recommend that Vitamin D3 is a part of an overall nutritional supplement program that includes a broad-spectrum multivitamin, multimineral, omega-3 and calcium/magnesium.

From Doctor Myron Wentz: “Today medical research is discovering more and more functions of vitamin D in the human body, every one of them critical for optimal health. For example, vitamin D regulates blood levels of essential minerals such as phosphorus and calcium; it regulates the parathyroid gland, which controls the activity of bone tissue; it is essential to our immune system, plays a role in preventing high blood pressure, and protects against a wide range of diseases, from several forms of cancer to diabetes to multiple sclerosis. One authority estimates that lack of sunshine—and the consequent reduced production of vitamin D—leads to nearly one million deaths per year around the world, 600,000 of those deaths from cancer alone. Many, many times more than caused by the H1N1 swine flu”.

Recommended Reading:
* Very informative article from the Linus Pauling Institute about Vitamin D and the health impact of not having enough of this critical vitamin in your body.
* Research news for breast cancer survivors
* Low Vitamin D levels lead to poor physical performance in the elderly
* Dr. Frank Lipman Integrative Physician Vitamin D: What You Need To Know
* Vitamin D for better golden years
From The Sunday Times: Vitamin D better than vaccines at preventing flu, report claims
From the New York Times What Do You Lack? Probably Vitamin D

6 Things Your Doctor Isn’t Telling You About Longevity & Superhealth. In this amazing clip recorded at the Longevity Conference last March Dr. Mercola reveals 6 amazing insights on what doctors AREN’T telling you about anti-aging & super health. This is no ordinary information, Dr. Mercola is on the forefront of nutritional science and his revelations will shock you! Dr Mercola provides further information on the benefits of Vitamin D3 and how vital it is to our well-being.

Find out which advanced quality nutritional products I use and recommend.

Related Post: Osteoporisis – prevention and care

If you would like to find out which nutritional supplements are recommended for healthy aging, please request my free eBook, by completing the form on your top right.

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