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How to Avoid Wrinkles and Degenerative Disease (February 2008)

Welcome to the 3D PTS Edge February 2008 newsletter.

 

The other day I was talking a to lady friend about an anti-aging wonder pill: ‘I know it’s expensive but my friend’s mum has been taking it for years and swears by it, I need to start early to really beat the wrinkles!’ (don’t worry guys, we know you feel the anti-aging pain too).

 

Lets face it, we’re under pressure. Do we ever open up a magazine, watch TV or walk down the street these days without getting the impression that beating age has never been more important.

 

Everybody likes to look (and feel) good, and we’re no different at 3D PTS. We’re into beating age into submission effectively, holistically and naturally, and importantly without re-mortgaging the house to pay for that must have Clinique, Clarins, Crème de la Mer or Imedeen skincare product, or for that matter botox or a surgical procedure.

 

For an effective, in depth look at how to age gracefully we’re launching an exciting brand new eBook next month called ‘The Anti-Aging Bible’, watch out for it!

 

We all know that skin is the big daddy when it comes to anti-aging, but we’re also talking about hair loss, muscle degeneration, and body shape changes, plus a raft of age related diseases like cancer, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Ageing means a whole lot more than a couple of wrinkles.

 

It’s easy to see the big picture of aging, wrinkles, disease, loss of flexibility and so on, but the real aging action – the action we’re interested in - takes place on a cellular level and it’s affected by the 3 dimensions of your fitness, nutrition, and your mind.

 

We age because our cells divide more quickly over time and because we damage them through the things we do. It’s that simple.

 

So how do we slow down the aging process, if not by buying expensive products or surgery?

 

We’d like to introduce you to exercise.

 

It’s official, exercise really can make you look and feel younger. A brand spanking new study has shown that those who take exercise are biologically younger – by up to 9 years – than those who don’t. It’s all in our cells – our DNA strands contain telomeres which protect our chromosomes (they cap the chromosome at each end) and shorten over time, causing our cells, ultimately, to die and our bodies to age.

 

This study, published in January 2008, used data from the Twin Research Unit at King’s College to compare identical and non-identical twins, whose average age was just under 50, and included more than 2,400 volunteers - mostly women - with an age range from 18 to 81.

 

What they found was a significant link between telomere length in the volunteers’ white blood cells and the amount of exercise they took. This remained significant when adjusted for smoking, BMI, and social class.

 

Basically exercise keeps your telomeres long and ‘young’ in comparison to the telomeres of folks who don’t exercise, meaning our cells keep us looking and feeling young, avoiding degenerative diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart attacks.

 

Exercise. Now isn’t that an amazing little anti-aging trick?

 

Muscle mass also has an effect on the aging process. Keeping your muscles lean and in good shape helps your metabolic rate stay high, while a decrease in metabolic rate is one of the markers associated with the aging process.(1)

 

Now that’s going to keep you looking, and feeling, young.

 

Also, and I know it’s a favourite 3D PTS topic, but don’t overdo the cardio. Performing excessive amounts of aerobic exercise, like jogging for over an hour, boost the aging process by increasing free radical formation and catabolic hormones that decrease muscle mass and therefore decrease metabolism.

 

Get off the treadmill, do some strength exercises!

 

Nutrition also has a major impact on the aging process, what we put in our bodies can either speed the aging process up or slow it down. Most skincare products out there work by providing nutrients to the dermatological cells, keeping them nice and plump, tautened and so on (you’ve seen the ad’s!)

 

So how can we do the same thing without buying all these nicely marketed products?

 

It’s a case of feeding your cells the right nutrients to keep them from breaking down and aging, and eliminating the toxins that speed up the aging process at a cellular level, ending up with wrinkles and disease. We believe in feeding your cells and fighting the aging process from the inside, not from the outside.

 

At 3D PTS that means taking some active nutritional choices, and here are our top 10 anti-aging super foods:

 

1. Water – rids you of nasty toxins that age your cells and hydrates them at the same time

2. Avocado, prunes, berries – really really high in anti-oxidants and great fats from avocado help your cell walls to stay young

3. Vitamins C (our favourite), A and E – all amazing anti-oxidants

4. Digestive aids & probiotics like live yoghurt, kefir (which is amazing stuff), and whey – as we age our digestive system is not as effective, giving it a helping hand means you can digest your food better and use the nutrients you eat

5. Un-denatured whey protein (like the Goatein we use in our NutriStart kit). Whey protein concentrate dramatically raises glutathione levels. Glutathione is an essential water-soluble antioxidant in the body that protects cells and serves as a primary detoxifier of harmful compounds such as peroxides, heavy metals, carcinogens and other toxins

6. Green foods like wheat and barley grass

7. Atlantic Krill oil and flax seed – both high in essential omega’s that your cells love!

8. Green Tea – another great anti-oxidant

9. Coconut oil: high in lauric acid which balances your metabolism, hormone system, and kills nasty bugs that make you toxic – all great for anti-aging

10. Tomatoes: lightly cooked with olive oil – increases the amount of lycopene,  several studies have found that a diet rich in lycopene can protect against the development of prostate  cancer, cancer of the mouth, stomach, large bowel, cervix and other aging diseases

 

We also need to talk about free radicals.

 

A free radical is an atom which has lost one of its electrons. What this means to you and I is that it wanders off in your body aggressively looking for another electron. It can either find that electron by stealing it from another atom, creating another free radical and starting a real nasty free radical party in your body,2 or from an anti-oxidant (for instance vitamin C donates electrons without getting unstable itself).

 

When free radicals gain the upper hand they disrupt your cells, making you age, directly causing age related diseases like cancer, arthritis, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

 

Frankly, we need to get to the free radicals before they get to us.

 

Our main weapons of choice are anti-oxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and coenzyme Q10 – they form the first line of defence against free radicals,3 and non-enzymatic anti-oxidants like vitamins A, C and E, glutathione, protein –SH and uric acid.(2)

 

Coenzyme Q10 is a fat-soluble compound primarily made by the body and also consumed in the diet (Nivea have added it to most of their skincare products, but we think it might oxidize before it gets where it’s needed). Your body uses it in the energy production process and it also acts as an anti-oxidant in cell membranes,(3) which keep your cells from aging.

 

A diet rich in these anti-oxidants, like our 10 top super foods, will do the job nicely.

 

For a great breakdown of your nutrient levels and toxic metal profile, we always recommend having Hair Mineral Analysis done. That means sending off a sample of your hair for analysis at a lab, giving you a profile of 15 nutrient minerals, 7 toxic metals and 15 other mineral levels. Once your report is back you can choose to follow a targeted supplement regime. You can get all this from 3D PTS here, but also from plenty of other places.

The last dimension in living the anti-aging dream is learning to chill out. A recent study conducted by the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) supported the link between stress and premature aging. Elissa Epel, a psychiatrist involved in the study said "This is the first time that psychological stress has been linked to a cellular indicator of aging in healthy people." The study involved comparing the health of 39 mothers caring for chronically ill children to a control group of healthy women.

The researchers looked closely at telomeres – yes, telomeres again. Every time a cell divides, telomeres get shorter. In the natural aging process, the telomeres eventually get so short that cells can no longer divide, and they then die. As more and more cells reach the end of their telomeres and die, the inexorable process produces the effects of aging - muscles weaken, skin wrinkles, eyesight and hearing fade, organs fail, and thinking abilities diminish.

The researchers also measured levels of an enzyme called telomerase, which helps rebuild telomeres to stave off this process. Telomerase levels naturally decline with age. "As the telomeres shorten, telomerase is trying to keep up," said Elizabeth Blackburn, a professor of biology and physiology at UCSF who helped conduct the study. "Over the long term, we lose the race and our telomeres do get shorter." (4)

In the interest of keeping our telomeres nice and long, and to round up our anti-aging chat, here are a few things that will help in the fight against aging and all it brings:

 

1. Get to sleep by 10:30pm, your body is programmed to detox in sleep after this time, if you’re awake, you’re holding onto toxins, and you know what that means

2. Exercise – at least walk 30 mins every day, look after your telomeres!

3. Chill out - meditate, get a massage – plan to relax at least 1 day a week

4. Breathe properly: belly breathing gets rid of more toxins your cells don’t like

5. Get some sunshine: Sunshine catalyzes a reaction in your skin, which leads to vitamin D production in your body. And vitamin D is vital. A new study out of King's College in London has discovered that vitamin D actually helps to keep your DNA from aging. Just remember that more is not better when it comes to sunshine.

6. Get a pet if you spend a lot of time at home alone – studies show it relieves stress

7. Don’t eat while working or watching TV - when you perform cognitive tasks your nervous system is in a very active mode. Eating is a non-active thing. Your nervous system needs to be non-active to properly activate the digestive juices and the organs of digestion.

 

So that’s it in a nutshell, our quick tour round the issues of anti-aging is over. As always at 3D PTS we take the 3 essential dimensions of an issue – fitness, nutrition and mind, and make them work for you with our ‘One Synergy’ approach to life.

 

For much more on aging and how to really stay looking and feeling young effectively, holistically, naturally, and without breaking the bank, keep your eyes peeled for our exciting new eBook, ‘The Anti-Aging Bible’, out soon.

 

By the way, if you liked this article, please feel free to forward it on along with any of our other FreeTools links, there’s nothing we like better than giving away our free stuff to as many people as we can.

 

Wishing you all the best in health and fitness,,

 

Craig, Matt and the 3D PTS team

 

 

 

 

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