3 Tips to Slow the Aging Process

After a summer of beach barbecues, happy hours at the Reeds, dinners al fresco, and countless trips to the ice cream parlors, you might be finding yourself with lower than optimal energy, bloating, and just a little bit unbalanced.

Some of us can keep up our routines during the summertime, but just like the summer slide the kiddos have, there’s a little bit of that phenomenon that happens even for those of us who want to be specimens of optimal health.

Everyone wants to slow down aging. It’s all the rage these days – and the fountain of youth is just a myth. You need to understand that the choices you make daily decide how quickly you do or don’t age. If you’re someone who wants to learn more about this but is a little daunted by the science, just remember it’s about doing many of the little things most of the time that help to reduce the biochemical changes that cause aging.

At our practice, the Anti-Aging & Longevity Center, we employ strategies for these post-summer and holiday slumps to help our clients get back to feeling their best. You are reading this article, so congratulations – you have taken the first step to slowing the aging process. To take that next step, come see us in Bryn Mawr, Pa., and we will develop a personalized plan built around your specific biochemistry to help you achieve your optimal health for a long time to come.

You may not be able to turn back time and reduce your chronological age, but you can absolutely alter the effects of time on your body. In fact, research has shown us that it really is possible to slow down physical and mental aging. A study conducted at Duke University demonstrated that people with the same chronological age may have a substantially different biological age. This study looked at the cardiovascular health, cognitive abilities, and various biomarkers of fitness for 1,000 participants at three chronological ages: 26, 32, 38.

After looking at these biomarkers, what they found that was that these biomarkers weren’t declining at the same rate in each age group – and some showed no evidence of decline, meaning they weren’t aging at all. The group of patients in the 38-year-old group had biological ages ranging from 30 to 60. This was good news for the ones biologically younger than their age, but a signal to make some changes for those whose biological ages were higher than their chronological age.

Knowledge is power, so knowing that factors other than genetics will influence how quickly you age helps you with strategies to slow that process down.

Here are our top three recommendations to help you get back to your best self:

Let’s start with the fuel you’re putting in this incredible machine, known as your body.

If you don’t already have an established baseline of wellness by eating a nourishing, plant-rich diet most of the time, that’s going to be Step 1. You want to try to eat 5-6 cups of green, leafy vegetables every day.

Greens contain vitamins, minerals and carotenoids which act as antioxidants in the body. They’re also amazing sources of fiber, and phytonutrients that naturally detoxify the body and help to support a healthy gut microbiome which helps you efficiently eliminate toxins.

Regularly fill up at least 50%, and even aim for 75%, of your plate with veggies. This ratio helps to lower blood pressure, improves blood-sugar regulation, and reduces risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Let’s talk about the liver. It’s an organ that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it’s working 24/7. Treating your body to a metabolic reset – one that helps improve metabolism, digestion, energy storage and hormone production – is an excellent way to align with the change of seasons. This allows you to reconnect with your body and get grounded after all the summer fun.

The liver has more than 500 functions, one of which is detoxifying and neutralizing toxins. There is no safe level of toxins, but our bodies are bombarded by them daily, and from all directions. There are toxins from your food and water, the environment, from body-care products, in our cleaning products. The liver also removes old red blood cells, medications, micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites, as well as toxins such as those found in alcohol.

Breaking down and eliminating harmful substances from the body is a complicated physiological process involving two phases that require many nutrients and vitamins.

Phase 1 involves taking toxic substances and converting them into intermediates that are more toxic than before the toxins were broken up. The initial result is the formation of free radicals, which can do lots of harm if you don’t keep them moving through your detox pathways on the way out of your body.

Phase 2 is all about conjugation and involves making the intermediate toxin into a nontoxic form that can be excreted by the colon or kidneys. There are six pathways to take the Phase 1 metabolites out of your body.

If you have a sluggish Phase 2, you’ll see the results of these toxins hours later. If this system gets overloaded, it gets backed up and you can experience symptoms like feeling jittery or having brain fog, or maybe developing a headache or insomnia.

This process also requires B vitamins, as well as sulfur-rich foods, and amino acids such as arginine, glutamine, glycine, methionine, ornithine and taurine, as well as glutathione and N-acetyl cysteine (NAC).

Supporting your body’s liver detox process is crucial for removal of toxins like free radicals. So, whether the season is changing, or you want to recharge your liver to optimize health, an efficient way to do this is with a 7-, 10- or 14-day metabolic detox program. A nice side effect of these programs is weight loss: 4-7 pounds on average for women, 5-9 pounds for men. Patients also report improved energy, better digestion, healthier skin, and improved energy. We can simplify this process by creating a springboard for you to gain more energy, achieve better health for long-lasting benefits, and get back into the lifestyle that is anti-aging vs. pro-aging.

Make sure you’re drinking enough water. Drinking enough water each day makes it easier for the body to flush toxins and helps to keep your liver and kidneys working effectively. Water makes up about 60% of an adult’s body weight, and is critical for digesting food, maintaining healthy joints and skin, and regulating body temperature. If you don’t have enough water, toxins can’t travel through the bloodstream to the liver to undergo the Phase 1/Phase 2 detoxification process. Additionally, as we get older, the kidneys don’t work as efficiently, and you may not be as sensitive to thirst signals. It’s important to keep drinking even when you’re not thirsty.

So how much water is optimal?

In terms of water intake, we find that most people don’t know what that number is. According to the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, men should have 3.7 liters (or 15.5 cups) of fluids daily and women should have about 2.7 liters (or 11.5 cups) of fluids daily. If you’ve been exercising and sweating, it’s important to drink extra water. And these days, with the hot weather we’ve been experiencing, this also requires additional fluid.

If water is not necessarily your thing, you have other options available to get the appropriate amount of fluid each day. Your body doesn’t discriminate where the hydration comes from, so eating water-rich fruits and vegetables will help you attain your water-intake goals. Foods such as watermelon and spinach which are almost 100% water by weight give you a flavorful alternative to repeatedly refilling that your water glass. Besides water, drinking beverages such as milk and non-caffeinated teas can add some variety to your hydration routine.

So, as the days get shorter and the back-to-school commercials get more frequent, use these final days of summer to plot a path to slow the effects of the aging process by eating your vegetables, resetting your liver, and focusing on your hydration levels. Taking these simple steps now will not only help your post-summer slump, but it will also ensure you are around for many more summers at the shore.