Young & Healthy, a thing of the past?

Often in our minds we think that age determines health. We think of children being vibrant and fully of life, while retirement means less energy and more leisure. However, this doesn’t have to be the case! We can have energy and age gracefully if we take charge of our own health by making conscious decisions to take control through our food choices.

Find your way around:

Is 65 the magical number at which you become old and unhealthy?

No, not at all! This was arbitrarily set during the 1930’s because it reflected the age of retirement (Life Table 1939). When social security was created in 1935, the average lifespan was 67. As a result, 65 meant close to the end of life (SSA History).

With great leaps in medicine (antibiotics) and infrastructure (running water and indoor plumbing), people are living much longer. For instance, the centenarian community continues to grow across the globe. Italy in 2017 had over 17,000 people over the age of 100! Now that’s not something we hear about everyday.

Well, I’m under 50 so that automatically means that I’m mostly healthy, right?

It depends. At this point in your life you may be managing chronic diseases. For example, Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, don’t exactly equal healthy. Controlling your levels with medication is a great advantage of our current medical system. Although when taken alone, they are not treating the underlying disease. Instead the “treatments” are only masking the symptoms, rather than treating the cause.

Having more than one chronic disease is fairly common among adults in the US. Those in this situation are more vulnerable to both bacterial and viral infections because their immune system is already out of balance.

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

How about in your 20-30’s? I haven’t been diagnosed with a chronic disease yet!

This is when we are trying to keep up with a high paced life. From going through college, to entering the workforce or starting a family, our long term health isn’t always at the front of our minds. We may get to the gym a few times a week after sitting in a car for an hour a day and being confined to a desk for 8 hours, with only small walks to the next meeting down the hall. Follow that up with eating out for lunch/dinner several times a week, joining friends for a beer (or 7) on the weekend, and having a sleep schedule that is anything but consistent.

These choices start to add up now and are the basis for which chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes develop later on in life. For example, prolonged sleep deprivation was tested in men aged 21 to 25 in one study and another included those 35 and older. In both studies, sleep deprivation was shown to have long-term effects on inflammation and cholesterol pathways which can increase ones risk for cardiometabolic diseases (Aho et al, 2016, Nature Article).

20 and younger, well I’m definitely healthy…

This is the time when we are getting a great deal of environmental exposures, from forgetting to put on sunscreen, to pollutants in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the foods that we survive on. We all know that as teenagers we drank too much soda and ate too much ramen noodles (or whatever your junk food drink and snack of choice was). These instances cause DNA damage, that over 5-10 years can accumulate until a detectable cancer is formed.

Dayem et al Molecular Mechanisms 2016, timeline description by Diandra

Dietary choices early on can have a lasting impact on ones health. Arteries are clogged even in childhood from high saturated fat intake. Pre-diabetes can develop (intra-myocellular lipid deposition in muscle cells) where insulin starts to loose it’s effectiveness (Heart Disease starts in childhood).

The fact is, at any age we can have underlying conditions that we may not even know about. From a genetics standpoint, even infants have small errors in their DNA that were there at birth, but the amazing thing is that your genes are not always your destiny! Aside from a few diseases like Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular dystrophy, Tay-Sachs, and Huntington disease where one mutation = disease (meaning the gene is “fully penetrate”), our exposures over a lifetime internally and externally can alter the impact of these genes (“Change your Genes, Change your Life” book by Kenneth R. Pelletier and Andrew Weil).

Is all hope lost?

Not at all! Dr. Dean Ornish has a comprehensive plan in his recent book “Undo It!” that includes Stress Reduction and Meditation, Love and support, Eating Healthy and Exercise. Remember, we aren’t defined by our diseases, we are whole people! No matter what your age, don’t take your health for granted! Everyday you have the choice to choose either health promoting or health destroying foods. This choice is yours to make 3 times a day.

For more information on healthy foods to get you on track…