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Realage is Real Good
Some Seabrookers may have already acquired Dr. Mike Roizen's book, entitled RealAge Are You as Young as You Can Be published this year by Cliff Street Books. Mike is a friend of mine and has been a professional associate for many years. He has worked on this book for many of those years so I was anxious to read it when it finally got published. The theme of the roughly 300 page book is the same as this column: you make choices every day that dictate how long you will live and how healthy you will be while alive. Mike calls the science behind his work, "preventive gerontology" - gerontology being the science of aging and preventive gerontology being the science that allows you to age.
The book, based on scientific evidence, claims that the data upon which it is based allows a prudent, healthful individual to make daily decisions which prevent more than 60% of arterial aging, 80% of cancer due to the environment, and more than 80% of accidents. These claims sound too good to be true, but upon scrutiny it does turn out that we consciously each day make choices which affect our longevity and the quality of our life.
The Concept
The underlying concept of RealAge is that your chronological age is usually different than your physiological age. Chronological age is easily calculated, it is this year minus your year of birth. It is useful information, but has limited usefulness in relation to your overall health. Your physiological age is how well your body and its many components, like heart, blood vessels, brain, kidneys, lungs etc. function. These are very relevant to your health. We all know people who are 75 years of age, but act and physiologically are much younger. The good news in RealAge is that this isn't because those physiologically younger people were blessed with good genetics over which none of us have any control. No! The message and thesis is that we can actually reduce the rate at which we physiologically age by the choices we make each day.
Real Choices that Really Count
The goal that each of us has is to live younger despite our continuing chronological age. There are real behaviors which retard or even reverse physiological aging. From time to time in this column we have and will continue to explore these behaviors in detail. However, there are eight general factors for men and nine for women that for the purposes of this month's column are useful to consider. These factors according to Dr. Roizen can influence your age by eight years (either making you older or younger) depending on what you choose. We have discussed some of these before, but here they are - hot off Dr. Roizen's press:
1) aggressively control blood pressure and stress
2) increase your social network
3) stop or never smoke
4) eat a nutrient-rich, fat-poor, calorie-poor diet
5) perform three types of physical activity regularly
6) aggressively manage (with physician assistance) any disease
7) identify your genetic risk (like breast cancer) and avoid factors known to predispose to that disease
8) constantly evaluate your health
9) postmenopausal women should work with your physician to find an appropriate and comfortable hormone replacement.
The bottom line, our age and health is largely under our control: not everyone is aging by the same clock - some clocks are running faster than others!  Back to Top
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