Article; 6 Ways You Can Reverse the Aging Process

You know that as you get older, you’re going to physically change for the worse. I’m convinced that if you effectively address these physical “age markers,” your health span will soar and you’ll look and feel younger.

I’ve measured how physical capacities change with age. Then, I’ve tracked each change against efforts to reverse them. I’d like you to focus on six important physical age changes that you can reverse.

1. Loss of lean tissue mass. Your muscles and internal organs are lean tissues. As we age, most of us lose both muscle and internal organ weight and replace the lean tissue with fat. People who age well, who seem to be far younger than their years, retain their lean tissue mass. Indeed, the Evergreen Project found that the more lean tissue you have the longer your life, the fewer your illnesses and the better your mental functioning.

Lean tissues protect you from many age-related ailments:

- Reduces risk of bone fractures by supporting bones.

- Improves sexual health by stimulating sex hormone production.

- Reverses hormonal age by boosting human growth hormone.

- Helps you keep trim by boosting your metabolic rate.

- Gives you more energy by increasing glycogen stores.

- Decreases risk of infection by strengthening your immune system.

Lean tissue loss begins at age 30, with an average of three pounds lost per decade. Yet the loss is preventable and completely reversible. I’ve seen patients of all ages regain 100 percent of their youthful lean mass.

To build muscle mass, you must engage your big muscles. The quadriceps on the front of your thigh, the hamstrings on the back of your leg and the gluteus of the buttocks are your three biggest. Provide stiff resistance through a broad range of motion for these three muscles. This can include weight training with squats or leg presses, bodyweight exercises, bicycling, stair-steppers or elliptical machines.

2. Shrinking lungs. As years pass, your lung volume shrinks. By the time you’re 60, you’ve lost up to 40 percent of your lung volume. Here’s how you can measure yours: Ask your doctor to give you a pulmonary function test to check your lung capacity. I find it very valuable to monitor the benefits of exercise at reversing the loss of lung volume that afflicts so many elders.

3. Diminishing heart capacity. Most people don’t realize that they’re losing heart capacity until it’s too late – when they’re in the emergency room after a heart attack. Yet you can get a gauge of your heart capacity by measuring your recovery heart rate.

Begin by walking comfortably for two minutes. Then measure your heart rate by locating your pulse on your wrist and counting the number of beats for 15 seconds, then multiply by four to get the beats per minute. This is your normal-activity heart rate. Now do a round of jumping jacks. Then, after two minutes measure your heart rate again.

Next, check your heart rate until it returns to your normal-activity rate. The amount of time from peak activity back to your normal-activity heart rate is your recovery time. The fitter you are, the faster your heart rate will recover back to normal.

If you don’t practice short-burst cardio, your heart and lungs have probably lost capacity. Here’s what to do. Use short bursts of cardio to get your heart rate to a target range for your age. Start at 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. (Your maximum heart is 220 minus your age.) In a few weeks work up to 80 percent of your maximal heart rate.

4. Increasing body fat. If you don’t act to prevent it, fat slowly but relentlessly replaces lean tissue as you age. But again, this shift is not inevitable.

Start by measuring your body fat. Get it measured at the gym or use a set of calipers. My youthful body fat goal is 8 to 16 percent for men and 12 to 24 percent for women.

Fat loss starts with adequate protein. This signals your body that, “the hunting is good.” What do you need to store extra body fat for if you will eat well again tomorrow? To put your body in fat-burning mode, over-consume protein, and minimize everything else. This is one piece of advice where I get a lot of resistance. If you can have some faith and try it, you’ll see too how much easier it makes losing fat and achieving a more youthful body.

Finally, short bursts of exercise burn fat best. Short bursts use energy from carbohydrates stored in muscle rather than from fat. Carbs burn energy at a much higher rate. You then burn off your fat during the recovery period as you replenish the carbs.

5. Thinning bones

6. Loss of functional strength. You can use the same routine to build bone density and functional strength. As it turns out, your bones respond to stressors put on them by increasing their density. And, if you are effectively stressing your bones, you will also be building functional strength.

Source:www.americanchronicle.com