This week, I’m diving into the topic of aging successfully and what it means to age successfully in today’s fast-paced world. I’m reminded of a patient that came and saw me one time named Bob. Bob was 72 at the time, and he said to me that he had come to see me because he wanted to die fast. I looked at him, shocked and asked him if he had prostate cancer. He said to me the following words, and I’m paraphrasing here.

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“You don’t understand. Healthy people die fast. Unhealthy people die slowly, and it’s a horrible type of death with cancer and chemo. It’s a prolonged, hard, painful death. I don’t want that. I want to die fast and healthy people die fast.”

It was an incredible perspective, and Bob is doing incredibly well in his early eighties. I attribute Bob’s success in aging to focusing on his health and reducing his risk of cancer, heart disease, and keeping his body optimal well into his years. 

So let’s get into it. 

What does it mean to be healthy?

In my opinion the word health never motivates a man to do anything because it’s such an ambigious word. Everybody has their own definition and mine is that health is to live longer with optimal functionality and quality of life. It’s not only the absence of disease but als the ability to live with optimal functionality for the brain to work as long as possible. 

Exactly. What do we mean by that? These are all loose terms. It’s like. W, what does it mean to be healthy? I’ll tell you that the word health never motivates a man to do anything because it’s such an ambiguous word. That means nothing. Oh, I’m going to what exercise to be healthier. You know, what does that mean?

What are you trying to, what does healthy mean? And so everybody has their own definition. I’ll tell you my definition of health is to live longer with optimal functionality and quality of life. So it’s not only the absence of disease. Health is also the ability to live with optimal functionality for the brain to work for as long as possible.

One of the things that I’ve seen that men fear most is not death. They fear having poor memroy, poor health and possibly getting dementia or Alzheimer’s.  Men fear having to be dependent on others as they age. And this for most of us as we age that these fears come to life but here’s the reality, we can only control so much. The number one killer of men is chronic disease. 

What Exactly is Aging

Aging is defined by a term call celluar senescence which means that these cells stop working properly. You have 37 trillion cells and these cells need to work properly. In order for the cells to work properly, they have to divide and they are constantly die off. What’s amazing is that a year and half from today, you are a completely different person and it has nothing to do with your personality. It means that every cell in your body has died and new cells have come about within a year and half. 

So cells dying off is a good thing especially if they are unhealthy cells like cancer cells. Cancer are cells that divide too rapidly and they don’t die off. And what we want is the cell division to occur so that healthy cells divide and we can be functional. 

The aging process starts right around 30 for men and every year men lose about 1-2% testosterone a year. So it’s extremely important you do everything you can to start working on your health and wellness journey. That starts with making sure your DNA is healthy. 

How you make your DNA healthy is reducing inflammation, excess oxidative stress and free radicals and a lot of that can be done through your diet and exercise and proper nutrition. 

Finally, it is incredibly vital that you start practicing lifestyle medicine and one of the biggest things you can do to age healthily is reducing your stress levels. It’s one of the biggest things that leads to unhealthy habits. Stress causes poor judgement in our diet, contributes to poor sleep and overall mood. Also make sure that you are engaging in a lot of physical activity as well as it not only helps reduce stress but contributes to healthy aging. 

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To get more content like this, check out the Dr. Geo Podcast on Youtube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcast. For more information on living an optimal lifestyle as you age, visit drgeo.com

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