The “secret” to anti-aging

The “secret” to anti-aging – and by anti-aging I mean preserving vitality, resilience, energy and weller-than-well health – is no secret.

Actually, there are two non-secret “secrets,” two well tested, scientifically validated ways to reverse our biological clocks.  One, believe me, you don’t want to do.  It’s called CR (calorie restriction), and I don’t mean a diet.  I mean a forever and ever eating strategy that restricts caloric intake to 60 to 70 percent of what your body is calculated to need without sacrificing any nutrition.  This is very very hard to do.  It takes unremitting planning, frequent testing, precise calculating (and resigning oneself to feeling hungry all the time).  It removes the spontaneity, not to mention much of the pleasure, from eating.  (I know whereof I speak.  I thoroughly researched CR, attempted it and write about the experience in the book.

So forget that secret.

The other non-secret “secret”?  Exercise.  Physical movement.  You know, sweat.  This I also did, to the extreme, for the book.  I also wrote about the many and wondrous anti-aging effects of exercise, from regulating blood sugar and reducing stress hormones to elevating mood and lowering blood pressure, from keeping arteries supple to keeping the brain youthful. Now comes some new research that demystifies the magic of exercise.  And the news is good.

It turns out that exercise can drastically alter how genes operate — in a good way. Just sit with that statement for a moment.  Exercise alters genetic expression.  Wow.

It turns out that one way of affecting gene behavior is through a process largely driven by how you lead you life. As in diet and exercise. In a new study, sedentary men who exercised for six months not only lost weight and inches, and not only improved their blood pressure and cholesterol profiles.  Their exercise regimen altered the genetic expression of their fat cells. Their DNA was modified.  The cells most affected were those most closely identified with playing a role in fat storage, and the risk for obesity and Type 2 diabetes.  Other studies have found profound effects on the DNA of muscle cells.

Significant, wellness-promoting, disease-blasting changes deep within our cells, at DNA level.  If you needed another reason to get up and move, to integrate vigorous physical activity into your life, you couldn’t find a better one than this.