Aging and Resveratrol

When I first read this New York Times article about resveratrol I was intrigued. Seems resveratrol is in red wine but I had just read about it elsewhere so I looked thru my computer and found it is in one of the products I take - the one that reduces post exercise aches and pains! So I am getting resveratrol in my body daily - which is good as I don't like red wine :- )

A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health.

Full article HERE

Wow - even more energy!

I, a sometimes cynic, am totally impressed with the energy I have of late.

In my cycling class, for the first time since I started over 2 years ago, I kept up with most of what the instructor was doing - I usually can not. [And she was into standing runs and sprints which I do not like and they generally wear me out quickly.]

But not now....I have been running - I am waking up very early which is an odd Fall pattern for me as I generally only wake up this early in the summer...

Where is all this energy coming from? The only change I have made in my life was to start taking a new fat loss product. It spares lean muscle as it targets fat. I can only guess that in losing fat [another inch in the waist and hips] I am changing something in my body balance and that is producing the energy....and I am exercising more strenuously because I have that energy...so I am burning more calories and ... and ... and .... Some of the ability to maintain the higher level of exercise may be the few accumulated months of taking another product that helps reduce soreness and stiffness due to physical activity or overexertion. It just may be that from now on it WILL take longer for me to wear out when I bike...We'll see - and I'll keep you posted.

I also tried an experiment for a few days last week. After exercising in the AM - I kept my heart rate monitor on for several hours. It's true - exercising does keep you burning calories for hours afterwards - 200 calories an hour for me - up to 5 hours later [when I took off the monitor as the chest strap gets annoying.] I put the monitor on one day when I did not exercise in the AM.. I burned substantially fewer calories that day when all else was the same except for not exercising.

My body is functioning much better these days and I ain't getting younger :-) so it's got to be something else. I'll keep taking the products because I assume it is they that are doing the good things for me as they are creating my personal version of healthy aging.

And I really have to add this - it's making me money ! I am an associate for the company that markets the fat loss product. Neighbors are joining my business and/or just buying the product. They are impressed with my noticeable increase in energy and the lost inches! And in this economy - they love the idea that they too can make money...so it's a win win win. Why ? This business model works well in a recession... right now who can't use extra money every month?

[You can learn more about the product and the potential income by clicking on the link at the top right on this page.]

Energy Anyone?

This country is having an energy crisis but that's not the one I am speaking of right now...I tend to do that elsewhere : -)

Do you have as much energy as you did say 10 or 20 years ago? I have been thinking about this as a few friends [some older, some younger] have said how tired they are feeling lately. It has nothing to do with exercising as they all exercise to some extent.

It may have to do with the declining daylight but I'm not sure of that as it was not mentioned in years past.

I find that my energy varies widely depending on what I am doing and I'm not so sure it's always age related...I recall when I was a New Yorker who lived a 24-hour-day most of the week. My friends and I lived on little sleep when we were in college...NY never sleeps and neither did we...at least for stretches of time...but I was in my late teens and early 20's....I then moved to sleepier cities and my habits changed...or was it the fact that I was getting older? Hard to separate the factors.

But back to 2008. I seem to have more energy than others younger than I...I just had a busy week [which helps account for the lack of posts here - it's election season.] Here it's been election season for a long time as our primary was in later May - but right now it's getting very busy and I am politically active..So I've been to meetings and fund raisers - which are actually fun parties - but don't tell anyone.. Most think of politics as dreary. It energizes me!

So is my energy coming from the politics or did the new fat loss supplement give me an energy edge? The two happened simultaneously and when I was a researcher - I tended to look at correlations between factors - and I still do. I have also lost more waist inches and a few more pounds. Is it the body change that is energizing me? [or all of the above?]

Not knowing the specific answer - my thinking is to not change any of what I am doing...Because? I prefer being energized to not being energized - it's part of my healthy aging "program."

And - If nothing else I sure feel good - in fact I feel great and I love that feeling!

New mantras for us? Feeling great at 68 ! [and soonish] Feeling fine at 69!

And there is a link at the top right of the page or HERE so you can find out more about this product I am taking.

Those pesky inches [the waist ones]

When in Chicago I bought and immediately started using a new fat loss product. It had great research findings behind it and some awesome testimonials as to it's ability to knock off that fat :-)

It was the evening of September 5th when I first started using it. On September 7, 8, and 9 I walked all over Chicago - miles and miles a day. I had energy to spare even tho I was waking up at 5ish [AM]. I did not change my eating habits - nor did I skip the occasional beer or glass of wine.

Arrived back in Portland on September 10th - 5 pounds lighter and two inches less in the waist. I know that's not typical and it has a lot to do with my body - which has always gained and lost with it's own odd patterns.

I'm soon going into week 3 of the product and the pounds and inches are still missing and as I am back home, I also started back to my health club [just once - yesterday - but it is a start :-)]

I'll keep reporting now on the results with exercise back on track...Decided that if I want to live long and well being lean is healthier. And I do write about healthy aging....so I'll be my own role model!

Here's me at the start of this product - the "before" photo.





I'll take one every so often with the same "outfit" on for comparisons.

If this product is one you might like to know more about go here to lynn's "store"

and look for OsoLean

I won't pressure you into buying it - that's not my style....





And here's a shot of Chicago - one the many I
took on my walks. I am intrigued by reflections -
no matter where thy occur - my river or Chicago
skyscrapers.

Moving – as a Liberating Experience

I just spoke with a friend of mine who recently left a house and city she had been in for over 45 years!

Last year when we spoke of her moving she was not sure she could leave the house where she had lived with her husband [who had since died] and her son [who left for college and moved on.] And, of course, all the “stuff” she had accumulated in that time ☺

She had asked me how I did it – I told her I sold, tossed, shredded and burned and it was liberating to literally dump the past. For me that was 5 years ago and yes I sometimes miss some of the “stuff” I sold but those are momentary musings. But I had moved fairly frequently so I did not have decades of pack rat boxes around....she did.

When she finally made the decision to move – she moved quickly! Sold her house, decided what to take, what to toss, etc. Now she is 1000’s of miles away from her old house - but near her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.

She’s been there about a month and said she knows this was the right move and that it was liberating! We laughed about her going from a life in big cities [like me she is a native Nyer] to the Midwest.....She’s excited and that’s good.

After that call I reflected on my own move. I went to a city where I knew no one - but it is a city. Unlike my friend, I had decided I needed to live in a city....but then I had my non-city years during which I learned I am a genetic city person.

My friend, having learned something from me, has her vacation already scheduled –[NY and Boston for a month.]

I did not feel liberated after my other moves so it may be the aging factor. Is it the shedding of accumulated “stuff” – and the experience of starting over? Is it the distance moved? Is the actual tossing and burning of papers once considered important? Does the shredding and burning represent a real liberation? A psychological breakthrough?

No matter – now almost 5 years after my departure from New England, I am still feeling liberated. Have I accumulated more “stuff?” Yeah – but as I have a very small house the amount is almost determined for me ☺

So – moving can be a liberating experience. It need not be traumatic or sad or anything else. Maybe it’s when we can make the decision ourselves instead of it being made for us. If you are happy, healthy and able to look ahead and not dwell on the past - Liberation – here we come!

Maybe It's Time to Start Running Again

I used to run - not far and not consistently. When I lived in Boston the Boston Marathon always was an incentive to start running but...that fizzled in the heat of a Boston summer or cold of a Boston winter...

Then in DC I lived near a track and ran on that with some neighbors and trained a bit with a friend who was into marathons. Back in New England I ran again but since arriving in Portland - I have not run at all - oops.. but I walk a lot :-)

So when read this today - I thought - hmmm - maybe it is time to start running again..

Regular running slows the effects of aging, according to a new study from Stanford University School of Medicine that has tracked 500 older runners for more than 20 years. Elderly runners have fewer disabilities, a longer span of active life and are half as likely as aging non runners to die early deaths, the research found.

"The study has a very pro-exercise message," said James Fries, MD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the medical school and the study's senior author. "If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise." The new findings will appear in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Full article here

Tomorrow morning - I'm going out for a run!

What do we know about active 90-year-olds?

Almost nothing!

This news clip is amazing!

Knowledge about human health outgrew the size of a single textbook long ago. Today our understanding of prenatal health alone could fill a small library, from fetal wound healing to the effects of air pollution, X-rays, even methamphetamines on fetal growth.

But if you are over the age of 90, the answers are few and far between.
Ann Johansson/for The Star-LedgerHal Peoples, 94, lawn bowls at the Laguna Woods Village retirement community in Laguna Woods, Calif.

The efficacy of dialysis for chronic kidney disease? Unknown.

Heart surgery outcomes? Unknown.

Risks from colonoscopy, high cholesterol or chemotherapy?

No one really knows, even though nonagenarians are the fastest-growing age group around the world.

Full article:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/07/knowledge_about_human_health_o.html

Why don't we know? Because no one knows where to find healthy active 90-year-olds....it seems we only know where to find the sicker ones!

In the USA, we have generally ignored the "real" aging population - focusing instead on our bias that all "old people" are frail, needing help and afraid of doing anything that may lead to getting hurt. So we only look at the frail, weak and less active among the older generations.

We need to put a major focus on healthy aging and prevention..we are a country obsessed with disease and "cures" but the old saying about that "ounce of prevention" works for all ages. We say we have a health care system but we have a disease care sytem. We need to stop spending all the time and money on cures and start spending on prevention of the problems as well.

As the article concludes:

All the cures in the world...will mean little until we understand how and why we age:

"Let's say you cure a 70-year-old woman of breast cancer, but she's frail, she's in a nursing home and she has Alzheimer's. Have you really done anything to increase her quality of life?"

Over 65? Not so healthy...

According to the Center for Disease Control, nearly 80% of those over 65 have at least one chronic condition and about 50 % have at least two.

You can go to the CDC interactive site and check your state and others HERE

You can also view the information by indicators such as:

Health Status
Physically Unhealthy Days
Frequent Mental Distress
Oral Health: Complete Tooth Loss
Disability

Health Behaviors
No Leisure-Time Physical Activity
Eating ≥ 5 Fruits and Vegetables Daily
Obesity
Current Smoking

Among the overall USA findings:

20% of people aged 65 and older are obese
Almost 33% are sedentary
25 % of the women aged 65 and older haven't had a mammogram in the last two years
Almost 6% report mental distress 14 or more days in the past month.

Interestingly, to me, it varies widely from state to state like for obesity - Iowa is high - 24% but it's not the cold winters as as Louisiana is at 25% and Maryland at 23% and they are warmer in the winter...

Check your state - it's interesting.

Will you retire?

Our lifespans have increased and our health is better. So do we continue to "retire" at 65? 70?
Or will we take on newer careers at those ages?

The median annual income for older women [ 65 and up] is a few thousand dollars over the definition of poverty level. And although we worked hard at women's equality - we are not equal financially. Our income at over 65 is about half of that of a male.

So it makes economic sense for women to keep working. I'll always work - but it will not ever be 9 to 5. I've tried that a few times and it doesn't fit my psyche :- ). I've changed careers many times...when I was 50 I went to law school and my son, who was then 11, wrote an essay about me that ended with "My mom is 50 and she still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up." His mom is almost 67 and still wonders what she'll be when she grows up....I love reading and learning - but
for now I'm content to do it on my own without collecting any more degrees....

I'm more into degree-less work now....It its my growing older better psyche : -)

Money and growing older

For many, there is a financial need to continue working after hitting the 60's. For others, there is a desire to keep working until we are no longer able to do so..... One nice thing about aging is that we hopefully learn to work smarter and not harder.

We are living longer and maintaining our health as we age...and for some, we are getting healthier as we grow older better I am in much better physical shape than I was when in my 50's. , Maybe even better than when in my 40's.

So - do we keep working or not? It's an individual choice - and depends on how much "better" you want to grow older : ). Full retirement with sufficient funds so that there is absolutely no stress related to money is great. But with increasing costs of everything - it's wise to not totally count on what you now have if you are retired.

I complain about corporations here: http://illegitimisnilcarborundum.blogspot.com
but I will say here that they scare me. All they want is the moolah and the hell with the people. Yes I know this is not true of all corporations but too many have hurt us - like the pharmaceuticals, the energy ones, the oil people, etc. Their goal is to increase their own net incomes and those of their shareholders- they do not care about who might get hurt. [The Medicare part D doughnut hole is a good example.]

Over the next bunch of postings - I am going to look at working and aging.

Still exercising

Even as we age there are major breakthroughs in our physical abilities. I mentioned that I was into cycling again and recently I got over a major hurdle. Since I ski, my quads are in pretty good ski shape, but that's not the same shape it takes to do a standing run on a bike.....So for months I was getting better at a standing hill climb but once we stared to go into a sprint or a run I folded and sat down - my quads screaming at me! I've hung in at the classes because my original goal was to be in shape for the Bridge Pedal in Portland this coming weekend - about 36 miles of road cycling over the 10 bridges.

Anyway back to my breakthrough. This week I was able to stand up and sprint - and my quads were not screaming! I was amazed that I could do this..it was a sudden breakthrough too as I could not do this in the previous class.....

The moral? We are never too old to improve our stamina, quads, energy or strength! We keep on going and we keep getting better. After all - we can grow older better.

PS - I do sip on one of my sport drinks as I pedal and I take another after......

We are the TimePrimers©

Older - wiser - and ..... better.....

We are the TimePrimers© - we do our best over time - we are prime and we prime time -shining it to perfection - we love our life and we want to hang around for a lot more of it..

So what do we do? and how do we do it?

When we were young we heard what are called "old wives tales" about health and food...We rolled our eyes and looked at our mothers as if they were aliens...Now we are learning that our mothers were correct. Maybe they knew what Hippocrates said:

"Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food."

"Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food."

Or maybe they read Maimonides:

"Let nothing which can be treated by diet be treated by other means."

or this Chinese proverb :

He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician.

Whatever knowledge they had - those old wives - our parents and grandparents - they seemed to know a lot about nutrition....

My mother was adverse to seeing a physician unless absolutely necessary - something I took note of - she lived to 95 - she believed in eating well and letting one's body take care of itself... She fed us well and grew most of the vegetables we ate...

But - and it's a big BUT....the soil was in better shape when I was a kid.... and that was NYC !

Today we have depleted the soil and no matter how organic our food - it is missing what it used to have way back when - and what is missing are many essential nutrients.

The environment is more toxic than it was, food is more processed, and it is usually picked before it is ripe and very often cooked to death.

Egads... is there anything we can do to grow older better?

Stay tuned - come back and learn about glyconutrients....

Glyconutritional products will play a leading role in the 21st century's emerging wellness industry. The driving determinant will be the growing realization that optimal cell-to-cell communication is one of the most critical functions of the life process and is fundamental to immune system health.

And if our cells do a better job of talking to one another, who knows what they can start talking about!