The
passage of time is inevitable and eternal. Aging begins as early as from young
adulthood (around age 20 to 40) to middle adulthood (around age 40 to 65), and
continues to old age (beginning at the age of retirement, approximately at age
65). Aging occurs throughout most of lifespan. Such a process is an
accumulation of changes, which may be subtle or even drastic, that
progressively lead to disease, degeneration, and, ultimately, death. Truly, you
cannot die merely of old age; your ultimate demise is caused by advancing age
itself, as well as by the diseases and degenerative conditions that accompany
it.
Aging is difficult to
define, but you will know it when you see it or experience it yourself. In
brief, aging is a steady decline in health, which is instrumental in shortening
lifespan; and the aging process is the duration during which such changes
occur.
The hard facts of aging
Whether you like it or
not, your biological clock is ticking, and this will happen to various systems
in your body:
Your heart will pump less blood, and
your arteries will become stiffer and less flexible, resulting in high blood
pressure—a health problem that often increases with age.
With less oxygen and nutrients from
the heart, your lungs will become less efficient in distributing oxygen to
different organs and membranes of your body.
Your brain size will gradually
reduce by approximately 10 percent between the age of 30 and 70. Loss of
short-term memory will become more acute.
Your bone mass will reduce, making
it more brittle and fragile. Your body size will shrink as you lose your muscle
mass.
Can the aging process be slowed down?
Absolutely! Although death has been pre-programmed into your
biological organisms, you body cells, theoretically, may have an indefinite
lifespan through division, rejuvenation, and regeneration—if they are still
healthy and functional.
Although your genes mainly determine the speed of your
biological clock, you can still slow down the speed of aging—if you still have
good health.
So, what
is good health? Is being healthy synonymous with absence of disease?
According
to the United States Public Health Service, good health is “preventing
premature death, and preventing disability, preserving a physical environment
that supports human life, cultivating family and community support, enhancing
each individual’s inherent abilities to respond and to act, and assuring that
all Americans achieve and maintain a maximum level of functioning.” This
statement probably sums up what you need to do in order to be younger and
healthier for longer; it says everything about aging.
Younger and Healthier
for Longer focuses
on preventive and remedial measures you can take to slow down your own aging
process in order to attain your goal to become younger and healthier for
longer.
This book is comprehensive in that it covers virtually all
aspects of a healthy mind and body—the requisites for becoming younger and healthier
for longer. They may be different for men and women in their different stages
of their lives.
Life
is a myriad of complex problems, which are often inter-related. This book
provides you with different choices of solutions. Instead of getting old
gracefully, why not mature youthfully?
Over
the past decades, preventive medicine has become an important component of the
health care system in the United
States due to the rising cost of medical
care and insurance coverage.
You need to develop your own preventive strategies to slow
down, if not reverse, your own aging process. Nobody can do it for you. But,
with the help of this book, YOU can do it for yourself.
Remember, each individual’s aging process is unique in
itself. This is most evident when you go to your high school reunion: some may
look incredibly young, while others may have added ten to fifteen years to
their age. A high school or college reunion is often a time of awakening and
reckoning to one’s aging process.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
