Healthy Aging: Choosing the Road to Wellness
"Whether you're concerned about weight gain, sex drive or chronic diseases, the key to healthy aging is a healthy lifestyle. Eating a variety of healthy foods, practicing portion control and including physical activity in your daily routine can go a long way toward promoting healthy aging. Better yet, it's never too late to make healthier lifestyle choices." ~ Mayo Clinic
My parents shared the same birthday (though dad was two years older) - I know…very cool, huh? But, other than that they both shared the Virgo trait of “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right”, they were VERY different - especially when it came to aging.
With a genetic tendency for heart disease, my dad’s history of alcoholism, smoking, lack of exercise, stress, and dietary excesses resulted in him retiring at age 55 due to health reasons. He continued to struggle with high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, emphysema, psoriasis, and Ichthyosis vulgaris (fish skin disease) until his death at age 78. I remember that there were lots of prescription drugs, pain, and suffering involved during these years.
My mom, however, despite a genetic tendency for cancer and heart disease, having a history of tuberculosis in her youth, and a lifelong challenge with adrenal fatigue, is still doing pretty well at age 100. She lived independently until moving into an assisted living home in 2020, still has a sharp mind, and a generally good quality life. She does have arthritis, osteoporosis, and occasional gastrointestinal challenges, but didn’t take any medications until an undiagnosed infection turned into a bout with heart failure a few years ago. She has eaten a healthy diet for MANY years (and is trying to teach them at her residence now), takes excellent quality supplements, maintains a daily spiritual practice, has a positive outlook on life, and has gotten regular bodywork for the past 30 years – she’s an amazing woman!
"Degenerative diseases of aging are not genetic but acquired. Because the systems of the human body are interconnected, and because one imbalance creates another imbalance, poor eating and lifestyle habits, not genetics, are the major cause of degenerative disease." ~ Diana Schwarzbein, M.D.
So many people claim that "it runs in my family", but while genetic “tendencies” may play a small role in our total health picture, we now know that positive thinking, diet, and lifestyle choices are the key factors. I share the brief pictures of my parents health histories as examples of what I observed as the two paths shown in the above graphic - the road to illness and the road to health.
In our youth, we can get away with less-than-healthy choices for a long time. But as we age, we experience "toxic load", which is the culmination of the total toxic burden that we have asked our bodies to bear. As a result we find ourselves dealing with pain, inflammation, fatigue, chronic illness and disease. The body has an impressive ability to heal, however, when given the correct healing environment.