20 Ways to Lower your Real Age

Tip #1 – Going for a 30 minute walk every day and getting a total of about 10,000 steps per day, can make your body 2 years younger after just six months.  Many people use the excuse, “I walk a lot at work.”  If that is the case, buy yourself a pedometer and see how many steps you take during your work day.  You can find a pedometer at just about any department or sports related store.  Just mark down your step number every time you get home from work over the course of a week.  If you averaged 10,000 steps per day, congratulations, you get enough walking at your job.  Anything below 10,000 steps per day, get out and get those magic 10,000 steps per day.

Tip #2 – While you are walking, your body is absorbing sunlight and converting it into active vitamin D.  Thirty minutes of winter sunlight or fifteen minutes of summer sunlight in a short sleeved shirt is all most people need to keep their vitamin D levels adequate.  Darker skinned people may need more sunlight while fairer skinned individuals will require less.  If you do not have any underlying medical conditions, like osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, etc., you should keep your vitamin D level above 40.  If you do have a medical condition, depending on the severity, keeping your vitamin D levels over 60 can be very beneficial.  Taking vitamin D2 supplements can help in this area.  By keeping this level up, you will be one year younger.

Tip #3 – If you are a smoker, stop.  If you live with a smoker, you will have to avoid second hand smoke in order to shave 7 years off your real age.  Sitting next to someone who is smoking for 15 minutes has been shown to have the same damaging effects as smoking one cigarette.  Keep your distance from smokers.  If your spouse smokes, give as much support as possible to get him or her to stop.

Tip #4 – Your mother told you to brush and floss your teeth.  If you listened to mom and continue to do that today, you will take 6 years off your real age.  Researchers have concluded that the same bacteria found in the mouths of those with poor oral hygiene, causes aging of the blood vessels.  By keeping this bacteria from growing in your mouth, you will keep it from growing on your blood vessels.  Remember, the most important measure of our real age is our heart and blood vessels.  Let’s keep them happy.

Tip #5 – Many doctors recommend taking a daily aspirin to keep your cardiovascular system in good working order.  By swallowing 162mg of aspirin a day, you can make yourself 2 years younger after three years.  Swallow your aspirin whole with a full glass of water.  Taking it with water prevents it from sticking to the side of your stomach or getting lodged in your esophagus (the tube leading from your mouth to your stomach) on the way down.  You also should not use a chewable form of aspirin.  Chewing aspirin will increase your risk of developing tooth decay.

Tip #6 – Managing your finances is something that most people should do anyway but you normally wouldn’t associate this with a youthful body.  Financial worry is one of the most damaging forms of stress and by eliminating that excess tension, you will lower your real age roughly eight years.  That’s extra time to spend your children’s inheritance!

Tip #7 – Continuing with the subject of stress, general stress reduction will give you another six years off your real age.  Even simple stress reducers like lying down and breathing deeply, scrunching your face and holding it for ten seconds, or calling friends on the phone can help lower body tension.  When you go for your daily 30 minute walk to satisfy tip #1 from the last email, take a cellular phone with you and call family or friends.  Here’s a tip for you guys out there; call your mother.  If you really want to impress someone, go for a walk and call our wife!  Then move on to tip #8…

Tip #8 – Now that you have impressed your wife (or husband), having sex is an excellent way to stay young.  By having sex at least three times a week, you can lower your real age anywhere from two to eight years.  The difference in the age reduction has to do with the quality of sex.  The better satisfying for both you and your partner, the greater the age reduction.  It is not just the act of making love but the love in making the act that counts.

Tip #9 – After all that love making, you are going to want to get a good night’s sleep.  Getting at least seven hours of sleep every night will get you another three years.

Tip #10 – Having fun makes you feel younger and playing mind games or thinking games will keep your body younger.  Reading, doing crossword puzzles, word searches, or anything that exercises your mind on a regular basis will do away with two and a half years.

Tip #11 – What you put in your mouth significantly contributes to your real age.  Learning to read food labels and following a few simple rules can shave three and a half years off your real age.  Look on the labels and avoid saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, and anything that says “enriched.”  Corn syrup is in most canned or bottled sauces and actually fools our brain into thinking we have not eaten as much food as we have.  Stay away from food that contains any of those substances listed above in the first five ingredients on the label.

Tip #12 – Most people know that eating fish is good for you.  Unfortunately, many people put breading on it and fry it in oil.  This counteracts any benefit you will get from eating fish.  Eating non-fried fish at least three times a week will take off three years from your real age.  The oils in fish help to prevent those tiny tears in our blood vessels and decrease inflammation in the body.  If you cannot stomach fish, taking fish oil capsules at a dose of two grams a day is roughly the equivalent of eating three servings of fish per week.

Tip #13 – Another important part of anyone’s diet should be fruits and vegetables.  Research shows that eating five servings of fruit and four servings of vegetables a day will take one and a half years from your real age.

Tip #14 – More and more dieticians are recommending that we add nuts to our diets.  Nuts contain a great amount of healthy fats.  Eating an ounce of mixed nuts (peanuts don’t count in this case) every day can reduce real age by four years.  Walnuts have the highest concentration of beneficial fats, just twelve walnuts a day is all you need.

Tip #15 – Have a fatty appetizer.  Eating a high fat food prior to your regular meal will make you feel fuller faster.  Avocado is probably the best choice here since it contains many beneficial substances along with being a great source of health fats.  Eating half an avocado a day or something equivalent, will take two years off your real age.

Tip #16 – White food increases inflammation which means increased aging.  Avoid white foods like bread, flour, sugar, white rice, or white pasta.  The only acceptable white foods are fish, egg whites, and coconut.  Keeping all those processed, unhealthy, white foods from going into your body will eliminate three and a half years from your real age.

Tip #17 – Calcium and magnesium work together in your body in many different areas.  By getting at least 1,200mg of calcium a day and 400mg of magnesium a day, you can do away with another one and a half years.  Your body can only absorb calcium when it has the proper amount of vitamin D (go back to tip #2 if you need more vitamin D).  Also, you can only absorb about 600mg of calcium every six hours.  So you will have to take your calcium two or three times a day to get the proper amount.  If you are a coffee or soda drinker, you will have to increase your supplemental calcium 50mg a day for every cup of coffee or can of soda you drink.

Tip #18 – Any woman who has been pregnant knows the importance of folic acid.  When cells divide and grow, they need folic acid to properly duplicate the DNA inside the nucleus.  Not having enough folic acid increases the chances of a mutation that can lead to diseases like cancer.  A daily intake of 800mcg of folic acid lowers your real age by one year.

Tip #19 – I am an advocate for strength training.  Resistance exercise, weight lifting, using resistance bands, pumping iron, whatever you want to call it, keeps you healthy.  This form of exercise will preserve bone strength and add muscle mass to your body.  The added muscle mass burns calories 24 hours a day and keeps your metabolism high.  Averaging just ten minutes a day takes off one and a half years from your real age.

Tip #20 – Since I am a pharmacist, I have to mention prescription drugs.  Taking your medication correctly will make you another year younger.  About half of the people who are on prescription blood pressure medication do not take it correctly.  In my own experience, about 80% of patients do not even know why they are taking a certain medicine or even the name of their prescriptions.