Age Management Medicine Nutrition is about
optimizing cellular repair. Your body's ability to repair
and re-grow the cells that make up your muscle
tissues is the key not only to recovering from your
workouts, but to growing a younger body-biologically
speaking. A younger
body is essentially a body that has regenerated its
cells more recently-so it's easy to see how quality
nutrition that supports quick cellular repair also
generates a younger body with the power to bounce
back faster than a poorly-nourished body of equal
biological age.
You know what I mean. You
have seen forty, fifty and sixty year olds that look
decades younger. I am also certain that you have
seen others who look much older than their stated
age.
A body able to repair its cells quickly also repairs its
tissue quickly-that rapid tissue repair means even
small amounts of exercise, when properly fueled with
quality nutrition, will be more effective.
In Age Management Medicine, exercising without a
nutritional plan can actually be
counterproductive.
If your body doesn't get
the fuel it needs to recover from a workout, it will
experience additional, unnecessary stress. This is
called nutritional stress. It can happen even if you
don't exercise. The likely
consequence of this stress? Your cortisol level (stress
hormone) increases and you biologically age faster.
Elevated cortisol leads to fat retention, decreased
memory, decreased energy and additional wear and
tear on the body. No wonder some people exercise
and don't make any progress.
There is a common myth that if you work out regularly
you can pretty much eat whatever you want.
You've seen the t-shirts: "I run so that I can eat". Well,
that is great as long as you are eating the right foods
to repair and replace the cells that you just broke
down.
Even if the calories you burn are equal to (or greater
than) the calories you consume, this does not
guarantee you will be fit or able to achieve your
conditioning or weight-control goals. You have to feed
your body the best, high quality nutrient dense foods
for optimal repair. This will decrease the risk of
nutritional stress.
Eating easily digestible, alkaline forming, nutrient
dense whole foods (especially super foods) is the key
to building a younger body. If you exercise and feed
your body junk food, it is actually more detrimental to
you in many ways than if you did not exercise at
all. You are building a new body at the cellular level
by using junk nutrients.This is not wise.
What
I mean by this
is that your body
depends on you to provide it with quality nutrients
which are the building blocks of repair to build a new
body. You are constantly building a new body and
undergoing repair at a cellular level. Choose the best
nutritional building blocks. Your body knows the
difference between super foods that are low in
calories and high in nutrients and fast food junk that is
high in calories and low in nutrition.
Exercise, when combined with quality nutrition, will
allow
you to grow a younger body at the cellular level. Not
exercising combined with eating junk food ( processed
food
that is
high in calories but low in nutrients) or exercising
combined with eating junk food will lead to
accelerated aging
and nutritional stress -which leads to an increase in
cortisol, the stress hormone.
The other part of the equation is adequate rest/sleep.
When you combine moderate exercise with nutrient
dense, whole food nutrition and adequate rest, you have
the recipe for building a younger body.
The
repair work happens while you rest and sleep in between
workouts and is just as important as the exercise itself.
Now, let's talk about exercise. Activity increases your
rate of cellular regeneration-literally helping you
grow a younger body. As your body ages, your cells
replace themselves more slowly; increasing activity
signals your body to continue replacing your cells
longer than it would if you were
not active.
Activity tells your brain that you are
still alive and to continue to build a better body on a
cellular level. The mind-body connection is real. An
inactive lifestyle is a faster track to aging and dying
prematurely. The message being sent is "I am not
moving so I must be dying". When you move, the brain
receives the message that it is moving and therefore it
is alive. Our bodies are seemingly complex and yet so
very simple.
The key to success with exercise is truly
finding an exercise that you really enjoy and doing it
as often as possible.
You may not like to run
and you may not find it relaxing- so don't run. You may
not like to go to yoga and you may not find it relaxing-
so don't go to yoga. You may not like to ride a bicycle
and you may not find it relaxing- so don't ride a
bicycle. You have to find what you like to do. Yes,
there is something that you like to do.
When a patient tells me that they don't like to exercise,
my response is that they have not found the activity
that they like to do so much that they don't consider it
exercise. You have to explore and you have to go
back in your childhood for clues. If you liked to do it
back then, you will probably like to do it now.
The key is to lower your cortisol, stress
hormone level by choosing an activity that you really
enjoy doing. Choosing to do the activity that you like
the least will just cause you more stress and make you
age faster. Don't feel that you have to drag yourself to
a gym to exercise if this stresses you out. There are
plenty of community based activities/exercise groups
and leagues that you can be a part of.
In summary, when you truly find an activity that you
can lose
yourself in, like you did when you were a kid, then you
will obtain the maximum benefit. This will be relaxing
for you and lower cortisol levels instead of increasing
it.
OK, so what activities are there to do? Well, the list is
seemingly endless but here are a few
suggestions:Hiking,
Walking,Biking, Lovemaking (yes, this burns calories
too),
Downhill Skiing,Snowboarding,
Tennis,
Racquetball or Squash,
Rock climbing,
Cross-country Skiing or Snowshoeing,
Volleyball,
Basketball,
Baseball / Softball,
Hockey,
Soccer,
Zumba/Salsa / Swing / Ballroom / Ballet / Jazz / Tap or
Ethnic dancing (Belly Dancing, for example),
Ice skating / Speed skating,
Rollerblading,
Swimming,
Rowing,
Scuba diving,
Running,
Yoga,
Pilates,
Tai chi or Qigong,
Aerobics,
Boxing,
Karate / Judo / other marital arts,
Weight Lifting, Jumping Rope,
Spinning, Golf (as long as you are walking from hole
to hole and don't have a drink in the other hand)etc.,
I have written an e-booklet that is available in the
Member Center of my website that addresses how to
avoid Nutritional Stress by eating High Net Gain
Foods. I also have an e-booklet covering the super
foods that are lower in calorie and nutrient dense.
These foods will provide your body with the nutrients
that
it needs to optimize health and lower nutritional stress.
Nutrition is extremely important in an Age Management
Medicine program. If you exercise and do not take in
High Net Gain foods, then all that you are doing is tearing
your body down. Your body needs the right amount of
nutrients to build itself back up after exercise and
constantly on a daily basis.
One of the problems with eating a high calorie, low net
gain diet or a low calorie, low net gain diet is that your
cortisol level- the stress hormone increases. This leads to
accelerated aging and storage of body fat. This is the
reason that some people have a high percentage of body
fat despite exercising on a regular basis.
I encourage you to read the e-booklet on Nutritional
Stress and the other e-booklets that I have written and
incorporate the method that I describe into
your program. This method is specifically designed to
optimize your health through high net gain nutrition
that
provides more energy and decreases your risk for
disease.
