While life span has
increased, our health span hasn't kept pace.
Every day 10,000
people turn 60. Every single day. By 2050, the global population over 60 will
double to more than 2 billion people.
Of all the tools to
combat the crappy way we age, exercise is the most powerful. There is no food, pill, or procedure that
affects the body as powerfully as exercise. It truly is medicine.
Lungs with a
1,500-mile network of airways exchange toxic carbon dioxide for oxygen across a
surface area the size of two tennis courts.
The liver serves
more than 500 different functions.
A billion brain
cells fit in a grain of sand, and each feed a trillion neural connections.
Our bodies are made
from more than 37 trillion cells organized into 250 different types.
Cigarette smoking
leads to fundamental genetic changes that can last 30 years after you quit.
The number one
consumer of energy in our body is our brain.
It sucks up 80 percent of our caloric resources.
We metabolize all
the food we consume to a sugar, glucose, to produce all the energy needed for
life.
Sugar consumption in
Britain rose from 18 pounds per person per year in 1700 to 100 pounds by the
end of the 20th century.
While it was slow to
take off in North American, sugar beet farming now makes up 55 percent of the
8.1 million tons of sugar produced every year in the United States.
Glucose is a
critical part of our cellular metabolism and design. The human body contains about 4 pounds of
sugar.
Obesity and physical
inactivity cause insulin resistance.
The first artificial
sweetener was lead acetate (lead sugar).
It was first used by the Romans.
There is mounting
data that habitual use of diet sodas containing artificial sweeteners causes
obesity and increased blood sugar levels.
Your metabolism
struggles to balance the battle between energy and error in an environment that
provides only finite natural resources.
Exercise is
medicine. There isn't a drug, stem cell,
gene editor, supplement, or diet with more widespread, positive effects on
health and metabolism than exercise.
Exercise increases
telomere length.
Regular exercise
increases longevity by reversing the effects of aging at the chromosomal level.
When it comes to
genetic architecture, exercise makes the cells appear younger.
For every minute of
moderate to vigorous exercise you do, you can gain up to 7 minutes of extended
life.
Exercise yields a
host of changes at the genetic level, including preservation of telomeric
length and suppression of genes that can cause cancer.
[Breast cancer]
patients who used mindfulness-based therapy demonstrated signs of improved
genetic fitness and prognosis, including longer chromosomal telomeres, improved
cytokine production, and healthier immune systems.
Graceful aging
requires generational cohesiveness.
One of the best ways
to live longer is to be able to recover quicker after you've been sick or
injured.
