If you have made it this far in your journey to longevity and health, your future looks bright. Nanotechnology and biotechnology are advancing faster than you are aging. For every year you age, biotechnology is gaining on you by about five to ten years. It is an extraordinary time in the field of science, and you are the beneficiary.

Every additional year you live, science is discovering genetic codes that, when switched on or off, have the potential to treat or cure diseases, reverse aging, and repair damaged organs. Within a decade there is the chance that those confined to wheelchairs will be walking, and those who have lost their sight will see. These scientific advancements have a direct impact on your life span. In fact, one extremely confident biomedical gerontologist from Cambridge University believes the first person to live to one thousand has already been born, and that advances made in stem cell research, gene therapy, and other new techniques can stop the aging process altogether!

It is easy to get caught up in the news of the day, which is often filled with negative images of war and violence. What we are not exposed to on a daily basis is the good news, and there is a lot more of that than the bad. If you could just take a one-week break from watching or reading the news and instead go the library or bookstore and pick up a book on the future of health care (health care without pharmaceutical companies), you will start healing within your own mind and body. This could add seven years to your life. And making it through one extra decade of your life could actually add two additional decades.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is commonly accepted that exercise – or activity, as I prefer to call it – is one of the best ways to improve your health and manage stress. Simply by adding a little movement to your life you can maintain flexibility, keep healthy bone mass, improve your mood, and ultimately even prevent heart disease. As Lynn Swann, former chair of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, emphasizes, “It’s never too late to move for health.” It has been shown that people who take up exercise at age seventy-five and quit smoking could add two years to their lives. It may take as little as thirty minutes a day, five days a weekto decrease your chances of heart disease, colon cancer, high blood pressure, or diabetes. However, if exercise is to become a part of your life, it should not be something you dread doing: adding activity to your lifestyle is not about drastic change, but rather about taking small steps to move your body in a way that is enjoyable to you. Most of all, avoid overly strenuous exercise – like walking too long or too far – to enhance your enjoyment. It really doesn’t matter what kind of activity you engage in: The most important choice is whether you decide to be active at all. Experts agree that some activity, even a minimal amount, is better than none at all.

There are innumerable benefits, both physical and mental, to be gained from daily activity. Here is a list of some of them:

• Lose weight
• Reduce stress
• Relieve depression and anxiety
• Reduce risk of heart disease and certain cancers
• Boost your mood
• Give you more energy
• Help you sleep better
• Increase bone density
• Strengthen your heart and lungs
• Improve your quality of life

In fact, a good walk has been shown to be good for your head. According to Dr. Gary Small, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at University of California, Los  Angeles (UCLA) Center on Aging, if the heart pumps more blood, it affects the brain because nutrients and oxygen-rich blood are being carried throughout the cells, thus improving brain function. Repetitive movement can actually stimulate certain areas of the brain, including the subcortical area, that is related to cognitive function – in other words, how well we think. Walking and talking is even better because the brain is engaging in a number of activities at the same time. In a 2008 issue of the Harvard Health Letter, it was reported that physical activity can both delay cognitive decline into dementia and even improve certain aspects of thinking.

Walking is the best possible exercise.
Thomas Jefferson

It should come as no surprise to anyone that emotional well-being is linked with physical health. Stress hormones, when released over a continuous period of time, have been shown to directly impact cardiovascular disease. But it is not just heart disease that has found to be affected by stress: If you’re happy, stress-free, and relaxed, you’re less likely to suffer from serious conditions such as diabetes and cancer, as well as relatively minor problems such as fatigue, upset stomach, and even the common cold. The bad news is that stress is on the rise.

According to the American Psychological Association, 48 percent of those surveyed in a recent study reported that their stress levels had increased over the last five years. The good news is that we now have more tools than ever to deal with stress. Scientists are conducting numerous studies on how to measure what’s going on in the brain and now claim that optimism and happiness are no longer as elusive as they once were. While it is believed that genetic factors contribute one-third towards our attitude, the rest is up to us. If we choose to be happy in our daily lives, most likely we will be healthier as well. As we make our way on our journey to good health and a long life, let’s consider our trip a relaxing and carefree vacation.  According to experts, optimists tend to experience stressors differently and adapt better to healthy lifestyles; these things lead to a healthier immune system. Among recent major research findings is that happy people are not only healthier and live longer, but they also are more productive at work, have better relationships, and are generally more
well-liked.

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.
Irish Proverb

Lifestyle changes cannot only extend the length of life but can also enhance the quality of life, particularly in our later years. Approximately 75 percent of the factors influencing life expectancy can be controlled, and one of the keys to good health is found in nutrients. While there are very valuable nutrients in the food you consume every day, supplements provide additional essential nutrients that are critically important to your health. Vitamins and minerals function as cofactors, or chemical helpers, in the chemical processes that occur every moment in every one of the ten trillion cells of your body. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, it is not only important that you eat right to achieve optimum health and nutrition, but you also need to take a multivitamin.

When we shop for healthy food, most of us rely on the manufacturer to provide us with ingredients that are good for us – however, I have researched hundreds of products and found that they fail to provide the percentage and/or quality of nutrients that we think we are getting when we make our purchases. We deserve better. Many of us are already trying to eat better, and we are taking the supplements we need for good health. For those with cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, and myriad other problems, taking supplements and eating properly may be lifesaving acts.

The first wealth is health.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

While living well is not about depriving yourself of foods you like, it is also not about eating too much. It is important to control how much you eat as well as choose what you eat; in this way, you will be better able to control the proper amount of nutrients in your daily diet. There are two common situations with portion control: we either think it is impossible to get the recommended four servings of fruits and vegetables in our daily diets, or we are eating way too much food. Most of us are used to living in a “supersized” society, where huge plates of pasta, double servings of French fries, or giant slabs of ribs are the norm for restaurants and fast food franchises. We have lost our ability to gauge what a portion size looks like.

Before we start, it is important to note that the USDA notes proper serving sizes on food labels for the purpose of giving people appropriate nutritional information. All food labels contain serving size information so that products can be standardized, but proper serving sizes are also recommended as nutritional guidelines in dietary plans. These recommendations are suggested not only for weight control, but also to give you information on maintaining the proper nutrient levels for good health.

When it comes to taking a journey toward a healthy lifestyle, what you eat is probably one of the most important things to consider. Embarking on our journey involves very simple modifications in your eating habits, and you can start by making just a few changes at a time. Most importantly, these changes lead you on the road to healthy living while at the same time saving you money – and it’s still possible for you to eat lavishly and luxuriously like a millionaire!

First, let’s look at what you eat. I don’t like to use the word “diet” because it implies a short-term plan, while healthy nutrition really involves a lifetime program that gives you choices based on things that you like to eat. There are many food pyramids that provide the basic framework for a balanced diet, the most notable one distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Many trust this food pyramid, but I believe that it is better suited to fattening cattle than adding years to our lives. How have we gotten to whatever age we happen to be and still not know what we should and should not be eating? Yes, schools should teach us math, science, and English, but we should also be instructed on how to live a long life by understanding food basics.

Basically, we need to eat less food. We should eat less bread and pasta, add fish to our diets, have fruits and vegetables with every meal, and whenever possible make our food choices organic. Doesn’t this sound simple? This is nothing new, but the more we hear the same advice from multiple sources, the more likely we are to have a willing and open mind about what we eat.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
John Dryden

What you are going to read in the next few pages may seem negative. It is hard to present the pertinent information in this chapter and give it a favorable spin. However, in order to move forward we need to take a close look at where we are today and examine why it is not a very good place to be. We will look back at this part of our journey and examine how and why we have gotten into this mess.

Some may say that the focus on profits rather than patient care became an addiction for many in the pharmaceutical industry. Like the ill wind of a tornado, this wrong emphasis twisted physicians and patients alike in the storm’s destructive path. I am going to call your attention to what has happened to millions of Americans caught in this health care storm.

It has taken us almost three decades to get to this part of our journey; we are here, in part, because most of us were raised to put our trust in health care providers. As we travel in our cars on vacation, we may find that there are long stretches of road that are desolate, but we know that we will reach the perfect location that we have been dreaming about at the other end.  Regarding health care, we may look back at our journey to better health and see some parts as desolate. We have been in health care desolation, and we are just now emerging on the other side.

For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
Mary Kay Ash

What kind of longevity (health) plan do you have in place? Does it account for a long and healthy life? Does it anticipate that you will be playing golf or tennis on your one-hundredth birthday? Will you be playing with as much vigor as a younger player? We are not just looking to live a long life – we are looking forward to living well.

We are about to embark on a long and pleasurable journey to good health, but before we start, it’s important to know where we are when we begin. We need to check the gas tank in order to know how far we can go. It’s as if you were going on vacation – don’t you want to make sure your car is ready to make the trip? If the “check engine” light is on, isn’t it important to immediately take your car into the shop for repair?

Unfortunately, when it comes to something as important as our own health, we don?t have a “check engine” light. We have to wait until engine failure before we are finally forced to deal with our own bodies. The most important journey of all?the one toward good health?is the one that we are the most unprepared to face. In order to begin your journey to longevity, you need to find a starting point; in order to determine your course, you need to get your engine checked. Every one of us has a different starting point. Unlike trained racecar drivers with perfectly tuned engines, we all have different conditions that may require specialized attention to get us started on our journey.

Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were.
Richard Paul Evans

The number of people living past one hundred doubled between 1980 and 1990, and the U.S. Census Bureau projects that the number of centenarians will reach one hundred thirty-one thousand by the year 2010. The projections show a doubling every ten years, with the number reaching eight hundred thirty-four thousand by 2050. The growth in this population segment is so large that it is now called “Generation C” (the “C” here represents the Roman numeral for one hundred). Demographers are now counting the number of supercentenarians, defined as people age 110 or older.

In the past, it was an unusual feat when someone lived to what was considered to be the old age of seventy. Today, the fastest-growing population in the U.S. is people eighty-five or older. These days, with all our modern advances in medicine, treatment, and our healthier lifestyles, more and more people are living longer and enjoying their good health well into their golden years. Scientific American reports that there are currently more than sixty thousand people nationwide who are more than one hundred years old, up dramatically from just a decade ago. Many experts on aging say they are surprised every day by the number of people who are able to live without assistance well into their nineties. According to a group of scientists at Oxford University, the ability of people to live to the upper limits of 120 years of age will be possible due to advancements in modern medicine.

Life expectancy: the upward progression of this is interesting.  When the Declaration of Independence was signed, life expectancy was just twenty-three years; in the 1800s, life expectancy was still under fifty years; in the 1900s we were expected to live into our seventies and eighties. Now it is predicted that anywhere from one to three million baby boomers will reach their one hundreth birthdays, while one in ten girls and one in twenty boys born today will live to be one hundred. Figures like these indicate that life expectancy is not set in stone. In fact, we have only scratched the surface of our understanding of the elements that impact it.

If I’d known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.
Leon Eldred