Nobody argues the fact, that healthy lifestyle is good. But it’s a boring thing for many of us and we prefer to go with the stream – to be sick, to age and to die, but only not to exert ourselves. What if you try this “boring occupation” and get all worked-up? Let’s imaging that the longevity process is one of the sport kinds and compete in life duration. Are you 80 years old? Then congratulate yourself on your first personal record! The years of training weren’t a waste of time. You feel young, sprightly and full of energy. This regular easy training is a part of your life and gives pleasure.
According to the Old Testament Methuselah died aged 969. This biblical record seem to be fantastic, but human organism is a very pliant and “self-repair” system. To reach 120 or even 150 years is a quite feasible task.

Sport is training above all, but what is to train in this case? During the aging process the reserve abilities of our every organ dwindle from year to year. Here is the answer: if you don’t want to age, train your reserves, more precisely the reserves of adaptation. To train means to use regularly, but our body reserves are get used when the organism misses something. It can miss food, water, oxygen, information. The deliberate restriction of these elements stimulates the use of the reserve potential, i.e. training. But what can we do to reach longevity?

Training 1 – Fasting

Fasting is one of the oldest methods of the organism renewal

If we restrict ourselves in food, we’ll get a fine method of the organism renewal, which is known from the ancient times. It’s temporary, voluntary and entire rejection in food. The aim of this fasting is a shift to the inner nutrition, i.e. the use of the reserves. You can only drink pure water – a glass of juice will hinder your body in its shift to the inner nutrition and block the mechanisms of the balanced expense of the reserves. It’s better not to start fasting at all, then to fast incorrect. The research results say that during a brief complete starvation the nutrition with your own reserves satisfies completely all requirements of your body and it’s even more useful than usual nutrition. All necessary matters have already been assimilated and they don’t require much consumption of energy and time for their participation in the metabolism process.

You can read about healthy nutrition and fasting in many popular books. One of the manuals can be Paul Bragg’s “Miracle of Fasting”. This famous American has died aged 81 when he was surfing. To the pathologists’ words, his organs and vessels were in a perfect state.

Training 2 – “Dry” fasting

Let’s see what happens during the “dry” fasting when you stop both eating and drinking. The organism consists of water on 70%. Water comes from what we drink and eat, but furthermore about 400 ml water is formed inside as the result of lipids oxidation. When you practice “dry” fasting the amount of that metabolic water increases and satisfies body requirements for a while.

During the “dry” fasting our organism resembles a camel, that can survive in a desert without water and food until it spends its reserves – a hump with fat (the organism synthesizes water from the air oxygen and hydrogen of adipose tissues). Our “hump” is fat excess, atheromae, atherosclerotic plagues in vessels and the other “garbage”, that can’t be removed in usual conditions.

1. Muscle mass decreases. (muscle/weight/height Body Mass Index Increases)

2. Fat increases as a percentage of body weight.

3. Strength, energy and speed of the body decreases.

4. Base Metabolic Rate (metabolism) decreases.

5. Aerobic Capacity, the capacity to process oxygen, decreases. Red blood cells as a percentage of total blood volume (hematocrit) decreases until the average at age 90 is what is considered to be “anemia” at age 40.

6. Body cells become resistant to insulin.

7. LDL Cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol) and triglicerides increase, and HDL Cholesterol (“good” cholesterol) falls.

8. Blood pressure increases.

9. Bone mineral density decreases.

10. Density of calcium in circulatory system increases.

11. Kidney functions decrease.

12. We lose neurons in our brain. This leads to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Senile Dementia.

13. The vagus nerve, the longest nerve in our body, deteriorates… and all the nervous system surely also deteriorates.

14. Growth Hormone secretion drops.

15. Testosterone in men, and estrogen and progesterone in women, drops.

Strength and energy of your body decreases

16. Sexual desire drops.

17. Thyroid (a hormone which affects metabolism) drops.

18. melatonine (a hormone which regulates the body clock) drops.

19. DHEA (a hormone precursor to testosterone and estrogen) drops.

20. EPO, (erythropoyetin, a hormone which stimulates the production of new red blood cells) drops.

21. Estradiol, a female hormone, increases in men.

22. Cortisol, “the Death Hormone,” increases.

23. Good enzymes (Super Oxidase Dimutase, etc.) drop.

24. A bad enzyme, MAO-B increase in the brain. MAO-B destroys neurons that produce dopamine, which is a neuro-transmitter.

25. Aromatase enzyme, a bad enzyme, increases. Aromatase converts testosterone to estrogen in men, which deprives him of libido.

26. The thickness of skin decreases, resulting in more wrinkles.

27. Prolactin, a female hormone, increases in the body of a male, presumably depriving him of some sexual libido.

28. Water proportion in the body and in the skin, drops. This results (among other things) in dryer skin, and more wrinkles.

29. Sense of hearing drops.

30. Sense of taste drops… “everything tastes the same”

31. Sense of vision, especially capacity to read small letters in low light, decreases.

32. Hair falls and loses its color (it becomes white).

33. The thymus gland, the master of the immune system, shrinks and atrophys, thus lessening our immune system.

34. Our liver, brain, and other critical organs shrink in size, thus affecting their functions.

35. Lipofuscine (“liver spots”) accumulates in our hands and our brains. This snuffs out many neurons in our brain.

36. The circulatory system deteriorates in length and width.

37. The velocity of blood flow decreases.

38. Inflammation increases in our body.

39. “Deep sleep” becomes more scarce and less profound.

40. Digestion becomes slower and less complete.

41. The retina of the eye becomes thinner, in many cases detaching.

42. The macula of the eye loses some of its shape after age 40, and causes distorted vision.

43. Micro-vessels in the eye pop, covering the retina, causing partial loss of vision, or complete blindness.

44. Night-vision decreases.

45. The density of active melanocytes in the skin is reduced by 10% to 20% every 10 years, starting in our late 30′s and 40′s. Melanin determines our normal skin color and attempts to protect our skin from severe sun damage. As we age, our melanocytes begin to function less effectively.

from http://articlesofhealth.blogspot.com/

Mimic wrinkles can appear in the early age

Let’s speak about wrinkles. Maybe you think you’re not old yet to have them, but wrinkles are not always a physical sign of aging. Your wrinkles may be caused by various habbits that you don’t even notice. For example knitting your brow when you’re angry, screwing up the eyes when the sun shines right on your face or laughing. The way you sleep is also important. If your head is in the wrong position lying on a pillow too high that your head bends to the neck, you’ll be an owner of neck wrinkles even at the early age.

Still there are more serious factors causing wrinkles and other skin changes. Many women live with internal diseases and often don’t surmise it. The location and depth of wrinkles can tell almost everything about your health.

Cheekbones and chin

1. Flabby skin on cheekbones is an evidence of urinary bladder problems.

2. Wrinkles on cheekbones tell about diminished function of stomach and pancreas.

3. If the skin on cheekbones resembles a very thin pellicle you should check your liver.

4. Slightly swelled up chin – your kidneys work at full stretch.

5. Cross wrinkle on the chin can be a sign of stagnant effects at liver and small pelvis level.

6. If your chin often grows numb, you should visit a cardiologist and make an electrocardiogram – you may have heart problems.

Nasolabial folds

Wrinkles as a map of your health

1. Swell and changing of your nose shape, its violet hue tell about lungs and large intestine diseases.

2. Deep symmetric wrinkles on each side of the nose are an evidence of gastrointestinal tract disfunction.

3. If nasolabial folds go down to the chin, it means that you have problems with digestion – acidity gastritis, stomach ulcer or duodenal ulcer, colitis.

4. Vertical skin-deep wrinkles above the upper lip tell about gynecological disorders.

5. Vertical wrinkles from mouth corners give notice of a possible gastritis with a low secretory function and predisposition to pancreas diseases.

6. If there are a lot of small wrinkles around the mouth, then there are spasms in large intestine.

7. White edging around the mouth draws attention to heart diseases.

8. Chaps in the mouth corners tell about water-salt metabolism disturbances or even about hydronephrytis – derangement of water eduction by kidneys.

Forehead and eyes

1. If you have a lot of cross wrinkles on the bridge of the nose, than perhaps you suffer from spine diseases.

2. Horizontal wrinkles on your forehead are a widespread sign of migraines.

3. Deep vertical wrinkle between the eyebrows tells you that your organism has a shortage of oxygen and fresh air.

4. Vertical wrinkle between the eyebrows to the right points at defective liver and gall bladder, to the left – at spleen problems.

5. Vertical wrinkle in the middle of the forehead tells about stomach problems.

6. Wrinkles below the eyes in the form of a half moon are a sign of possible problems with urinary bladder.

7. Swollen upper eyelids let know about kidney problems.

8. Baggy skin below the eyes gives notice of heart diseases.

Smoking makes you look older

Even if you look younger than you are, you shouldn’t forget regular care for your body. Here are the simplest tips you are to follow to maintain youthful look for ages.

Drink more water

This is a vexed question if it’s really necessary to drink eight glasses water a day. But the fact is obvious – our skin consists of water by 90 percent. If your organism is short of water, your skin can become dry and sensitive. Water also removes toxins from the organism. Otherwise they come out through our pores, forming pimples and spots. Water humidifies, vivifies, cleans and oxidizes skin. It also reduces pigment spots and makes wide pores smaller.

Choose proper food

There are no special products or drinks promising an eternal youth, but antioxidants help us to restore skin and to struggle against free radicals. Antioxidants protect us from the signs of aging, which are by-products of pollution, smoke and UV-rays. Fruits and vegetables with a bright colour and green tea are great sources of antioxidants. Pay attention to vitamin C as well – it’s necessary for collagen production. Collagen is a structural protein making skin smooth and elastic.

Quit smoking

It’s incontestable that smoking makes your face age faster. So if you want to look younger and fresher you should immediately stop smoking. Cigarette smoke contains more than 4000 toxins and many of them get directly into your blood flow and are transported by blood right to your skin. Besides when you inhale smoke, your lungs produce more than a billion of free radicals that do harm to the whole organism. Smoking influences blood vessels in the upper layers of the skin, what makes your blood produce less oxygen and collagen. At last, slow circulation of the blood is the reason of a thin skin of the smoker and early signs of aging.

Avoid stress

Long stress has always an effect to your face, causing tension, lines and wrinkles that can hide your true age. Maybe it sounds like a cliché but if you feel good you look good. It’s very important to find a time for relaxation. Give a treat to yourself with bubble baths, face masks and spa-procedures. All this gives a powerful psychological support and inspires you with conciliation and harmony.

Jane Fonda - dazzling mature beauty

Nowadays the situation becomes more complicated because we have an opportunity to delay physical signs of aging, at least the most evident of them. Active exercises help us to strengthen flabby hips and belly, moisturizing milk makes our hands and feet softer. Besides, we can’t forget plastic surgery doing miracles: baggy skin below the eyes and double chin disappear as if with a wave of a magic wand. The fact is beyond any doubt – we don’t look the way our mothers did when they were forty years old. But our ability to look young at a mature age actually turns to reality the myth that woman is as good as beautiful she looks. It’s called Jane Fonda effect.

Jane Fonda has brought healthy life-style and youthful look into fashion. Watching Hollywood stars on TV we hold our breath – they roll in luxury, favoring us with a perfect smile on their everlastingly young faces. They serve as an example of how splendid one man can look at the mature age and we start thinking that we should also look well. And soon it turns to another cultural purpose. It seizes a strong hold on our minds and causes the contradictory situation, when the distinctions on the scale of age become smoothed and obliterated. But at the same time we continue to believe, that a woman with wrinkles on her face, pigment spots on hands and gray hair looses her allure and grace, at least a part of herself.

Actually, the things shouldn’t go this way. The middle of life can be the time of a great spiritual growth, because it’s time when we look in the mirror and ask: “What have I achieved and what am going to do?”

Aging makes you sad, doesn't it?

You surely do, anyhow if you still aren’t forty. Forty years is a turning point of woman’s life. When you turn forty, you start realizing that the half of your life is behind.

The fear of this number is a fear of aging. The approaching of the fortieth anniversary usually makes you feel doomed and confused, you often get into a sullen mood. But sometimes, when you finely attain this age, you understand that everything isn’t so terrible and you like being a forty years old woman. Painful waiting is behind and you breathe with relief, because you didn’t start looking different or feel different. It seems funny how you could be so afraid of this date.

But still, what are the roots of this fear? Unfortunately, the cultural imperative determines our value according to our appearance, what makes women so sensitive to the physical signs of aging. Notwithstanding that women can be great surgeons, politicians, psychiatrists and scientists, the majority of us still consider, that our value depends on how we look like and not on what we are able to do.

You're always young in the eyes of your children!

Women are inclined to equate beauty with sexuality. That is if aging makes our beauty fade, then it diminishes our sexual appeal. If we don’t look sexy enough, we can’t attract sexual partners. If we don’t have a partner, we won’t have children and won’t realize our predestination. Finally, if we don’t realize our predestination, there is no use of us. But does the value of a woman lie in her ability to give birth to a child? Certainly, it doesn’t. Still the fear of aging is rooted exactly in such rules. The aging means for a woman nothing but a “humiliating process of sexual disqualification”.

But if your kids are grown-up and your loving husband is always near to support you, is there any sense of being afraid of the aging process? If you look like a kind careful mother and wife in the eyes of your near relations? If you do, it doesn’t mean that it’s not necessarily for you to care for your face and body. It just means there’s no use to pursue a perfect ageless appearance you used to see on TV. Your value is how much light you have inside to brighten those gloomy autumn days of you life.

Mature woman or senescent woman?

Once you notice that your eyes no longer shine as bright as they used to when you were younger. Examining your face in the mirror you can see a lot of vertical wrinkles that you’ve never pay attention to before. And when did those freckles on your hands appear? You may wonder, how a woman that you see in the mirror resembles your mother.

You feel afraid and depressed at the understanding that the youth slips by, the life is half lived and you turn to a woman of ” the certain age ” as French say. This is the moment of realization that you begin to age. The moment, when you captiously peer into yourself and start meditating upon the years left behind: “What did I do until now? “, “Where do I go? “, “What do I want to do in the rest of my life? “. But it’s also the time when you can occupy yourself entirely with your own development and finally do the things that you used to put off till tomorrow.

But when does it happen? Some women begin to feel old and reckon themselves in middle age when they aren’t forty yet. The others start thinking they aren’t young anymore attaining forty years. There are also women feeling youthful after fifty years. And though we usually consider that the transition from the youth to the mature age happens in the middle of our life, it occurs to everyone differently.

Do you know, how often do the women, who haven’t even yet celebrated their thirtieth birthday, look for wrinkles and baggy skin below the eyes? They want to make sure that they have no physical signs of aging and look young. Because the most of us judge the end of youth and the beginning of aging exactly over the appearance of physical changes. No one wants to meet the middle of life with a net of wrinkles under the eyes, wan skin color, gray hair and flabby breasts and belly. Even if you chef finds you an efficient expert and your husband thinks you’re very attractive and sexy, you can’t pass unnoticed the changes occurring to your body.

It’s time to look into yourself and ask a question: are you a mature woman or an aging woman? Your inner voice will tell how old your soul feels.