The Ageing Process.

Understand it and we can slow it down!

Biological ageing is about 20% Genetic (Luck) and 80% Lifestyle!

Background

Firstly thank you for visiting our clubs Health Section.

I became interested in health when my wife was diagnosed with cancer, and have been studying it ever since.  This may sound pretty dumb, but it took me quite a while (years) for the bleeding obvious to hit home. The chronic diseases we are concerned about when we get older are all age related.  As we get older the risk of being diagnosed increases.  Once one accepts this fact it is also bleeding obvious that if one slows the biological ageing process then we improve the chances of living longer before we get sick!

Hence Boomers Health, while providing general derived from evidence based science, focuses on what you can do to prevent the onset of age related chronic diseases like heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and Type II diabetes.  Subsequently we believe the most effective steps that can be taken are determined by how much we eat, what eat, when we eat, how we manage stress and lastly and to a lesser extent exercise.

There are literally 10’s of millions of websites offering advice on these subjects, so what makes Boomers Health different.

1. The clubs advice is free from the influence of advertisers and health related donations.
2. We do not sell any product, and if one is ever recommended we do not receive any benefit from the product supplier.
3. Information is useful if and only if the recipient can “permanently” change habits. Unfortunately most healthy eating and weight loss programs fail because, because they all require changing habits and fail to successfully address this issue. 

Getting older is something no human can avoid, but we can influence our biological ageing rate.  The best example visible ageing is our own skin.  Simply compare the quality of the skin of the face or the back of the hands compared to the quality of the skin under our armpits or inner thighs; this skin can be as smooth as the skin on a “new babies bum” whereas the facial skin is more wrinkled and marked.

This damage is caused by our suns “ionizing” UV radiation.  We can’t see our insides but over time the cells that make us (about 60 to 80 trillion cells depending on our size) are also damaged by  “ionizing molecules” of various types like free radicals, reactive oxygen species, super oxides, peroxides and Advanced Glycation End Products (AGE’s).  Cells are being damaged every single millisecond this is unavoidable; but to manage this our cells have wonderful repair mechanisms.  Even so over time a cell can be damaged to the point where it is too dysfunctional and then it may be killed by the immune system, or commit suicide. This is a good thing we don’t want bad cells to survive that causes disease and ageing, but dead cells need to be replaced, so another cell of the same type divides to replace the cell that has been lost.  So far so good, but; the division process can also cause errors, and the more times a cell divides the more likely it is to become degraded. To combat this nature has built in a natural fail safe system, the number of times a cell (a liver cell, brain cell, virtually any type of mature fully defined cell) can divide is strictly limited and once that limit is reached the old cell survives but can longer divide. These are “senescent” cells, the more of these that our tissues contain “the older our tissue is”. Our bodies are amazing. As these senescent cells accumulate in a tissue and dying cells need to be replaced adult “stem cells” come to the rescue. In the tissue stem cells replicate themselves and can transform into a brand spanking new tissue cell.  As with normal cells errors can and do occur during stem cell division, but unlike normal cell division there is no limit (fail safe system) as to the number of times they can divide.  The more a stem cell divides the greater the risk of mutations, the number of stem cell divisions that occur in a particular tissue is directly related to cancer formation in about 80% of cancers.

It’s all about Balance

We can slow the rate at which our skin ages by reducing our exposure to the Sun.  But its a double edged sword; we need some sunshine to stay healthy but too accelerates skin aging.  Its the same with our insides, how much we eat, what we eat, when we eat, the air we breath, and the stress we are subject to, causes cell damage which drives the biological ageing process and increases the risk of age related diseases.  As with sunshine its about balance; if we don’t eat we starve to death and if we eat too much we accelerate biological ageing and shorten healthy life expectancy.

Skin Ageing vs Internal Organ and Tissue Ageing

There is one massive difference between the to.  We can see what is happening to our skin, but we can’t feel it.  Internal ageing can neither be seen or felt.  The internal ageing process is not noticed until we “feel” a symptom.  It could be pain, a lump, shortness of breath, headaches we never used to have or even our first heart attack or stroke.  In short if we experience a symptom we are already sick. This is why it is important for Boomers to have regular check ups and why its important to learn how to manage lifestyle and stress.  Our lifestyles (habits) affect the micro environment in which each of our trillions of cells live, if our cells thrive so do we and vice versa.  

What Matters Most

Our research suggests that the most important factors to slow ageing are

1. How much we eat.
2. When we eat.
3. What we eat.
4. Our response to a stressful environment.

These issues will be covered in detail for “logged in members”.  Why isn’t the information free?  We will not compromise the content of any articles and programs we introduce, by profiting from the sale of supplements, advertising revenue, and contributions from vested interests, as the hundreds of millions of other “health websites” and foundations do.  Research takes time, running the club takes time, and we have to eat (not too much of course).  We are advised that our monthly membership fee ($5.75) is ridiculous, help keep our research and site up to date, consider becoming a member.