Health and Longevity
Here’s Why Longevity Is Personal Responsibility and What We Can Do.
Increasing lifespan with lifestyle changes and leveraging scientific developments looks feasible.
Introduction
Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no cure for death at this stage. However, most of us want to live as long as possible. Having a quality life even at older ages matters to us. I can’t imagine anyone who wants to suffer from physical and mental pain at any age.
Many longevity scientists aspire to find solutions to reduce the effects of cell death and prevent DNA damage to expand life span. Some scientists and philosophers even imagine producing possible solutions to stop dying.
There are many threats to longevity. The critical ones are chronic stress, major diseases, health conditions such as metabolic syndrome, inflammation, biological decay, structural decay such as muscle and bone density loss, toxins, pathogens, and accidents.
We can take personal responsibility for preventing most of these factors. I briefly touch on key points within our control and personal responsibility without going into detail, as each point is very comprehensive in nature.
Aspects of Longevity Within our Control
Chronic stress is a significant cause of many ailments. Stress is inevitable for living beings. All humans, animals, and even plants experience it. Some people can have a higher threshold of tolerating stress at elevated levels.
However, elevated chronic stress poses significant health risks for many of us. From a personal standpoint, the critical aspect of stress is how we perceive it. Our perception determines how to cope with stress, manage it, and reduce its dangerous effects.
Lifestyle factors can help us reduce stress. For example, we can mitigate stress risks by focusing on exercise, nutrition, sleep, relaxation, and refraining from addictive behaviors such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and drug use.
Exercise can strengthen our muscles and bone density. High-quality nutrition can supply essential minerals, vitamins, proteins, and healthy fats. High-quality sleep can rejuvenate the body and the brain. And relaxation can reduce stress. These lifestyle changes are all within our control and our responsibility.
A vital lifestyle choice that can contribute to longevity is a mindful approach to life. Mindfulness and meditation practices are not only for reducing stress but also for improving our mental health by strengthening our focus and attention.
Meditation can physically change the thinking part of the brain. Meditation does not cost money and is our responsibility.
Fasting improves health by regulating blood sugar and increasing insulin sensitivity. We know that insulin resistance is one of the major causes of metabolic syndrome, which causes several severe health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
In addition, fasting can initiate autophagy. Why And How We Should Initiate Autophagy: Dealing with dead and zombie cells naturally. Caloric restriction and time-restricted eating also indicate longevity benefits in recent scientific studies. So, fasting does not cost us money, and it is a personal responsibility.
Some supplements have promising results in preventing some health conditions. Addressing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, especially magnesium and vitamin D, and the use of antioxidants such as NAC looks essential, as mentioned in the following articles.
Vitamin D, as a Steroid Hormone, not Just Another Supplement
The biggest concern regarding longevity for mental health is dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form. It is now believed to be a metabolic disease.
Therefore, hence some science communities name dementia type three diabetes. Perhaps, addressing metabolic syndrome can reduce the likelihood of cognitive decline.
In addition, increasing our cognitive reserves can delay the onset of dementia and reduce its effects to a certain extent. Investing our time in improving our cognitive reserves is a personal responsibility.
I touched on some practical points about using daily chores as brain boosters to enhance our mental resources and reduce the chance of cognitive decline.
We have evidence that the shortening of telomeres indicates our lifespan. Unfortunately, there are no scientific solutions to extend our telomeres or stop the shortening of progress.
However, as mentioned earlier, we can reduce DNA damage by improving our lifestyle conditions.
Similar to stress, chronic inflammation is a root cause of many diseases. Nevertheless, we can significantly reduce chronic inflammation by applying healthy lifestyle choices.
I mentioned some practical points on how I address my chronic inflammation in this article: How I Dealt With Chronic Inflammation: A personal transformation story.
Other known health risks are toxins and pathogens. Eliminating these harmful materials entirely is not possible.
However, reducing them is possible. We take most toxins and pathogens from food, drink, and air. With lifestyle changes, we can improve the quality of food, drink, and air consumption. It is a personal responsibility.
Mitochondria also play a critical health role, especially as part of our energy system. I mentioned some practical ways to improve the health of our mitochondria in an article: Energy for Excellent Leaders: Critical awareness for mitochondria health.
Apart from physical and mental health focus, our social relationships also have a considerable effect on our health which might affect our life span, as mentioned in studies related to the lives of centenarians in Blue Zones.
When you look at these life factors, they all play a role in longevity, and most of them are within our responsibility and do not cost much.
Though, we can’t do much about accidents. Our responsibility is to have a mindful lifestyle to reduce the chance of having accidents to some degree. We know that traffic accidents kill more than any other disease. I hope technology and science can help us to create safer vehicles soon.
I look forward to safe and autonomous cars. Unfortunately, some accidents still happen in the workplace, especially in factories and mines. This is a collective responsibility of employees, business owners, and governance bodies.
Conclusions
Even though there is no solution to death yet, some known factors can increase longevity to some extent. We have some evidence that anything reducing chronic stress and inflammation can contribute to longevity. The beneficial effects of mindfulness in stress management are well known.
Refraining from unhealthy fats and sugar can mitigate metabolic disease risks and hence might prevent diabetes, dementia, and heart disease to some extent. Fasting can also help overcome metabolic syndrome.
Our liver creates ketones as an alternative energy source for the body and the brain through fasting. This alternative energy (β-Hydroxybutyrate), also serving as a signaling molecule, can rewire the brain and address some physical and mental health conditions.
Several other lifestyle habits, such as the use of a sauna and cold showers, have promising and indicative results in improving longevity. Both saunas and cold showers can be used to reduce chronic stress and inflammation. Sauna has also been shown to activate longevity genes such as SIRT2.
Fasting, sauna, cold showers, mindfulness, meditation, workouts, sleeping, working in a flow state, relaxation, and laughter therapy do not cost much money. They are all within our control and responsibility.
There is a significant focus on longevity in the science and technology communities. Scientific research indicates that stem cells can divide infinitely over time and regenerate organs.
Therefore, it is hypothesized that if stem cells are used at earlier ages, the rate of aging can be significantly reduced.
Regenerative medicine is making good progress. The research on this is full-fledged. Regenerative medicine is expected to be a new medical specialty. Nanomedicine is also another field that is growing gradually. I plan to share my research on stem cells and regenerative medicine in another post.
Cryonics is seen as life insurance for the future by some people. The metaphor used is a hospital a few decades or centuries away, hoping scientists could achieve reviving bodies one day. Some patients already go under cryo-protection at Alcor, which takes several days. I plan to post an article on my research on this interesting development.
I cannot comment on these futuristic practices at this stage as the ethical implications are myriad, and unknowns radically outweigh the knowns. Our knowledge stemming from indicative studies on longevity is minuscule. Speculations are all based on hope and dreams. My only focus on longevity is what we can do naturally at this stage by taking personal responsibility.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
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