Category: aging

500 Words – Day 022 – More Aglet Please -612-

Just how badly have we missed the microbial mark and what influence do these microflorae have on the overall balancing act we call life in our goal to make it to 120 years of age with a body that looks and feels no more than a robust 24?

Lifespan, healthspan, and life expectancy. Is any one of these more important than another? A long lifespan is not something I would enjoy if I were hindered from doing whatever I liked because of some physical impediment that I could have avoided. And this is where healthspan comes into play.

Currently, it appears that the human lifespan is about 120 years. In the United States, the current life expectancy in 2022 is about 78.5 years with a health span of about 63 good years of life without many physical limitations. So then what changes over time that results in a decline in functionality and better yet, can that decline be averted? I would like to think so.

Clearly, there will come a time in everyone’s life when there will be some form of decline in functionality. So what is stopping us from extending that decline or at least pushing it back to our 120th birthday or more?

It is us that are keeping this from happening. Our body has the functionality within it to make it to 120 years of age. And I am beginning to suspect that it is the overall condition of the microflora, primarily found in our intestinal tract that is the major contributing factor that determines how close we get to that end of 120 years. And if it is that microflora that is the mediator of that overall healthspan functionality, then what do those microorganisms need to get us to that fullness of life?

The microflora that lives on us and within us is much more at the forefront of our minds than it was just one generation ago. In all the years I spent in school I can’t say that I remember hearing anything about it at all. Yet a deviation in the functionality of this mass of living organisms about our being can have grave consequences in the individual creature.

Our body is a complex system. Within that individual system, there are many complex subsystems that are also complex within their own discrete functions. And yet I can see that we are very little different than a plot of topsoil that somehow figured out a way to wrap itself in a lipid bilayer, what we call skin so that it could get up and wander about the Earth.

Nonetheless, here I am again with this question. What are we doing wrong?

If our life was a shoelace, one of the most important aspects of the health span of that shoelace is the aglet at the end of the lace. Those little metal or plastic tubes that are affixed tightly around each end of the lace. A happy, healthy aglet makes for a well-functioning shoelace. Of course, the lace can always break somewhere in the middle, but barring that kind of failure those little aglets will ultimately determine the overall length of the functionality of that lace.

I suspect that our life is much like this aforementioned shoelace. If it is not overused it will last much longer than one that is abused by overuse. A shoelace can fail from overuse long before the aglet fails and in like manner our human body can fail long before our body loses the ability to regenerate the cells that ensure a full health span of 120 years.

So are we wearing out the aglets of life or abusing the lace of life that results in mechanical failure? Maybe both.

500 Words – Day 020 – Raw Vegan Requiem – Natural Hygiene; A Bridge Too Far -873-

I recently spent a full year on a raw vegan journey after I found a group on Facebook that promoted Natural Hygiene that promoted a diet that was not only vegan but one that followed a diet primarily based on fruit and gentle leafy greens. I also decided to remove garlic, onions, caffeine, dark chocolate, even added salt, and bore deeply into eating mostly fruit and salads as suggested by this aforementioned group. The only exception was a small amount of homemade hummus added to my salads in place of dressing. So I guess if someone wanted to nitpick a little they could say that I was only 98% raw vegan. There is too much evidence and data demonstrating that those that live the longest eat legumes on a daily basis. That and I just make good hummus.

I feel it was a worthwhile endeavor that allowed me to learn firsthand a lot about how the human body functions when exposed to a raw vegan lifestyle over a long period of time. Not something a lot of people can say. An its overall cleansing effects on my body were well worth the time and effort. I am grateful for what it did for me and I still believe that it was the right thing to do.

Would I recommend this diet to everyone? Not necessarily. It would depend on the individual and what their diet had been like for the year leading up to their wanting to take on such an endeavor. If they had been a strict vegetarian for a year first then by all means. I wouldn’t see any problem in making the shift. If they were omnivores, I would suggest transitioning to a vegetarian diet for a good six months beforehand. I believe healthy and gradual transitions are the best way to find success in dietary changes.

These days I am no longer a raw vegan for a number of reasons, but most importantly is because there is no evidence that it is the best way to go about getting to 120 years of age with a body that looks and feels no more than 34. Aside from the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that such a hygienic Edenic diet would do such, my main concern with the raw vegan or even fruitarian diet is that it is too easy on the body ultimately resulting in a more fragile state of existence, premature decline, and lower mortality overall.

Humans did not become the dominant species by eating a perfect or overly hygienic diet. On the contrary, it is because of much adversity and stress in our lives that brought us to where we are today.

An all-fruit diet in today’s world is problematic because we just don’t have access to enough variety on any given day to have a wide enough diversity of nutrients to make it even feasible to get enough of what we need, in the way our body would need it for our body to thrive.

And then there is the overly-hygienic state that an all-fruit diet will land your body in that would ultimately leave you with a microbiome that has diminished diversity which is not a good place to be. Our body and mind need to be exposed to small amounts and diversity of stress on a regular basis to maintain a strong state that can better deal with unforeseen future adverse situations. An overly hygienic, or sterile state is not a good place for a human or any other organic life form to be found outside of a sterile or hygienic environment. And none of us live in a cleanroom. We live in a diverse world filled with much adversity and as such our body needs exposure to adversity and even small amounts of environmental stress to remain anti-fragile and strong when unforeseen future adversity should arise.

To be clear, I am still a vegan by definition because it provides us with the greatest opportunity to make it to 120 years with a body that looks and feels no more than 34. However, I don’t believe that we need to limit ourselves to a raw diet and that adding certain plant-based foods that need to be cooked first is an important part of greater longevity and a fuller life experience. They provide a necessary and beneficial derivation through mild adversity that strengthens the body overall.

So rather than arguing about which version of vegan diet is better for every individual, I can say with all certainty that there are other principles that are more important than a list of approved foods that exclude things like cooked legumes, sweet potatoes, and cruciferous veggies. Clearly, some plant-based/whole food is better at cleansing the body than others, but there does come a point where a complex living system can become too hygienic and the needle of health starts pointing in a negative direction. A Natural Hygiene diet is the best for cleansing, but not good for overall longevity and to suggest that it can be a permanent lifestyle is overreaching. A bridge too far.

Adversity and variation are what build a strong and robust body that will make it further down the road while avoiding any states of disease.

500 Words – Day 019 – Stress. Are you getting enough? -1299-

Stress. Our life depends on it. The quality of life and the amount of years we will live on Earth is a direct result of the quality and kind of stress we apply to the systems of the human body. We are like a tree. Apply too much stress at one fine point and it will fall over and die. Add just the right amount, applied at random intervals and the tree will grow strong, both above and below the ground.

I imagine most people would not see stress as something beneficial to their life. But it is. Quite beneficial in fact. In reality, most of us living in the Western World have become quite soft if you will simply because we have come to a place in history where we have plenty. We don’t have the right kinds of stress that would provide our bodies with the right kind of stress that would lead to an overall improvement in the human condition.

Yes, we can age more gracefully with the right amount and kind of stress in our life.

We are very rich compared to our great-grandparents that were born just a little over 100 years ago. We not only have plenty, but we also have a variety that they couldn’t have imagined. But along with the variety of nutrient sources we have today, most sources are foods that are processed and lacking in the actual things our bodies need to help us achieve our fullest potential.

And then there are the right kinds of foods that our body needs much more of. Plant-based/whole-foods. In some places, like Los Angeles for example, we have plenty of access to these natural food sources, but the sad reality is that most don’t have access to the variety that mother nature has created for us. And as such we just keep eating the same few things over and over again. Of bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, and a handful of leafy greens we have plenty, but we tend to lack diversity. And because of international trade and refrigerated shipping containers, it is dirt cheap to get a narrow selection of produce in plenty all year round. So we are missing out on the benefits of seasonal variety that would be beneficial for our body.

More than 100 years ago there was a lack of not only quantity, but also a variety that led to disorders like scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor, pellagra, and goiter. The wrong kind of stress. Today we no longer have the problems like these that were a result of deficiency of nutrients. Today we have too much but not enough diversity of the right stuff and now we suffer from metabolic disease from overconsumption and lack of variety. And then the icing on that cake is that even if we are getting a sufficient amount of calories from the right kind of foods, the lack of variety is oftentimes resulting in food allergies and behavioral disorders related to food and dietary fads. Again, the wrong kind of stress

Our American(Western) lifestyles would benefit greatly from a little adversity and high-quality stress that would produce beneficial results leading to a better overall picture of health and wellness.

Hormesis, Health, Homeostasis, and Aging.

You’ve heard it said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” A phrase coined by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). This is a principle called hormesis. It is what happens when we go to the gym and work out. We stress our body and it responds positively. But that is not the only kind of hormesis. Toxins, or poisons, can also result in a hormetic effect that offers protection and extended longevity of lifespan.

For thousands of years, it has been observed and practiced that low doses of poison could be beneficial to health in the long run. Studies have shown that small amounts of alcohol can double the lifespan of worms(nematodes) as well as enhance the memory of mice. However, high amounts of alcohol in humans result in cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, and neurological disorders. However, there is an overall reduction in mortality, especially of the kinds resulting from coronary heart disease and stroke in those that have small amounts of alcohol.

And apparently, there is a similarly protective effect from cigarette smoking on Parkinson’s disease and may have similar effects on Alzheimer’s dementia. I imagine this has more to do with nicotine which is used as a pesticide in agricultural settings. Remember, low doses of poison can be beneficial. But alas, modern man tends to not practice temperance when it comes to smoking and drinking, which ultimately then makes them both toxic at the levels most will enjoy.

Unfortunately, these two specific hormetics tend to be well overused. But that is another topic for another essay. Nonetheless, hormesis can benefit overall homeostasis resulting in a better quality of aging.

Aging is the condition or process of deteriorating with age and death is the final manifestation of the body’s inability to maintain homeostasis. Homeostasis is the result of the body’s efforts to maintain a stable environment to the benefit of the overall creature(us). A state of ease in contrast to a state of dis-ease. Well, versus unwell. And this is all maintained through a number of different mechanisms, or physiological processes that for the most part go unnoticed as we make our way throughout the day. For the most part, it is an automatic process that takes place, which I imagine is a good thing for us. Especially since our body still needs us to keep breathing, whether we are awake and aware, or not. A feature I definitely appreciate being automated. Some other processes our body automates and regulates are pH, glucose, blood pressure, toxins, and temperature.

What most of us call aging is a shrinking back of the hemodynamic space that is often taken for granted when we are young. We take it for granted in our younger years because our body simply feels and works better. But eventually, sometime around our twenty-fifth year, we begin to feel aches and pains that we didn’t experience in our youth. One might even say it’s all downhill from there. Some make it into their thirties or forty’s before feeling this way, but not without some effort on their part through sober-minded thinking and decision-making processes or by pushing back a little at the gym. This pushing back is called hormesis.

As we get older we start to notice things changing, usually because of what we see in the mirror. An increase in skin blemishes. A thinning out of our hair. Maybe a few gray hairs start showing up. Fingernails and toenails not looking as healthy as they may have at a younger age. And these things are actually good visual indicators of our overall health. They can speak volumes without ever having to use a word as they allow for someone that studies aging to see not only the current state of the body but also what could have led us to that point in our life.

Good health is the result of a body’s ability to maintain homeostasis, but it comes at a cost. A cost that is factored into our current lifespan of 120 years which we are sorely lacking the ability to attain here in the twenty-first century. Likely from a lack of adversity. Maybe it’s time we start being a little harder on ourselves.

We’ve really gotta get this figured out. We are missing out on so much good life. We are literally throwing away the greatest asset of all. Time. And the time we do have really tends to be hindered in the way we age in our latter years.

This is a sad reality that I am going to fix. I’m done aging badly.

500 Words – Day 014 – What Disease? -1049-

From this day forward, I will proclaim that there is no such thing as disease. That is not to say that there aren’t disorders of function(disfunction) within the human experience. Surely there is and we have all experienced disorders to one degree or another.

In other words, I am going to do my best to remove the term disease from my linguistic arsenal because I believe it to be problematic. Problematic in that it allows for a continued building up of ideas and language that takes us further away from the truth of what disease really is. An advanced state of aging. A problem that is a result of our body lacking the vital energies needed to repair or replace the components that we are wearing out. To say it another way, we are using up our body’s resources faster than they can be replenished.

And so in some sense, the word disease becomes an expensive paywall that prevents us from understanding what is really going on. And this disease is simply the first paywall or locked door that keeps us from really understanding what is really going on. Once you are convinced that you have a disease and you have gone through that door, it is further separated out into many other doorways and dim passages by which the initial problem becomes even more confused, obscured, blurred, and specialized into other, even scarier sounding disorders and diseases that become even more difficult to understand.

This then ultimately leads us down the road to needing a doctor to guide us as blind people through the perilous straights of murky medical terminology. By the time the common man gets to this point they simply don’t know what to do. And in many cases, their doctor’s primary care doctors know little more. From this point, specialists who hold the keys of knowledge hidden behind the doors of specialties and specific diagnoses aren’t really able to help us better understand what is going on simply because they lack the time or skills needed to easily teach us in plain language what is really going on within our body.

And thus we simply trust them in their decision-making processes that landed us in their care in the first place. And once most people get to this point there is little they can do other than simply say okay, submitting ourselves to a course of treatment that isn’t necessarily going to get us back to a state of homeostasis. To a place of normalcy where our body can once again be in its default state of organic and biological flow where everything is working with ease.

And this then leads us back to life…

There is only life and life exists regardless of our consciousness of it. We get to participate in it for a period of time. A span. A spectrum of existence that begins with what we humans call birth, and that existence has a temporal ending that we call death. Metaphorically speaking, we are simply an act if you will. A scene in a movie or play that makes up the whole of our individual lives. Our act or scene is a story that has many stages in between its temporal beginning and end. One story; yet two natures. One that is physical and the other that is spiritual. One is the story of our physical body and the other is that which we call our consciousness. Yet, both are a part of the same individual story that makes up each individual human life. And it is all an animated existence powered by electrical energy.

Our physical body is an organic, carbon-based life form that has been drawn up, gathered together, animated, and electrified as a utilitarian, beneficial, and necessary part of life here on Earth. We are here for a reason. In some sense acting as a counterbalance to another factor that exists within the realm of life on Earth.

So where does disease fit into all of this talk of man’s nature? What if I told you that disease is simply a metaphor for aging that has been used as a marketing tool in some sense? Well, that’s exactly what it is. The marketing of an idea that at the very least implies that there is something going on in our body that is out of our control that needs some form of external input, whether by ourselves or the hands of another.

So let’s just remove the word disease from our common use of language and just call it what it is then. Simply aging.

Beginning somewhere between conception and birth, Aging has been defined as a steady decline or reduction of physiological function that leads to increased susceptibility to diseases that will ultimately end in biological death.

Beginning –> Aging/Disease –> Death/End

When compared to other mammals, humans have what appears on the surface to be a longer lifespan. Approximately 120 years according to what humans have defined as a solar year consisting of 365 1/4 days.

Sidenote: I would like to argue that all mammals within their individual context from their own perspective experience the same amount of perceptible time known as a lifespan regardless of how humans define time. The idea that a day to a human would be something like a week to a dog, as an example. This might explain why a dog is so happy to see its human that has been gone on a two-week vacation. To us humans, it has only been two weeks, but to that dog, perhaps, it has been something akin to us having been gone for almost 2 months time.

Standard evolutionary models of aging are explained as the full potential of our body’s ability to repair or replace cells that would allow for continued existence. The idea is that over time, what we call natural selection through a process called senescence, or the deterioration of age begins to exert less effort in the removal of our spent cells. Our body simply loses its will to take out the trash if you will.

This brings me back to what we have classically called disease. And this is the basis by which I would like to suggest that we stop using this negative, pejorative term for what is simply the process of aging.