Читать книгу You: Staying Young: Make Your RealAge Younger and Live Up to 35% Longer - Michael Roizen F. - Страница 7

Most of us think ageing happens like this: we go on our way, living happily through life, until one day we start to feel old, and the symptoms domino right before our cataract-clouded eyes. Our bones creak, our backs hurt, we go blank when trying to think of our neighbours’ names, we hate driving at night, we can’t play golf any more, we can’t hear what our spouses are saying, and our sex lives pretty much come down to brushing up against the washing machine. Soon we’re eating dinner at three-thirty and our primary goal of the day is staying awake long enough to catch Countdown.

To us, that approach means you’re drowning in life – not bathing in the beauty of it. We’re here to challenge that perception of ageing and create a new way of thinking about “anti-ageing medicine”. The traditional focus of the medical community has been on treating chronic diseases and reversing acute illnesses associated with ageing – cancer, heart disease, stroke. The assumption was clear: since heart disease and cancer alone account for over 50 percent of all deaths, you could live maybe 50 percent longer if you could avoid the big killers. As it turns out, this isn’t what would happen. As devastating as these diseases are, wiping them out as your killer increases your average life expectancy by only about nine and a half years – not the thirty to forty years that you would expect. Why? Because something else takes their place.

To add serious years to your life – and life to your years – you have to lower your risk for all diseases. And the only way to do that is to slow your rate of ageing on the cellular level. Curing cancer or any other disease does not necessarily do anything to change the nature or speed of your bodily ageing process. That’s because ageing and disease – although they interact with each other – aren’t the same thing. As we grow older, all of our systems slowly deteriorate, which makes us more vulnerable to disease. By slowing the ageing of our cells while simultaneously preventing disease, we can enjoy not only a higher quality of life but a much longer one as well. This is where we’re taking YOU.

What Is Your RealAge?

Throughout the book, we’ll refer to your RealAge – that is, a formula designed to figure out your biological age based on your lifestyle and behaviours, rather than your simple calendar age. Do good things, and your RealAge is much younger than your calendar age. Do bad things, and you can have the body of an oldster even if the calendar tells you that you haven’t hit thirty yet. One of the great things that the RealAge formula has taught us is this: Make changes, see the rewards. You can figure out your RealAge with a free test at – www.realage.com.

Of course, the reason why ageing is so intimidating isn’t because it appears to sneak up on you like a first-rate mugger. In reality, ageing is more like a savvy bank robber who’s spent months casing the joint. Why the discrepancy? Because there are huge delays between the cause of the problem and the effects you actually see in your life. And that means you have to start building defences in your thirties, forties and fifties against attacks that may not occur until your sixties, seventies and eighties.

Fortunately, science has finally figured out most of the spectacular biological processes that control ageing. And by learning about such things as mitochondria, telomeres, sirtuin, nitric oxide and the vagus nerve – which you will do in this book – you’ll appreciate how to apply these remarkable discoveries to your own life. As we take you inside your own body, you’ll learn about the shoelacelike chromosome that affects memory loss. You’ll discover the body’s cellular energy factories that play a role in damaging and preserving your arteries (and you thought it was all due to the buttered biscuits). You’ll even figure out whether you’re a good candidate for hormone therapy as you age and understand how your third eye controls your sleeping pattern (yes, we said third). Ultimately, by understanding the science behind your body, you’ll slow your rate of ageing – to live long and strong. While science holds the keys, only you have the power to unlock your potential longevity.

After all, ageing may be inevitable, but the rate of ageing is certainly not.