What is Successful Aging?

At the very heart of our desires and hopes and wishes is time. Not just any time. Time shared with the ones we love, the ones we have grown with, the ones we have nurtured….the ones we have endured the ups and downs of life with. If we could just have more time with them. 

Life is beautiful and miraculous. We are all blessed to even be alive. Do we realize how fortunate we are? Yes, there are difficulties and stress and challenges and sometimes seemingly insurmountable circumstances, but we are alive and have had the opportunity to enjoy such happy and incredible times as well. We don’t want the good times to end.

This is why we must do everything in our power to protect and preserve the vital functions of  our bodies and our minds. What does that mean?

Do our every day choices serve as a reasonable means to that end?

In my life, especially in my early days, I experienced pain, sorrow, poverty, scarcity, humiliation, fear, and hopelessness. Through and by my parents, I  was afflicted with abuse, alcoholism, infidelity, negativity, and insecurity. 

I intimately experienced disease and death of several family members who made poor lifestyle choices. I took the last pulse of my mother and my grandmother. I absorbed their last seconds of a beating heart. It was moving. It was transformative. 

My life experiences shaped my passion to help people avoid pain and suffering; to truly love people and care enough to listen to their difficulties and offer solutions to preserve their quality of life. To intimately and comprehensively understand health. To help people not only live longer but live healthier….longer. This is my life mission….my calling.

Aging successfully requires credible knowledge and empowerment and demands action and commitment from those who desire to preserve and prolong precious time with their families. 

From a physical standpoint, successful aging requires preservation of movement, mobility of all joints in our body, flexibility and extensibility of all the soft tissues that connect and create movement and locomotion of our entire selves. It requires relentless strength, endurance , and power. It demands extraordinary ability to accomplish or produce youthful functional movements and tasks. All in the interest in lifting and carrying and playing with our younger family members without restriction and perhaps to retain the ability to play Pickleball or Padel without pain and discomfort. To travel and to climb, walk, navigate, and maneuver through terrain and structural obstacles. To enjoy youthful performance and activity tolerance until the very end of our lives.  to play Pickleball or Padel without pain and discomfort.

From a Metabolic Standpoint, successful aging means optimal energy metabolism, balance, and performance at the cellular level.  It means protection and nurturing of our vital organs. 

It requires the ability to minimize toxin exposure, augment our natural immunity, and efficiently manage the most critical hormones in our bodies. It demands the creation and maintenance of the extremely beneficial and critical bacteria that make up our microbiome (our digestive tract or gut). We need to optimize intake of macro and micronutrients critical for optimal cellular function and we must minimize the ingestion of substances that contribute to disease manifestation. We must embrace preventative medicine which means educating ourselves and pursuing screening exams and tests.

From a Mental Health standpoint, successful aging means providing optimal nutrients, cognitive challenges, and blood pumping exercise critical for brain health. It is important to manage the thoughts and perceptions that enter our minds and learn to procure our ability to allow or disallow information we manifest. We have to give ourselves a break and not be so hard on ourselves. We need to accept ourselves and love ourselves and speak kindly to and about ourselves. Spiritual and social gatherings can often be instrumental.

Successful aging means that although “getting old” is associated with slowing down, moving less, and declining cognitively, we can be strong and relentless and soak up the beautiful miracles of the life we have been gifted but it has to be done with thoughtful intention. 

Wishing you a very long and satisfying life full of beautiful relationships and experiences and may you stay strong, stay healthy, and play forever!!!