The ultimate guide to healthy aging

As the Preventive and Anti-Aging medicine doctor Dr. Vicente Mera claims, it’s not about going against the natural cycle of aging, it’s about improving quality of life to prevent premature and disease ridden aging. How we age is influenced directly with our lifestyle choices. Whilst we can’t freeze time or impede cellular aging, we can dictate the rate at which this occurs.

We all secretly want to look our best and delay the process of aging, and luckily for us, with the advice of the best experts in Aging and Preventive Medicine, we can discover what the best tricks to keeping our body as healthy as possible, for as long as possible are.

We all know what the main aging triggers are, such as smoking, poor diet, regular alcohol consumption, stress, insomnia and pollution, but do we know what our body needs to stay youthful?

Nutrient-rich diet

According to Dr.Mera, adopting an anti-aging diet, rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants can prevent the shortening of telomeres. Telomeres are the extreme ends of chromosomes, where most of our DNA is found, and as we age, they begin to shorten. They influence our general state of health, metabolism oxidation and cellular aging. The interesting fact is that they don’t necessarily correspond to our chronological age. In fact, if you’re aging faster than you’re supposed to because of lifestyle choices, your telomeres will be shorter than they should be.

To prevent this from happening, your diet should be rich in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes, and you should include anti-aging foods such as pomegranates, blueberries, spinach, kale, salmon, nuts, turmeric, avocado, mushrooms, cacao and maca root.

Meditate

Another less known factor that prevents premature aging is meditation. Studies show that practicing meditation stimulates 2 genes that reduce telomerase, the enzyme that shortens telomeres, therefore, slowing down the process of aging. In addition, meditation helps reduce stress levels, a great aging accelerator.

Sleep

The most overlooked remedy to age prevention is sleep. In a society that takes sleep for granted, it’s becoming even more important to highlight the fact that sleep is a healing, restoring and rejuvenating therapy for our body. Lack of sleep doesn’t only increase blood pressure, weaken the immune system, worsen memory, and affect our hormonal levels and mood, but it also causes our cells to age faster.

Luckily for us, aging isn’t out of our control and there is a lot that we can do on our behalf to prevent it from affecting us prematurely. With a balanced, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant-rich diet, as well as meditation, sleep and exercising, we can keep our body feeling young from the inside out.