Let’s talk about feeling younger in ten years. The odds favor that you will be alive, but have you entertained the quality of your future life?
Everything you do today, impacts how your health will express itself in ten years.
Furthermore, it’s not just what you do that impacts your health, how you think also impacts how your genes express themselves.
WTFreak?
Talk about shapeshifting our attitudes about our health. The assumption used to be that we were stuck with our genes. Total disempowerment.
Based on the research of Dr. Mario Martinez, we now know that even our thoughts impact how our genes express themselves.
We also know lifestyle impacts the expression of our genetic code.
We on the hook for our health.
In 2011, I was pre-diabetic. I had resistant weight gain that most people accept as normal aging. To hell with that kind of aging. Gaining a little bit of weight every year so that you are twenty pounds heavier in your forties and twenty-five pounds heavier in your fifties is not normal aging. It is, however, an indicator of metabolic chaos.
Type 2 Diabetes runs in my family and after watching it’s impact on my paternal grandmother and my father, I really did not want the future I saw for myself in them so, I kicked the sugar habit and pre-diabetes in the booty!
I refused to accept decline as normal aging.
You have the power to set the stage for your future health by examining your unique history, the triggers of your health conditions and the things that make your symptoms better or worse. The information collected provides the direction for the creation of an action plan (lifestyle adjustments) toward improved health. This is the work we do in Functional Medicine that provides aging backwards results.
Discard the status quo of your conventionally trained medical staff and dip your toe in the possibility of a bright, healthy future of feeling younger while technically growing older.
Globally, life expectancy has increased roughly twenty years since the early 20th Century. That doesn’t mean that people are living longer with a higher quality of life.
Life expectancy in the USA has fallen behind other industrialized countries. The new average life expectancy for Americans is 78.7 years, which puts the U.S. behind other developed nations and 1.5 years lower than the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average life expectancy of 80.3.
Opioid and alcohol addiction and increased suicides are the principle contributing factors for the declining expectancy in comparison with peer countries.
On average, 115 people in the U.S. die each day from an opioid overdose, and six Americans per day are dying from alcohol abuse—the highest rate in 35 years, according to federal data.
The report also highlights a rise in the suicide rate, which increased 24% between 1999 and 2014, as well as health conditions from diabetes to HIV/AIDS that are negatively impacting the lives of Americans.
Noteworthy and alarming is the reality that addiction and a decline in the emotional wellbeing of Americans have been statistically significant to drag down the country’s average length of life.
Additional research by Cigna using the UCLA Loneliness Scale, reveals that half of all Americans feel lonely.
56% of participants said they surround themselves with people who are “not really with them,” 40% said they lacked “companionship,” their relationships aren’t “meaningful” and that they feel “isolated from others.”
Furthermore, the study identified that loneliness impacts the quality of one’s physical health.
I have asked myself, “how did we get here?”
We are more connected than any other time in history. The digital age has bridged the continental divides. Humans are highly adaptive and thus we embraced the technological magic bus. I can’t say it’s only been to our detriment. It’s certainly provided a platform of connection for those of us who have friends and family in distant lands. It’s provided a lens to see cultures and context across the continents. The world wide web brings the world into your home.
However, during the time of digital expansion, communities have become fractured. On a micro level, we live further from family. Jobs are more demanding. We have less time for socialization and we are more tired than past generations. We are more sedentary, demanding less from this beautiful structure of a body that is designed to bend, reach, stretch, kneel, hunt and gather.
There’s never been an easier time to grow older and feel simultaneously younger but intentionality is a must. For the majority of the senior population, they are not feeling younger while growing older. They are simply propped alive by the pharmaceutical industry.
Functional Medicine offers a clear path towards feeling younger while growing older. Through the lens of Functional Medicine, symptoms are pursued through a root cause solution. Symptoms are not treated in isolation rather as a part of the whole body systems.
By “whole body systems” I am referring to the digestive, immune, urinary, cardio, endocrine, neurological, reproductive systems in addition to a client’s mind, spirit and community, oxidative stress, environmental toxic load and structural integrity.
The digestive system being the foundation of the immune system. Correct your digestive system and chronic symptoms drop like flies.
In Functional Medicine we use the following health markers for chronic conditions and optimal functioning of all body systems.
- Proper digestive function which means you are able to consume, digest, rest and eliminate without bloating, IBS, leaky gut, GERD and other digestive woes.
- Glucose levels which are indicators of inflammation and future disease.
- Regenerative sleep. The body heals and regenerates itself primarily at night. Proper sleep pattern is imperative in determining long term health.
- Proper elimination of toxins. You’ve gotta POOP people! Not just little balls but long, colon shaped logs.
- Mood management. Your mood is related to the health and bioses of your gut and your neurotransmitter and hormone function.
- Stress management and mental health. How you metabolize and think about stress impacts your health.
Everything in your life is relevant to your future health. If you are like me, and want to feel younger while growing older, you’re going to need intentionality and a strategy.
My own midlife health crisis is precisely why I created my Vitally You, Holistic Mastermind, a year long coaching program for an intimate group of eight women. Vitally You provides education, support, strategies and a community model in an effort to bring intentionality and coherence toward the achievement of your health goals and desires.
African Proverb says it perfectly,
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
There are no quick fixes for health. There are short term solutions offered by the pharmaceutical industry that likely mask the root cause. There are self soothing strategies that likely place you in a holding pattern of behaviors that jeopardize your best health.
You have the power to direct the future of your health. Let’s do this.
Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.Helen Keller
Contact me if Vitally You peeks your interest. I’m taking applications through November for the January 2019 Mastermind.
