Introduction I am making several assumptions about you.
Assumption #1: You are among those of us who think that growing old is anything but graceful. Despite the best efforts of Hollywood and Madison Avenue to market middle age as the prime of your life, in reality there's nothing sexy about wrinkles, graying hair, spreading middles, sagging jowls, fading vision, diminishing sex drive, and loss of memory.
Assumption #2: You have already spent more money than you would like to admit on health clubs, diet plans, and maybe even cosmetic surgery to look younger. You are not alone. Last year Americans spent more than $35 billion on trying to lose weight and underwent more than 400,000 cosmetic surgical procedures.
Assumption #3: You would be willing to spend time and effort if you could actually feel younger. Now there's the challenge. Is there any way to actually stop -- and reverse -- nature's aging clock? Ten years ago the answer was a resounding no. Today, thanks to remarkably practical advances in antiaging medicine, the answer is yes, decidedly yes.
This book provides a step-by-step approach to creating an antiaging program that can actually slow and even reverse the physical and mental deterioration associated with aging. Let me put that another way: With the advanced antiaging system presented here, it is possible to not only stay young but to grow younger.
You may have heard that claim before. But this book is different from any other because it approaches antiaging from a new perspective: Not everyone ages in the same way. Our unique genetic blueprints and lifetime experiences mean that the process of aging affects each of us in different ways. Therefore, we cannot be treated in the same way. This concept is vitally important in creating an effective antiaging strategy, but it has been ignored so far. Why? For one thing, it is easier to tell everybody the same thing: Take a handful of superhormone X and call me in the morning.
Age Right is the first book to actually show you how to develop an antiaging regimen that fits your individual aging profile. Your program will be designed for your aging characteristics, utilizing the same approach I use with patients who visit my antiaging clinic and taking into consideration your biochemical profile and factors that include age, medical history, body type, gender, and lifestyle.
By the end of this book you will have an actual antiaging day planner with a regimen of supplements that include phytonutrients, vitamins, antioxidants, "smart drugs," those substances that enhance mental performance, herbs, and amino acids. Combined with a training or exercise program and diet and lifestyle recommendations, this customized regimen will provide you with the tools to counter age-related disabilities from creaky joints to decreasing mental performance. You will improve your ability to relax and sleep, enhance your immune function, lose excess weight and keep it off, heighten sexual ability and performance, increase bone density and lung capacity, and enhance skin and muscle tone. By any measurement you will look and feel younger.
As an attending physician at five Olympic Games, I developed a results-oriented therapy that bridges the gap between scientifically solid advanced research and everyday application. Your antiaging program will incorporate the same cutting-edge techniques that the world's best athletes use to increase their performance.
My strategies for antiaging were developed during my twenty-year tenure at UCLA's Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics where I treated many of these gifted athletes on the playing field and in the gym. We spent hours together discussing their training secrets. And that's when I began to observe that the symptoms these elite athletes were experiencing from overtraining were physiologically identical to those of my middle-age patients in my private practice.
Could the same treatments that helped the world's best athletes recover their health be applied to my patients experiencing the first effects of advanced aging? The answer was a startling yes.
In Age Right you will learn that as children and young adults we had a natural repair process called anabolic drive which continuously regenerated body tissue. Gradually, we lose this rejuvenating capacity and develop numerous conditions associated with aging: obesity, heart disease, and Alzheimer's, to name a few. But thanks to recent advances in antiaging medicine, we can actually regain that anabolic drive by replenishing depleted levels of hormones, the fluids that regulate our organs and tissues, and neurotransmitters, the brain's chemical messengers.
We are the first generation in history to have a say in our biological destiny. Advances in biotechnology and genetics research are ushering in a new age of antiaging therapy. To take full advantage of the wonders that await us in the next century, we must bridge the gap with the treatments available now that can dramatically enhance the quality of our lives. Age Right provides the answers to holding back the hands of time.
How to Use This Book
This book is designed to create an antiaging regimen specific to your aging pathway. Using a series of questionnaires and tests, we will pinpoint exactly where your weakest areas of defense are and supply you with the weapons to combat the effects of aging.
Parts One and Four provide valuable background information. Part One explains how and why we age and current theories of aging. Part Four provides a detailed guide that makes sense of all the antiaging products on the market today, a guide to antiaging foods, and a look at antiaging treatments on the horizon. But if you're in a hurry to get started on your antiaging regimen, skip these chapters for now.
The core of Age Right are Parts Two and Three. This is where you will discover your aging pathway and your current biological age. With this data you can be shown how to build an antiaging regimen with strategies that address your individual strengths and weaknesses. You will also find appendices on supplements, diet, and exercise. Use these references to complement your antiaging day regimen.
It is always recommended that you consult with your physician before embarking on an unusual or vastly different health and fitness regimen.
This book is part of an ongoing study of applying advanced antiaging research to the general public. We would like to hear your thoughts and comments on the programs presented here. Contact us at:
Sports Medicine & Anti-Aging Medical Group
1807 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 205
Santa Monica, CA 90403
Phone: (310) 829-1990
Fax: (310) 829-5134
E-mail: kulllis@ucla.edu
Website: http://www.agingprevent.com
Copyright © 1999 by Dr. Karlis Ullis, Greg Ptacek
Chapter 6: The Four Dimensions of Aging
When I first met Jackie Joyner-Kersee, she was an eighteen-year-old freshman who had come to UCLA to play basketball. After establishing that she could do that exceedingly well, she decided to test her talents in track and field. In an amazingly short time she was competing in the most difficult endeavor, the heptathlon, comprised of seven different events: sprinting, distance running, shotput, javelin, high jump, hurdles, and long jump. In the 1984 Olympic Games she took the silver medal in pentathlon, barely missing the gold by a few points. In the 1988 and 1992 Olympic Games, she took home the gold. Her domination in this event, with multiple world records over such a long period, has never been equaled.
With her record of achievements you would never know that Jackie has an illness that can be devastating to an athlete: asthma. By the time I met Jackie, I had already begun to formulate a theory about aging after a long and intensive study. I had concluded that all the various processes of aging in the human body could be explained by changes that occur in three broad categories. Working with Jackie caused me to rethink the theory and add a fourth category. We therefore have these four categories:
1. Neuroendocrine: how hormones and the nervous system signals interrelate
2. Energy Metabolism: how we gain and utilize energy, or the effectiveness of our energy metabolism system
3. Biomechanical: how we move
4. Lifestyle and Environment: the social and personal dynamics that govern our personality and style, and how we relate to one another, the world, and the environment.
Another person with an illness like Jackie's might have dismissed the idea of becoming a competitive athlete. Make no mistake, there were a number of times when her asthma was so severe that it required emergency treatment. But Jackie adapted to her environment and chose to succeed despite the pain and adversity.
There is actually another dimension of aging -- genes. Your biological parents affect the way you age. But there is little you can do about this dimension of aging, so there is really no practical reason to discuss it. In the next ten to twenty years this fifth dimension of aging will become increasingly important. The Human Genome Project, the international scientific effort to map all 100,000 human genes, is ahead of schedule and has already yielded new therapies for a wide range of diseases associated with aging and others -- from breast, prostate, and lung cancer to inserting longevity genes or repairing injured genes to give you an extra thirty or more years of good living beyond your normal life expectancy. Soon many of the diseases and afflictions associated with our advanced years for -- example, Alzheimer's and osteoporosis -- might be cured by fixing a cell's suboptimal genetic structure. In the meantime, our best strategy is to halt and even reverse the effect of aging by taking full advantage of the antiaging breakthroughs that are imminent.
All of us are dealt a genetic hand with certain physiological advantages and disadvantages. Even with the best training, yo...
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
