No one can see into the future, but you can predict a few things with uncanny accuracy, and one of those predictions is exactly how you’ll age based on your current lifestyle … particularly if you’re sedentary.
Thanks to many dozens of observations and studies of astronauts living in microgravity, we can see the many aspects of aging almost right before our eyes, because living in space is like an accelerated form of aging, and for humans on earth it’s pretty much like watching time-lapse photography.
Similarities Between Space Flight/Bed Rest and Aging
According to Dr. William Evans, exercise scientist, pioneer in the field of age reversal and one of NASA’s leading researchers of the effects of microgravity on aging, prolonged space flight results in remarkable physical changes, which are astonishingly similar to our journey into old age.
After just a few weeks in microgravity, muscle cells will atrophy and becomes as weak as most sedentary 80-year olds. Calcium will be leached from their bones at a greatly accelerated rate. Normal bone growth will be upset, leaving their bones pitted with craters and liable to fracture. Imagine the bones as being like a wool sweater that has been eaten by moths. The astronauts’ balance will be extremely compromised. Along with reduced muscle mass and bone density they will experience a decrease in aerobic capacity, strength, insulin sensitivity and growth hormone, while experiencing an increase in cortisol production and risk of cancer and an immune system that is so weakened that even a minor infection can pose a major threat.
Evolution “designed” us to move, in fact our very health depends on it.
Several years ago, exercise scientist Dr. Evans conducted a series of weight-training studies with sixty, seventy, eighty- and ninety-year-old men and women, and he found that strength gains were achieved by up to 175 percent in just a matter of weeks. Many of the participants increased the size of their muscles by 15 percent with just a few basic strength exercises.
With those bigger, stronger muscles, some of them were able to get out of their wheelchairs or put down their crutches and canes. Many of these people were surprised to find that the simple act of building muscle with light – ten and fifteen-pound – weights was enough to transform their overall quality of life.
Most people think that aging is an unstoppable force, a progressive slide into infirmity, but our long-term health is mainly determined by the lifestyle choices we make throughout our lives.
Diet and exercise affect our health at the cellular level far before we notice the physical signs of aging. If we invest in our health with the same approach that we do investing for retirement … a little each day … we can enjoy a long lifespan and an equally long health span.
So let me ask you a question:
Did you make an investment into your health today? What about yesterday or the day before that or the day before that?
If your answer was “no” you may want to begin giving this matter some very serious consideration because the tea leaves clearly tell … you will NOT age well.
