The Senior Fitness Quest

Growing old is the eventual human experience. We start as totally dependent babies, we progress through learning and maturation to be first independent and productive, and then take on the responsibility of others who depend on us in various ways. Eventually, if we are fortunate, we go back to a stage of relative independence, with a greater amount of uncommitted or free time wherein we can do pretty much what we chose for our own fulfillment. Finally we fall into some form of reduced vitality, becoming progressively more dependent on caregivers and finally die from some life-threatening challenge, usually some bug that overwhelms our immune system.

The quest for senior fitness is to manage life such that when we get to that later stage of relative independence, we have the health and vitality to enjoy it to the maximum level. It’s about optimizing health and fitness by making wise choices throughout life and continuing to live into advanced age making deliberate choices that optimize health and fitness.

It really helps if this idea dawned on us somewhere in our twenties, but more likely we started in our thirties, or forties, or fifties. Personally, I started trying to pack on some intimidating muscle when I hit 33, having been the proverbial 120 lb weakling through most of my twenties. I had no idea at the time that it would be a key factor in late life health, or that people would consistently be stunned to find that I am 10 to 15 years older than they thought. Talk about stroking the old ego!

Along the way I got fascinated with the challenge of optimizing health and fitness, and have learned a great deal about strategies for doing so. The purpose of my website is to pass this understanding along to anyone who will listen and make the changes necessary in their lifestyle to join in the quest. Here then are what I consider to be the six primary keys to senior fitness – and remember, today is the very best day to take up the challenge and start living the quest.

Anti-aging - Slowing the processes involved in aging, and delaying their consequences.

There are four primary (known) mechanism of aging: free radical damage, glycation, inflammation and senescence. These are somewhat overlapping, in that reducing the rate of aging due to one mechanism generally reduces the others. The challenge is to understand what elements of your diet, activities and thinking are making you age faster, and what foods, activities and supplements can slow aging.

Strategy: Attack these aging mechanisms with passion and you will see wholesale changes in your vitality.

Free Radical Damage:

The strategy is threefold. First, eat a diet of real foods, rich in vegetables and fruits with high antioxidant levels. Second, supplement diet with a broad-spectrum antioxidant formula. (Don’t just take single antioxidants like vitamin E and think that is good enough; take a product featuring a wide range of food and herbal extracts). Third, take formulas that boost your own antioxidant production, particularly Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD) and Glutathione Peroxidase.

Glycation:

You have heard of Syndrome X, Metabolic Syndrome or Type II Diabetes – glycation is the bad guy in all three of these ’diseases’. Blood sugar (glucose) has a nasty habit of bumping into fats and proteins and forming permanent junk molecules that usually stick where formed. They progressively cripple cell membranes in every organ, our blood vessels, skin and brains. Elevated blood sugar makes this happen much, much faster, and chronically raises insulin levels, contributing to chronic inflammation.

The strategy is incredibly simple. Eliminate sugar in all forms and starch-based foods from your life. Dump the breads, pastas, breakfast cereals, sodas, candy, pastries, donuts, baked good, chips and instead eat meats, nuts, cheeses, vegetables (mostly raw), some fruit and drink water. Drop anything with high-fructose-corn-syrup in it. You can cure the above diseases in about a month, and slow your rate of aging drastically.

Inflammation:

Strategy: First, avoid chronically high insulin levels as described above – insulin is very pro-inflammatory. Second, bring the ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fats in your diet close to 1 to1. Do this by eliminate all refined seed oils; use only extra virgin coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil in your cooking and food. Third, take enough Cod Liver Oil to get a total dietary intake 2000 IUs of vitamin D3 daily; this will also supply abundant omega-3 oils DHA and EPA. Forth, lose your excess body fat. Fat is not just inert mass – it is a very active hormone-producing organ that generates pro-inflammatory hormones and cytokines. Fifth, take a anti-inflammatory supplement that includes curcumin, Korean Angelica, ginger, basil, rosemary, capsaicin, clove and pomegranate extracts.

Senescence:

Two exciting strategies have com to light recently.

First, caloric restriction is knows to alter gene expression to lengthen lifespan. That is thought to happen because it, among other things, increases expression of a group of genes called sirtuins that allow cells to divide many more times before entering senescence. I suspect it also increases production of telomerase, an enzyme that repairs the end segments of chromosomes called telomeres. Telomere length limits the number of times that a cell can divide before entering senescence, essentially shutting down.

What is new is that brief periods of caloric restriction (about 3 months in one study) can change the gene expression for a year or more. This means that by eating high nutrient density foods for two to three months out of a year you can promote hundreds of pro-longevity genes that make your cells function 20-30% longer.

Second, the compound Resveratrol, found in grapes and other fruits, causes a high percentage of the same pro-longevity genes to be expressed without caloric restriction. Although not yet proven in humans, in every animal model it has shown the ability to extend lifespan (and the fitness level at any age) up to 30%. This is one supplement you should always and forever take in therapeutic quantities of about 100 mg daily.

The strategies above will work synergistically to reduce disease and promote longevity by slowing the major mechanisms of aging.

Nutrition – The Raw Materials for Senior Health and Lifetime Fitness.

Food provides the basic material for building, operating and maintaining our bodies in a disease-free state of health. It also powers our energy production and repair processes. We very much are what we eat. The trick is to eat foods that facilitate health and fitness and avoid those that reduce it. That involves optimizing diet and the processes of digestion, absorption and assimilation. As we age, these processes become less effective – we get less out of what we eat, and our anabolic or repair processes slow as well.

Here are strategies for enhancing this entire process:

• Eat real, whole, unprocessed foods! Eat mostly that which is plucked from the ground, off a tree or bush, or was walking, swimming or flying recently.
• Put a priority on free range poultry (and their eggs), grass fed animals and wild seafood – the difference in nutritional content is staggering.
• Eat almost nothing that comes in a bag or a box or a can.
• Eat adequate amounts of the right fats! Fat is absolutely necessary for survival, but there are Fats that Heal and Fats that Kill (an insightful book by Udo Erasmus).
• Avoid all refined oils; use extra-virgin olive oil, extra-virgin coconut oil or butter for food and cooking, and its corollary - Eat or drink nothing that has the words 'partially hydrogenated' on the label.
• Learn sensible portion control! Modest portion size is a major part of eating correctly; never eat until you’re full. Eating five or six small meals a day is essential for fat control and muscle growth.
• Eat sufficient protein for the body to maintain and repair its structure. A healthy, active (intense weight training or aerobic sessions or sports 3 days per week) person needs about 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass per day to grow, repair and maintain muscle and other organs.
• Learn the rules of food combining! Basically, don't eat starches and proteins together - they will stay in your stomach for hours and you won't absorb the protein.
• Supplement meals with Hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes; take Probiotics!
• Eat or drink almost nothing with sugar in it, refined or otherwise; give up sodas!
• Be cautious and selective regarding grain-based food products! If you have signs of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome or lupus, try eliminating all grains and grain products.

These principles fairly well sum up what we know about getting the right nutrients from the right foods, digested, absorbed and assimilated. There is much more at the detail level to learn, but this is a very good start to eating right and getting the most out of it. I want to impress upon the reader that what you eat is the primary basis for your health, or lack-there-of. This information has been long coming to credibility, yet it is amazing to me that my grandmother was aware of most of it from a folk standpoint. One of my goals at Senior Fitness.com is to point our readers to credible sources of information, and to filter out the junk from the treasure. Don’t stop with a shallow understanding of health and fitness; make it your intent to be a life-long researcher of knowledge aimed at keeping your fitness at a peak level for the rest of your life.

Exercise – The Primary Driver for Reversing Age-related Functional Decline.

First and foremost - The body is a demand-driven, adaptable, living system that requires movement and muscular activity to maintain its function. Look what happens to someone bedridden in a hospital; muscle mass, flexibility, strength, bone density and range of motion all drop like a downed helicopter, in just a matter of days. The unseen effects are equally damaging; every organ reduces function and slows its activity. Lack of movement is devastating to the human body.

Aging is very much like a longer version of being bedridden. Slowly, over decades, the same decreases in capability occur AND the antidote is the same: MOVEMENT. Start moving and your ability to move will improve. Walk, run, dance, stretch, lift weights, play games that require physical motion and the losses due to aging will reverse.

Along with this improved ability to move, many other changes take place. Blood sugar levels will regulate downward and remain more even, stored fat will be reduced, insulin sensitivity will improve, blood pressure will come down and your heart will get stronger. Your vascular system will actually start building collateral arteries around blocked vessels, improving blood flow to your heart and other organs. The body's repair mechanisms speed up, things heal faster, the immune system gets stronger; you get sick less often and you recover more quickly from virtually every malady.

So, lie on the couch, watch TV, drink beer and eat potato chips with all your spare time and the disabilities of aging will overtake you like a Mongol army. You've seen the stories of the 92 year old Chinese (or whatever country) man or woman, still tending the rice paddy, wondering what all the fuss is over being that old. They still ride a bike to work and enjoy life with their family five generations deep. The primary difference is that they never stopped moving.

Strategy: Make weight training or resistance training or body building your primary baseline for anti-aging exercise at least three days a week.

At Senior Fitness.com we are convinced that resistance training, weight training or, in a wider sense, body building gives you the most significant results for your effort, and that the older you are, the more important it is to your physical capabilities. Aerobics, Yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, sports activities, martial arts, they all have important benefits, but they can’t regrow muscle, build strength, enhance hormone production and increase bone density to the degree that resistance training can. Make pumping iron, three days per week, your base line and first priority.

What works for me is one day for upper body pushing functions (chest, abs, shoulders, triceps), the second day upper body pulling functions (traps, back, shoulders, lats, biceps) and the third day a serious leg workout involving some form of squats. Do a 5 minute warm up, hit the weights and be gone in 45 minutes. Take a pre-workout creatine/Nitric oxide booster and an anabolic recovery drink post-workout and watch your muscle shape improve, your strength shoot upward and your body fat go away in a matter of 3-4 months. It is such a rush!

Yes, you will be sore starting on the second day after a workout, peaking on the third day, but only a third of your body feels the soreness at a time, and if you adopt the correct attitude that it is the sign of a successful work out, then it actually feels good to have. I personally love the sense of aliveness it gives me to feel those results – I know I’m gaining. The other amazing thing to me is that I, at 68, in October ’07, did the heaviest set of squats of my life, and have no doubt that when I take a run at another personal best next year, will be able to do better.

Rest, Recovery and Relaxation - Time for the body to repair and strengthen itself.

Strategy: Order your life to get enough sleep on a daily basis to feel energized and avoid fatigue.

Most of the reconstructive work your body does happens while you sleep. Deprive yourself of this vital activity and you will age more rapidly and decrease your performance in virtually every aspect of your life. Yet, one or the biggest complaints of our senior population is that we don't sleep well, we don't feel rested when we do and don't have inadequate energy when we're awake. In this category we will attempt to bring you the information and means to get enough sleep, the best quality of sleep and how to promote and improve the body's various repair mechanisms to have the waking energy to live life to the max.

Strategy: Listen seriously to your fatigue; curtail activities and take a nap when it hits you.

The other facet of rest is the relaxation time we want in each day to smell the roses or whatever else recharges your batteries for the next activity. Yes, it would be good to be the Energizer Bunny all the time, but pushing beyond fatigue is a stress that tears you down. Fatigue is a warning that your energy production is unable to keep pace with your activity level. Often all it takes is to lie down and shut your eyes for a few minutes, and life is SO much better. We plan to feature techniques for rest, restful activities and making recovery a conscious part of living life to the fullest.

Strategy: Space your activities to allow local and systemic recovery. Don't let your recreation put you into a state of chronic fatigue.

We promote weight training as the most effective form of exercise for seniors. But in order for the benefits of weight training to be realized, the body has to be allowed to recover, both systemically and locally. Local recovery refers to the secession of Delayed Onset Soreness - the soreness you feel starting about a day after an intense workout, which usually subsides after the 3rd or 4th day. Before local recovery, your muscles are fragile and susceptible to injury if overtaxed; particularly with the kind of stress you incur playing sports. Systemic recovery refers to secession of post-workout fatigue; it is the recovery of the central nervous and endocrine systems, and the clear sign is a sense of feeling energetic again. In both instances, the older you are, the longer it takes, and the better your overall health, the faster your recovery.

You can't do dead-lifts or squats on Friday afternoon and then dig ditches Saturday morning. You will be hammered for days and maybe injured, because you haven't allowed time for either systemic or local recovery. A Heavy workout for back and legs requires 3-4 days to recover from before you can put any serious stress on those body parts. Don't do protracted aerobics on the same day you train with weights because it will drag you down systemically; your body will go catabolic and tear down muscle instead of building it. We suggest that you can do light aerobics the next day, but don't try to run a 10K.

Strategy: Use sports recovery drinks to help the post-exercise recovery process.

A whole class of post-workout products (mostly drinks) has developed to aid in restoring energy levels after a workout. They really help us seniors bounce back. My favorite, providing electrolytes, creatine, glutamine and all the right stuff to drive them into your recovering muscles, is BSN's CellMass. It warns against use if you are on MAO inhibitors or have hypertension, heart, liver or thyroid problems (see a doctor first). I took the risk and have had terrific results. Another product I recently tested is Anabolic OD by Muscle Asylum Project. This stuff is supposed to speed the recovery process and promote nearly instant muscle growth. I can say it makes a heavy workout seem like it was days ago within a few minutes of taking it. Important point: this is the only time you should ever drink a sugared beverage – your insulin response will be short-lived and will drive the nutrients into the appropriate structures and organs to speed repair and recovery.

Strategy: Make your nightcap a sugar-free protein drink to promote repair during the night. Use 500 mg of L-Tryptophan or 100 mg of 5-HTP about 45 minutes prior to the drink to help with solid sleep and to build serotonin levels for mood enhancement the next day.

You can keep your body primed with the necessary amino acids to rebuild muscle and generally promote more rapid repair of all tissues by taking a carb-free protein drink before retiring. This also shortens the catabolic phase of sleep so that you don’t cannibalize muscle to do the systemic repairs that require amino acids during the long fast of night.

Supplements - Exercise right, eat correctly; is that all it takes? Not as seniors! Supplements make up for the losses of aging.

With age comes decreased capacity to repair cellular damage, to digest foods completely, to produce energy in the mitochondria, to recover from exercise, to take in and use oxygen, to circulate blood, to repair cartilage, etc. Supplements are the secret to getting around these limitations.

The primary issue is using the right supplements. If you think they are generally a waste of money, you need to understand what is now available and the amazing difference the right nutrients can do for our aging bodies. Today's foods are stripped of many critical nutrients and loaded with other elements that speed aging, depress the immune system and impede cellular activity.

There is a huge array of supplements on the market - some wonderful, some dangerous, some useless. We will try to cut through the hype and show you which are powerful boosters for overcoming age-related limitation. Those we promote fall in the following areas:

• Enzymes - to completely digest food, eliminate gastric distress, to remodel scar tissue and remove .
• Probiotics - to keep the digestive system in high gear, control blood lipids and boost the immune system.
• Anti-oxidants - to retard aging, stop inflammation, fight cellular and DNA damage and promote healing.
• Essential Fatty Acids - to replace those lost in food processing, needed for the proper function of every cell in your body.
• Vitamins and minerals - to provide optimum nutrition for our ever more active bodies.
• Bodybuilding aids - that promote lean muscle growth, fat reduction, strength enhancement, endurance, energy production, exercise recovery, improved blood flow and blood pressure.
• Products that improve hormone production and balance - to recover capabilities you thought were gone forever.
• Much, much more - some of these work so dramatically that you will have to get off or reduce medications with your doctor's guidance.

Our goal is to show you what works to overcome the limitations of aging; what you should be using, and what you should never put in your body. In this latter category we put all forms of synthetic steroidal drugs – don’t go there!

Thinking and Attitude - One person's junk is another's treasure; it's all a matter of thinking and attitude. Exercise can be an extremely pleasurable experience; you just have to get your brain to think so.

The crazy thing about exercise is that it changes your brain chemistry. The human body was designed for activity; it thrives on motion and exertion, and it gets sick on being sedentary. Activity primes the brain for more action, habitual inactivity leads to atrophy of everything; mental and physical. Can we learn to favor activity? The answer is Yes – there are methods available to make rapid change in the way we think about anything and, more importantly, the way we feel about anything.

Reality is personal; everything is experienced through a sort of filter system that our genetics and experiences form over time. Everything we experience is really an interpretation of sensory inputs; the signals bombard us through our eyes, skin, ears, nose and mouth, and millions of sensory neurons in our gut, lungs, muscles and joints. We make sense out of it as we can, and call it reality. But the interpretation is something we can change at will, if we know how.

We don't get a user's manual for the brain, we just assume that we are using it correctly as we grow up. As we mature, we become aware that some people seem to be running their brains better than others. We develop strategies or behaviors for responding to the world around us. And we get locked into behaviors that sometimes are not serving us well at all.

Do you have ways of dealing with the world that you would change if you could? Would you like to be excited about activities you now avoid, or motivated to change patterns of behavior that no longer serve your greater good?

Strategy: Take charge of your mental and emotional processes with one or more of the tools discussed below.

The purpose of this category is to present the tools available to change our thinking, our feelings and our attitudes for the better. One such tool is Neuro-linguistic Programming or NLP; really a collection of tools to rapidly and permanently change the way our brain works, if we want such a change.

Hypnosis is another way of making nearly instant changes in behaviors, thinking and the way activities and circumstances make you feel. We found the Hypnosis Workshop to be a great source of information and training for self hypnosis and hypnotherapy and have a section for their material.

Another breakthrough technology - the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT - combines the use of the acupressure meridian points with verbal elements of NLP to effect remarkable emotional transformations and healing as well as rapid modification of thinking and behavior patterns.

These three methods can change your life for the better in a relatively short time, and allow you to shape the way you respond to habits, phobias and negative thinking patterns.

Using the six critical keys for a dynamic senior life – It’s up to you.

The golden years are alleged to be for that great, self-fulfilling time between the child-rearing years and the slide into death. We would like to make them as rich, pleasurable and meaning-filled as possible. Good health makes this far more achievable. The 6 keys lay out a pathway to making this happen.