SUMMARY:
In this post, I discuss some of my favorite clinically proven or researched methods for aging well. We are going to discuss the magic 8. These eight tips include behaviors, diet, exercise, hydration, sleep, skin care, supplements, and injectables. I have even added a bonus tip for you that I have experienced multiple times as my secret weapon and can’t wait to tell you about it.
FULL-TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back my fellow lifestyle enthusiasts. If you are new, I’m Linne and you should probably know that I’m obsessed with all things lifestyle and how they impact your overall health!. As a physician and a researcher, my goal is to provide the overwhelmed and maybe out of shape individual with simple tactics to improve your lifestyle and thus improve your health and well-being. So, if you’re into that kind of thing, then you’re in the right place.
Today we are going to discuss my top 8 methods for aging well. As a physician who sees patients in a medical day spa, I am often asked about ways to age gracefully and slow down the hands of time. I want to share these methods with you today. And while some of them are common sense, others may surprise you. And quite honestly, most folks are not practicing the simple tactics on a regular basis.
And, by the way, if you are a lifestyle enthusiast and obsessed with all things health, then SHARE THIS POST with your friends, leave a comment below, and hang on because we’re going to discuss some fun stuff today.
Have you even looked in the mirror and felt that you aged over-night; that all of a sudden there is saggy skin where it didn’t use to be, there are new lines on your face, you look tired, there are spots where they don’t belong, your body is not in the shape you want nor is your energy where it needs to be to get things done? Quite frankly, the reason that I love this topic so much is that there are many new thoughts and technologies constantly surfacing that deserve a little attention in the anti-aging discussions. We all want to age well, but most of us don’t know what is truly working when it comes to daily practices and regimens.
“At 44, I have learned that aging is increasingly mind over matter. As I grow older my mind is more filled with positivity and hope for the future and less filled with worries about what others think, as what others think doesn’t matter as much”
— LINNÉ LINDER
“Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been”
— DAVID BOWIE
- BEHAVIORS: The largest contributing factor to aging is stress. If you caught my video on cortisol and aging you know that stress utilizes precious amino acids for fuel. And guess what your collagen fibers are made of? Yep. So, if you think you can run yourself ragged being the type of person who is always on the go, exercising intensely every day, and drinking a gallon of coffee, you are in for an unfortunate surprise. The best thing you can do is slow down. Cut things out from your schedule, adopt a meditation practice, wear a monitor that measures your parasympathetic responses to stress and helps you recalibrate (like heart math).
- DIET: If you’ve read The Forever Fat Burner, you know that I am a fan of lower carbohydrate diets. But that is not because it is trendy or helps you lose weight, per se. While weight loss is a natural consequence of eating lower carb, the truth is that sugar is a toxin. Without insulin to shunt sugar out of your bloodstream, sugar could destroy you. It also destroys chromosomes and shortens telomere length. So, avoiding sugar is key to preventing advanced glycation end products. These AGES are caused when protein and fat attach to sugar in your bloodstream or when you eat overcooked foods. High levels are linked to obesity, heart disease, kidney disease, and Alzheimer’s.
- EXERCISE: When it comes to exercise, we need to find the Goldilocks amount. Most individuals are either not exercising enough or exercising too much. Very few people have found what I like to call the minimum effective dose. I can’t tell you how many of my weight loss patients have tried cutting calories and exercising intensely at gym classes or they like to run for miles a day. Nearly every time we test their circadian rhythm, their adrenals are shot. In other words, their efforts are backfiring. Their body perceives the exercise as a stressor and their body produces too much cortisol. As we just discussed, this level of stress causes weight loss resistance. So, what do I recommend to my weight loss patients and those who want to improve the aging process? A mini trampoline. Yeah, crazy but true. It is the number one best way to improve your overall health and well-being. It provides just the right amount of stress on every cell in your body. You are strength training, improving cardiovascular capacity, and stretching every muscle in your body. You are improving bone density, coordination, and strengthening every collagen fiber in your skin and subcutaneous tissue. Hands down, if there was only one thing I could do to improve my overall health, it would be rebounding. Period. Here is my magic formula for finding your minimum effective dose: Do a form of high-intensity interval training (ideally on your trampoline) for 4-15 minutes, 2-3x per week. This is going as fast as you can for 30 seconds, resting for 30 sec to a minute then repeating this cycle 8 times. Then on the other days do 20-40 minutes of fun cardio (on the trampoline, dancing, yoga, walking). On the weekends do low intensity, long exercise like hiking for 2-3 hours. That’s it. If you have to, add some muscle work in 2-3 times per week with body weight resistance for 20 minutes; however, if you are using the trampoline, you won’t need to. It is doing the resistance work for you.
- HYDRATION: Dehydration can influence cognition and even a mild level can disrupt mood, concentration, alertness, and short-term memory in children, young adults, and the elderly. While the link to skin aging and dehydration is debatable, it is true that your skin cells are 30% water and it is visually apparent when I see (and feel) dehydrated tissue. Dehydration can cause adverse changes in mood, vigor, and fatigue, as well as increased headaches and difficulty concentrating among young women, and musculoskeletal pain. The best time to hydrate is first thing in the morning. I like to drink 3-4 cups of water when I wake up, then wait for 45 minutes or so to have my morning coffee.
- SLEEP: Getting a good night’s rest has a plethora of health benefits and is number one in turning back the hands of time. Sleep helps you to regenerate cellular function and repair damaged tissue. More sleep equals more repair. More repair equals fewer wrinkles. Sleep deprivation decreases the blood flow to your face. Less blood flow translates to dull, lifeless skin. Going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every day and getting 7-9 hours of sleep every night is your ticket to your healthiest appearance.
- SKINCARE: Would you ever buy a new car and never wash it? Would you buy a leather couch and never condition or treat it? Just like cars need regular tune-ups, your face needs regular professional love. Getting facials and maintaining the results with a higher quality skin care regimen is key to glowing skin. I’m going to step on a lot of toes here. Did you know the FDA approves multiple levels of products? Gas, food, over the counter, physician grade, and pharmaceutical grade. Did you know that by law, over the counter products cannot change the structure of your skin whereas medical grade skin care products, known for high concentration of active ingredients, are formulated to reach the deepest levels of the skin to help skin cell turn-over, collagen and elastin production in order to reduce fine lines, wrinkles, age spots, acne scarring, and problematic areas. Through years invested in clinical research, these products have been scientifically proven to work. If you are dealing with acne, sunspots, or aging, you need skin care products that will penetrate the deepest level of the skin, not a product that won’t penetrate shedding skin. A scary fact about OTC products is that they are not required to have clinical studies done, which means the claims they make are not proven to be true. In essence, an OTC product cannot change the quality of your skin beneath the outer layer of your skin otherwise they would be considered pharmaceutical or physician grade. Therefore, with most OTC products, you might have softer skin, but you aren’t doing a darn thing to enhance the quality of your skin. As a physician who specializes in aging-well practices, I find that a lot of my patients age on the left side of their face faster than the right! Why is this? Most likely because of the lack of sun protection while driving. So, always wear sunscreen, even if you will be mostly in your car.
- SUPPLEMENTS AND SUPERFOODS: I have a few secret weapons for building beautiful skin and aging well. One of my top favorites is tea; but not just any tea. I drink the tea that centurians in China drink as part of their daily rituals. And while green tea has incredible benefits, it isn’t the only one I drink. I love Gynostemma Pentaphyllum tea (Jiagogulan). The best part is it helps you to relax, restore good sleep, and improve energy levels. It has been widely used in Chinese medicine for the treatment of several diseases, including hepatitis, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. There are numerous studies on the potential benefits of preventing cancer as well. In addition, I add hydrolyzed collagen to my smoothies each morning, add a few drops of the element activated silicon and I take high doses of biotin for hair, skin, and nail strength. I also love the overall health benefits of taking high doses of omega 3 fatty acids (from a good source of fish oil).
- NEUROMODULATORS: I get asked about these two things a lot and so I will create a separate video for you to discuss these tools for aging well. In a nutshell, neuromodulators such as Botox, Xeomin, and Dysport help the lines in your upper face to soften – kind of like taking a magic eraser to your face and turning back the time clock a few years. Fillers have several different consistencies, and depending upon their performance can enhance areas of bone loss, provide structure and volume where there has been volume loss, and fill in deeper lines that Botox is not indicated for. In the right artist’s hands, these products can be applied to create a natural, well-rested, refreshed look; rather than an overdone surgical look as we often see in reality TV shows.
- BONUS: lastly, one of my favorite tools for turning back time is technology. We live in a fabulous day and age where we have access to lasers, ultrasound, radio frequency, and many others to help with pigmentation, texture resurfacing, lifting and tightening tissue, and stimulating collagen growth. We’re born with a crazy amount of collagen in our skin; however, the body’s production of collagen slows in our mid-to-late 20’s and decreases dramatically after age 30. Thereafter, the collagen levels in our skin begin to drop by 1-2% each year. Therefore, the more we can stimulate collagen growth with strategic, targeted energy that heats the tissue and stimulates new growth of collagen and elastin fibers, the more we can “naturally” bank our own collagen and thus improve tone and texture of the skin. I recommend you get an aesthetics consult at a medical clinic near you to determine what technology is best for you.
So to summarize, we don’t have to let Father Time have a hay day with our body. We can step ahead of the game by educating ourselves on our options. So, I’ve just scratched the surface of my favorite aging-well practices. I hope that you found some of these tips useful and empowering.
Do me a favor and just pick one of these 9 suggestions to help you in your aging-well practices. Leave a comment below and tell us which one of these nine you are going to commit to trying (or researching) for the next 30 days.
Once you gain momentum you can tackle the other 8 areas to supercharge your youthfulness.
THANK YOU!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post! Your support means a lot to me. If you have made it through this far, I want to commend you, my friend.
Don’t forget to give this post a thumbs up if you found it beneficial, share it with your friends, comment below, and be on the lookout for more posts like this to help you achieve optimum vibrancy and vitality!
And, as always, strive to supercharge your health by simplifying your lifestyle.
Until the next post my friend…
XOXO,
Dr. Linné