Stay Young Stay Healthy - A guide to anti-aging techniques that turn back the clock

INTRODUCTION

For centuries, ever since the legendary Ponce de Leon went searching for the elusive Fountain of Youth, people have been looking for ways to slow down the aging process. Medical science has made great strides in keeping people alive longer by preventing and curing disease, and helping people to live healthier lives. Average life expectancy keeps increasing, and most of us can look forward to the chance to live much longer lives than our ancestors.  
Many researchers think that the key to our own personal Fountains of Youth resides in our hormones and endocrine system. These are the various organs and glands that make hormones in our bodies.
Yet we are all aging constantly. The unpleasant fact is that every single one of us begins aging the moment we are out of the womb. (At least it beats the alternative.) If you’re living, you’re aging; you can’t avoid it. But there are a number of things that you can do to keep yourself healthy and active, and to eliminate or at least slow down many of the factors that contribute to aging.
Yes, it is possible to turn back the clock. Your body was actually designed with the inbuilt ability to fix itself, as long as you take care of it properly. Your body is made up of something like 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) living cells, which keep themselves strong and healthy with the proper food.
Each and every one of those trillions of cells dies off and is replaced with a new cell at regular intervals. Your entire body is literally completely replaced every few years – you really aren’t the same person you used to be!
What happens with your cells is the key to anti-aging. When a cell dies, one of three possible things must happen:
If the cell has not been receiving proper nutrition, its replacement will be a weaker version of the cell. In this scenario, your body is degenerating.
The replacement cell may have the same strength as its predecessor. In this case, your body essentially remains in the same place.
The third possibility is that the new cell is stronger than the previous one. Now you’re actually regenerating the body, and reversing the aging process. This can only happen if you give your cells plenty of the right kind of food energy to work with.
Somewhere in our thirties, many of us start noticing those first signs that we aren’t kids anymore – a few gray hairs appearing, lines in the face, skin starts sagging. As more time goes by, other signs slowly and gradually appear – it’s a little harder getting up in the morning, our vision and hearing aren’t what they used to be, our sex life isn’t as lively as we remember. And we look around us and see the same things apparently happening to our friends and family. Most of us pretty much automatically accept what we see as an inevitable process of nature.
Unfortunately, this is a mistake, because as the old cliché goes, you’re only as old as you feel. And if you feel and think that you’re getting older – well, then you are!
Your mindset does influence what goes on in your body. Meanwhile, you see your body getting older, and so you feel older, which reinforces the aging processes in your body. It becomes a vicious circle.
Fortunately, you can turn this around by using the tips and principles explained in this book. As you notice your body looking and feeling younger, your mindset will improve, which motivates you to continue your anti-aging practices, which sets up a positive feedback loop, instead of a negative one. And so the process accelerates.
People are living longer than ever these days, due to advanced medical breakthroughs, increased awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle, and other related factors.
The human body can take an awful lot of abuse and neglect. We don’t always think about our bad habits, since it may take years or decades for the effects to become apparent. But neglect yourself long enough, and you may one day find yourself suffering through the late period of your life with a wide range of maladies and complaints, from difficulty seeing and hearing to cancer, heart disease, brittle bones, and many other problems.
Yet it only takes a little knowledge and a bit of work to prevent most, if not all, of these common old-age problems from manifesting. There’s no magic pill or instant cure, and it will take some effort on your part. But the results will be well worth it -- how much would it be worth to you to enjoy your final years as a healthy, active adult, able to continue doing many of the things you most love?

CHAPTER 1: WHY AND HOW DO WE AGE?