Anti-Aging - Intro
As of 2016, I’m officially 42 years old. I’m often told how young I look, but health means more than having a youthful outward appearance. I'm not genetically blessed. Just like everyone else, I've had my share of health issues which include slow thyroid, severe allergies, digestive issues, chronic fatigue, and muscle pains that felt like Fibromyalgia. It's about having an awareness of your body and applying health management to eliminate or calm the fires that are affecting you. And by living a healthy lifestyle, I've accomplished just that and experience little to no symptoms that I lived with 10 years ago - day in and day out.
Taking the time to review the latest scientific studies on a daily basis and “talk shop” with my network of doctors and nutritionists is something I consider a hobby. I’m almost embarrassed to admit I take my health to an extreme – between my comprehensive blood labs, collection of supplement bottles, genome analysis, and volumes of literature. Some ask me if being strict with my health takes away from enjoying life, or is too expensive. That’s not to say I don’t have an occasional cheat day, but it really doesn’t. When I’m taking care of myself, then I feel better and that’s my personal motivation for continuing on. And as far as money goes – the way I look at it is if you don’t pay for it now, you’ll pay for it later in the form of surgeries, disabilities, and pharmaceutical drugs (as grim as that might sound). Now to be perfectly honest, the health field is not my primary profession. However, I've put in my so-called "10,000 hours of practice" in the form of research. And I believe my gift is in being able to sift through and validate all the conflicting scientific and clinical health information, and organizing it into a structured health plan – what I consider to be my Beyond Organic philosophy. Maintaining vibrant health is just as achievable for everyone. I think the answers to living a long, healthy life are already out there … there are no secrets. And I’m here to help you pull it all together into something that you can use to map out your own long-term health goals.
Beyond Organic Anti-Aging Pyramid
Now on to the Beyond Organic Anti-Aging Pyramid. You’ll notice there are 5 sections to this pyramid. Each section is meant to build on the sections below it …
- Foundational – At the very bottom, we have Foundational. These are going to be your basics like diet, sleep, exercise, reducing your toxic burden, etc. The sections above Foundational will be less effective if you don’t have these building blocks in place. I’ll go into this in a lot more detail in the next post.
- Supplemental – This section fine-tunes the steps we took in the Foundational section; it includes taking supplements to make up for deficiencies in your diet (example: anti-oxidants), additional emphasis placed on meeting the DRI’s (RDA’s), and incorporating naturopathic medicine as your medical support.
- Personalized – Personalized medicine and nutrition are powerful tools in your toolkit. We’re all made differently, and what’s good for 1 person will not necessarily work for another. This section focuses on further optimizing your nutritional and health status based on lab tests performed with your doctor. This includes calibrating your nutrients, biomarkers, hormones, and more.
- Experimental – This section evaluates health data and treatments which are more on the cutting edge. In other words, we’ll be looking at the new discoveries of the past several years which are shaping modern medicine such as stem cell research.
- Theoretical – This section is dedicated to treatments, drugs, and other things which aren’t publicly available yet. It will include a mention of groundbreaking studies worth reviewing that demonstrate interesting proof of concepts. I’ll also cover several organizations devoted to life extension, their current projects, and upcoming plans.