What is aging? It’s not wrinkles, or aching joints, though those are signs of aging. Actually, aging is a cellular process. Throughout your life, your body cells undergo various forms of damage. This damage can be from injuries, exposure to toxins, infections, radiation, or even normal metabolic processes that generate harmful byproducts. These toxic and damaged cells need to either be repaired or replaced. This is the process we call aging.
How Cells Age
As part of the response to damage, cells may initiate autophagy, a process where they digest and recycle their own damaged components. This is cellular repair. Autophagy has high energy requirements, and cells depend on stored energy reserves (or alternative pathways like fat-metabolism) to meet the energy demands. The cells also have a minimum requirement of fat and protein, and certain vitamins and minerals to do it right. For example, zinc is important for the proper functioning of several autophagy-related enzymes.
If too much damage has occurred and the cell can’t repair itself, then the cell will die. Cells can also die from infection, extreme temperatures, radiation or any manner of injury. If a cell dies from a sudden or overwhelming trauma, the contents of that cell cause inflammation and damage to other cells around it, requiring them to now undergo autophagy.
So now you have lost a bunch of cells, and they need to be replaced. Here comes aging! It’s called cell division or mitosis.
Mitosis is where a cell makes a perfect copy of itself. Now, instead of one cell, you have two identical sister cells. The instructions for how a cell makes a perfect copy of itself (structure, functions, etc.) are a rope-like protein structure called DNA. DNA is a “rope” made from your genes. DNA is very delicate and can essentially unravel, so the ends of the DNA “rope” are protected by telomeres.
Each time a cell divides, the telomeres shorten slightly. Eventually, the telomeres become too short and the cell can no longer divide. At this point, cells either die, or linger on as defective cells, causing damage to the surrounding tissue. As you get more and more cells that can’t divide, your body slows at replacing damaged cells, which leads to visible signs of aging, such as wrinkles, slow wound healing, and hair thinning. Additionally, injured organ cells can’t be replaced so you start having reduced organ function all over the place. Even the immune system suffers.
Aging is not just about looks. Every cell in your body needs to be healthy to function, from the cells that make your kidneys and liver, to the cells in your brain and heart. So when you think of reversing or slowing aging, you should be thinking in bigger terms than just “reducing wrinkles.” Slowing aging means a longer, healthier life.
Slowing (and Maybe Reversing?) Aging
There are certainly things that can slow the damage to your cells — and thereby reduce the number of times your cells need to split, which slows the shortening of telomeres. There is even some evidence that one can actually slightly lengthen telomeres!
The first thing everyone can do is to start reducing the things that cause damage to your cells:
- Stress
- Sugar consumption
- Alcohol, smoking and drugs
- Chemical cleaning supplies
- Chemical body products
- Strong electromagnetic fields (EMFs)
- Excessive radiation
- Chemical food additives
- Processed grains
Out of the above list, stress and sugar consumption are probably the biggest single contributors to aging, but the others, cumulatively, are a cellular disaster.
In addition to eliminating harmful things, there are things that help cells be healthier as well. These are all thing we focus on and talk about in our Nutrition Program Overview, including:
- Getting sufficient sleep
- Getting daily sunlight on your skin and eyes
- Maintaining proper hydration
- Eating lots of organic vegetables and some whole fruit
- Regular moderate or intense exercise
- Optimizing energy systems and maintaining proper levels of vitamins and minerals. These are actually part of the same thing. When you are eating the right foods and taking the right supplements, your cells produce more energy, and they have the ingredients they need to detox and heal at their highest level. This is what we specialize in.
I have never seen the magic that occurs with Nutritional Balancing Science (done with a proper Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) anywhere else. You can do everything listed above and get great benefits, but the protocols Dr. Eck researched and developed, that we have been blessed to have found and now can pass on to others, takes healing and detox to an amazing level. This is real, deep long-term healing. It is sometimes uncomfortable, but we have seen it do seemingly impossible things. If we are not already working with you, we would love to start helping you be the healthiest (and youngest) you possible!