I read recently that Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Woods and his wife Jo have just set up a private health club & in London. The menu is 100% organic, including the booze. "Organic vodka gives you much less of a hang over" wife Jo points out. The couple expect to attract a mixture of stars in the sports & entertainment worlds. Ron, fresh out of a London alcohol rehab clinic adds encouragingly, "a lot of our friends aren't with us any more. Most of the partygoers are dead".
Which brings us to my question, "How long do you want to live?". Do you (or more likely, did you) want to live fast, love hard and die young? Well, if you are a movie or rock star and you actually do get to die young, it might be a deal worth considering. Unfortunately there are no guarantees that you will kick the bucket under 30 and for most of us the fast life begins to slow - even for stars. And, horror of horrors, we begin to age. Worse, it starts to show. Look at Ron, and have you seen Keef lately?
Condemned to life, as best we can make it, most of us will do what we can to hide the visible signs of aging and as for the time and manner of our death, any but the briefest thought on that is definitely for later. An increasing minority will make some lifestyle changes to push back or arrest the process and some of us will pursue some form individuation, adding depth and perspective to our lives.
Last year a survey in Germany showed that half of all Germans wanted to die before they were 80. In reality the actual life expectancy for German men is 73 and 80 for women, so they aren't far off the mark. Interestingly, most of those surveyed said they would cut the amount of what they ate by 50% and generally clean up the act if they were guaranteed a longer life. Well, the fact is that most of them don't and won't eat less or better. Forget about the fast life, they would rather enjoy the food they're used to even if it kills them in their mid 70's. The nearer they get to that age the less they think this way of course. And, they are making one assumption that is false in most cases. They believe that death when it comes will snuff them out, just like that.
Alas, that is not the way of it. For far too many of us old age is a long, painful and expensive descent into decrepitude and the loss of our mental and physical abilities. Modern medicine may have increased the length of time we live but the nasty little secret is that it has few if any answers for the chronic and degenerative diseases that eventually kill us as we grow old. A depressing prospect and no wonder we prefer not to think about it? Not really, because it doesn't have to be this way. The good news is that almost all of us can add 10 to 15 years of active life to our span. We can retain both our marbles and our mobility if we are prepared to look after ourselves. Many of us alive today will routinely live active lives until the age of 110 or 120. And for those of you who have lived fast and abused your bodies terribly in the past - don't despair! The body has truly remarkable powers of regeneration, given half a chance.
We actually age much more quickly than we need to. Simply put, we age because from our early 20's onward our cells die more quickly than they replace themselves. Of course when we are that age we don't see or feel the effects, but by our mid 30's the process becomes evident. All we have to do is slow down the process of cellular destruction and in columns to come we shall expand on ways to do this.
The main means for this are already well known to most of us. It means eating right and having enough interest in life to want to live it in the first place. It means not smoking at all and not drinking alcohol or consuming other harmful substances to excess. A healthy diet, the right combination of carbohydrates, protein and essential fats in as fresh a format as possible. It means exercising and not just aerobics, but stretching and weights too. As we age we lose muscle and hormone levels decrease, and yet there is no reason why someone at 65 shouldn't have the same levels of these as a 25 year-old. Finally, we need to supplement. Our bodies and the world we live in has changed and to live a long active life in the face of the degraded food and soil, the pollution and poisons that surround us we have to obtain the nutrients our bodies need. Quite apart from protecting our health and keeping us young nutritional supplements have remarkable disease preventing and therapeutic properties than can actually cure chronic conditions.
So look after your bodies and celebrate them. No one ever got to heaven through mortification any more than they did from indulgence. Above all remember that you are a body, you don't just own one. Treat it right and it'll carry you anywhere, deny it and you may end up on your base chakra with a bump.
Paracelsus
Comments or queries are welcomed.
ParacelsusAsia@yahoo.com
