Ageing

Ageing

The ageing process is biologically determined: form conception to birth body cells multiply fast, but from birth onwards. This process gets slower and slower. You can exacerbate the ageing process by smoking, drinking, eating too much or eating too little, not taking enough exercise, taking drugs, living under too much stress. But there are many ways, too, in which you can improve the quality of your life, and maintain your youthful self.

Eating Habits

Eating well throughout your life is essential to good health and may help prevent premature ageing. Unrefined carbohydrates, like bran, are a particularly important part of the diet as they help prevent heart and arterial as well as digestive tract problems, all of which are more likely to occur with age. Other recent research suggests that salt, sugar, cholesterol and saturated fats should all be kept to minimum. Eat plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables, pulses and salads, keeping red meats to a minimum and including plenty of fish, chicken, nuts and other proteins with low saturated fat content.

While taking care over the quality of food you eat, be careful of quantity too. As you grow older, the amount of food you need decreases. Your metabolic rate decreases by 5 per cent for every decade after your 20th birthday, so do not imagine that you can continue to follow the same eating pattern for your whole life. Extremes of weight are ageing: obesity or anorexia nervosa strain the digestive system and age the whole body.

Exercising

Regular exercise helps keep up muscle tone and general fitness, keeps your whole body healthy and additionally can help ward off anxiety and depression and helps keep you youthful. Try swimming or cycling, always starting gradually and increasing the amount of time you spend on it. Take as much exercise as you can during the course of your working day, too; walk up stairs rather than taking the elevator; take an extra 10 minutes to walk from a bus stop rather than calling a taxi. Do a short series of exercises each morning. Walking well prevents your age from showing: always walk with your shoulders relaxed but not hunched, bottom tucked in and head held high: this will help avert pains and tensions too.

Relaxing

Stress is a major factor in the incidence of a number of diseases which in turn have an ageing effect on the whole body. And stress can be more directly ageing, too, giving a careworn look to the skin, preventing hair from having its natural shine and you from feeling energetic. Reduce stress in your life, and use a relaxation technique to help: yoga, meditation, self-hypnosis, just give yourself time alone to read a book, or to work in the garden. There is evidence that your state of mind can influence your body's health: combat adverse effects by keeping fit and relaxed.

Smoking And Drinking

Both smoking and drinking accelerate aging. Smoking is a known cause of lung and other cancers. However, it kills more people through cardiovascular disease and bronchitis than through cancer. The action of smoking causes increased stress and facial lines, and the affinity of the carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke for the haemoglobin in the blood deprives skin of the nutrition it needs. Smoking makes blood platelets stickier, thus increasing the likelihood of your suffering a thrombosis (blood clot). Excessive drinking can lead to a variety of liver diseases and early death, too. Light, social drinking may not necessarily be harmful. Large amounts do, however, deplete the body's supply of vitamins C and B and dehydrate the skin.

Over-Exposure To Sun

As cell reproduction slows down, the skin's network of collagen and elastin gradually weakens, producing a slacker, wrinkle-prone surface. The top layer of skin (epidermis) becomes thinner, too, and the slower rate of cell renewal means that dead skin cells remain longer on the surface, making it look dull. The ageing processes are greatly exacerbated by excesses of climate and particularly by too much sun. Both UVA and UVB rays have a detrimental effect which accumulates over many years' sun exposures. Good, careful treatment and protection of your skin throughout your life (including daily use of sun-block on your face and hands in summer) will contribute a great deal to its continued youthful appearance, as will good vitamin supplies. Excessive smoking, drinking , eating, sunbathing in natural sunlight or on sunbeds, use of saunas and stress increase skin ageing: avoid these and ensure that you get plenty of exercise and sleep.

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