{"id":475,"date":"2012-01-24T10:27:41","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T15:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wholeperson.com\/wordpress\/?p=475"},"modified":"2012-01-24T10:34:14","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T15:34:14","slug":"longevity-and-aging-dont-make-a-big-deal-about-getting-older","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholeperson.com\/blog\/longevity-and-aging-dont-make-a-big-deal-about-getting-older","title":{"rendered":"Longevity and Aging: Don\u2019t make a big deal about getting older"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Aging<\/a>Don Ardell\u2019s tips for aging well are from his book Aging Beyond Belief<\/a>, 69 tips for REAL Wellness. REAL wellness stands for Reason, Exuberance And Liberty. Don says you can\u2019t buy pills or treatments for REAL wellness\u2212it\u2019s a mindset and lifestyle you control. It\u2019s never to early to let Reason, Exuberance and Liberty be your guide\u2026these tips are for folks of any age. Enjoy.<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

TIP 2
\n<\/em><\/span>L<\/em>o<\/em>n<\/em>g<\/em>ev<\/em>i<\/em>t<\/em>y <\/em>an<\/em>d Ag<\/em>i<\/em>n<\/em>g
\nDo<\/em>n<\/em>\u2019<\/em>t<\/em> <\/em>ma<\/em>k<\/em>e a big deal about gettin<\/em>g <\/em>olde<\/em>r<\/em><\/h1>\n

E<\/em>verybody does it, it can\u2019t be avoided and there is no cure. Each day is an opportunity to enjoy being younger than you ever will be again, so think and act as vigorously and with as much exuberance as you can muster. Billions are spent annually to slow or, more often, disguise the inevitable markers of aging. Such a waste. All this is futile. As Ecclesiastes would say, \u201ca vanity of vanities, an incomparable excess.\u201d I personally have a soft spot for excess, but not to the point of being incomparably self-delusional about my vanities.<\/p>\n

Want in on a little health secret? Move to Canada. An impressive array of data shows that Canadians live longer, healthier lives than we do. What\u2019s more, they pay roughly half as much per capita Americans ($2,163 versus $4,887 in 2001) for the privilege.\u201d (Los Angeles Times<\/em>, February 23, 2004).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Did you know there\u2019s a mathematical formula that predicts maximal age? There is\u2014and the formula is the basis for the agreed-upon maximum human age being set at 120. (This means I could be writing a second edition to this book in the year 2058.) The formula for maximal age is six times the number of years from birth to biological maturity. Humans take about 20 years to reach maturity, so multiply that by six and there it is\u2014a 120-year limit. (The oldest well-documented age ever was 122.)<\/p>\n

Remember, many factors affect longevity, particularly lifestyle choices (e.g., exercise, diet), personality, social life and genetics. Approximately \u201cone-third of aging is heritable, the rest is acquired\u2014that means you are responsible for your own old age.\u201d (Tara Parker-Pope, \u201cWhat Science Tells Us About Growing Older\u2014And Staying Healthy,\u201d Wall Street Journal<\/em>, June 20, 2005; Page R1.)<\/p>\n

Longevity in this country is nothing to cheer about. When compared with other Western nations, the U.S. is doing worse now than 50 years ago! We are currently losing ground, not making longevity advances, relative to other countries. This might surprise you. Yes, we live longer but our relative position is poorer compared with comparable societies than it was when Eisenhower was president. This despite our having the costliest medical care system on earth!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

A World Health Organization study released last year put Canadian life expectancy at birth at 79.8 years, Japan\u2019s at 81.9 and America\u2019s at 77.3!<\/p>\n

In 1900, the lifespan in America was 47.3. I shudder to think of all my friends who would be dead now if that \ufb01gure had not improved over the course of the past century. With no advances, there would be few to no competitors in my 65-69 age group in road races, duathlons and triathlons. A similar 30-year gain in life expectancy into the future would render the average lifespan in the year 2112 a robust 107.3 years.<\/p>\n

How might that come about? Perhaps from a wide range of social changes over time, like more nutritious foods and challenging but fun phys ed in schools, campaigns for safer sex and more e\ufb00ective ways to end insane behaviors, like smoking. (It will help also if humanity refrains from setting o\ufb00 any thermonuclear devices.)<\/p>\n

Imagine the excitement of watching men and women in their 120s crossing \ufb01nish lines at road races and multi-sport competitions, to the cheers of the multitudes, with \u201cRocky\u201d music blaring from loudspeakers. It would be inspirational.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s also implausible. Wellness is good, wellness is great but I still don\u2019t believe that there will be dramatic advances in phys ed in schools, better diets or other social changes. I hope I\u2019m mistaken about this. If there were such changes and many others consistent with the spread of wellness mindsets like some positive contagion, even that might not produce really dramatic increase in lifespan, though quality boosts would be remarkable. If there are any signi\ufb01cant increases in lifespan, the more likely impetus will be improved scienti\ufb01c understanding and attendant manipulation of biological aging processes. But, I\u2019m not wildly optimistic about this scenario, either.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Nor does the U.S. Social Security Administration project dramatic gains for the next century similar to that realized over the last one. Their projections foresee life spans into the mid-80s, which is still pretty impressive. Unless, as some fear, the obesity epidemic gets worse.<\/p>\n

In any event, getting older is not such a big deal if you stay younger than nearly everyone else your age! The remaining tips will o\ufb00er plenty of ideas for doing just that.<\/p>\n

-from Aging Beyond Belief<\/a>, by Don Ardell<\/p>\n

\"Donald<\/a>Donald B. Ardell<\/strong> was a pioneer in the Wellness movement. He wrote\u00a0High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs, and Disease<\/em>, first published in 1976 by Rodale Press, with editions over the years by Bantam Books and Ten-Speed Press. Since then Don has written a dozen additional wellness books, including\u00a0Die Healthy<\/em>\u00a0(with Grant Donovan),\u00a014 Days to Wellness<\/em>\u00a0and most recently,\u00a0Aging Beyond Belief<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don Ardell\u2019s tips for aging well are from his book Aging Beyond Belief, 69 tips for REAL Wellness. REAL wellness stands for Reason, Exuberance And Liberty. Don says you can\u2019t buy pills or treatments for REAL wellness\u2212it\u2019s a mindset and lifestyle you control. It\u2019s never to early to let Reason, Exuberance and Liberty be your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[102,207,206,12,213,214,10,8],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-excerpts","tag-aging","tag-aging-beyond-belief","tag-don-ardell","tag-health","tag-longevity","tag-secret","tag-stress","tag-wellness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nLongevity and Aging: Don\u2019t make a big deal about getting older - The Wellness Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wholeperson.com\/blog\/longevity-and-aging-dont-make-a-big-deal-about-getting-older\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Longevity and Aging: Don\u2019t make a big deal about getting older - The Wellness Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Don Ardell\u2019s tips for aging well are from his book Aging Beyond Belief, 69 tips for REAL Wellness. 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