Ultimate Guide to Looking and Feeling Your Best at Any Age
Aging isn’t for the faint of heart. Depression, insomnia, weight gain, and fatigue can knock on your door, invading a happy, healthy life. Aches and pains turn up more often. Some experience frequent injury with slow recovery. Dealing with health struggles takes the joy out of life, leaving you to wonder: is this how it’s supposed to be? Most turn to doctors who prescribe endless medications trying to solve the problem, but oftentimes, it doesn’t work. You’re told ‘this is how it is when you get older.’ You’re supposed to accept just getting through the day, not feeling your best.
Is this really how it is when you get older? Is this really how you’re supposed to feel? At Huemn, the answer is a resounding NO! You feel this way because healthcare in the United States is set up to treat symptoms, instead of the root cause of illness. Your hospitals do not promote overall health - they promote sick care.
Think of your body as your front yard. Instead of a dumpster, you decide to pile your trash in your front yard. As the trash piles up, bugs and vermin linger around the yard. They feed on the rotten trash and cause you discomfort. To treat the issue, you spray insecticides all around your yard. It kills the bugs and provides temporary relief. But more come back.
This seems silly, right? The way to get rid of the pests is to take care of the trash. The insecticides are just fighting the side effects of trash. Not to mention, the insecticide is bad for you, AND for the environment. You’ll need an endless supply of it to keep killing the new bugs. You will keep spending money on a solution that will never get rid of the root cause. This is how the “sick care” system treats your illness...
Instead of treating the root cause of your depression, you’re prescribed medication to minimize the side effects. Instead of treating the root cause of your pain and fatigue, you take medicine to override your natural response and numb the pain. As soon as you stop taking the pills, it will all come back. So you keep taking them. Then you find medications have side effects of their own. You’re trading one symptom for another. Are you happy to stick to a pill regimen for the rest of your life? Is it ok to trade one side effect for another?
There is a better way.
At Huemn, we focus on health optimization and prevention instead of sick care. We look for natural ways to support proper function. If you are in pain, we offer holistic treatments for inflammation to stop pain at the source. If you’re fatigued, we recommend changes in behavior that foster a more energized lifestyle. Changes in diet, exercise, and sleep patterns go a long way in terms of longevity.
You don’t have to feel old. There are natural, non-invasive, non-toxic treatments to help you feel (and look) your best. At Huemn, we focus on healthy aging rather than stopping it altogether. Another birthday shouldn’t mean more pain. You can enjoy the rest of your life. Below, we’ll be discussing a variety of tools that you have at your disposal, in order to maximize overall longevity.
Anti-Aging Diet
Your diet is the first step to longevity. As you get older, your metabolism slows down. Feeling tired and fatigued becomes your norm. Instead of accepting fatigue, give yourself every advantage to optimize your health. Adopting a wholesome diet can reduce inflammation and disrupt the cycle of pain and fatigue. You can be vibrant and energetic at any age. After all, age is just a number.
The key is to stick to whole foods. Load your diet with lots of produce and real food. When you go to the grocery store, shop the perimeter rather than going down the aisles. This is typically where you’ll find whole foods. Leafy greens, colorful fruits and vegetables, and protein sources are your friends. Cold water fish and whole grains are great additions for proper nutrition (if well-tolerated, that is). Think of your stomach as your fuel tank. Whole foods are premium fuel that will take you farther and keep you feeling good.
Unfortunately, the Standard American Diet (SAD) relies heavily on processed foods. These make up the bulk of the grocery store aisles. Processed foods are high in inexpensive inflammatory oils, trans fats, refined sugar, and simple carbohydrates. They weigh you down and leave you feeling fatigued. This is like putting unmodified vegetable oil in your tank. Your vehicle will run, but not the way it should. The bad fuel will clog your engine until it barely functions. Your body works the same way. Will it run on calories comprised of junk foods? Sure. But for how long, exactly?
In addition to a wholesome diet, be sure to stay hydrated. Drinking plenty of water helps with detoxification and keeps your energy levels up. The human body is comprised of mostly water; therefore, is needed for all major bodily functions. Staying hydrated is another key to properly filling your tank. Juices and sodas tend to have high levels of refined sugar. Sugar can lead to inflammation, and it’s linked to every major disease. To reduce inflammation and keep yourself feeling energetic - stick to water. An average adult should drink 8-10 glasses of high quality, filtered water a day. Make this simple by keeping a water bottle with you all the time.
Healthy Aging With Gene Regulation
Humans have the same genetic makeup from birth to death. At age 80, you have the same genes as when you were 8, so what changes? The answer isn’t in which genes you have, it’s which ones are turned on. We have special ‘longevity genes’ that control the aging process. They can be turned on and off to speed up or slow down the aging process. Sirtuin genes regulate almost every biological process and could be the key to longevity.
Think of sirtuin genes as a coach and all of your biological processes as a team. It’s a coach’s job to train the team to work together and reach a common goal - win the game. Sirtuin genes do the same thing. They regulate biological processes via the modulation process. They give signals (like a coach calling plays to the team) to better your health. Just like a team, coaching only goes so far. Practice and conditioning are just as important. A team needs the stress of conditioning to truly be successful. The same goes for sirtuin genes. They need stressors like fasting, exercise, and cold therapy to condition the body into better health.
Another important thing about siruin genes? They can only function in the presence of NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide). More NAD+ results in more cellular energy, less DNA damage, and a slower aging process. To kickstart better health, you need to get your body to produce more NAD+. This isn’t alway easy. The body produces NAD+ under an energy deficit. The road to looking and feeling your best is utilizing conditioning via fasting, exercise, and cold therapy.
Fasting is a great way to elevate NAD+ levels and kickstart your sirtuin genes. Fasting creates an energy deficit because it starves the body of an energy source. The extra NAD+ gives the sirtuin genes what they need to begin DNA repair and slow down the aging process. Try adding a fasting routine to your schedule. Start by not eating after 8 PM until you have breakfast the next morning. You can slowly work your way into longer and longer fasting periods. You could eventually get to a point where you eat during an 8 hour window and fast 16 hours a day. Note: not all people respond well to fasting; therefore, we recommend you discuss your options with your healthcare provider, or a trusted nutrition professional.
Exercise also increases NAD+ levels. It kickstarts your metabolism to burn more energy - creating an energy deficit. Exercise helps the energy-sensing enzyme NAD recognizes that it needs to increase its production. In turn, it creates new proteins such as PGC 1 and FOXO 1 and 4. These proteins increase skeletal mass and encourage longevity. If you intermittent fast, try exercising during your fasting period. Start slow - your body will not be used to working on low energy. If you feel tired or faint, stop and refuel. Start with a 15 minute workout, adding 10 minutes every few days until you’re at your desired exercise time.
Another great stressor to increase NAD+ is cryotherapy. The cold triggers a network of changes throughout the body. It signals an energy crisis and stimulates NAD+ production. Like exercise and fasting, cold therapy is a healthy stressor that encourages resilience and makes you more adaptable to stress. Your sirtuin genes use this fuel to slow down the aging process and foster better health. At Huemn, we offer a walk-in Whole Body Cryotherapy chamber, which is the most effective method of cryotherapy, as it triggers the cold receptors in your head and neck, in addition to the rest of your body.
Each and every body is different. To get the best results, find what works best for you through trial and error. Utilizing various forms healthy stressors does more than just increase NAD+ and kick start your sirtuin genes. Good stressors engage your body in a healthy way, increasing overall health and wellness. Add them to your daily routine and enjoy the benefits, no matter your age.
Inflammation and Age
Your body’s first response to disease, injury or stress is often inflammation. It slows you down, causes fatigue, and may speed up the aging process. Every factor that contributes to aging bodies is connected to the presence of inflammation. These factors are felt in the present through inflammation, as well as their long term effects:
● Stress and Environment: As we age, the environment and normal cellular processes damage our genes.
● Telomere Attrition: Our chromosomes are capped by telomeres. These short snippets of DNA repeated thousands of times are designed to protect the bulk of the chromosome. As we age, our telomeres weaken leaving DNA susceptible to damage.
● Epigenetic Alterations: Environmental factors change how genes are expressed. Genes can be turned on and off - accelerating the aging process.
● Proteostasis: Over time, different proteins in our bodies will no longer fold and function like they are supposed to. Diseases like cancer or neurological disorders can occur from genetic mutations.
● Metabolism: Nutrient levels in the body influence metabolic pathways.
● Mitochondrial Dysfunction: Mitochondria (our cellular power plants) begin to decline in performance as we age. Your pain and fatigue could be at a cellular level.
● Cellular Senescence: As cells age, they stop dividing. They remain stagnant and cannot be removed from the body. The build up causes increased inflammation.
● Stem Cell Regeneration: As we age, our supply of stem cells diminish as much as 100 to 10,000-fold.
Inflammation is linked to every major disease. Controlling it is the key to feeling your best at any age. If you improve your diet and increase your production of NAD+, you will reduce inflammation and slow down aging. The two are linked.
Another factor that contributes to inflammation is senescent cells. These are cells that have ceased to die off or create new cells. As you age, more and more accumulate. They are in limbo, building up, and causing rapid aging and inflammation. These zombie cells are more difficult to control. They cannot be removed through diet and exercise. They cannot even be removed by natural therapies like cryotherapy (although it can reduce the inflammation).
At Huemn, we made sure to find a natural solution. We sourced a high-quality senolytic supplement that contains fisetin and senolytics supported by science. We suggest using it in a "hit and run" approach. You can clear senescent cells by taking senolytic for three months, then take three months off.
Adopting lifestyle changes and supplementing to clear senescent cells can greatly reduce inflammation. This goes hand in hand with slowing the progression of cell death and DNA damage. Reducing inflammation will help you feel and look your best. Healthy lifestyle habits are vital for longevity.
Take Aging Into Your Own Hands
For generations, Americans have been told that pain, fatigue, and mental decline are a normal part of aging. You can go to the doctor and take some pills, but this will just numb the pain. “This is your life now, you’re old.” Not at Huemn. There are natural ways that you can optimize your health to look and feel your best at any age. Instead of treating the symptoms of old age, go to the source by:
Adopting a wholesome diet can reduce inflammation and have you feeling renewed. Whole foods that lay around the perimeter of the grocery store are your premium fuel. Stay away from processed foods with high sugar and trans fat. When you give your body the best fuel, you’ll get optimal performance.
Use healthy stressors like fasting, exercise, and cryotherapy to generate NAD+ and kick start your sirtuin genes. These are your body’s secret weapons to better health. And don’t forget inflammation—it’s related to every known disease and accelerates the aging process. Your new lifestyle and natural therapies will decrease inflammation and improve your pain and fatigue.
Finally, with age, you build up senescent cells. Take a high-quality senolytic supplement to flush the zombie cells out of your body. Reducing inflammation could stop DNA damage and protect against cancer and degenerative diseases.
Bonus: Explore natural therapies that foster longevity. At Huemn we do just that. We offer science-backed, noninvasive, holistic treatments that reduce inflammation, combat pain, and promote optimal health. Be sure to contact us for your free session!