If you want to live your best life for as long as possible, then we have to talk about aging. When it comes to health and happiness, aging is the invisible elephant in the room.
Aging, for instance, plays an outsized role in all the leading causes of death in the U.S. (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, dementia). The singular exception is drug overdoses. Beyond raising our chronic disease risk, aging jeopardizes our hard-earned retirement years by exposing us to serious falls and accidents and making us more vulnerable to infections (age is the No. 1 risk factor for COVID-19 deaths.). Remarkably, even the risk of death by suicide increases significantly at older ages.
However, aging has usually secretly stolen our quality of life for decades. Metabolic health declines noticeably for most people by midlife, sapping our energy and predisposing weight gain. Bones, muscles, and cardiac function atrophy diminishing our capacity to engage with the world in the ways we enjoy.
Hormone function, such as sex hormones, growth hormone, insulin, and thyroid hormones, becomes impaired, affecting not just our appearance but our healing capacity, sexual function, and mental health. Even a restful night's slumber becomes elusive. Both sleep quantity and sleep quality (for reasons we can't yet explain.) decline with age1.
Faced with this grim picture of the aging process, it is perhaps no wonder that anti-aging is a more popular trend than ever. And there is good news to share.........