10 Ways to Stay Forever Young

By Vanessa Sheets─

Ever wonder why some 75-year-olds are able to trek five mile hikes, hold second-act careers, and drive while others can’t get around the house without a walker?

We usually chalk it up to luck or genetics. But it turns out that we have more control over how we age than we think.

“I’m living proof,” says 70-year-old Rod Fisher in his book The Ageless Boomer: Living Young For the Rest of Your Life. At an age when many of his peers suffer from painful joints and aching muscles, memory loss, and declining health, Fisher lives with boundless energy, flexibility, strength, and mental clarity. More impressively, he’s cancer-free despite a genetic predisposition

(Fisher’s parents both died at an early age due to lymphoma and colon cancer).

Fisher, a retired Wall Street executive, credits key lifestyle choices for saving his life. In his search for health information that produces the greatest results, he joined the Advisory Board of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine (founded by Dr. Andrew Weil), spent decades meeting with the world’s top health and fitness experts and became a Certified Walking Instructor.

Here are Fisher’s top tips for staying ageless:

1. Eat a whole foods, plant-based diet. Fisher says this is the single biggest change you can make to optimize your health. A nutrient-rich diet centered around fresh fruits and vegetables, seeds, nuts and legumes, and whole grains that is free from preservatives and artificial additives helps prevent age-related disease and decline.

2. Avoid harmful toxins. Processed foods, alcohol, refined sugar, trans fats, and tobacco all prevent us from reaching optimal health. Researchers report that the difference between an active 75-year-old and one who is the same age but can barely get around is their exposure to harmful chemicals in their environment, food supply, and personal care products.

3. Drink plenty of clean water. Drink filtered water free from contaminants and heavy metals to support your liver in removing waste from the body. Staying hydrated also boosts cognitive function.

4. Balance your time in the sun. Daily moderate exposure to sunlight helps your body make enough vitamin D- a critical nutrient for keeping bones strong and reducing the risk of cancer and heart disease. And, we need more vitamin D as we age for our overall health. Fisher points out that an antioxidant-risk diet helps prevent sunburn.

5. Stop sacrificing sleep. Sleep is the cornerstone of good health, Fisher explains in his book. The hormone melatonin is triggered by darkness and plays an important role in repairing our bodies and combatting the effects of aging.

6. Bounce more. Fisher believes exercise should be fun, and jumping on a trampoline (or rebounding) certainly fits the bill. Not only is it an effective way to maintain balance and strengthen your core, it’s easy on the joints and forces oxygen to flow through your cells- boosting your circulation in the process.

7. Walk it out. Reduce your risk for developing diabetes and cancer, increase bone density, and improve your cardiovascular health by walking just 30 minutes a day.

8. Push-up Power. Build muscle, and you’ll live longer, according to UCLA researchers. You don’t need to get under a barbell either. Simple bodyweight exercises including push-ups, squats, lunges, and pull-ups can prevent age-related muscle loss.

9. Fisher says stress is a killer- it elevates cortisol to stimulate the fight or flight response when presented with danger, and takes a toll on all systems of the body. The good news is daily meditation not only reduces stress, it may actually help us live longer and enjoy a higher quality of life in later years by increasing the length of our telomeres. Telomeres are the caps at the end of our chromosomes that help our genes replicate properly, and longer telomeres correlate to a longer lifespan.

10. Don’t cut social activities out of your life, even if you’re struggling with health challenges. Your ability to build and maintain relationships could matter more to your health than even obesity and smoking, Fisher says. Staying connected helps stave off dementia, depression, and stress.

Don’t you want to be the 75-year-old whose life is filled with morning hikes, brunch with friends, and meaningful hobbies? Adopt an ageless lifestyle so you can stay sharp, fun, and active at any age.

Vanessa Sheets is a journalist whose health articles have appeared in print and online magazines, and business websites. Visit her website at TheHealthWriter.com.