Cleansing for Longevity: A Holistic Foundation for Healthy Aging

We were listening to music in the car the other day as I drove my daughter and mother around running errands.  Taylor Swift’s “22” came on and I asked my six-and-a-half-year-old child if 22 sounded old or not.  “Oh yeah, that’s really old!” she replied.   My septuagenarian mother and I smiled and sighed ruefully… what we wouldn’t give to be that old/young again!   

Age is partly a state of mind, partly an accumulation of wisdom, and partly a representation of how we live our lives daily, while ‘longevity’ is simply the number of years we live.  For the patients I work with, the goal is to age healthily.  Not simply adding years to our lives but supporting quality of life through our years. I’ve seen young adult patients with many symptoms of being “old” – achy joints, poor memories or cognition, damaged skin, fatigue – and I’ve worked with elderly patients who are inspiringly spry and energetic, engaged with life and their community, and appear to be absolutely age-less! I know which one I want to be! 

What We Can’t Control About Aging 

Good genes are helpful, but it’s estimated that only 25% of our long-term health is due to genetic influence (1).  The other 75% that makes up the difference between people of the same age bracket who are “young” and those who are “old” appear to be multifaceted, and many of those factors can be modified. This is great news as it gives us a degree of power behind how well we age!   

Gender definitely plays a part in the aging process.  Puberty starts earlier in those born female (XX chromosomes) earlier than it affects those born male (XY chromosomes), and cis-gendered women typically have a life expectancy that is 4 years longer than cis-gendered men (2).  Research into aging of the transgender population is ongoing with limited data at this time (3). 

6 Things We CAN Control About Aging! 

The good news is that, while we can’t stop aging, we CAN slow it down. Keep reading to discover 5 nutrition and lifestyle hacks you can start TODAY to age in the most graceful, best way that you can! 

Since every one of our trillions of cells is made up of food that we ingested, it stands to reason that healthier food leads to healthier bodies. Do you want your body to be created from French fries or a home-cooked family dinner? 

The quality of what we eat is a reflection of both the caloric density and the nutritional density of that food.  Studies have repeatedly shown that caloric deprivation has a very positive effect on our cellular aging, by improving insulin sensitivity and lowering fasting glucose levels (4). 

However, reducing nutrient intake along with calories can potentially have a negative effect on aging by encouraging bone loss and muscle loss (5).  Therefore, nutritionally dense foods with lower caloric value support healthy aging more than foods that are calorie-rich and nutrient-poor. 

Pro Tip! 

Examples of low-calorie, nutrient-dense whole foods include whole grains, beans and legumes, as well as fruits and vegetables, and I recommend building these into every meal and snack until you are following an “80-20” rule where you are eating real foods 80% of the time (and treating yourself to higher-calorie, nutritionally poor foods 20% or less of the time). 

A link between obesity and mortality via prevalent, so called “Western Diseases” including cardiovascular diseases, metabolic diseases (read “diabetes”), and cancers is increasingly clear (6).  This supports the idea of glucose and insulin management as key in our quest for healthy aging. 

When we eat can have as much of an influence on our glucose and insulin control as what we eat. Constant eating, even of healthy foods such a fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, prevents our glucose and insulin levels from dropping. Building in mini fasts between meals…essentially, having 2-4 meals daily every 3-5 hours with no snacking in between, is a simple first step for many people in boosting their insulin sensitivity.   

Pro Tip! 

Try this schedule of eating: 

This schedule can also be adjusted to better suit your lifestyle, while keeping the suggested intervals between meals, for example: 

A longer fast could be something to explore outside of a cleanse. Again, please check in with your health care provider before launching into more than an overnight fast! 

How we eat can also play into our ability to choose better quality foods and to eat until satiated.  Eating at a table, with company, and enjoying food along with conversation slows down the speed at which we eat and allows us to eat less as we feel full sooner.  

When eating mindlessly – while working, while watching TV, while driving – we tend to miss the signal from our body indicating satiety and we unconsciously overeat (7). 

In Okinawa, Japan, where there used to be a high concentration of healthy, agile, mentally astute centenarians (until the Western diet crept in), they have a saying:  Hara Hachi Bu. This translates as a teaching to eat until 80% full and then stopping until the next meal. In essence, it’s the wisdom to nourish yourself with food with a reminder to not overeat. 

Pro Tip! 

Try to pause, and simply sit after you have had your meal, before you get up to have seconds. This allows your brain to catch up to your stomach, and you may realize you’re not still hungry! 

Positive Stress 

Most of us are familiar with the saying that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  The medical term for this is “hormesis”.  Ongoing, periodic exposure to sublethal levels of stress – a polar bear dip in a cold body of water from time to time, bitter compounds in foods, caloric deprivation, intense exercise – strengthen our vitality and make us more resilient and adaptable to unexpected stress. 

Social Connections 

In the “Blue zones” of the world, pockets of the planet that are home to high concentrations of healthy, vital, elderly populations and many centenarians (including Okinawa, Japan) social community was found to be a predictor of longevity… and with quality of life (8). 

Pro Tip! 

Take the time to reach out to loved one today for no other reason than to maintain connection.  It may be helpful for you, and if they are elderly, it could be absolutely essential for them! 

Activity and Exercise 

Moderate exercise is yet another cost-effective way to support longevity (9).  The best exercise is the one that you enjoy, so find an activity that you love – walking, gardening, dancing, swimming, yoga – and keep it a priority in your life. 

As Oscar Wilde said, the only certainties in life are death and taxes.  Death comes to us all, so the goal is for “mortality compression”; to be as healthy, vital, and vibrant as possible until our final moments, and to avoid a long, drawn-out, worsening of health and quality of life as we slide towards the end. 

Honour the balance that infuses every day and year of our glorious lives!  The sun rises, and sets.  Likewise, we are active, and we sleep in an alternating pattern throughout that daily rhythm for our entire existence. 

The daily pattern of movement and rest also appears in the annual seasons:  spring cleaning, summer activity, autumn harvests, and winter coziness… 

Our bodies mirror the planet on which we live and thrive with balance as well. We eat to shore up our nutrition so that we can repair damage, create neurotransmitters, and grow. We sweat, urinate, and move our bowels to remove unwanted and potentially harmful waste from our systems.   

Build a little, cleanse a little, and repeat… In medical terms, ‘metabolism’ encompasses both ‘anabolism’ (building) and ‘catabolism’ (breaking down). We need both, in an alternating rhythm, in order to improve our healthspan! 

In our modern Western world and a typically overwhelming access to food (both fresh and organic as well as refined and denatured), cleansing is not as ingrained into our lives as it was for our ancestors.   

Taking the time to consciously “clean house” by shifting our diet, increasing fluids, sweating through exercise or sauna, and using an intentionally curated blend of herbs – such as the Wild Rose Herbal D-Tox kit – is an important ritual to support the removal of toxins, to allow the body to break down that which no longer serves us, and to give space for health, and healthy habits, to emerge. 

Pro Tip! 

Cleanse periodically (consider seasonally) with herbs that have been used for centuries, in the Wild Rose D-Tox kits that have been used for decades!   

Living For Longevity 

Longevity and healthy aging are not influenced by one simple factor. We need nutrition, sleep, community, activity, joy, stress (ideally the good kind!), fasting and feeding, and regular detoxification with intermittent bursts of enhanced detoxification to help us thrive into our senior years. Any baby step you take now, and build upon, can benefit the steps you take as an elder in your community. 

References