Practical Longevity

In our daily lives, we are exposed to tons of information. The economy itself is evolved around you as an attention economy. The worst part of this new paradigm is the analysis paralysis. Filled with too much information you can’t decide which action to take to solve a crucial problem: aging.

The longevity actions we can take today may be the most important ones. Late action may cost you your life. Here, I am sharing some practical information with you so that you can start taking action today.

Intermittent Fasting

This is the #1 recommendation the anti-aging experts will give you. By doing intermittent fasting you can get rid of insulin resistance, diabetes, you can even prevent cancer.

It allows your body to recycle damaged cells. You can try this simple solution today by just skipping lunch and then improving by also skipping breakfast and eating only dinner. Or if it is more convenient, you can only have breakfast while skipping lunch and dinner.

Keto or low carb diet

When I look at the main risk factors affecting people, I see cancer and coronary artery diseases. When we look at the mechanism of these health problems, we can see that carbs are the center stage.

Lowering the carbs would be your best defense against those deadly health problems. By lowering your carb consumption, you can become an efficient fat burner. And this will help shed a lot of weight in the form of fat.

A person following the standard american diet is always filling in their body’s carb stores (in the form of glucose) which is 500 grams. To be able to start burning fat, this person has to burn the carbs first. And it takes 2000 calories of activity to burn all that carb. This requires an extended duration of activity. Well, it might be achievable for young people, but it gets harder for older people to commit themselves to such long exercises.

But once you lower your carb consumption to 50 grams or lower, a much simpler activity such as walking outside makes you start burning fat as fat becomes your body’s primary source of energy.

So what should you eat for a low carb diet? Most people think it is a very restrictive diet to lower carbs. In my experience it is not restrictive at all. I started a low carb diet as a temporary solution, but I like it so much now it has become my lifestyle.

Foods

Let's start with breakfast: Eggs, cottage cheese with nutritional yeast. For dinner, steak, fish especially salmon, chicken and vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, lettuce, kale and many other greens. Nuts such as pecans, almonds, and walnuts are great for snacking. These are going to be your go-to foods.

Here comes the main criticism of a low carb diet: people will claim you will be missing certain nutrients by ditching that much carbs. But you can always take them in the form of supplements. For example, potassium, magnesium (which has a lot of functions in the body and well-established, safe supplement). Also you may want to consume enough sea salt. It is as easy as that.

By using an application like MyFitnessPal, you can count your calories, more importantly your carbs, you will start making smarter decisions about the food you choose. For instance, instead of eating one banana which is 25 grams of carb, you can eat much more stuff within your carb quota.

Another important thing is making sure that you are getting 1gr of protein per your body weight in pounds.  So a 200-lbs person should eat a minimum 200 grams of protein daily. If you are building muscles, you need to consume more. As you get older, you need even more protein to compensate for the muscle you are losing.

So during the low carb diet, one of the challenges you will encounter is that while trying to reach your protein goal you will have a hard time staying within your carb limit. There are some hacks I am using.

You can convert your favorite tea into protein jello with zero carbs by mixing it with beef gelatin. After mixing my tea sweetened with stevia together with beef gelatin, I pour it into a plate. And slice it into 8 pieces each with 7 grams of protein. You can also try making gummy bears for more fun if you have time.

Bone broth is also a great source of protein with zero carb. I use powder form which is more convenient. I mix 2-packs (for a more intense taste) with fresh  lemon juice, salt, black pepper and hot water. It is very delicious and one cup of this gives me a whopping 20 grams of protein with zero carbs.  

When it comes to desserts, you can replace flour with almond flour, coconut flour and by replacing sugar with low-glycemic sweetener such as erythritol, you can get great results. Even though erythritol sounds like another chemical, artificial sweetener, it is a natural sweetener and it will not spike your insulin. I use it all the time for my favorite recipes: chocolate mousse pudding and peanut butter cups.

There you go. You have the food list and even the desserts. As you can see it is not restrictive at all and you can start this diet today!

Resistance Training

As we age we lose muscles. It affects the quality of your life, recovery after an injury. When it comes to the muscles the principle is that if you don’t use them, you lose them. So we need to give a clear message to our bodies that we are using our muscles by doing progressive resistance training; which is lifting weight and increasing the weight over time.

If you don’t have equipment or time, another alternative is doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) which gives a similar tension to your muscles.

For maintenance, yoga can be used to tone your muscles together with its breathing benefits.

Walking

Walking is one of the most undervalued exercises. Together with a low carb diet, the moment you start walking you will start burning fat. Walking in the morning and exposing your eyes and body also helps you charge your melatonin, which is required for a quality sleep at night time. Ditching your sunglasses for your morning walk is going to help you get more of the sun light needed for melatonin.

Get a fitness tracker to count your steps. Start with 10,000 steps a day as a starting point.There are some apps which gamify walking by challenging you to meet daily step goals through various incentives; you can earn small amounts of money or lose it based on your performance.

And you don’t need to limit yourself to just walking outside. Assuming you can find a place indoors that will allow you to make loops, you can increase your steps indoors. It takes just 10 minutes to make 1,000 steps. You don’t need to walk at once; you can split your steps into 5-10 minute chunks throughout the day.

Sleep Quality

Poor sleep quality acts as a stressor and it is not good for your body. Poor sleep increases your cortisol, stress hormone levels. Cortisol will stop your fat burning. In the long run it may cause adrenal fatigue lowering your energy level. So it is important to get enough sunlight before noon to increase your melatonin during the day and limit your blue light exposure a couple hours before you sleep. Also moving away any device that creates an electromagnetic field from where you sleep will benefit your sleep quality.

Cold Showers

Cold showers act as a short term, useful stressor promoting autophagy which is the process in which your damaged cells and more importantly the mitochondria  are recycled to create new cells with better mitochondria that produces energy in the form of a molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate).

It also helps activate your brown fat cells. Brown fat cells create heat without shivering. This process is called thermogenesis. During this process, the brown fat also burns calories. Brown fat cells have many many more mitochondria compared to white fat cells. Brown fat is highly regarded as a possible treatment for obesity and some metabolic syndromes.

You can start small, like one-minute and gradually increase your time in a cold shower. You can start by exposing your arms and legs to cold water first, and expose your whole body to cold water. This will make you hyperventilate at the beginning but you will feel amazing after this cold shower.

Breathing Technique

While there are activities like yoga in which breathing is baked into the stretching of your body to better oxygenate, there are stronger breathing techniques like that of Wim Hof’s.

Wim Hof breathing technique gives your body a boost  for utilizing the oxygen. It is so strong that you can even beat  the headaches using this technique. During this technique, you will start tingly feeling on your arms. At the end of a session you will feel sort of high from oxygen.

Oxygen has been long used to remedy health problems such as damaged auditory nerves as a result of barotrauma. In that sense these breathing techniques give you a similar recovery benefit in a longer, maintainable manner.

So I have included everything the longevity community and experts agree on. You have the option to start today and incorporate some or preferably all of these things above in your life. Instead of waiting for a greater signal, such as a heart attack, or waiting for many years, you can start trying these things. I promise you that you will start seeing very significant results.