Recently, I watched a 2016 BBC documentary titled “How To Stay Young” where Angela
Rippon and Dr Chris Van Tulleken team up with scientists to show what can be done to reverse
the ageing process. I also recently turned 40. I know it’s just a number, but it made
me start thinking about my own mortality and the ageing process. I realised that now is
the time to stop mucking around and really get serious about my health. So in this video,
I’m going to step through some of the advice from the documentary (and from my life) to
help you stay young.
Step 1 — Test How Well You’re Ageing
A simple test has been devised to see how well you are ageing. It’s called the Sit-to-Rise
test. First, take off your shoes and stand cross legged; The goal is to lower yourself
down without touching the ground with your hands. Once you are down, you must then try
to stand back up again by just using your legs. You cannot change the position of your
feet. The scoring system is easy. You start with 10 points, and then lose one point every
time you have to use a hand or a knee. If you wobble, you lose half a point. The test
measures your strength and balance, key indicators of how well you are ageing. If you scored
8 to 10, you’re more likely to have a long and healthy life. If you scored 6 to 7½,
you’re about twice as likely to have a shorter life than the 8 to 10 group. For people who
scored 3½ to 5½, they have about a 3½ times the risk of not having a very long life. If
you scored low, don’t worry — It’s not a death sentence. And that leads into…
Step 2 — Physical Activity
You can improve your score (and therefore your longevity) by being more physically active
in your daily life. Any exercise that targets strength, agility, and balance will help improve
your Sit-to-Rise test score. Whole-body exercises are the best. Things like dancing, running
around in the park, playing tennis, or basketball. Just pumping iron in the gym and increasing
your bicep size is not likely to improve your lifespan (although, if you do a full-body
workout with lots of dynamic motion, then that surely will help).
Step 3 — Quit Smoking
If you smoke, quit. It is the single biggest risk factor for how well you age.
Step 4 — Relieve Stress and Anxiety
Stress plays a huge effect on how well you age. You must find ways in life to stay cool,
calm, and collected. Luckily, some of the steps already mentioned can be used to lower
your stress. Exercise is a great way to relieve stress. It has been shown that by putting
physical stress on your body through exercise, there is a direct correlation with relieving
mental stress. The benefits are strongest when you exercise regularly. Just by having
a brisk walk every day is a good way to squeeze some extra exercise into your daily life.
Also, it gives you a chance to admire the world around you — to stop and smell the
roses, so to speak. Another way to relieve stress is to cut down on your caffeine intake.
Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, tea, energy drinks, and chocolate. High doses can
increase your anxiety, so it’s best to limit yourself to no more than a couple of cups
of caffeinated drinks a day. Also, learn to say “no”. Take control over the parts
of your life that you can change and are causing you stress. If your boss wants you to work
late every Friday night, well it’s up to you to be assertive and say “no”. Don’t
let other people dictate how you should spend your free time.
Step 5 — Maintain a Healthy Weight
It’s a given, but you have to maintain a healthy weight in order to stay healthy and
improve your longevity. Being overweight increases your risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure,
heart disease and strokes, sleep apnoea, osteoarthritis, fatty liver disease, kidney disease, and if
you’re a lady, pregnancy problems. Obviously, exercise plays a part in maintaining a healthy
weight, but by far the biggest contributor to being overweight is how much food you stick
in your gob. I control this by fasting everyday. That is, I aim to eat only one meal a day
in the evening, and try to only eat quality food. And that leads into…
Step 6 — Eat Healthy
In many areas of the Western World, fast food has replaced fresh food. It has been shown
time and time again that processed food is not good for you. Recent studies have shown
that ultra-processed foods are particularly bad for us. These include soft drinks, packaged
snacks, reconstituted meat, and pre-prepared frozen meals. They contain little, if any,
fresh food, and include ingredients like sweeteners, colours, preservatives and food-derived substances
like casein, lactose and gluten. Ph.D. Candidate, Alexandra Jones, from The George Institute
for Global Health commented on the nutrient content of these ultra-processed foods. She
said,
“The evidence suggests that perhaps there are some foods that — because they're ultra-processed
— it doesn't matter what we do to their nutrient content, it's not going to make them
better for us. You basically can't make an ultra-processed food healthy by just pumping
it full of nutrients.”
Step 7 — Eat a Vegan Diet
This is basically just a follow-on to Step 6. In the BBC documentary, a former American
cardiothoracic surgeon by the name of Dr Ellsworth Wareham was interviewed about his health.
He practised surgery up until the age of 95 and had been a strict vegan for more than
50 years. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 104 late last year. He lived in the Californian
city of Loma Linda which is renowned for having one of the highest rates of longevity in the
United States. It is classified as a “blue zone” in that a substantial proportion of
its population live much longer than average with many living past 100. Loma Linda is also
home to a large number of Seventh-day Adventists, which explains why many of its residents are
vegetarian. The religion actively encourages its followers to live a vegetarian lifestyle.
A vegan diet, in adults at least, has been shown to reduce your risk of cancer, heart
attack, and stroke. For vegans, overall mortality is reduced by a quarter compared to meat-eaters,
and they’re only half as likely to get heart disease. When we eat animal protein, it stimulates
a hormone in our bodies that we all need for growth. But as we get older, especially during
middle age, this same hormone speeds up ageing. So the more you replace animal protein with
fruit and vegetables, the slower you will age. A little rule of thumb — the more colourful
your meal is, then generally the more nutritious it is. So if you want to live longer, cut
out dairy, meat, and eggs, and replace them with nuts, beans, and lots of fruit and veg.
However, you don’t have to become a full-blown vegan to gain a lot of the diet’s benefits.
Even just a small reduction in meat-eating has been shown to slow down the ageing process.
And the final step, Step 8 — Stay Positive
I guess this is related to relieving stress, but by just being positive and optimistic
in your life, studies have shown that this may help you to live up to seven years longer.
And that’s it… The 8 steps to staying young. Test how well you are ageing by performing
the Sit-to-Rise test. Stay physically active by participating in activities that exercise
your entire body, like dancing, and tennis. Quit smoking. Relieve stress and anxiety by
living a more social life, exercising more, and cutting down on stimulants like caffeine.
Maintain a healthy weight by eating less and staying active. Eat healthy by avoiding processed
foods and increasing your fruit and veg intake. Become a vegan if you really want to put the
skids on ageing. By avoiding meat, eggs, and dairy, you prevent your body from overproducing
a growth hormone that makes you age faster. And finally, stay positive. There’s no use
having a negative outlook in life, especially as you grow older.