Aging and Good Health

Aging is difficult to define, but you will know it when you see it or experience it yourself. In brief, aging is a steady decline in health, which is instrumental in shortening lifespan; and the aging process is the duration during which such changes occur. The following are some of the signs and symptoms of aging:

• Your heart will pump less blood, and your arteries will become stiffer and less flexible, resulting in high blood pressure—a health problem that often increases with age.
• With less oxygen and nutrients from the heart, your lungs will become less efficient in distributing oxygen to different organs and membranes of your body.
• Your brain size will gradually reduce by approximately 10 percent between the age of 30 and 70. Loss of short-term memory will become more acute.
• Your bone mass will reduce, making it more brittle and fragile. Your body size will shrink as you lose your muscle mass.

Can the aging process be slowed down?

Yes and no. Theoretically, death may have been pre-programmed into your biological organisms as well as your body cells, and thus pre-determining your lifespan. That said, your body organisms and body cells may still have an indefinite lifespan through division, rejuvenation, and regeneration—if they are still healthy and functional. Again, theoretically, your genes mainly may have pre-determined the speed of your biological clock, but you can still slow down the speed of that biological clock—if you still have good health. The bottom line: nothing is set in stone.

So, what is good health? Good health means there is alignment of the wellness of the body, the mind, and the spirit. The United States Public Health Service has rightly said that good health is “preventing premature death, and preventing disability, preserving a physical environment that supports human life, cultivating family and community support, enhancing each individual’s inherent abilities to respond and to act, and assuring that all Americans achieve and maintain a maximum level of functioning.” If you want to stop your aging, take good care of your health. 

Go to my website: Health and Wisdom Tips. To stop aging, you need mind power to get the know-how to have good health to live to 100 and beyond, if you just don't die!

Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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