Have you ever looked at someone and thought, “Wow! They look so young!” What is it about them that makes them look youthful? Their colorful, full hair? Muscular physique? Rosy, plump cheeks? We often attribute the physical hallmarks of aging to the passage of time. As we age, gray hair grows, we lose muscle mass, and wrinkles begin to show. Many of the changes we associate with aging also appear in disease. What if how and when we age has nothing (or very little) to do with time and everything to do with health?
Aging As Disease
On a biological level, aging, as we know it today, mimics disease. Many of the cellular mechanisms that become impaired in a diseased state are the same changes that occur with aging. When we look at aging as a disease, we can apply the same principles we use to reverse disease to turn back the biological clock so that the body looks and acts like a more healthful, younger version of itself.
Whether your goal is to reverse or prevent disease, feel younger or slow the aging process, the first step is to remove any underlying factors contributing to inflammation. Inflamm-aging is a novel term used in medical literature to describe how inflammation drives age-related degenerative changes. In other words, the inflammatory foods, chronic infections, toxins, stress, and unhealthy lifestyle habits that contribute to disease also make your biological clock tick faster.
Turning Back the Clock
Once we’ve removed these pro-inflammatory mediators, the next step is where we get to take full advantage of modern scientific advancements. Anti-aging and regenerative medicine gives us the tools to literally rewind the clock on a cellular level. Using cutting-edge regenerative medicine techniques, we can reverse cellular senescence and undo the epigenetic changes that occur as we age.
Let’s take skin wrinkles as an example. Unlike Botox, which is a toxin that paralyzes your muscles to pull your wrinkles flat, these innovative regenerative methods are naturally occurring compounds that can help you regrow collagen. When we use them to address wrinkles, the actual cellular makeup of your skin cells remodels. If you were to look under a microscope, your cells would resemble your skin from years ago. These same techniques can be used to regrow hair, balance the immune system, encourage proper hormone balance, repair arthritis and regrow cartilage, and improve stamina and libido.
Become a Biohacker
It is never too soon (or too late) to put the breaks on aging. Preventing disease and premature aging takes less work than reversing it. Become a biohacker and leverage biology to their advantage by optimizing your health and exploring regenerative medicine. Use these tools to you can keep yourself young, promote healthspan, and hopefully even extend your lifespan.
