Accelerated Metabolic Aging

Good Day Everyone and Happy Father's Day to all you Dads!

Especially to my wonderful Dad, he's a peach.

Today I'm going to give you the one week progress report of my following the Women-to-Women program for rebalancing hormones.

In the box with my 90 day supply of nutritional support (multivitamin/mineral + Omega 3 gel cap +
calcium/magnesium) and the herbal hormonal supplement came a book that revolutionized my eating. The book, The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth About Losing Weight, Being Healthy and Feeling Younger by Diana Schwarzbein, MD (endocrinologist) and Nancy Deville.

I took the supplements and immediately read the book cover to cover. I'm understanding more and more, and truth be told, I had my suspicions supported.

I can report to you that I feel 40% better in one week. And believe me, when you've been "on the floor" with fatigue and fuzzy head, this is nirvana.

My adjustments were not so much remembering to take the supplements, because they're easy. They come in a packet for am and pm; the hormonal supplements in a jar. I set them on my counter the night before so I see them first thing. The more difficult adjustment is to COOKING my food. My grandma used to say, "Good food takes time." That was her job in our household, and she usually spent the better part of her day preparing dinner for the 6 of us. I could use a grandma about now. My biggest resistance was to all the time I was going to have to put into thinking about the right foods and then preparing them. Fortunately the book has 30 days of recipes in the back for the "brain dead".

In addition I have to have breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, and dinner. Now I have to think about eating 5 times a day! But I did it and I continue to do it, because the alternative is going back to feeling like poo, and I won't do that.

I had started doing Tai Chi a few weeks before that in the morning when I got up. I found a tape in the library. I pop that in and do the am workout before I do anything else. The routine is more like dancing than anything else. It's gentle and elegant and lots and lots of deep breathing. I find it easy to commit to. There is also a pm workout, which eventually I will attempt to put into my daily routine. But as I've told you, dear reader, one thing at a time and keep doing it.

In addition a couple of mornings I actually found myself waking at 5:30 and wanting to go for a walk before the sun came up. That, was shocking! While I was out there I found I wanted to dink around in the garden for a bit. Double shock. I was having "energy" and desire to "do."

What I want to share with you is Dr. Schwartbein's concept of Accelerated Metabolic Aging.
This is getting old before your time. Quite frankly I believe that in years to come we will have utter control over this whole process, but that's for a later blog and possibly over on the Applied Spirituality side of things. But for right now, most of us suffer from this as a result of Western Life Style and poor diet.

As you might know metabolism is defined as the amount of energy a person's body burns. So thinking of your body as the engine, and your food as fuel. But additionally, metabolism is
"the combined effects if all the varied biochemical processes that continually occur in your body on a cellular level, " making it possible for you to function as a living being. Regeneration processes are twofold: those that build up the body; those that break down the body. The breaking down process is essential for clearing out the old cells and old cellular materials such as enzymes, hormones to make way for the new ones.

Hormones are the chemical communicators that direct the cellular binding processes which are essential for breaking down old cells and making new ones. Since the body is a composite of interconnected systems, when one hormone levels goes out of balance, it affects all the others as well.

More on cellular health. You body has two types of cells, stem cells and committed cells. Stem cells live only to produce committed cells. Directed by hormones, stem cells divide slowly over the course of a lifetime to make new stem cells and committed cells. Committed cells perform the biochemical processes of the body. Committed cells are constantly being renewed as they are short lived.

Here's the deal: if stem cells were to continue to produce and adequate supply of perfect committed cells, your metabolism would not age and you would therefore, never age. [I believe this is coming.] However, in this time since we believe in aging, the decreased efficiency of our metabolism is the natural and inevitable result of cellular aging that carries out that belief.

So here's how it works: stem cells make committed cells, committed cells make hormones, hormones direct the stem cells to make more committed cells, etc. Accelerated Metabolic Aging is the premature breakdown in this chain due to unhealthy eating and western lifestyle habits such as stress, toxins, poor nutrition, medications (both perscription and over-the-counter), etc.

Hence the return to organically grown whole food diets with high levels of real nutrition in the food you eat. Hence the avoidance and elimination of prepared, packaged and processed foods which have poor nutritional value and synthetic chemical additives. Hence the addition of exercise, meditation, yoga, breathing and tai chi for calming the internal state down.

We were not meant to lead the lives we are living under such stress, anxiety, urgency and fear.

All these factors combine in every one of us, regardless of chronological age to result in accelerated metabolic aging.

Next blog I'll talk about insulin resistance.

Thanks for reading!

Kath