Aging Backwards_10 Years Lighter and 10 Years Younger in 30 Minutes a Day

by Miranda Esmonde-White

  Our bodies have natural strength and a natural range of motion. To maintain our good posture, energy levels, and freedom from pain, we need to maintain, at a minimum, a 50 to 70 percent range of motion in all of our muscles. We need them to slide easily into a state of contraction or a state of flexibility. If there is no movement in the individual muscle cells, then it goes without saying that movement within the larger muscle will be impeded as well. And as we’ve discussed, a lack of movement leads inexorably to atrophy and cell death.

  In order to slow down and reverse the aging process, we need to have both flexible and strong muscles; this means we have to do a combination of strength and flexibility exercises. Strengthening alone will slide the cells in only one direction, and flexibility alone will slide the cells in only the other direction. An equal combination of both dynamics, strengthening and stretching, is required to gain and maintain a sufficiently large range of motion to keep us feeling young, relaxed, and comfortable in our bodies.

  THE FORCE OF GRAVITY

  Another facet of aging that we must counter is the force of gravity. As we age and our cells become weaker, gravity’s effects are amplified and our bodies begin to look unflatteringly saggy and soft. The force of gravity is constantly pulling us downward, but we can reverse that downward tug by consciously pulling ourselves upward, against it. Lifting our arms above our heads is one of the simplest and most effective ways to reverse the shrinking and sagging of our muscles, particularly the muscles of the spine and trunk. If we don’t do this, we are likely to shrink faster than we need to.

  Our 620 muscles run in many directions and patterns: vertically, horizontally, and diagonally across the body. To fight gravity, we need to pull the vertical muscles upward, as these are the main cause of our drooping and sagging. Some of the largest vertical muscles are found around our spine and trunk, so every time we lift our arms above our heads we are training those muscles to maintain their length and helping them resist gravity.

  If the vertical muscles are not lengthened and strengthened to their maximum, they will shrink to the length that they are accustomed to. The human body is an efficient machine, and those cells that are left unused become tagged as unnecessary and are allowed to shrink and die. Furthermore, as muscles contract, they gradually get tighter and tighter, leading to compression of the joints. Unless we exercise our full range of motion, we leave ourselves open to poor posture, drooping shoulders, low energy levels, and even arthritis of the spine. Corrective exercise, centered on reaching toward the ceiling, prevents these negative outcomes by lengthening the spinal muscles and inhibiting atrophy.

  The solution is so simple, yet most people are too focused on following a complicated exercise regimen to believe it can be this easy. Try this one exercise: Pull one arm at a time toward the ceiling for a total of 32 repetitions. Alternate arms with each reach, and do this consistently for 5 minutes every day. It will make you look and feel younger, and it should rapidly improve your posture.

  OTHER FITNESS OPTIONS

  When it comes to other sports or fitness programs, very few programs rebalance all 620 muscles and protect the joints. That is why I created ESSENTRICS. My first love was tai chi, which is also a full-body movement technique. But if I missed a session (as I often did, owing to my hectic schedule), I found it difficult to reintegrate myself into the group because the routines changed a little bit with every class. I wanted to create a program that would be as enjoyable as tai chi but that anyone could follow easily; those goals helped inspire this program.

  Many people love activities like walking, running, weight training, yoga, Pilates, skiing, swimming, and tennis. All of these activities are fun to do, but every one of them is known to damage the joints, unbalance the muscles, cause chronic pain, and not use all 620 muscles.

  My suggestion to you: If you love it, do it. Just be smart about using all of your muscles over the course of your day, both with everyday motions and with regular rebalancing training.

  POWER AND ENDURANCE

  Nothing signifies old age quite so aptly as someone whose every movement is laborious, someone for whom even routine tasks take forever to accomplish. Anyone who is used to moving quickly knows it is a lesson in patience to be around someone who takes forever clearing dishes off a table, walking up the stairs, getting up from a sofa, or getting out of a car. Slowing down is a natural sign of aging, but premature slowing down is not, and can be easily reversed.

  What causes us to slow down and have trouble doing simple tasks is a lack of strength, which has two components: power and endurance. We need them both to be able to do life’s daily tasks with ease and comfort. Power is measured by the ability to lift a heavy object and endurance is measured by the ability to keep moving for long periods of time. Power gives us the ability to lift heavy items or simply lift our own body off the sofa easily. Endurance allows us to run marathons, take long hikes, or simply walk for more than five minutes without tiring.

  Gaining power and endurance can be accomplished with relative ease and speed, and at any age. Both power and endurance are in the “strength family,” where improvement requires us to do strengthening exercises. The power required to lift a heavy bag of groceries isn’t the same as the power required of a professional baseball player to hit a home run. Nor is the endurance required to carry the groceries from the store to your car in the parking lot the same endurance required of a marathon runner. But the basic principles are the same. You do not need to train with the intensity of these athletes to develop the power and endurance necessary to lead a normal, active life. Instead, you need to align your training habits with your goals.

  Power requires immediate explosive strength, whereas endurance requires effort sustained over a length of time. Strong muscles are required for both power and strength, but we use a different approach to train for each one. Power is developed by doing repetitive movements using the weight of the entire body. Power movements are those rapid movements requiring a sudden burst of strength; activities such as skiing, tennis, golf, and carpentry all require different degrees of power. Some of these activities might also require endurance, if we prolong them.

  Endurance is the ability to keep moving for an extended period of time without tiring. Endurance activities are slow and steady, and we undertake them for more than five minutes. In addition to running races, cycling for several miles, and swimming many laps, these include cutting grass, weeding, vacuuming, painting walls, and going for long walks.

  One of the greatest difficulties of aging is that we fail to perceive our gradual loss of strength and flexibility; we are made aware of it only when we wake up one painful morning to discover that what was once second nature now requires strenuous effort. The contrast is most evident when we are around young people, who seem to brim with energy. But the speed of the young is also just a product of explosive power and endurance strength. Young people have these attributes naturally; as we get older, we have to work for them!

  As we age, we subconsciously let ourselves take smaller, slower strides. In order to reverse this part of the aging process, and increase both power and endurance, we have to consciously take wider, larger strides and move faster when we walk. This wider, faster stride will increase our explosive power. If we walk rapidly for at least 20 minutes every day, we will have strengthened the endurance and power of our lower body (hips, knees, and feet) immensely. In addition to taking wider strides, try moving faster in everything you do. Turn your daily tasks into antiaging workouts—move rapidly and make yourself do bigger, rather than smaller, movements.

  Public attitudes toward smoking have changed dramatically in the last twenty years. Millions of people quit smoking once they were shown how bad cigarettes were for their health. I believe that people who genuinely understand the relationship between regular, full-body exercise, their health, and their ability to look and feel young well into their senior years will take this information and radically change the way they live. No one wants t
o age and no one wants to age rapidly. The price—from chronic pain to the loss of independence and the attendant emotional distress—is simply too high.

  Until now, we didn’t know how to stop the effects of aging, but now that I know the science behind aging, I never miss a single day of giving my body 20 to 30 minutes of full-body exercising. This method not only helps reverse the aging process but also helps us to avoid diseases and conditions that can severely reduce our quality of life.

  CHAPTER 7

  GET MOVING

  THE CONNECTION BETWEEN FITNESS AND DISEASE PREVENTION

  We’ve talked about how ESSENTRICS protects against muscle loss and how our muscles keep us young. Now let’s talk about how powerfully muscles can care for the rest of the body.

  Another myth of aging that people blithely accept is that we’re all going to get sick at some point—that disease goes hand in hand with aging. Not true. Many diet and lifestyle factors can help you prevent the onset of disease, and one of the most powerful is the ability of exercise to build muscle. Fitness can not only help you lose weight and have more energy but also keep you disease-free. We’ll look at how the strength of your muscles affects the other systems in your body—such as the cardiovascular, digestive, and neurological systems. These can get weaker with age, but don’t have to if you commit to exercise.

  The body is like a complex car that has different systems; all have to be in good working order or the car won’t run. The wheels are like the muscles, the engine is like the cardiovascular system, the transmission and brakes are like the nervous system, and the burning of gas is like the digestive system. If one of those parts isn’t working the car won’t go. Or if the parts are rusted and worn out, then the car might run, but badly.

  This is where healthy strong flexible muscles come in. The role of the muscles is to keep the systems healthy; to assist the cardiovascular system in the distribution of blood into every cell of the body; to cleanse out toxins that damage the organs; to assist the digestive system in flushing out waste products; and much more. Without strong active healthy muscles working in harmony with them, the systems become exhausted and break down prematurely. When this happens we feel and look unhealthy, we become prone to getting sick, and we take much longer than necessary to recover.

  Strong flexible muscles keep you healthy, and when you do get sick, they help you to recover rapidly and fully! With regard to your desire to remain young and vibrant the muscular system is the most important system in your body. When you let your muscular system become weak, all the other systems that keep you alive are directly affected. Without strong flexible muscles all the other systems will age rapidly through overuse and decay. One Danish study looked at the impact of smoking tobacco, high alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, and overweight on expected lifetime. The researchers combined life tables and disease prevalence data from over 14,000 participants in the Danish Health Interview Survey. They found that, on average, physically inactive people will have a life span that is 5 to 8 years shorter than that of physically active people.37

  We know that if we don’t exercise all 620 muscles, they will atrophy. When this happens, we will find it much more difficult to maintain our health because with atrophy comes a deterioration of the systems of the body required to keep us healthy.

  CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM

  The heart is our most important muscle; we must protect it at all costs. The muscular system has a very important role to play in keeping the cardiovascular system fit and functioning at full capability. The muscular system is designed to work in harmony with the heart, veins, and arteries, helping to improve circulation and reducing some of our cardiovascular workload. When the heart’s workload is reduced, wear and tear on important parts of the cardiovascular system is reduced, and damage that can trigger inflammation and heart disease is prevented.

  Muscles have a direct role in the efficiency of the circulation of blood throughout our bodies. Active muscles are designed to perform as pumps, helping the blood circulate. The pumping action of the muscles takes some of the load off the vessels, which otherwise would have to do all the pumping and delivery of blood alone. When the vessels have to do the pumping by themselves, they cannot do as effective a job as when the muscles are helping them. This means that some cells are not receiving nutrient- and oxygen-loaded blood, and so we are prone to illness and chronic tiredness—the feeling that we are dragging all day and can never get caught up on sleep. Sound familiar?

  First and foremost, we need active muscles delivering nutrients and removing waste products to help us stay young. The circulatory system is the system that delivers blood to the entire body—as I sometimes say, “from brain to brawn.” The circulatory system delivers nutrient-loaded oxygen-rich blood to every cell in the body and, on its return journey, acts as a garbage removal system, retrieving dead cells, toxins, and waste products. A slow sluggish circulatory system means that our cells are not receiving life-giving nutrients, nor are the poisonous toxins being flushed out of our system. This leaves us feeling and looking exhausted: Dull, lifeless skin is a giveaway for a sluggish circulatory system.

  Recent research reported in the New York Times found that this cleansing effect is not the only reason our skin looks so great when we exercise. The preliminary study from researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, presented in 2014 at the annual meeting of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, followed a group of sedentary men and women over 65 to study the effect their exercise habits had on their skin. The researchers had this formerly sedentary group work out vigorously (at 65 percent of the subjects’ maximum heart rate) for 30 minutes twice a week for 3 months. When the researchers analyzed biopsies from the subjects’ skin, they discovered that the skin had changed dramatically, and more closely resembled that of people in their twenties. The researchers believe that exercise triggers the release of myokines, a type of protein released by the muscle; the myokines would travel from the muscle through the bloodstream and initiate changes in cells far away from the cells where they were released. The skin samples indicated that the levels of myokines actually leaped up by 50 percent after the start of the study.38 Exercisers were being changed on a genetic level, and those changes were manifesting themselves in younger, dewier, less lined skin.

  No face creams can replace the vibrancy that good circulation gives to the skin. No massages or facials are as powerful in cleansing and nourishing the skin as full-body circulation. I love my creams, facials, and massages, but there is nothing as effective as a good full-body workout to make your skin glow!

  All we need to do is 10 minutes of large body movements every day to increase the blood flow, flush out the toxins, and inject the entire body with energy-giving oxygen and nutrients. Nothing makes us more exhausted than sitting around all day! Anyone who works in an office will attest to that. And nothing brings the sparkle back into our eyes better than a few minutes of exercise.

  Large full-body movements like the ones in Classical Stretch, ESSENTRICS, and tai chi all strengthen the muscles of the cardiovascular system and facilitate the circulation of blood without any impact on the joints and provide an effective alternative to the traditional cardio workouts on the market. When the circulatory system is functioning well, we have more energy. Our brains receive more oxygen, so we think more clearly. We simply feel better in every way.

  The Harvard school of medicine has done many studies of the health benefits of tai chi. Interestingly, the citizens of China have been doing tai chi for centuries and many remain free of exercise-related injuries for most of their lives. To this day in China you will see people doing tai chi in parks, at their workplaces, and in various public places. The Chinese are known for their longevity and good health, which can be attributed in large part to their practice of tai chi.

  Furthermore, the results of studies such as those by the Harvard Medical School on tai chi showed that tai chi–type movements are valuable in preventing coronary artery disease
and had an effect on various factors associated with the disease, such as lowered blood pressure, a boost in exercise capacity, and improved cholesterol levels. Especially given that the leading cause of death in America is coronary artery disease, this finding has very important implications.39

  With their large sweeping muscle movements, these exercise programs relieve the strain on the arteries caused by a buildup of plaque in artery walls. Muscle movement involves contraction and relaxation, a pumping motion that acts to assist the circulation of blood into the extremities and back to the heart. Large muscle movements act as a partner to the heart muscle in the circulation of blood, taking the overload off the heart and distributing the effort of full circulation. One review of tai chi’s effectiveness in preventing chronic heart disease, completed for Cochrane Database Systemic Reviews, reported that six studies had found tai chi reduced participants’ systolic blood pressure by up to 22 points and three studies had found it reduced diastolic blood pressure by as much as 12 points.40 Two studies also found reductions in total cholesterol, LDL-C, and triglycerides. Clearly, there’s a compelling cardiovascular rationale for the ancient practice of tai chi and similar approaches, such as ESSENTRICs.

  I personally don’t enjoy traditional cardio workouts such as aerobics or running on a treadmill, so I have sought to find alternatives. If you do enjoy them, don’t stop doing them, but these high-impact forms of exercise have proved to damage joints if they are done over many years. I have many clients who love running and want to continue running all their lives. You should be able to do so; you just need to protect your joints with correct strengthening and simultaneous stretching exercises. Unfortunately, very few runners take the time to protect their joints. I’ve worked with many runners over 45 who have been forced to stop running because of joint pain or damage. No one should have to stop doing a favorite sport, especially if it is beneficial to the cardiovascular system or other body systems, but athletes must protect their joints with preventive exercises so that the joints will last a lifetime.