Reading, reading "How Not to Age"

Here at Full of Life we’re dedicated to helping people achieve a long life, with a long “healthspan”: being as healthy and mobile as we can for the longest time we can.

I watched my father decline in his last years and I don’t want that for me, or for my children. I want to be as healthy and lively as long as I possibly can, enjoy my life and not be a burden.

Additionally, I’ve been infirm and it sucks . Three years ago I found a way to conquer my auto-immune issues I don’t want to go down that road again, so I’m willing to do what it takes to stay well. (see my story here)

Which includes taking advice from world experts such as Dr Greger, whose new book “How Not to Age” is now on my bedside cabinet.

In the introduction Dr Greger asks: “Instead of our current, piecemeal approach of focusing on individual degenerative diseases, what about slowing down the aging process itself?”

“We can’t approach the top 15 killer diseases one at a time, we have to decelerate aging to address everything simultaneously.”

“Even if all forms of cancer were eliminated,” he says, “average life expectancy would only increase by three years. Why? Because we’d just be delaying death from another cause, such as heart attack or stroke, the biggest killers in the Western World”.

The thing we need to realise is that biggest killers – heart disease, dementia, cancer, diabetes, obesity, liver disease – are pretty much all preventable.

The risk of disease from these killers and other diseases that disable us, including arthritis, kidney disease, osteoporosis, Parkinson’s, depression etc double every seven years BUT with the right interventions, an average 65 year old can have the disease risk of a 58 year old; effectively halving the ongoing risk of death, frailty and disability.

Dr Greger wrote his seminal health Bible How Not to Die (2017) outlining the science of such an intervention: he concluded that a whole food, plant based diet was the ultimate diet for human health and longevity.

How Not to Die was not about living forever, it was a manifesto on how not to die prematurely, “in pain, and after a long, chronic, disabling illness”.

The words ageing and longevity have become buzzwords lately. There’s a massive industry designed to take money from the pockets of people who want to live longer lives.

So, to clear things up from the start. There’s no supplement, individual food or oral anything that will, on its own, lengthen life.

But lifestyle changes can.

That’s the conclusion that Dr Greger has reached, now that he and his team have read more than 20,000 scientific papers and analysed the most up to date science that the world has to offer.

In the USA – and Australia is fast catching up – we are living longer in sickness, not in health. A 20 year old in 1998 could expect to live to 78 years of age; a 20 year old in 2006 would look forward to an additional year. But would they look forward to it? Would they enjoy it? The 20 year old in 1998 would – on current statistics – suffer ten finals years of bad health. While the person born years later will suffer 13 years of ill health before death. And the story is not improving with the decades.

In other words, according to Dr Greger and the research, we’re living longer, but we’re living sicker.

So I’ve got a cup of green tea beside me, and I’m diving into “How Not to Age” – all 627 pages of it.  When I come up for air, I’ll report back.

Though I’m pretty sure what he’s going to say. Eat more plants. Eat more fibre. Stop it with the processed food. Move more. Sleep better. Manage stress. And….eat more plants!