After 85, many people continue to live in good health for many years. That's what we all want to do. We don't expect to live forever, but none of us want to ill for 20 years before our death. That happens too often.

Eating a Living Well and Living Long

Bad health is "normal" in our society. We accept being over weight. We accept declining strength, and we accept the loss of walking and running ability. If you were healthy, you wouldn't let yourself fade away with no resistance. But that's the environment we live in, an environment we've created, that we can if we choose create in a different way.

We don't eat in the way our ancient ancestors ate. They didn't have access to continuous food in a marketplace like we do. Food supply was seasonal, and uncertain. There were times of plenty and times of shortage, sometimes extreme shortage. Most people ate one maybe two meals a day. It was not uncommon, each year, to have a time when the only food was a slaughtered animal (Maybe caught from the wild.) or perhaps little at all. That's why we have a hybrid metabolism. We can easily live on protein and fats, from animals, and if things are really bad, on our own body fat. However, in our modern lives, that's not normal.

Because we always use a glucose metabolism, a sign that there is plenty of food, we all tend to put on weight. That's protection against the coming famine, but the famine never comes and we get fatter and fatter. In addition we seem to develop an intolerance to carbohydrate, it's called insulin resistance, and it makes us sick, by causing inflammation throughout our vascular system.

I always thought that the gold standard for diet was a vegetarian diet. I'm wrong. Modern dietary science doesn't give any support for the vegetarian diet. You might have personal reason for wanting to be a vegetarian. It can be done, but it's hard work, and you might struggle to be healthy.

Fear of Cancer

We all have many pre-cancer cells in our bodies. These cells must multiply 40 - 80 times to form a tumour big enough to detect.

At each cell division, they are vulnerable to detection and attack. Cancer cells need an energy supply, glucose. They often manage to do without oxygen, so they might also be poisoned by high oxygen concentrations.

Your own immune system will eliminate most pre-cancers if you weaken the metabolic pathway of the cancer.

Cancers are vulnerable if you are using a strict LCHF diet, becoming nutritionally ketonic. That denies the cancer insulin, and makes it difficult to get glucose for growth.

It's thought that even for a few weeks a year, nutritional ketosis will be protective against cancers.

Social Connection

You need to be with other people on a regular basis.
Many of our eating behaviors are socially mandated.
Drinking saturated tea or coffee, is always something you can do. (Add a spoonful of butter.)
If others are eating, are salads, meat, quiche, or nuts available?

Freedom from Chronic Illness

Typically, people who are 75 suffer from five or more "illnesses." That probably means almost all of them have metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome is a set of six "diseases" that can all be corrected by dietary change.

It's not normal to suffer from pain, although that is a very common experience.

Saturated fats and high cholesterol do NOT cause cardiovascular disease. We still don't know why atherosclerosis begins in the arteries. The best current theory is that it's caused by "inflammation" which might be a lot of things, but it's something to do with our modern lifestyle. I suspect something that changed when all our food was purchased from shops, and much of it came in packages. People we consider primitive didn't have heart attacks. They were healthy and well, deep into old age.

Sleep is the opportunity you body takes each day to do extensive repairs and maintenance. You should sleep soundly, sleep long, and you should wake up wide eyed, clear headed, and refreshed.

Taking None or Very Few Medications

Taking multiple medications is bad for you. Nobody knows how the different medicines affect each other. The best medicine is good food, and the best time to eat it was 20 years, before "lifestyle" health problems occurred. That's not possible, but it remains possible to change your diet today.

Alzheimer's is a metabolic disease. Therefore, a sensible prevention strategy is in your lifestyle and diet. Research is currently being done.

What is Successful Aging?

Weight, Alcohol Use and Smoking

Your weight should not be very different as an older person than it was when you were a young adult. Our experience of weight loss diets is bad, so we think it's a problem we can't solve.
We all know that smoking both causes diseases and reduces your lifespan. Don't do it.
Alcohol use is widely accepted and ignored. Alcohol misuse, is also ignored, but it is a great destroyer. Excess use of alcohol destroys marriages, and businesses, and undermines both personal and family health. Don't be a victim of alcohol or drug misuse, your own or someone else's.

The diagnosis of metabolic syndrome could apply to more than 60% of all adults. Metabolic syndrome might be common, but it's not necessary, and it's certainly not going to allow you to age successfully.

Many older people think it's too late to change their diet in a significant way. That is never the case. In less than a month significant benefits will flow from a better QUALITY diet. And over the next year the degree of improvement will continue, not only weight loss, but more energy, better sleep, and much less inflammation in the body. For people with metabolic syndrome the benefits are even greater, you can expect to remove all symptoms in less than a year.

Fitness for Work and Play

Normal Aging You should have energy to the ordinary things of life.

You should be able to walk long distances, and go up and down hills with ease.

You should be able to walk briskly. Can you stand upon one leg while putting a sock on the other?

When your walk slows, and especially when you begin to shuffle, your health is seriously impaired.

Exercise is important for your mind. Exercise increases the blood flow and 25% of that flows through the brain.

Exercise increases your strength and your confidence, and improves your quality of life.

An increasing number of falls is a bad sign. A serious fall resulting in a broken hip is often a signal of near term mortality. Keep dancing, it improves your strength and your balance.

What is Successful Ageing?

It's been suggested that people who die before the age of 85, probably died because of problems caused by their lifestyle. Perhaps they were just unlucky, but the unlucky are very small in number.

What is Successful Aging?