What does middle age mean these days? Noted nutritionist and anti-aging expert Oz Garcia provides strategies on how to redefine the concept of age and live healthier longer in "Redesigning 50." An excerpt.
“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?”
— SATCHEL PAIGE, BASEBALL HALL OF FAMER
Are you fifty or thereabouts? Chances are you don’t look, act, or feel the way your parents did at fifty. It’s a whole new era in the art and science of aging, and that’s what this book is about: redesigning the rest of your life to slow down your biological clock and keep you looking and feeling as young as possible for as long as possible. It’s also about redefining what it means to get chronologically older even as you keep the energy, vitality, and appearance of youth.
This book is about healthy aging — staying active physically and mentally, looking your best whatever your age, and knowing what you need to keep yourself in the best possible shape for years to come. So welcome to Redesigning 50. In this book, we’re going to introduce you to what fifty looks like in the twenty-first century and help you take advantage of the finest that science and artistry have to offer to make “middle age” the best it’s ever been, without going under the knife. Although plastic surgery might be appropriate for some people in certain circumstances, there are now many far more enlightened anti-aging options to bring you to what I like to call the New 50: a fitter, healthier, better-looking middle age than you ever imagined possible.
Do we even know what middle age means anymore? If you’re anywhere near the age of fifty, you probably remember that the mantra of the 1960s was “Don’t trust anyone over the age of thirty.” When we were teenagers, we thought that thirty marked the beginning of middle age. I know I did. But now, having passed the thirty-year marker many years ago, I’m no longer sure how to define middle age. Old definitions no longer apply. Middle-aged women are now having babies. Men and women in their sixties and seventies are climbing mountains, traveling into outer space, and making greater achievements than are many of their more youthful counterparts. In today’s world, middle age is no longer a stage of life to be dreaded or feared, but one that we can fully enjoy and embrace.
Aging takes most of us by surprise. We look in the mirror one day, or get up out of a chair, or try to do something we used to do effortlessly — and suddenly we realize that we’ve actually gotten older. That’s what happened to me. Even though I don’t always want to admit it, I have started to experience the universal signs of reaching a certain ... maturity. I need reading glasses. I can’t run at the same pace or with the same stamina I used to. It’s become a little more difficult to regulate my weight.
I’ve started to ask myself questions. What can I do now and for the rest of my life to make the coming years as good as those that have passed? Do I need to worry about health concerns that some have called the diseases of aging? And how do I not only remain healthy but feel good — and look good, too?
Fortunately, I have a privileged perspective from which to explore and answer these concerns. For the past twenty years, I’ve been a successful nutritional consultant in New York City, the head of health and nutritional services for Equinox Fitness Clubs worldwide, a consultant to the East Coast Alliance of Trainers and to the world-renowned Life Extension Foundation, and the author of The Balance and Look and Feel Fabulous Forever. Over the course of my professional and personal experience, I’ve come to grasp the true importance of everything from managing our hormones to how much sleep we get (yes, we really do need eight hours) to the most advanced diagnostic testing available today to gauge every aspect of our health, and the full range of products we can now put to use.
Using the latest information and most innovative means available, I aim to help you experience the highest levels of well-being so that you can be more productive, have better relationships, reduce needless suffering, manage your moods, reduce the use of medication when appropriate, and overcome infirmity more quickly. Ultimately, I want you to stay in the game as long as possible, playing at peak performance.
I’m not foolish enough to promise that you won’t get old, but I am saying that anti-aging techniques have come a long, long way in recent years. I’m not saying you can stop all deterioration of the body as you get older, but I am saying you can lay down speed bumps to slow the process and in many ways even reverse the signs and symptoms of aging.
Middle age represents more than a number; it marks a hormonal shift that appears as menopause in women and andropause in men. Even if our appearance doesn’t give away our age, our hormones do. Some people feel that these hormonal shifts mean the end of their youth and vitality. I’m here to say that this is just not true and that with the knowledge and scientific advances we have today, middle age can be the best part of your life. You can modify your diet and lifestyle to lead a longer, happier, and healthier life. You can have a vibrant sex life. You can reduce and even reverse much of the damage done to your skin from dietary and environmental abuse. You can look and feel young again.
The best part is that you can achieve all this without having to live in a dietary bubble. You will learn how to make healthy choices and still enjoy food in a nonrestrictive manner — both at home and while dining out, whether it’s at a mainstream restaurant like Gennaro Sbarro’s or at a four-star restaurant with a chef like David Bouley.
You will get some really sound pointers on the functional effects of particular foods. You’ll learn not just which foods are good for you and why, but also what gives them their rejuvenating properties. As we age, we get immunologically weaker; changes in our genetic expression cause us to be prone to diabetes, heart disease, and excitotoxic damage to our brains (excitotoxins are food additives like MSG and aspartame, which can literally stimulate neurons to death). Food can be a critical tool in protecting us against the tectonic shifts that occur within our bodies as we get older.
You will learn that fitness is extremely critical as we age, not only to maintain physical strength and muscle mass but also to keep our minds sharp and efficient. For this book, I have consulted with some of the top experts in the fields of mind and body fitness for people in their forties, fifties, and beyond.
You will also learn that managing stress becomes more important as we age. Things that were once seen as far out (such as yoga and meditation) or self-indulgent (such as massage and the spa experience) have now been proved to be major components of longer, healthier lives. I will help you understand what stress is, and how you can regulate and reduce it.
The main reason I wrote this book was to identify the key elements in redefining this midpoint in our lives. Being fifty (and beyond) today means living in an option-filled environment. There are so many things you can do to maintain the state of good health and well-being described in this book simply by following certain protocols laid out here. These steps are not radical. As you will see from reading this book, in every field there are various points of view, so you can choose which may be best for you, your circumstances, and your lifestyle. But each one gives you a barometer, a means by which you can gauge how you are doing now, what you can do going forward, how you can erase years of wear and tear on your body, and how you can prevent damage in the future.
It isn’t that I want you to be fifty years old and look as if you’re twenty. I want you to be fifty years old and have your body respond as if you were a fit and healthy thirty-five-year-old. I want you to be able to spend the next fifty years able to regulate the speed at which you’re aging by how you use food, supplements, and nutraceuticals; how you manage stress; how you incorporate fitness and exercise into your life; and how you take care of and maintain your youthful appearance.
The goal of this book is to present you with options. I have mined the knowledge of health professionals in both traditional and alternative medicine to present the best of what’s available for the “boomer” population. These professionals are at the top of their fields; I have worked with many of them and greatly admire their practices. They are all extremely smart, caring professionals who share my philosophy of health: to help people attain and maintain active, vital lifestyles for as long as possible by combining the best of conventional medicine with the newest discoveries in health care.
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK WITH OZ
I’m fifty-four years old, and I met Oz when I was forty-four. I now feel as if I’ve gone from fifty-four to thirty-four. When I first met him, I had hit the wall. I was running six miles a day, and all of a sudden I was exhausted. I was falling asleep every day at three in the afternoon. I went to see Oz because he was recommended by a friend. To say I was skeptical is an understatement. I told him up front: “I’m not going to take any of your stupid vitamins. I’m not going to listen to anything you have to say. But what do you have to say?” He told me that my adrenals were exhausted and that I needed to change my eating habits. I thought I had a good diet. I ate a lot of fish and salads. He said that I needed to do a cleanse and get my liver straightened out.
I followed a detox program for about a week. By the fifth or sixth day, I was flying. I was back up and running, and I’ve never stopped. Now I’m up early in the morning and up until eleven at night.
He said I needed to make sure I was off all caffeine. He was very strict. He said, “If you don’t get off the caffeine, I don’t even want to see you again.” I said, “You’re out of your mind. It’s probably Lyme disease.” I went and got tested. I got tested twice. It wasn’t Lyme disease. Finally I said, “Okay, fine; I’ll listen to you.”
For me, the coffee was a detriment. It was really hurting me, and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t even think I was drinking that much. But Oz asked me to keep a food log and to write down everything I was eating and drinking. I showed it to him and said, “You see, I don’t drink coffee.” He said, “What’s that?” I said “That’s the cup I have when I get up in the morning to get me going.” “What’s that?” he asked. “That’s the one cup after breakfast.” He said, “What’s that?” “That’s the late-morning pick-me-up cup.” “What’s that?” “That’s the one after lunch.” “What’s that?” “That’s the one at four in the afternoon when I’m really tired.” “What’s that?” “That’s the one after dinner.” He said, “That’s six cups a day! Of course you’re a coffee drinker.” I had no idea.
Working with Oz is a learning process. He helps you become a good detective about your own health. He helps you learn to take care of yourself. He always takes a sensible approach. It’s not extreme like Atkins or Pritikin. It’s his own way. He’s been a wealth of information and a wealth of knowledge.
In some ways I’m unique, because I have a chronic disease that can be very debilitating. Some people end up in the hospital. I take care of myself, and I feel great. I’m involved in several different businesses, I run around, I play. If anything, my problem is that sometimes I think I’m too young. I have to remember that I’m a little bit older now.
Oz taught me to be self-sufficient. He took me beyond healthy. He took me to a point where ten years later I feel ten years younger than when I started.
I am, however, a human being, so sometimes I’ll call him up in the middle of February and say, “I don’t know what’s going on. I have headaches, and I’m tired.” He says, “What are you doing? Let me guess. You’re eating ice cream and chocolate and peanuts. Cut that stuff out.” Sure enough, the headaches go away.
He always teaches that everyone’s got a margin for error. He doesn’t tell anyone what to do. If I ask him, “Can I drink alcohol?” he says, “If you can have one or two glasses of wine, great. But if you’re the type of person who can’t tolerate alcohol, then learn to recognize that about yourself. You have a smaller margin of error in that area.” He basically teaches you to be the owner of your own body and to educate yourself about your own margins for error.
Excerpted from "Redesigning 50," by Oz Garcia. Copyright 2008. Reprinted with permission from HarperCollins. All rights reserved.