Well, why not? Isn’t that what we all want? We don’t want to just live longer, but to live longer in good health. Right? But how do we do it?

Most of us accept the reality that all living things die. We learn that at an early age. It’s bound to scare us so we probably put it out of our minds. But by the time we are in our forties and fifties we remember this and start thinking about it a lot. Maybe it’s because we begin to see that things about our health are no longer what they were when we were younger. That probably has a lot to do with the kind of lifestyle we have been living. That’s a hint that we should have been thinking about this stuff a lot earlier.

So, do you want to know about this stuff? If you don’t, this is the place where you probably want to turn me off.

If you are into my pieces just for fun and games, this is not it. This is about real stuff about our lives, how we have lived it, and how we might live it differently. It’s also about information that may be coming to us a little late in the game. This is a story we should be telling our kids when they are in high school. Well, what the heck! Maybe it’s never too late!

There’s a great deal of work being done in the research area of aging. There are a few new ideas being floated around. Plenty of them have not been fully proven. Some of them have come out of work on yeasts and mice. But they have reached a state where there are quite a few people, most of them rich, who are beginning to put some of these ideas into practice because they seem to produce results in the real world. Want to know about them? Well, read on!

First of all, I’ll mention the name, Dr. David Sinclair.   You can read up on him for yourself for more background. He is a very successful guy who says he is motivated by the desire to leave a lasting legacy for humanity. He is certainly not the only one doing work in this area, but his work stands out. Do a little research and judge for yourself.

So here comes the story, as the mystery has unfolded through the work of dedicated researchers. All of us are ruled by the DNA we have inherited from our parents, half from each one. Randomly, each delivered a share of their genetic makeup from the grab bag that each one held. Every cell in our body carries this inheritance. You probably know all that. What you probably don’t know  is how this material dictates the mechanics that take place in our bodies

On each strand of our chromosomes there are a whole series of chemical codes, including those which dictate how we resemble some aspects of our parents and their forbears. These codes also transmit instructions for the operation of our body mechanisms. In each cell there are substances that have been labelled ritulins. These act on our chromosome codes so that they are either expressed or blocked of expression. Sometimes the body needs them expressed and sometimes the body needs them suppressed. Whether it is the desire for sleep, or sex,  or we experience hunger, or fear, or the body has to react to an invasion by a harmful bacterium, these substances trigger the appropriate body responses.

So far so good. However, as we age, some elements of our body’s systems begin to perform their tasks less efficiently. Some cells which should be replaced are not and just plug up the system further. The body has a mechanism which is designed to carry out repairs. These actors are called NMN’s. But as we age we tend to produce less of these as well so the body cannot keep up with the task at hand. The damage being done by the accumulating failure of these functions to be carried out is expressed by our experience of aging.

However what researchers have found out that there are some ways that we can stimulate the body to produce more NMN’s. Apparently when the body undergoes some physical stress, it responds by producing more of these repair machines. The more machines like that we have in our systems, the more the body approaches that state it had when we were younger.

Researchers, Dr. Sinclair among them, have found that there are some things anyone of us can do to stimulate our bodies to achieve the desired result. He suggests we organize our daily routine so that we feel hunger each day. And he suggests regular physical exercise. He feels that such a regime will keep us feeling and being younger longer.

He also suggests we should drink water, eat more almonds and avocados, and stay away from diet foods and supplements. Plain yogurt, preferably Greek, raw rather than processed, and flash frozen rather than fresh are part of his food prescription for a younger you.

Sinclair is working on creating some NMN-like material that will pass FDA scrutiny. Until that day, we now know what we have to do. We could also get a regular transfusions of the blood of a younger person who will match our blood type, but that is more problematic. Stick to exercise and hunger pains!