6 Ways to Slow Aging

How old are you?  Is it the number of candles on your birthday cake or your mindset?  In this article, I will teach you how to slow aging and reverse your biological age.

Aging and the Medical System

Just prior to giving the keynote lecture at a large medical conference organized by Northwestern University in Chicago on the subject of “How to Thrive to 100,” a surprising number of conference attendees I met said something to the effect of, “who in their right mind would want to live to be 100?” That sort of response completely ignores the fact that a person who arrives at 100 in good health most likely enjoyed great health when they were 60, 70, 80, and 90, too. What these doctors didn't understand is that people who live to 100 have learned how to slow aging.

But even doctors are products of their environments. They have been bombarded with messages that make getting old look awful.  The have spent their careers examining people who have confirmed through their struggles the idea that getting old is a painful, lonely, and frightening ordeal. Of course, healthy people don’t spend a lot of time at the doctor’s office, so what doctors don’t see nearly so often are the examples of slow aging that have inspired me to believe that calendar age is little more than a condition of our mindset.

Don't Act Old

I just had my 50th birthday.  Is there a certain way I should act and feel now that I am 50?

Inside I don't feel any older.  In fact, I actually feel younger now than I did in my 30s.

Instead of simply denouncing those who respond with malice toward the idea of getting old, I try to change their minds. I share examples of people who have learned how to slow aging.

I tell them about Fauja Singh, who took up marathon running when he was 80 and continued running distance races well past his hundredth birthday. I tell them about Teiichi Igarashi, a former lumberjack from Japan who summited Mount Fuji for twelve years in a row, starting when he was eighty-nine. I tell them about Georgina Harwood, who celebrated her hundredth birthday by jumping out of an airplane and then swimming with sharks off the coast of South Africa. And, of course, I tell them about the amazing people of China's longevity village who stand as proof that the process of growing older isn’t something that should be feared, but rather something that should be craved.

In fact, every last one of the centenarians I’ve spoken to in China's longevity village have told me they are living the best years of their lives. Those in the village who were not yet 100 longed to get there. And looking forward to golden years that have the potential to be truly golden might be one of the best things you can do for your health right now, no matter what age you are.

Your Mindset Determines Your Biological Age

It occurred to me, as I watched the centenarians in China's longevity village garden or take their daily walks, that no one every told them that there was a certain way people in their 100s were expected to feel and act. That’s because none of the centenarians in Longevity Village think about “growing older,” let alone worry about it. There is no fear in the passing of another year.  They have learned naturally how to slow aging.

We should follow their example. Although our age is often a tremendously large part of our mindset about “where we’re at” in life, it is a perfectly pointless measure of who we are.

Inherently we all do know this. Not everyone “acts” his or her age after all. Almost all of us have met children who are “old souls” and adults who act like kids. The number of times we’ve circled the sun has far less to do with our well-being than we typically think.

To take advantage of what science actually tells us about aging, though, we have to get into the habit of ignoring the ot...