Every minute of every day, you and I are getting older. Have you ever wondered what causes your body to age? Well there’s been a lot of research into that and there are some very simple things you can do – to slow down that process. Interested?

 

Eat Healthy, Be Healthy

You and I have been given such an amazing body, and it’s the only body that we’ll ever get. It’s been wonderfully, exquisitely, uniquely handcrafted and yet so many of us are abusing it into an early grave. All because of what we’re putting into our mouths. You are what you eat – literally.

Way to many people are contracting diseases that, just a century ago were rare as hens teeth. As we saw last week on the program, cardio-vascular disease was almost unknown in the early 20th century. Today, the World Health Organisation estimates that through heart attack and stroke, cardio-vascular disease kills 16.7 million people every year. That’s one third of all deaths worldwide. And please don’t think that this is all coming from wealthy countries. Two thirds of those deaths are coming from low and middle-income nations. There’s probably not a one of us who doesn’t know someone who’s had a heart attack or a stroke.

Well, if we had been having this discussion back in 1901, almost none of us would have known anyone who’d had a heart attack or a stroke. And yet by 2020, the World Health organisation estimates that there will be around 25 million cardio-vascular disease deaths worldwide. It’s on the increase. It’s the same with cancer, same with diabetes, same with obesity. People we are eating ourselves into an early grave. And the more research that comes out, the more it all points to the so-called Western Diet.

I believe, I know that God gave you and me the most amazing bodies, and the reason we’re dedicating a few weeks to talking about this stuff on this program, is because I want to help you avoid becoming a victim of your western diet influences.

The thing that sets the western diet apart as we’ve seen if you’ve been able to join me, is not it’s fat content – there are plenty of instances of traditional diets high in animal fats where the people have a zero rate of cardio-vascular disease, diabetes and obesity – the thing that sets it apart is the high content of processed and refined carbohydrates.

Sugar: there’s sugar in just about every processed food you buy in the supermarket, white flour, white rice. Sweet drinks, sweet sauces, sweet cereals, sweet just about everything. Last week I shared with you that my top secret for losing 25 kgs (that’s 55 lbs)  that’s a lot of weight, was simply removing refined carbohydrates from my diet.

I just want to talk about that a bit more today, because people are shocked. Some think I’m crazy. Others put it down to another fad diet thing. I told someone about it recently, and they said, ‘but aren’t you hungry?’ We are so conditioned to believe that refined carbohydrates are a normal part of a healthy diet. But they’re simply not!

If you turn the clock back a century – back to the days when cardio-vascular disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity and a string of other diseases (which today are pandemics on the increase) were almost completely unknown – the one thing that stands out like a sore thumb, is that refined carbohydrates were a complete rarity in people’s diets.

People want to know, ‘Well, Berni, if you don’t eat bread and cereal and tomato sauce and cakes and biscuits and chips and stuff, what in goodness’ name do you eat?’ That’s the question I’d like to answer for you today, as I sit here with my blood pressure normal, my blood sugar normal, my triglycerides and bad cholesterol low, my good cholesterol high.

I wish I could have invited you to dinner last night. It was awesome. My wife Jacqui cooked a roast vegetable salad while I grilled some tandoori chicken on the BBQ. The salad was stunning. She cut up zucchinis, peppers or capsicums, mushrooms, baby tomatoes, onions, beans (I actually can’t remember all the veggies that were there) and drizzled them with healthy olive oil and roasted them for half an hour in the oven. Preparation time – about 10 minutes.

We then tossed the roasted veggies in a bit of vinegar, added a little salt and pepper and served them up warm with the tandoori chicken that I’d cooked. What was missing was any sauce with sugar in it. What was missing was roast potatoes or white rice or white pasta that would spike your blood sugar level and produce nasty triglycerides in your blood.

But do you know, those veggies contained all the carbohydrates my body needs. I had a stack of them too; they tasted exquisite. The meal contained mostly carbs, some protein and some fat – the way a meal is meant to – only the carbohydrates were tucked away inside a whole bunch of natural fibre, which made them slower to digest. Meaning I wouldn’t get hungry for a long time, and my blood sugar wouldn’t spike.

That’s how people ate back at the beginning of the 20th century. In fact that’s how they’ve been eating for millennia – plenty of unrefined carbs, unrefined grains which are slow to digest, with plenty of fat – animal fat included and plenty of protein. If we had the courage to turn the clock back 150 years on our diet, to a time when obesity, diabetes and cardio-vascular disease were virtually non existent, what we’d doubtless discover, is that many of the diseases that are the products of the 20th and 21st century western diet would go away. And the exciting thing is that the food is fantastic.

My biggest insight? Vegetables rock. Animal fat, rather than increasing my cholesterol levels, actually keeps your blood sugar under control, keeps your appetite under control, and doesn’t make you fat. The research is done. The studies are in. And I’m walking proof.

There is so much fantastic, natural food out there, and if we were prepared to go for it what we would discover is a whole new food sensation, a healthier body, a body that ages much more slowly, a body that is mentally and physically sharper and far less prone to 20th century diseases.

Are you serious about looking after that one body you’ve been given? Really? So, what are you going to do about it? You are what you eat.

 

Slowing Down the Ageing Process

Now that I’m in my mid fifties, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research about is the process of ageing. What I’ve observed is that you can take two people of the same age, and one looks much younger than the other. A smoker will often look much older than a non–smoker of the same age. A person who is significantly overweight will often behave much older as their leg and hip joints struggle with the weight, than a person who is not overweight.

I see people who are my age using walking sticks, or hobbling, or finding it hard to get up out of a chair. Is that a random process, or is it something to do with the lifestyle that we lead? Does the process of ageing strike according only to the programming in our DNA, or are there environmental factors that influence ageing? In other words, is there something that you and I can do – in how we live – to slow down the ageing process.

That’s not a new thought, there’s a lot of research going on in this area as our population ages. There are a few different theories of ageing. The most widely accepted one in the medical community is the free radical theory of ageing. You’ve probably heard of free radicals, but, much like me before I became interested in the ageing process, you haven’t paid much attention to them.

In a nutshell, the free radical theory of ageing goes like this: Many of the activities of life produce free radicals in our body – these are unstable molecules in search of a spare electron – we won’t go too much into the molecular science here, or we’ll be at it all day. Heavy exercise produces free radicals. Pollution produces free radicals. And these free radicals are unstable and highly reactive, looking to soak up a free electron from anywhere. Now, every cell in your body needs oxygen to survive – to create energy. Without it, you die. In your cells, energy is produced by tiny structures called mitochondria. It’s a complex process, but think of the mitochondria as the power plant in each cell.

The process involves free radicals. Most of them are contained, but some of them escape, a bit like some of the muck that comes out of the exhaust of a car. As soon as the free radical escapes, it’s out there looking for a spare electron. And when it finds one to grab, the molecule that donated it now becomes an unstable free radical. And those free radicals do all sorts of horrible things in your body if they go unchecked, they create a chain reaction of molecular instability. A researcher in this field Dr Harman puts it this way:

It is likely that the life span of an individual is primarily determined by the rate of mitochondria damage, inflicted at an increasing rate with age by free radicals arising in the mitochondria, in the course of normal respiration. Eventually as your mitochondria become less efficient from the accumulate free radicals, a vicious cycle begins. You produce more and more superoxide radicles and have less and less defence against them. Finally your body’s various defence mechanisms are overwhelmed.

This is exacerbated by very heavy exercise, by smoking, by pollutants and they tell us, by a diet rich in refined carbohydrates. That could explain for instance, why smokers often appear to be much older than their non–smoking peers.

But here’s the good news: this whole destructive process of free radicals is counteracted by things called antioxidants. Think of the effect of free radicals as the process of oxidising or rusting your body. Anti–oxidants are substances that have free electrons to give away, to stabilise free radicals, to bring your whole system into balance.

Where do you get them? From foods rich in antioxidants, namely fruit and vegetables. In fact the brighter the colour of the fruit or vegetable, mostly the richer they are in antioxidants. Broccoli, spinach, berries, red and green and yellow capsicums or peppers, the brighter the better.

An antioxidant is simply a substance that quenches a free radical by donating an electron, thereby ending the free radical chain of events that destroys mitochondria, and causes the body to age, and eventually to die. There’s a very, very, very good reason why they keep telling us to eat lots of vegetables and fruits – because they’re healthy for us and – this is how they contribute to our health (as well as the vita nutrients that they pump into our bodies).

Contrast that with a diet high in refined carbohydrates which creates an over supply of insulin – hyperinsulinism it’s called – to deal with all the sugars you’re pumping into your body. And as one researcher put it, hyperinsulinism puts you in the ageing express lane.

Agree with him or not, Dr Robert Atkins puts the whole thing in perspective as he writes this about the historical context of our diets:

No human civilisation ever, has consumed a preponderance of carbohydrates in the form of refined products with most of their original vita-nutrient content discarded, until the 20th century westernised diet became prevalent.

Eat your fruit and veggies – which by the way are stunning – and ditch the refined carbohydrates, and in one fell swoop you’re introducing the antioxidants you need to slow the ageing process, and removing the greatest single cause of putting people into the ageing fast lane.

That’s it in a nutshell. God has a mighty plan for your life, but that plan can’t and won’t be fulfilled if you prematurely destroy the precious body that He’s given you. Listen again to the Apostle Paul and what he says about this body you’ve been given:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

And what we’ve been talking about, actually, is exactly what our parents told us around the table – eat your vegetables. It ain’t rocket science, is it?

 

The Impact of Exercise

Now if you were able to join me last week, you’ll know that in this whole healthy living series, we had a bit of a chat about exercise. But if you heard that message, don’t tune out, because we’re going to circle back and pick up something important that could change your life.

I know that there are some people listening today who don’t have easy access to motorised transport but way too many people are living a sedentary existence. Sitting in front of computer screens all day –rarely walking anywhere, let alone working up a sweat. I’m like that and so, for much of my adult life, I did almost no exercise whatsoever.

And the less exercise you do, the less you want to do. Deep down, I knew that my sedentary life style wasn’t exactly making me healthy. When you added to that a diet high in refined carbohydrates, sugars and the like, I was heading for diabetes and cardio-vascular disease. I was an absolute Monty for a heart attack or stroke.

My father died of complications related to Type II Diabetes – and it seemed that I was walking in his footsteps.

Did you know that single biggest statistical indicator of an impending heart attack isn’t your blood triglyceride or cholesterol levels – it’s a lack of exercise. Inactive men for instance have nearly four times the risk of developing diabetes compared with just moderately physically active men. Active lifestyle by the way is also linked with significantly reduced cancer risk. And exercise is the key factor – THE KEY FACTOR – in preventing disability as you age. People who exercise regularly have a substantially lower risk of becoming disabled later in life. In fact the research clearly demonstrates that disability is not an inevitable part of aging. It can easily be defied by moderate physical activity, starting … now! It’s also a key overall factor in your longevity of life.

Are you getting the picture here? Am I making you feel uncomfortable by being that direct about all of this? Oh good. That’s what’s meant to be happening, if you’re one of the people who is where I used to be. I want it to sink in that you are cruising towards a certain early demise – if not immediate death, then an unhealthy, uncomfortable life.

Now so far in this series I’ve talked a lot about dietary choices and the impact of those choices on our health, our wellbeing and our lifespans. But now I want to tell you some things that are going to get you motivated to start introducing deliberate exercise into your routine. Three simple things to get you moving off your backside.

Here’s the first one: Some exercise is better than no exercise. Let me say it again, some exercise is better than no exercise. And you would be surprised at how low a level of exercise starts to reduce your risks around cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Are you ready? A brisk walk for a half-an-hour at least three times a week will significantly improve your health outcomes. Every day or most days is better. But just three half-hour walks at whatever constitutes a brisk pace for you, is all it takes. I know, I know – you don’t have time right? You have a long commute. You have kids to worry about. You work long hours. I know all of the excuses cause I used to use them all.

Remember to tell them all to your cardiologist when you’re lying on the stretcher in the emergency ward, trying to live through your heart attack would you? At some point we all need to come to grips with how utterly ridiculous the “I don’t have time” excuse really is. If you don’t have time to exercise, then you’d better get your affairs in order, because you’ll be making time to be sick … or dead.

Here’s the second simple thing that is going to get you moving – learn to exercise your options. We don’t all like the same thing. I absolutely love walking. You may not. Okay then, choose something that you do enjoy. Some people love to get on a treadmill and watch TV or listen to music or a podcast. A guy I used to work with Ron, he’s retired now, he loved swimming in the mornings and now, in his mid seventies, owns a sheep farm and is a fit as a fiddle. There are so many options and most of them are free. Just pick one – the one you like, the one you enjoy – and do some moderate levels of exercise.

There is never a time where I am telling you to become a marathon runner. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that very heavy exercise creates lots of free radicals, reduces your immune response, and can impact severely on your bones and joints, particularly as you get older. Moderate exercise at a brisk pace, three, four or five times a week for a half-an-hour is all we’re talking about.

And here’s the third great bit of news: when you exercise moderately you’re going to change your dietary choices almost automatically. Why? There’s a simple psychology that when you invest the time and energy in a bit of exercise, you’re not going to want to undo it all by shoving a packet of crisps or a bar of chocolate down your gullet. And really, I found that the positive reinforcement of moderate exercise really helped me change my dietary behaviour that contributed significantly to weight loss.

Doesn’t matter what age you’re at, what fitness level you’re at, it is never too late so start with some moderate exercise. And the wonderful thing about the amazing body that your God has given you is that it will guide you as to what is the right level of exercise. Starting off with something that works for you is absolutely the right thing to do – and little by little, as your fitness levels improve and your dietary levels change, you end up feeling so much better. Yesterday afternoon I went down to the local gym that I’m a member of (which is in itself a miracle) and ran and walked 6 km in 45 minutes, worked up a sweat, pumped some iron, and came out feeling fantastic.

That is such a long way from the days when I was grossly overweight … it all started with the first step. Remember – some exercise is better than no exercise. And your life depends on it.