EVERYONE wants to stay young, there is no doubt about that. If you want to make yourself or your products popular all you need to do is claim that you have the secret to staying young.
In Zambia most of the people are below 20 years old. This is beginning to change as more and more people are living longer as the country develops.
One of the common signs of development is a fall in the birth rate and a rise in the life expectancy.
When you visit Europe, one of the most interesting things you will notice is the almost complete absence of babies and young children. Zambia is heading that way too.
When I told some of our visiting colleagues a couple of years ago that the retirement age in the university where I work was 55 years, they were shocked.
They told me in their country that is middle-age and your career is just taking off at that point.
In their university the retirement age was 75 years at the time. Things have changed in Zambia too.
Have you ever had that niggling temptation to avoid an old school friend? I must admit that I have.
Though with time now, meeting an old primary or secondary school mate is becoming rarer and rarer still.
However, you sometimes have the feeling that you look much older than your old school mates.
You don’t want to be shown up so you kind of sneak away from them unobtrusively.
Then you wonder secretly to yourself, what is this guy’s secret?
Many women are even less discrete about it and simply stagnant their age at 30.
They also go into the local drugs store and ask for creams to make them look younger.
Men tend to be a little more timid about it and they will draw you aside, while looking over your shoulders to see if anyone is listening. Then they whisper in your ear “Doctor, what can I do to look younger”?
So,I often scribble something hurriedly and thrust it into their hands. So today I want to scribble a little something and thrust it into your hands by answering three questions.
1. What are the main causes of ageing?
2. What are the medical problems caused by ageing?
3. What can I do to stay young and healthy?
What are the main causes of ageing?
It’s not clear what causes ageing and why some people age more quickly than others.
What is clear is that they are two things at play, the genes (what is inherited from your parents) and the environment in which you are living.
You can probably not do anything about your parents and what you inherit from them, but you can certainly do something about your environment.
It appears that the body or the cells of the body are programmed to live for a specified period of time. In other words like any product they have a shelf life.
When this period is reached the body begins to deteriorate. It is called programmed cell death. This process of degeneration can progress faster depending on the way the body is treated.
If the body is exposed to an unsafe environment the body cells will age much faster.
The key things that the body or the body cells needs to keep young and healthy are oxygen and food.
The key food the body needs in the short term is sugar (or glucose) for it to generate energy.
Fats are used as a storage reserve in case the body can not immediately get sugar.
When it cannot, it breaks down the stored fat to produce energy.
However, in the long term the body needs proteins in order to grow, repair and heal.
The key protein which is important in healing and repair is a stretchable protein called collagen fibre.
Oxygen is essential to burn the sugar to produce the energy that runs the body. Just like we need oxygen to light up the charcoal or to ignite the combustion engine to run the brazier or the car respectively.
In this same way this process creates the energy that runs the body. The oxygen and the food are brought to the body or body cells by blood vessels.
With ageing these blood vessels narrow and clog up. This creates an energy shortage in the body, very much like the energy shortage being faced by many of our countries in this region.
Have you ever had the feeling being around elderly people that they seem to generally lack energy and look tired?
The result of this shortage of energy is that cells begin to shrink, degenerate, become less active and generally age.
So, the things that will keep the cells young and active are healthy blood vessels and lots of repair proteins (collagen fibre).
This is produced when you eat white meat (fish and chicken), fruits and vegetable fats.
These contain collagen fibres and good fats (omega 3 fats) that keep the blood vessels clean and healthy.
What are the medical problems caused by ageing?
With increasing age the inner lining of blood vessels get filled up with bad fats (animal fats) over the years. The blood vessels become narrow and hard.
The supply of food and nutrition to the body cells falls and energy shortages in the body result.
There is also a fall in the repair protein collagen so the body cells cease to repair themselves efficiently.
The result of this if we start from the head to the toes are, loss of hair , wrinkling of the skin, loss of elasticity of the skin and loss of subcutaneous fat.
You will notice as people get older how their cheeks become sunken and the cheek bones become more prominent. The forehead juts out and looks so shiny all of a sudden.
The energy shortage leads to loss of all the storage fat reserves so they begin to look generally smaller than they did before.
You notice how your former headmaster who used to look so tall and intimidating now looks so frail and small. The hair becomes thinner and frail.
The deep hair pigment is lost and it begins to grey especially on the temple areas of the head. In many men balding of the top of the head occurs as the hair begins to fall off. There is a decline in speed of reasoning, memory, abstract thinking, vision and hearing.
The margin between the coloured part of the eye (the iris) and the white of the eye (the sclera) develops a rim of whitish flakes due to deposited fats.
This is seen as a halo, what is called the age ring or arcus senilis. In men the jaw gets smaller and the lower teeth develop gaps.
A good sign that you are getting older is the increasing difficulty to eat meat with the constant need for tooth picks, to dislodge pieces of meat between the gaps in your teeth. The teeth may loosen and fall off.
This makes eating difficult, further worsening the energy shortage in the body.
The blood vessels to the heart, brain, legs and all other parts narrow. This leads to increasing pain in the chest, calves muscles (walking cramps), increase risk of strokes and a decline in sexual performance.
Another common problem is in the bones and the joints. The joints lose their elasticity and flexibility.
Notice how the young man who used to bounce around in the corridors of your office, moves around now, uneasily like a door with rusty hinges as he has gotten older.
You will notice that with age it gets increasingly difficult to climb long series of stair cases.
The back and joints are a constant source of pain.
This is because of the loss of the stretchable protein collagen. So you need to smile and stretch more to keep the body producing lots of collagen.
What can I do to stay young?
The little note that I thrust into my nervous clients shaky hands only contains three words. Which are white meat, fruits and vegetable fats. These foods are the key solution to keeping young.
If we can take care of our blood vessels, by keeping them from narrowing and ensure a good supply of repair protein, than we can help delay the ageing process.
You may have noticed how the oldest people in the world are from Asia or of Asian origin. This is primarily because of the predominant type of diet.
In many Asian countries the diets are rich in sea food (white meat), vegetables (Vitamin C) and vegetable oils (rich in omega 3 and 6 fats).
These elements help keep the vessels clean and contain an abundant supply of repair protein collagen.
In addition you need to smile more and stretch yourself more. Stretch yourself more both physically and mentally.
When you smile you use up the collagen fibres and you encourage the body to produce more collagen.
When you stretch your joints and body the body is required to produce more collagen fibre.
This helps to keep the body cells repairing better, the joints, skin, teeth, hair, bones and blood vessels in good health.
