Reading “The Aging Myth” by Dr Joseph Chang

Not so long ago, I went to visit a friend who introduced me to the AgeLoc Technology. That is the skin care and pharmaceutical products that are produced by the approach of finding solutions by targeting ‘the source of aging’, which are the youth cell clusters in our body that affect our aging process.

It turns out that the cellular ‘power plants’ called Mitochondria fuel our cells with energy. As we age the number and the effectiveness of Mitochondria declines and our gene expression loses its youthfulness and we begin to look and feel older. This is what I learned from a demonstration of the Nu Skin products at my friend’s house.

Being a research oriented person, I immediately launched into an investigation through the Internet and through asking enormous amounts of questions from those friends who know about these things, like doctors and such.

It did not take me any time at all to find books about it. The one above the rest was easy to spot as it is a New Your Times Best Seller called The Aging Myth; unlocking the mysteries of looking and feeling young by Joseph Chang PH.D.

Dr Chang is the Chief Scientific Officer at Nu Skin and has an experience, spanning decades in research and development of medicines for many illnesses. According to him, at some point he lost the interest to cure deceases and instead started concentrating in finding ways to keep people healthy without ever having to fall ill in the first place. His aim is to give humanity a possibility of a long and healthy lifespan that allows for a meaningful life until we die healthy. It would also save enormous amounts of money in healthcare costs worldwide.

I was extremely impressed by his and his company’s approach. It makes sense to prevent and care instead of trying to fix something that is broken. In my mind this approach is analogical to the positive psychology movement that also believes in maintaining the human mentality at high rather than trying to fix the low. It is a well researched phenomenon that a sum of the effort of a group is more than its parts and anti-aging industry has certainly come a long way with its most advanced methods that benefit humanity in finding solutions to keep us healthy and happy longer.

Dr Chang’s quest is to change the aging paradigm from being our destiny to being a choice of a lifestyle that nurtures and maintains the human body healthy by preventing and supplementing rather than curing and fixing.

I must say that I took the book to bed and started reading and never stopped. I was very intrigued and inspired. I actually immediately afterwards bought several of them to loan and send to friends and relatives to spread the good news.

It is a phenomenal feeling when one finds something that ‘clicks’ so well within that it prompts to immediate action.

In my case it is into active aging action as I feel the need to try and see if I can beat my great grandmother’s 105 years of active and healthy living. The book really made me remember her story. The introduction to my great-grandmother's story is now on the second page of this blog for everyone to see. It is my challenge and my inspiration.

I recommend Joseph Chang’s book to you as a great inspiration. It is a book with great science behind it but so easily read that it allows you to contemplate on what you should do to take up a challenge of active and graceful aging.

I will start the story of my great-grandmother Iida and keep adding to the challenge as I go on in my own quest for growing older, younger and healthier.

Useful references:

BARTLETT, M. R. 2010. Nutritional and Genetic Strategies for Longevity. Anti-Aging Medical News, Winter.

CHANG, J. 2011. The Aging Myth; Unlocking the Mysteries of Looking and Feeling Young, Aylesbury Publishing.

Contemplation on how the slogan ‘Aged to Perfection’ fits with the slogan ‘Growing Younger’

Lately, most frequently popped up slogans of my Internet searches on active aging have been ‘Aged to Perfection’ and ‘Growing Younger’. It has lead to me thinking a lot about their meaning in relation to active aging. Somehow they seem to be in opposition to each other but at the same time I am suspecting that they co-operate to form a meaningful framework for the dignified aging paradigm.

For me the term ‘Growing Younger’ has two connotations. The first implication is that the age we are in is not acceptable and that as an aging person, especially a woman, we have to abide by the popular culture of our western world and by the Hollywood model which encourages us to do whatever we can to look younger and to keep up appearances that youth is desirable over mature age.

The second suggestion is more positive, as I am sure the slogan was meant to be, that we as aging persons are not bound by the destiny but instead can by our own actions keep our health into older age. In fact that is how I found this slogan.

It first popped up to my consciousness from the realage.com while doing ‘the real age test’ that tells you what your age is in relation to your health.  The suggestion in doing the test is especially to make people aware of their health situation that can affect the process of aging if not attended to.

The slogan ‘Aged to Perfection’ calls to that personal  and fundamentally positive and humorous mindset that always sees the world through the ‘pink classes’ allowing the positive experiences counter the negative experiences . It ensures that despite the pitfalls of the aging process, it is our own attitude that dictates how we tell the story of our lives. In fact it first showed up in my consciousness while searching for suitable cards to send to friends celebrating their mature age (the 80^th) birthdays. 

This week, I have also been reading an interesting book called Positivity by one of the leaders of ‘the positive psychology movement’, namely Dr Barbara L. Fredrickson. I have been really impressed by her research for some time now and would recommend her ‘positivity ratio’ test to everybody in any age group.

According to her research the 3-to-1 ratio of positive experiences overriding negative experiences can make a huge difference in how our lives are shaped. From there we can detect that the way we experience our own life is fashioned by how we actively decide to train our brain to be aware of the positivity of any situation that can affect how we feel about living to older age.

For me it is interesting to note that while we are celebrating birthdays, be they of any age, we can let the light heartedness of the moment take charge and for that day see the humour of age creeping upon us, but when we are consumed by our daily tasks and focused of a particular ailment or fault we detect in our body, we suddenly see the whole assumed horror of aging and feel like needing to look young makes us think better about ourselves.

My suggestion then is to celebrate every day as a birthday and look at any given situation from a positive mindset rather than a negative one. It is how we each of us can take charge to actively colouring our lives ‘pink’ or ‘purple’ or whatever the fancy takes us at any given moment of time while ‘Growing Younger’ to the ‘Aged to Perfection’.

References:

http://www.realage.com/  - take ‘the real age test’ here

http://www.50thbirthdayparty.com/aged-to-perfection.html  - find cool birthday cards here (the picture on this blog is from here)

http://www.positivityratio.com/  - take ‘the positivity ratio’ test here