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DUBLIN, Ireland / Irish Independent / Health / Fitness / February 26, 2010

Ed Power on the new technology that is making us live longer

By Ed Power

Spare a thought for Ireland's post-millennium generation. As adults, they will be saddled with the mother of all national debts. Climate change will probably have reached disaster movie proportions by the time they hit middle age. They will grow up traumatised by childhood memories of Jedward.

GROWING APART: Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as lovers in Benjamin Button, one getting younger, the other getting older

Still, there is one glimmer of sunshine amid the gloom -- according to experts, those born in Ireland in the year 2010 have a realistic chance of reaching the grand old age of... 150. The infants of today, it is claimed, may well live up to 70 years longer than current average life-spans as science pushes back the boundaries of human life.

The idea of old age stretching far past 100 sounds like something from a science fiction movie. However, scientists say ongoing medical breakthroughs promise to completely redefine our idea of what it is to be elderly. In an article published in medical journal The Lancet several months ago, the Danish Aging Research Centre said that, as a consequence of rising living standards, there is a realistic likelihood most Westerners born since 2000 will make it to age 100 at least (so long as rising obesity problems across the US and Europe are kept in check).

"Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations," wrote one of the authors of the study, Kaare Christensen. "Very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries."

In addition to benefiting from higher living standards, many specific new developments have the potential to make the ripe old age of 150 a realistic goal.

Firstly, the medical community is taking huge steps forward in the field of prosthetics. A few decades hence, a non-functioning body part or organ will not longer be necessarily a threat to one's life.

In particular, the science of bone prosthetics is advancing rapidly, raising the possibility that future generations of old people may be spared arthritis, aching joints and impaired mobility.

Rather than having to rely on a walking stick or wheelchair, they will be able to simply book into a bone prosthetics clinic and come out all spruced up and nimble.

Similar breakthroughs will mean deafness and blindness are no longer an issue as we creep into our 80s and 90s. Artificial lenses will make eye-replacement surgery feasible and progression in laser technology means deterioration in vision can be halted and reversed.

"The good news is people will generally be functioning well -- it's more like they're postponing their aging process," said the Danish team.

At a cellular level, meanwhile, researchers are along the road of being able to grow and harvest body tissue by turning on and off genetic triggers in stem cells. They have already achieved this in mice, growing new skin cells from modified stem cells. Should advancements proceed at the present rate, "organ farms" may be only a few decades away.

Furthermore, experts increasingly believe that, by cutting back on our food intake, we could extend our life-span. In Boston, nutritionists have produced evidence that lowering your calorie intake by 25pc might help you live longer.

"I feel better and lighter and healthier," said one of the participants in the study. "But if it could help you live longer, that would be pretty amazing."

At first glance, the idea that eating less could help you carry on longer sounds counter-intuitive. However, experiments on lab rats showed that those whose diets were restricted lived 50pc longer.

More interestingly, work with rhesus monkeys indicates that, by cutting back on calories, we are less susceptible to disease. Monkeys on a restricted diet suffered a much lower incidence of diabetes, heart and brain disease and cancer.

Most intriguing of all is our deepening understanding of the process of aging itself. While factors such as smoking, stress and our level of regular exercise all have a bearing on the rate at which we grow older, geneticists have now uncovered a genetic link to cellular aging.

Studies of human chromosomes have revealed that, at either end of the DNA strands contained in every cell, are protective caps called telomeres. Each time a cell dies and replicates itself, these caps shorten -- the analogy offered by scientists is of plastic tips fraying at the end of shoelaces.

As telomeres grow shorter, the evidence is that we become more vulnerable to age-related ailments such as heart disease and certain kinds of cancer. If researchers can find a way to stop this decline, humanity may have arrived at a way to turn 'off' the aging process.

For kids today, aging may eventually be something you can halt or even reverse. Mind you, they'll still have to overcome those childhood memories of Jedward. [rc]

- Ed Power
Irish Independent

©Independent.ie

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HUNTINGTON BEACH, California / CNN Health / February 24, 2010

By Ashley Fantz


Spark friends Rebecca Coats and Eve Rasmussen
run in the Surf City marathon in Huntington Beach,
California, February 7.

Becki Coats was embarrassed, so embarrassed that she didn't want to show pictures of herself with her new grandchild.

"I couldn't stand thinking about people saying, 'Oh, my, what happened to you,'" she said. "Well, I'd become a fat, cuddly grandmother who cannot play with her own grandbaby, that's what."

Coats weighed 230 pounds. At 49, she was too heavy -- and sidelined with herniated disks and a bum knee -- to do her job as a firefighter, so her bosses gave her a desk job. But her physical pain was no match for the anguish to come when over the next year and a half her teenage son died in a car wreck, her mother died and she lost a friend to cancer.

"It was just constant bad news. I was told that if I didn't lose weight, I was going to lose my job entirely," she said.

Required to attend a work fitness program, Coats learned about Sparkpeople.com, a free fitness social networking site that, like Facebook, relies on its users to sustain it. They provide basic biographical information and weight loss goals and are automatically transferred to Spark Teams, small chat groups bound by similar shape-up goals.

The ad-supported site lets users build their own Sparkpages -- which can be linked to Facebook -- and have access to the lively written Sparkblog, which offers advice from certified trainers, the latest health articles and studies and recipes.

When Coats logged on she was connected with seven other women in a "40-something with 25 to 49 pounds to lose" message board. She quickly felt a kinship with these women she'd never met.

"They were talking about life -- jobs, husbands, their kids, traveling, getting to know each other like they were your girlfriends sitting at your kitchen table having coffee," she said. "It's not like you sign on and it's all about 'Drop that weight!'

"Here were women who are going to encourage me to get off my butt but weren't going to judge me if I didn't look like a swimsuit model in six months," she said.

Coats and several of the other women in her chat group met for the first time earlier this month to run the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, California. Each ran a different distance, and they met at the finish line.

"It meant a lot to us to do this together, something that each of us never considered that we'd ever do," she said.

Spark was launched 10 years ago by a wealthy early eBay investor. It is among the best known secrets in the weight-loss world. According to Comscore, it's the most visited fitness site with 7 million users (162 million page views in January), but Spark has taken a low-key, word-of-mouth approach compared to its big bucks advertising competitors like Weight Watchers.

"Spark is built on a truth that people love feeling like they're needed on a team," said founder Chris Downie who, along with two business partners, sold his late 1990s online auction site to eBay for a reported $72 million and started Spark.

Downie spends much of his day in his Silicon Valley home messaging back and forth with Spark users or reading what people are talking about in the Sparkcafe. (On February 3, among the 798,784 cafe chatters, nearly 10,000 people were involved in a "Should you eat breakfast?" thread.)

"I always had shyness and anxiety as a kid, and I wanted to create something that would allow users to remain comfortably anonymous if they wanted but still connect," Downie said.

"The key to me is that I felt supported and not judged," said Jennifer Lang, an upstate New York psychotherapist who is part of the group. After having her fourth child at 41, Lang weighed 228 pounds.

"I had not exercised in 20 years," she said. "Really. In 20 years. It just wasn't a part of my life until it had to become my life or else."

She found Spark while surfing the Internet and joined other Spark groups, including the pointedly named "Mothers with 2-year-olds." She faithfully filled in her nutrition tracker every day, a function that not only automates calories but tells you when you type in "Dannon yogurt" what the heck's really in that container and whether it's really good for you. It also provides ideas for substitute meals. Spark's software won't allow someone to program a diet less than 1,200 calories a day.

A year later, Lang is 50 pounds lighter.

Stories like Lang's and Coats' are ubiquitous on Spark. CNN.com signed on to the site and messaged with several users who said they'd shed 5 to 100 pounds.

Many said they didn't even mind being sent the flurry of Spark e-mails they say didn't strike them as spam. A few examples: "Where to find the nearest running trail near your home" and "5 Ways to Avoid Hitting the Snooze." A hip and glute stretch video was short and direct, and another e-mail containing a low-cal recipe did not, like so many in its genre, produce food that tastes like cardboard.

As Lang got healthier, Tammy Rhones signed onto the women's chat group as "Marathon Mom," even though the 49-year-old's problems with weight and a clubbed foot sidelined her from most sports over the past few years.

"I never got past being that little girl who thought she couldn't run," she said, describing how she would watch Ironman competitions with amazement at the monster triathlon. A trainer told her about Sparkpeople.

Shortly after registering, Spark "woggers" (runners who walk) began sending her instant messages, motivating her to join a real-life running club to work on her foot. Months later, in a burst of extra motivation, Rhones completed a 2.4 mile ocean swimming competition and 150-mile bike ride. She also started competing in Spark's online 5K and 10K races where users post their real-life mileage. It might take a week, but in the virtual races, the first one to complete the total distance wins.

"I've always had a competitive side, but Spark has given me the chance to appreciate my successes as opposed to comparing myself to everyone else," Rhones said after running the half portion of the Surf City marathon. "I don't need to look at a magazine anymore and say, 'Oh I need to strive for that.' I'm a size 12, not a size 6, and I'm happy with that, that's OK." [rc]

© 2010 Cable News Network.

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LONDON, England / The Telegraph / Lifeastyles / Health / Diet & Fitness / February 22, 2010

Hypnotist Paul McKenna has made millions from helping people beat their vices, but does it really work? Celia Walden goes under his spell to try and conquer her caffeine addiction

By Celia Walden

"I Can Make You Thin." The sentence can scarcely be heard above the cacophony of hailing coins. And yet this is what Paul McKenna is telling me, with a straight face, that he can do.

If you carefully follow the programme that his new weight-loss book and CD propagates, the world-famous hypnotist and motivational speaker believes that, without either food restrictions or exercise prescriptions, you will end up a healthy size.

Mind games: Celia Walden submits to Paul McKenna's cerebral techniques Photo: Martin Pope

Using neurolinguistic programming to reinforce his message, McKenna claims to have reprogrammed the brains of thousands of people into believing that they can control food, rather than allowing it to control them.

“To be honest my clients are female-heavy,” he laughs. “No pun intended. If it weren’t so sad it would be funny that, in the late 20th and early 21st century, a vast proportion of the Western world are either fat or starving themselves. People drink, gamble, take drugs and shop, but food is our drug of choice right now. It’s a dangerous one because it is relatively inexpensive and easily available.”

He says that in an independent study of his programme, 71 per cent of people lost weight and kept it off for two years. When 20 people tested it for GMTV, 90 per cent of them lost weight.

McKenna, who studied neuroscience at university in Louisiana and the UK, has written 10 best-selling books on subjects as varied as confidence, smoking, stress and how to be rich, earning him sales of £17 million in the UK alone. He also tours both sides of the Atlantic giving self-help seminars.

This venture, he says, is the one he feels most passionately about. His own family, he admits, had a tendency to overeat, something he rebelled against from a young age, refusing “to clear my plate the way I was told to”.

“Nowadays it’s not uncommon for people in high-pressure jobs to use food as a crutch in a similar way to smoking,” he says. Food provides a mild euphoria, he explains, releasing endorphins and reducing stress, which is why so many of us make our workloads bearable by continually snacking, guzzling sugar-free sweets, chewing gum or drinking litres of coffee.

Guilty of this last vice in particular, rather than having any desire to lose weight, I ask McKenna whether he might be able to use the principles of I Can Make You Thin to cure me of my caffeine habit.

Minutes later, I am standing up, feet slightly apart, trying to resist being pushed over by McKenna, who is pressing my right shoulder back with a gentle, but unrelenting force. Using Aikido, a Japanese martial-arts technique, to reduce emotional overwhelm, he asks me to conjure up a professional situation in which I am confronted by a seemingly impossible task.

“How high are your stress levels now?” he whispers. When I tell him 9/10, he exerts a stronger pressure. “Now imagine the same situation, but not reaching for coffee, and just managing it,” he commands. “How high are your stress levels now?” I hear myself reply 6/10, without knowing how I have reached that figure. Resisting the pressure of his hand forces me to steel what Yogis call “the core” – the very place stress attacks first.

A few minutes later I’m down to 5/10, able to picture sitting down to work at my computer without a vat of black filter coffee perpetually moving from hand to mouth. Suddenly McKenna says we’re going to stop it there. “It’s important for people with creative jobs to hold on to a certain amount of stress because it also acts as a driving force.”

Next is a quick blast of hypnotherapy. I’m slightly apprehensive as he tells me to lie back and close my eyes, keen not to wake up neighing like a sheep, or worse still: unable ever to enjoy food or drink coffee again. “Relax,” he tells me, his voice halfway between a seductive murmur and a gentle imperative.

“I’m going to try to see the world through your eyes. As you listen to my voice…” and then suddenly I’m somewhere else, not so much floating as buried beneath layers of something soft and duvet-like. I can still hear McKenna semi-chanting the basic truths that we all know but reject every day (“you do not need another cup of coffee in order to function” etc), but, my mind has become super-absorbent, accepting these facts as though I am hearing and understanding them for the first time. I’m fully conscious – aware of a car alarm outside and a builder shouting from nearby scaffolding, but very sleepy.

All of a sudden McKenna’s diction speeds up, his voice losing its mellifluous quality as he counts down from 10 to one and instructs me to wake up.

Still bleary-eyed, I make my way back to the office, bypassing Costa Coffee without so much as a glance. For two or three days I feel markedly less stressed, the kernel of tension in my belly all but gone. I’m down to one small coffee in the morning with breakfast. By the following week, however, I’m pretty much back to my usual five a day.

McKenna stresses that hypnotherapy is not a magical solution; it will often take more than one session for a message to become ingrained – although the seminars, costing £300 and attended by 500 people at a time, claim to bring results after a single day. Should either fail you, he has devised an ingenious idea: an I Can Make You Thin app, available to buy on iTunes, which can give you a blast of support from your iPhone. McKenna is so pleased with it that he is contemplating making an app for every area he works in.

“A lot of what I do with people depends on their motivation – the willingness of that person to change,” he tells me. “The rest is timing. If you get that right, it really does have the power to transform a person’s life.” [rc]

I Can Make You Thin, complete with DVD, £14.99, Bantam Press. See www.paulmckenna.com

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010

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NEW YORK, NY / The New York Times / Health / February 16, 2010



By Tara Parker-Hope

Soft drink makers increasingly are being accused of contributing to the nation’s obesity epidemic. Now a consumer advocacy group is questioning whether Coca-Cola should be allowed to sponsor a national heart health campaign.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has issued a letter to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute asking the agency to end its partnership with Coca-Cola in a program that raises awareness of heart disease among women. Diet Coke is the most prominent sponsor of the Heart Truth campaign, which includes heart graphics on Diet Coke cans and appearances by the model Heidi Klum as the “Diet Coke heart health ambassador.”

Heidi Klum. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Heart Truth

In a statement, the center’s executive director, Michael Jacobson, compared Coke’s corporate sponsorship with allowing a cigarette maker to fund a government anti-smoking campaign. The fact that the campaign is sponsored by Diet Coke, rather than a sugar-laden soda brand, is irrelevant, he said.

“Coca-Cola promotes heart disease by marketing drinks that contribute to obesity,” Mr. Jacobson wrote. “Coke has long sought to affiliate with or co-opt health groups and associate its brand with athletes and models. I fervently hope that N.H.L.B.I. officials understand that letting Coke bask in their agency’s good reputation does American hearts far more harm than good.”

Coca-Cola defended its participation in the Heart Truth program, saying in a statement:

We’ve used our communications and marketing expertise to reach millions of people with this important heart health message. We’ve made free heart health screenings available to thousands of people across the country. As a result of The Heart Truth campaign, awareness that heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death among women has risen to nearly 70 percent compared to 34 percent in 2000 when the campaign was first introduced. And since Diet Coke has been involved, awareness of The Heart Truth and our support of it has nearly doubled. We are extraordinarily proud of the work we’ve done in partnership with N.H.L.B.I. and Heidi Klum to have a positive impact on the lives of our consumers.

Mr. Jacobson also questioned why other food marketers, like the snack food company Snyder’s of Hanover and the Sara Lee Corporation, are co-sponsors of the campaign.[rc]

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

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BEIJING, Chaina / People's Daily / Life & Culture / Health / January 27, 2010

New research shows that video and console games help improve reflexes, memory, attention and spatial abilities in older people

Slaying orcs, charting military campaigns and gunning down bad guys might not sound like things seniors would be interested in pursuing for fun or exercise.

But they might want to start, some experts on aging say.

Research has found that off-the-shelf video games have the potential to help seniors age more gracefully, keeping their minds sharp and responsive through game play.

"There's a growing body of evidence that suggests playing video games actually can improve older adults' reflexes, processing speed, memory, attention skills and spatial abilities," says Jason Allaire, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University and co-director of its Gains Through Gaming Lab.

With the advent of the Nintendo Wii, there's even the potential that video games could provide seniors with an outlet for physical exercise.

The Wii uses special controllers that require arm and body movements, and a number of games have been developed for the system specifically to provide an exercise program.

One study found that a Wii bowling game boosted the heart rate of players at a senior center in Pensacola, Florida, by about 40 percent. The game required that the players, who were in their 60s, 70s and 80s, hold the controller like a bowling ball and swing it to hit the pins in a virtual bowling alley.

"The Wii is a perfect vehicle because it is so easy," Allaire says. "It's in a lot of senior centers already. Older adults already tend to use it."

The potential of video games to keep minds sharp was highlighted in a 2008 study in which 40 people in their 60s and 70s were asked to play Rise of Nations, a real-time strategy game for computers that can be found in many stores that sell video games.

"We wanted to see whether we could take an off-the-shelf game and see fairly substantial changes," says Art Kramer, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who participated in the study.

Researchers measured the cognitive abilities of the players, none of whom had played any video games for at least two years. They then had half the group play Rise of Nations for nearly 24 hours over an eight-week period.

Follow-up tests found that the seniors who played the strategy video game improved their performance on tests of memory, reasoning and cognition. There were particular improvements, Kramer says, in what's called executive control processes - abilities such as planning, scheduling, dealing with ambiguity and multi-tasking.

"As we get older, we show declines in many of those abilities," he says. "As a result of doing certain things, we end up doing them less often. The kinds of processes that were exercised in the video game were some of the processes that older adults show deficits on."

Allaire is part of a team that has been given a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to do further research on whether and how video games can boost memory and thinking skills in the elderly.

The researchers plan to have seniors play a Wii game called Boom Blox that involves using weapons such as slingshots and cannonballs to demolish on-screen targets. The research will also involve World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game, Allaire says.

The plan is to assess three aspects of video game-playing that are thought to drive cognitive improvements in older people, Allaire says. They are:

Attentional demand. "You have to pay attention to what's going on on the screen and react quickly," he says. "The more attention you expend on the video game, the better you get at focusing your attention."

Novelty. "There's a lot of research that, when we're put in novel situations or are learning novel things, it activates our brains," he says.

Social interaction. "People who stay more socially engaged have more cognitive function," he says. "We think people will interact with each other through collaborating and playing the game."

Although the research efforts show the possibility of using video games to help aging adults, Allaire noted that no studies have shown a transfer of video-game skills to real-world activities.

"Is it going to help you remember to take your medications, or to remember what you wanted to buy at the store?" he asks. "That really hasn't been proven."

Kramer says that seniors should consider video games as one of a number of things they can do to keep themselves sharp.

"I would not suggest that video games would be the only or even the best way to exercise those cognitive functions," he says, noting that physical exercise, social interaction and diet are already proven ways to promote mental abilities as you get older. "I would recommend they get out and ride a bike. I would recommend they learn a new language." [rc]

Source: China Daily/Agencies

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LOS ANGELES, California / The Los Angeles Times / Living / January 18, 2010

Physical activity is the No. 1 preventive-care tip for seniors

FIT AS A FIDDLE:
Bonny Sanfield, 71, pedals happily during a group ride of the "Old Spokes" in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer / MCT

By Judith Graham

If you're an older adult wondering what you should be doing to stay healthy, the most important answer is staying active.

"Physical activity is more powerful than any medication a senior can take," says Dr. Cheryl Phillips, a San Francisco physician and president of the American Geriatrics Society.

Much of the frailty that accompanies advanced age can be mitigated through exercise. Even moderate activity makes a difference. Frailty often leads to impairment and the loss of independence -- developments that can be preventable.

Phillips recently offered this preventive-care advice for older people:

Sure shots: "Get a flu shot every winter and a vaccination against pneumonia once after you turn 65," she says. The American Geriatrics Society also recommends a single vaccination against shingles after age 60 and a tetanus booster shot every 10 years.

Fighting the fall: Talk to your healthcare provider about falls and what you can do to prevent them. Each year, almost one-third of adults age 65 and older fall, resulting in nearly 450,000 hospitalizations and 16,000 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Getting rid of throw rugs, installing easy-to-grab bars in the bathroom and altering medication regimens can minimize the potential for a tumble.

Medication awareness: Your doctor should know every prescription, over-the-counter medication, supplement and vitamin you're taking. Once a year, Phillips says, review the list, asking, "Do I need to keep taking this?"

Checkup savvy: Have your hearing, vision and blood pressure tested every year, get dental checkups annually and cholesterol tests at least every five years (more often if your levels are high).

Weighty (non)issue: Don't worry about a few extra pounds. "People 65 and older actually do better with a little extra weight on them," Phillips says. Getting sufficient nutrition is more important.

Early detection: Secondary prevention is aimed at finding illness early enough. This includes periodic screenings for colon cancer and mammograms for women who have a life expectancy of at least five years. Men should discuss prostate cancer screening with their doctors. Women can stop pap smears for cervical cancer after age 65 if three previous tests have been normal.

Supplemental help: Since bones thin with age, take calcium (at least 1,200 milligrams a day) and vitamin D (at least 600 international units) and periodically assess your risk of osteoporosis, Phillips says. Otherwise, she advises against taking vitamins, saying that older adults should get nutrients from well-balanced meals.

Smoke screen: If you're a man and you have a history of smoking, you may want to get an abdominal aortic aneurysm screening once between the ages of 65 and 75, according to the American Geriatrics Society. Men are five times more likely than women to develop these bulges in the aorta, a major blood vessel, that can rupture and cause uncontrolled bleeding.

Take control: Tertiary prevention means controlling illnesses that exist. "Make sure you have good knowledge about your diabetes or heart disease and that you understand the things that can impact it and that you can manage," Phillips says.

Start good habits: Last but not least come lifestyle changes that people know they should adopt but still ignore. Give up smoking; drink only in moderation; spend time with other people (try not to become isolated) and get active -- "anything you do with any kind of regularity will make a difference," Phillips says. [rc]

By Judith Graham
E-Mail: jegraham@tribune.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

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LONDON, England / The Times / Life & Style / Health / January 16, 2010

James Dulgan, our fitness expert reveals how to keep your body in optimum shape at every age

In your 20s

What’s happening to your body
You can do anything. Your ability to recover from injury is at its peak and you can take on tough exercise. But remember, you’ll pay for how you live now in later years, so look after yourself.


Simon Cowell on holiday on a jet ski

Related Links
The 10 best fitness websites
Abs fab: how the six pack took over
Will you live to 120?

How to keep in shape
Make sure you play sport a couple of times a week. Martial arts are a good idea to work off that testosterone. At the gym, try supplementing weights work with a yoga class once a week, because men have a tendency to tighten up. We’re not as flexible as women because we don’t have as much of the hormone relaxin in our system (in turn, because of their increased relaxin, women need to make sure they do weights work to stabilise their joints). If you’re worried that real men don’t do yoga then you’re clearly not a real man.

In your 30s

What’s happening to your body
You need to start looking after yourself, not just by exercising, but with good nutrition and by drinking lots of water. If you’ve been abusing your body since your teens, you’ll start to look like a woman. I’m serious: man boobs and a fat butt are common consequences of alcohol, bad food and toxins creating more oestrogen in the system and causing a more feminine body shape. Beer is probably the worst offender — recent research from Oregon State University found beer hops to be the most powerful substance in terms of oestrogen replacement for post-menopausal women.

How to keep in shape
Towards the end of your thirties your muscle strength starts to diminish, so make sure that you do resistance work (lifting weights, preferably free weights) backed up with some cardio, maybe a bit of boxing or a light run a couple of times a week. Taking up jogging will not be the answer to all your problems. It’s not a good idea to do just cardio work because the increased respiration speeds up the rate of oxidisation in the body’s cells, which ages you. Those dumbbells matter — the more muscle you have the faster your metabolism will be and so you’ll maintain a better body composition with less fat.

Start thinking about taking some supplements — a couple of fish oils and multivitamins — to make sure that your system is well nourished.

In your 40s

What’s happening to your body
You need to be much more conscious of what you eat because it will start to show on your body more. Eat fruit, vegetables and especially fibre, not least because there’s an increased chance of colon cancer in your 40s. If you’re not eating enough green vegetables, try a fibre powder (available in health food shops). Your metabolism starts to slow down, your testosterone production slows too, but remember — if you still challenge your body, your body will do it’s best to keep up.

How to keep in shape
Believe it or not, you should be aiming to exercise six times a week — the standard three days won’t be enough if you want to look and feel good. Don’t worry if you’re new to exercise. Start with a brisk walk and take it from there. If you can walk into a room, you can do a simple squat and lunge — there’s no excuse for not being able to do these basic movements. It doesn’t have to be an hour’s slog in the gym — run around with the kids, teach them to surf, go to the gym and don’t dismiss Pilates or yoga. As you get older you develop faulty breathing patterns from being stressed at your desk, so breathing is a huge part of being healthy and lots of men find that Pilates and yoga help. I’ve had clients get up to 90 per cent more oxygen per breath. As a result, they find they have much more energy and less stress. A tip for feeling instantly less stressed is to breathe like a baby — breathe right into your tummy, then push the breath out using your tummy muscles, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.

In your 50s

What’s happening to your body
Think of your body like a creaky door — you’ve got to keep it oiled and moving. Exercise is less about intensity and duration and more about doing something little and often. Look at exercises to replicate your daily activities so that you can do them more safely. At my gym, for example, if you’re a lorry driver, loading deliveries, we’ll get you to do squats and twists.

How to keep in shape
Make sure that you drink plenty of water and eat lots of fruit and veg. A simple way of looking at it is that you want to get clean (avoiding foods that are processed and full of additives) and lean. Stay away from high-impact sport because your powers of recovery are slower. Most guys are at the peak of their careers now and it can be a stressful decade — to release tension, try boxercise or pad work with an instructor.

In your 60s

What’s happening to your body
Your body processes are slowing down. Muscle mass declines, connective tissue deteriorates and your bones are a little more brittle. The good news is that you can still turn around some of the damage.

How to keep in shape
Keep up the swimming and golf and take fish oils to help with joints that may be deteriorating. It’s not too late to pick up weights but do talk to a professional first if you are new to fitness. Don’t be afraid to try your local gym and ask for a bodyweight programme incorporating squats and lunges. Your goal is to build up or maintain joint and muscle strength so that you can remain independent. [rc]

For more information, bodyism.com

Copyright 2010 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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LONDON, England / The Sunday Times / Life & Style / Diet & Fitness / January 10, 2010

Combining the latest knowledge from the world’s experts,
over the next three weeks we've a ten-point plan to get you into shape


Edwina Ings-Chambers

It’s time to get holistic about your health. Not just because it’s January and time for new resolutions, and not just because the release of the movie of the international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love will have us all feeling the need to get some spiritual speed in our lives.

No, holistic health is important because it is not just about how the body works, it’s about understanding how our minds and emotional selves play a part in keeping us healthy.

Over the next three weeks, we will outline a brilliant 10-point plan to get you physically and emotionally to a place of genuine wellbeing. We will show you how to recover your energy, how to stop your past from holding you back, and how to measure your homocysteine levels, a key to good health that most of us have never heard of.

We will also have a special issue on how to concentrate on you: how to find “me” time, how to feel strong and confident in yourself, how to find a purpose in life and how to exercise smart. Mental health is just as important as physical health when it comes to how we feel and how we look, and once we’re physically and mentally healthy, everything we wish for in life has a way of coming true.

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A better way to eat, starting now

Alongside all of this, we will feature delicious recipes from the Nordic Diet, a diet for life that’s not about punishing yourself and cutting back on calories but about guiding you to eating healthy, but scrumptious, food, the kind your body actually needs to function at its optimal level.

To kick it off, we’re focusing on the fundamentals. We look at how to get your gut working properly, because what your body digests and absorbs affects your energy, your life span and your state of mind, as well as your general health; how to relax properly, with exclusive tips from the LA guru everyone is talking about; and which health and beauty supplements you should choose from the thousands on offer. We also introduce you to the best foods for good digestion and to protect against ageing. This new year, there really could be a whole new you — we’ll drink (two litres of water a day) to that.

1: LEARN TO RELAX

According to the yoga guru Maya Fiennes, learning to chill out is one of the most powerful ways to reinvent yourself. “Relaxation is key to crea­ting a happier, healthier self,” she says. “For most women, there is just too much going on, not just physically, but in our heads as well. Our minds are on overload. If you learn to breathe properly and focus on the present moment, you will find it easier to tap into your intuition, that little voice that tells you what it is that would really make you happy.”

A former classical pianist, Fiennes, who has been dubbed the Nigella of relaxation, has dev­eloped a celebrity following in LA, where she lives with her music-producer husband, Magnus (brother of the actors Ralph and Joseph). It’s not hard to see why she is in such demand — she offers strategies that anyone can try without having to check into an ashram.

Fiennes’s tips are startlingly new because they are quick and maximise those dead zones of time — queuing in the supermarket, sitting in traffic or waiting for the computer to do its thing. They are based on balancing the chakras, the seven power centres of the body. And the good news is, you can access this energy without contorting your limbs or standing on your head. [rc]

Chakra-balancing on the go
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Copyright 2010 Times Newspapers Ltd.