The global anti-aging industry was reportedly worth $250 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow to over $331 billion by 2021. This is hardly surprising given our infatuation with looking and feeling young. However, many of these industry solutions are not promoting the more fundamentally sound ways to achieve a more youthful appearance and experience.
Detoxify Your Body
It’s a common adage among older people that their age is largely to blame for their general aches and pains. However, a more accurate way to explain these maladies is that each year of accumulating toxins and nutrient deficiencies has cumulatively worn out the body and mind. This is a primary reason why aging has accelerated in recent decades, to the point that diseases that were nearly exclusive to senior citizens, are now showing up in people in their early 30s.Master Nutrition and Digestion
It’s common sense that your diet will have a major impact on how eloquently you age. Processed and fast foods have infiltrated our society, and the results are showing up as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and much more. We wouldn’t expect to put dirty fuel into our vehicle, and not eventually suffer some type of performance setback.As most natural health enthusiasts can agree, shifting to more whole, organic foods is an excellent first step to start feeling and looking younger. Choosing foods high in antioxidants will amplify those benefits due to their anti-aging qualities.
A caveat to embracing the whole foods diet as an anti-aging strategy is that you need to choose foods that will digest properly inside your body. This may look a bit different for everybody, but, for example, whole grain bread may not be a good option for everyone. Food is not always the bottom line, but rather your digestion, and how effectively it breaks down your food and extracts nutrients to shuttle them into the blood and circulated throughout the entire body.
If this digestive process breaks down, your well-intended food choices go up in smoke. This is why mastering your food intake according to your digestive capacity is smart, and why cleansing and fortifying your digestive tract and organs should be considered a major priority. Once this is done, those delicious and healthy foods will fuel your body properly and provide a much more youthful feeling.
Optimize Your Immunity
We are all going to be exposed to biological and chemical threats on a daily basis throughout our lifetime. This is impossible to avoid and each time we are assaulted, it takes a toll on our bodies, leaving us a bit weaker and feeling a bit older each day. This process is often so glacial that no one really notices until the tipping point is reached and symptoms are more obnoxious.Knowing that we can’t stop this risk, it becomes very important to optimize our immunity so that any foreign invaders or challenges to the immune system are dealt with more swiftly and efficiently in order to remove the offender. Failure by the immune system to do this properly results in infections and toxins taking root inside your body and slowly eroding your health.
To strengthen you immune system, consider foods and herbs that cleanse the digestive system and detoxification organs, to create a terrain that repels germs and noxious offenders and aids your body’s natural removal processes. In terms of foods, this could be garlic, onion, ginger, dark leafy greens, lemons, and berries. For supplements, you can’t do much better than medicinal mushrooms, vitamin C, turmeric, essential oils, vitamin D and probiotics.
Spoil Your Skin
Your skin is a great reflection of your internal health, which will always be the foundation to a youthful and glowing appearance. In addition to that, people should consider the external treatment of their skin so they can mitigate sources of environmental damage.First on the list for saving your skin is addressing the raw elements, most importantly, sun exposure. While it’s true that reckless sun exposure can accelerate the aging process, it’s also true that appropriate and smart sun exposure can enhance it. To use it effectively, get at least 15 – 30 minutes a day of sun exposure on at least half your body during the sunny seasons, then cover up or put on a natural sunscreen when it makes sense for you to do so (just when your skin starts to turn pinkish).
Support Your Joint and Muscle Health
Nothing defines aging better these days than rickety, aching, and sore muscles and joints. It’s commonly believed that this is just a natural part of the aging process, and while that may be partly true, what’s even more important to understand is that it happens way more prematurely than necessary.A strong diet and good digestion will help stave off this aggravating process, as well as maintaining a healthy weight and engaging in daily moderate exercise. The key is to keep the body in an alkaline and “flow” state, to support the fluidity and natural movement of joints and muscles.
Of course, there are some great supplemental choices that do an excellent job at supporting these areas, but one that is gaining a nice reputation is astaxanthin.
Now, keep in mind that this is certainly not an exhaustive list to looking and feeling younger, but is a great place to start. There are many books written on this subject because of the complexity and fascination with the aging process. In addition to these tips, you can also consider balancing your hormones, improving your heart health, releasing stress, appreciating nature, exercising, getting proper sleep, grounding, and meditation. All of these work well on their own, and combining a few will develop a synergy that will make you more timeless.
