What is Aging?

Have you noticed?

Some 60-year-olds are old, yet some 80-year-olds are young.

What makes the 60-year-old old and the 80-year-old young? What is aging?

Aging embodies a wide range of physiological changes that limit our normal functions, render us more susceptible to a number of diseases, and raise our risk of death. 

(This is my condensation of comments from the following site: http://www.senescence.info/aging_definition.html)

So why have some people been successful at delaying the effects of aging?

Since only 15 percent of our health is related to genetics, the other 85 percent must explain why some people stay youthful into their senior years and others do not.

The key is maintaining healthy cells.

The body is comprised of about 70 trillion cells. Each of these cells has specific functions to perform. Cells that are defective will malfunction in some way, contributing to early aging. When too many cells malfunction, symptoms begin to appear.

Every second of your life, the body is making about one million new cells to replace cells that die. For those new cells to function perfectly, the amino acids, fatty acids and oils, vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates, oxygen, and water that make up a cell must be available when each cell is created. If those components are not available from the bloodstream at the time of the birth of the cell, the new cell will be defective for the life of the cell, and it will not function optimally.

Unfortunately, most of us are deficient in one or more nutrients and the new cells that our bodies create are defective. 

Nutritional deficiencies are just one of several factors that cause aging. I will address the causes of aging in subsequent blogs.