article on aging rev26

8/10/2019 Article on Aging Rev26

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Ori Hofmekler

Is Aging A Disease?(Can aging hit you at a young age? Can it take over your body just as your body is unprepared?)

Ori Hofmekler

Your body is under constant attack from stressors such as radiation, viruses, and bacteria yet you survive

every day. How is that? Three words: Resistance To Stress. A great body of evidence indicates thatamong all defense mechanisms built into your body, the most crucial and most immediate one is yourbodys stress response.

Your Stress Response and Aging

The capacity to respond to stress is your first line of defense against life-threatening danger. Whenactivated, your stress-response not only prevents immediate death, it also prevents damage of all kindsincluding that caused by aging. And if your stress response is not activated, the aging process will starttaking its toll. So you either become resistant to aging or prone to accelerated aging. It all depends on howviable your stress response is.

This incredible phenomenon is currently the subject of much scientific research. What particularlyintriguing is the realization that contrary to conventional thinking, aging is not necessarily age-related butrather stress related.

Science indicates that aging is a condition that affects the body same as other diseases. Only that aging is acontinuous process of degradation that creeps under the radar as it persistently deteriorates the body.Like other diseases, it seizes the opportunity to damage your cells and tissues when your body isunprepared and your capacity to respond to stress is inadequately low. But what exactly is aging? Whatcauses that?

What Causes Aging?

Aging is a metabolic error a disorder by definition. It is a process that takes over your body just as yourdefenses are weakened by factors such as dietary abuse, anabolic substances, drugs, chemical toxicity,injury or disease.

What drives the aging process is actually a growth pathway called mTOR (Mammailan Target ofRapamycin). When overactivated, mTOR not only accelerates your aging, it also increases yoursusceptibility to inflammatory diseases, diabetes and cancer; and it shortens your life-span.

Aging is indeed a super -disease a host of metabolic disorders and malignancies under one umbrella,caused by over-activated mTOR. What triggers mTOR to run out of control? Overfeeding and energy

overload. High calorie intake, high meal frequency and high glycemic load are the main culprits.

Aging is caused by bad nutrition a nd it s further promoted by frequent feeding. The same stuff that makesyou gain weight, also accelerates the aging death. And vice versa. Anything that inhibits mTOR and makesyou lose weight blocks and delays your aging. mTOR is inhibited by fasting and calorie restriction. It is alsoinhibited by nutrients that mimic the effect of calorie restriction on the body (see SAF Nutrients).

Can Aging Hit You at a Young Age?


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Your genetic information is stored in your DNA. To prevent breakdown and damage of your DNA, yourbody keeps a tight quality control system that constantly checks and repairs those encoding factors. And ifyour DNA is damaged beyond repair, your body will unleash demolition forces to search and destroy thosedamaged cells.

This is how your body has been programmed to keep quality control and prevent cancer. But that defensesystem will be utterly shattered if your capacity to respond to stress is compromised.

Instead of destroying sick or dysfunctional cells, your body will turn them senescent (old). Your body wouldrather do that to prevent them from getting malignant. This process is called geroconversion. Senescentcells cannot divide ; theyre dysfunctional and pro-inflammatory, as they damage cells and tissuessurrounding them. Geroconversion is irreversible. And it can occur at a young age. You cannot fix analready old tissue regardless to how old you are. The only way to keep your body young is by blockinggeroconversion.

Blocking Geroconversion

Cellular aging can be blocked and prevented. Your body has the option to destroy and recycle dysfunctionalcells rather than turning them senescent. But t hat option can only take place when your bodys stress -response is turned on and your mTOR is shut down. Keeping your stress-response viable is critical not onlyfor keeping your body resistant to aging, but also resistant to cancer.

Nature leaves no place for a doubt. Anything that inhibits your stress-response accelerates your aging anddeath. Overfeeding is the main inhibitor of your stress-response; it is the main culprit. Lack of physicalstress is the other one. Hence, plenty of food and lack of hardship make you prematurely old. This leads tothe following conclusion

Both nutritional and physical stress keep your body young.

Growing evidence indicates that nutrition is the key determining factor in how organisms age. Overfedorganisms tend to age and die at a younger age than underfed organisms of the same species. Studies onfruit flies have shown that natural selection plays an important role as well. Natural selection has to dowith why organisms plateau at a certain age. They plateau because natural selection no longer benefitsthem in an evolutionary way.

Species which are no longer subjected to natural selection plateau at a young age. They are susceptible topremature aging and related diseases. How does that apply to our society?

For most of our history we have been Gatherers-Hunters and we needed strong and durable individuals tokeep our genes going forward. Now, however there is no need to be strong in order to be successful.Natural selection no longer applies to our society; longevity no longer presents an evolutionary advantage.Consequently, most people tend to plateau at a relatively young age. Perhaps you too.

Nowadays, people love to sit in front of the TV or computer during down time while snacking on casual junk , and they do that so often that they dont even bother to wonder why. The average man acceptssymptoms of premature aging as normal. Conventional thinking refuses to acknowledge the possibility that


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The typical modern men diet is deprived of these life-extending nutrients. Some of the most critical SAFnutrients occur in dietary waste such as barks, roots, risomes and pits, which are no longer part of ourfood chain.

Yet, you can still find SAF nutrients in food products from non GMO wild type species. These include wildlygrown grasses, sprouts, herbs and berries as well as dairy (raw milk and whey products) from pastureraised animals and eggs from uncaged or wild birds. Wild catch fish and seafood are viable source of SAFnutrients as well. Sources exceptionally rich in critical SAF nutrients include Amur cork tree bark, oregongrape root, willow bark, Japanese knotweed root, cinnamon, turmeric root, ginger, roasted peanuts, cocoabeans, black and green tea, almonds, pine (bark, nuts and pollen), olives (leaves, sap and fruits), pits(kernels) of apricot, sour cherry and plum, unripe guavas and dates, and grape (skin and seeds).

Putting this strategy in practice

Carefully select your food. As a general rule, choose wild type low glycemic foods from the lower foodchain. Thats where SAF nutrients most likely occur. Your best choices: weeds, grasses, sprouts, roots,tubers, nuts, seeds, legumes and pasture raised dairy products, particularly whey protein. Coca beans(such as in raw dark chocolate with no sugar added), green tea, black tea and coffee, are particularly rich inSAF nutrients. Wild berries and cherries are great sources as well, only that fruits contain sugar whichsomewhat attenuates their benefits.

Avoid all GMO foods. Stay away from all process glycemic foods including pastries, sweetened cereals, cornand potato chips, conventional chocolate candies and ice creams. Avoid energy bars, protein bars andprotein shakes made with sugar including those labeled organic. Remember, sugar overspikes your insulinregardless to how it is labeled; it overstimulates your insulin and mTOR to inhibit your stress response andthus accelerate your aging along with related diseases.

The Applied Stress SAF strategy enables you to keep your mTOR under control and put the brakes on the

aging process. Some SAF nutrients such as berberine, salicin and resveratrol, have been shown to not onlytrigger genes that extend life-span, but also turn on mechanisms that negate degenerative ailments such asdiabetes, inflammatory disorders, neuro-degenerative diseases and cancer.

To maximize the strategys impact, keep yourself physically active. Applying physical stress to your dailyregimen will serve you best, and even more so if you practically exercise while fasting.

Final note

This is not a quick-fix anti-aging recipe. Nature has no such thing. Consider your life an on-going struggleagainst the forces of entropy. You must challenge your body to become resilient to entropy. You need to

actively survive or youll passively die. The more you recognize that and the more you adhere to thisstrategy, the higher your chance to not only extend your life, but also enjoy a superior quality of life in abiologically younger body.


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Ori Hofmekler

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