If you want to drive your doctor nuts, just tell him that you are visiting an anti-aging medical clinic and will be receiving injections of human growth hormone, or HGH. Most doctors will roll their eyes and throw up their hands in disgust at the very idea that their patients would be visiting anti-aging medical clinics. That's because Western medicine views the growing anti-aging medicine industry as quackery. It's ridiculous, they say, for people to believe that nutritional supplements and injections of human growth hormone can reverse their biological age.
Interestingly, those very same doctors and critics don't think it's ridiculous at all for people to undergo radical surgical procedures, chemotherapy, radiation, and extremely toxic prescription drug therapy in order to extend their lives for a few more months. So there's a great contradiction in the minds of doctors who automatically think that anything they haven't been taught must be quackery; meanwhile, anything they prescribe to patients, no matter how bizarre or barbaric, is scientifically "proven".
So what's the real story when it comes to anti-aging medicine in the first place? Can daily injections of HGH and daily supplementation with certain nutritional supplements actually make you younger? The answer is a qualified "yes". It's qualified because these supplements and injections can only help you if you are simultaneously helping yourself by pursuing extremely healthy dietary practices, engaging in daily supplementation with superfoods like chlorella and spirulina, and following a rigorous program of physical exercise. In other words, you're not going to get much younger in terms of your biology or mental function just by sitting on the couch all day, and then getting off your feet only long enough to visit the anti-aging clinic in order to receive an injection, and another dose of nutritional supplements. However, if you have the motivation and self-discipline to follow a program of aggressive lifestyle changes, these injections and nutritional supplements can greatly multiply the effects of your own efforts and literally take years off your apparent biological age. Both your body and your mind will, within a few months, begin to function like the body and mind of a person who is years or even decades younger than you currently are.
There's not only tremendous clinical evidence to back this up, there's also personal experience. Today, at the age of 34, I am frequently mistaken for being in my early 20's, and yet when I was only 30 years old, and following rather unhealthy lifestyle practices, I looked almost 40. And it's not just appearance either: your internal organs, your body systems and your mind can also put on or take off years of apparent age depending on what kind of diet, supplements and physical exercises you choose to pursue. In other words, anti-aging technology is very real, and I strongly recommend people pursue strategies for reducing their age by starting with changes in their diet and exercise, and then, only after they've established healthy habits, pursuing additional leverage in terms of anti-aging supplements and medical procedures such as HGH injections.
So, what are the best anti-aging supplements? There are many, such as CoQ10, that have a tremendous amount of clinical evidence backing up their use as anti-aging supplements. However, I'm not a fan of taking supplements in their isolated form. I'd rather get these compounds and phytonutrients straight from nature, in whole food forms. So, when it comes to getting these anti-aging compounds into your body, the best source is to turn to these whole foods as they are found in nature: superfoods.
I frequently mention superfoods in these writings, and there's a good reason for it. They contain an vast number of health-enhancing phytonutrients. Today's scientists and doctors don't even have a clue as to how many phytonutrients might be present in a superfood like chlorella or spirulina, much less having a grasp on how those phytonutrients impact the human body. But the point is, you don't need to have an ingredients list of what is in a superfood in order to benefit from it. Your body knows what to do with it once you ingest it. If you trust your body and the wisdom of nature -- and recognize the nutritional benefits of consuming high-density food sources -- you will gain the benefits, regardless of your level of understanding of their nutritional composition.
The very best superfoods to consume in terms of longevity are chlorella, spirulina, sea vegetables (such as seaweed), broccoli sprouts (or any sprouts, for that matter), quinoa, and soy products like tofu or soymilk. Taken together, these products probably provide tens of thousands of compounds that are beneficial to human health. Perhaps in another 100 years, these compounds will be identified, studied and proven to be extremely helpful to human health, but in the meantime, they remain mystery compounds that are outside the understanding of modern medical researchers.
But there's something interesting in all this: these are the superfoods that I recommend people eat anyway, regardless of whether they're interested in longevity or pursuing the fountain of youth. In other words, there's really nothing special you need to do to pursue an anti-aging program that you aren't already pursuing just by being healthy in the first place. A healthy human individual is automatically on an anti-aging program, which is why they live longer. Sort of makes sense, doesn't it?
Conversely, most Americans and people in the so-called civilized nations are actually pursuing an accelerated aging program. If you want to accelerate your aging process, and shorten your life, the way to do that is to do what most Americans are doing already: avoid physical exercise, eat a large percentage of your diet from fast foods and junk foods, consume large quantities of white flour and refined white sugar, eat brand-name groceries sold in beautiful boxes and made with dirt-cheap ingredients that lack any nutritional content whatsoever, and of course, avoid supplementing with superfoods and other nutritional supplements.
It can also be claimed and backed up that the consumption of prescription drugs is an aging acceleration strategy as well. Prescription drugs, due to their toxicity, cause premature aging of the liver, the pancreas, the kidneys, and other important organs, which eventually leads to the premature death of people taking those drugs. So, when it comes to anti-aging strategies, avoiding prescription drugs certainly belongs near the very top of the list.
There's one more important consideration here when it comes to anti-aging strategies, and that's strength training. Given all of the documented benefits of human growth hormone -- and there are many -- it's no surprise that people are attempting to get more human growth hormone into their bodies through injections. However, you don't necessarily need injections to boost your levels of HGH. One of the best ways to boost your levels is to engage in strength training, and the larger your muscles you train, the more HGH your body produces.
For example, if you strength train your gluts and hamstrings by practicing some squats, your body, over the next 24 to 48 hours, will produce much higher levels of HGH naturally. And HGH is only one of the chemicals your body produces in response to strength training. It could be said that for every hour you work out, your body manufactures $10,000 worth of beneficial chemical compounds -- that is, it would cost $10,000 if you had to have them manufactured somewhere else and injected into your body. But by strength training, your body manufactures these on its own -- no needles required, no visits to the anti-aging clinic, and of course, no risk of having some artificial substance injected into your bloodstream. You just get the anti-aging medicine nature intends -- straight from your body.
And that's my last bit of advice when it comes to longevity: engage in regular strength training. Strength training will boost your bone mass density, it will enhance your mood and brain function, it will increase the oxygenation of organs and tissues throughout your body, and, of course, it will reduce your body fat and increase your lean body mass. These are precisely the same benefits that are being attributed to HGH injections, and yet you can achieve all of these simply by engaging in regular strength training. That's not to say that HGH injections don't work -- I'm actually a supporter of anti-aging medicine, but I believe that most people would do better by pursuing anti-aging lifestyle changes on their own before looking to clinics or other anti-aging companies to solve their aging problems for them.
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, and he has authored and published several downloadable personal preparedness courses including a downloadable course focused on safety and self defense. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams launched TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Wednesday, July 28, 2004
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