Anti-aging medicine practitioners are always being asked, "Does anti-aging medicine really work?" For this cartoon, I thought it would be funny to imagine what might happen if the pills and injections worked a little too well. "Anti-aging medicine" is really a misnomer. Technically, there's no such thing as anti-aging. We're all moving forward in time, and our biology is ticking away the same seconds on the clock just like everything else. The real question here concerns "health enhancement," because enhancing your health will reduce your apparent age and make you look, feel and act younger. Nutrition, exercise, sunshine, fresh air and strict avoidance of all toxic chemicals in foods, personal care products and home environments will make you appear to age much more gracefully than everybody else. But that's all relative to the "normal" aging process observed in society, which is really the result of a widespread aging acceleration program.

The aging acceleration program

Most consumers, you see, are on an aging acceleration program. They're eating fried foods, drinking milk and soda, coating their skin with toxic sunscreen and perfume products, washing their clothes in cancer-causing chemical detergents, taking disruptive pharmaceuticals and destroying their own health in every way imaginable. That's the aging acceleration program to which virtually all consumers currently subscribe. If you want to appear to benefit from "anti-aging," all you have to do is avoid the aging acceleration program that everybody else is on. It's that simple. You'll look (and feel) far younger by comparison. Some of the people I went to college with, who are about my same age, right now appear to be in their 60's! (I'm 38). They're overweight, suffering from joint pain, high cholesterol and depression, and they're no doubt already metabolizing cancers and liver disorders that will be diagnosed later in life (if they don't die of a heart attack first). Meanwhile, thanks to great nutrition and a complete avoidance of toxic chemicals, I'm doing Capoeira and gymnastics like I was still in my 20's. The key to anti-aging is simply opting out of the accelerating aging program everybody else is on. People look at me and they say, "Gee, you look really healthy for almost being 40," but the truth is that my health is quite normal. It's everybody else whose health is degenerating at an unnatural, accelerated pace.

Myths about aging and disease

The diseases that doctors attribute to "aging" are, in reality, not related to aging at all. The mind doesn't really fade away as you age. That's complete hogwash. Your bones don't just disappear as you age, and the body doesn't become weaker and more diseased with each passing year. Those are just myths perpetrated by conventional medicine. These myths are popular because they appear to be true based on observing the masses. If you look at most people, they are indeed losing their bones, their bodies and their minds with each passing year. But here's the catch: That isn't due to aging, it's due to all the toxic chemicals they consume combined with their chronic nutritional deficiencies and lack of physical and mental exercise. In other words, observing the rapid deterioration of the health of the people living in modern society today is not, in any way, a legitimate assessment of the effects of aging on the human body. You only see the effects of a lifetime of exposure to synthetic chemicals, food additives, dangerous pharmaceuticals, vitamin D deficiencies and ongoing abuse of the body. Naturally, that's going to lead to Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, liver damage, cancer, heart disease and so on. It has nothing to do with any sort of natural aging progression.

But does anti-aging medicine really work?

Back to the issue of anti-aging medicine, some practitioners in the anti-aging world promise to take a typical consumer full of toxic chemicals and suffering from nutritional deficiencies, then jolt them back into a state of youthful vigor through hormone injections and high-dose vitamins. In my opinion, that approach not very useful because it fails to address the lifestyle decisions by the consumer, and it's the lifestyle (foods, exercise, supplements, stress, exposure to toxins, etc.) that ultimately determines how old or young you look and feel. In other words, you can't just pump someone full of synthetic hormones while ignoring their daily use of cancer-causing personal care products. You can't give them high-dose B vitamins while ignoring the complete lack of nutrition in the foods they routinely eat. And I can guarantee that you'll never make anyone younger unless you get them to engage in more exercise, more sunlight, more play time and LESS chronic stress. Anti-aging medicine can do very little for someone unless the whole patient is making a shift towards a healthier, non-toxic lifestyle. Of course, the best anti-aging doctors take that into account, and they promote a program of wholesale lifestyle changes combined with aggressive nutrition programs. That style of anti-aging medicine can, indeed, work miracles. I've experienced it myself. I look, feel and act younger today than when I was 30. My "anti-aging medicine" was a permanent shift away from unhealthy foods and consumer products, combined with aggressive nutritional supplementation and superfood consumption. So from that point of view, anti-aging medicine really works. But I wouldn't call it anti-aging medicine in the first place. I would just call it common health sense. Eliminate all the toxins in your life (food, personal care, lawn care, home care, etc.) and let nature provide your food, your sunshine and your medicine. You'll find yourself looking and feeling younger very rapidly (espeically if you combine it with the daily consumption of raw fruit and vegetable juices).