Being long-lived means living long. Longevity is both desire and fear: desire is inherent in man, especially if it concerns a longed for immortality (being long-lived is equivalent to feeling almost eternal, and each year more favors the dream of invulnerability), fear concerns the ways of ‘aging.
We want to be long-lived as long as this implies a state of global well-being and the health of the mind and body. To age, therefore, but to age well. The doubt that each arises when reflecting on longevity is therefore in what conditions age like ninety or one hundred years can be reached.
It is, in fact, an age that was once unthinkable: around 1850 life expectancy at birth (how many years it is likely to live when you come into the world) began to grow especially in the countries greater technological and industrial development and, over the past 150 years, there has been a significant extension of the length of life.
Vaccines, antibiotics, better hygiene and health conditions, water remediation, more effective treatments (surgery, for example, and organ transplants or anticancer therapies with a significant increase in the cure rate) were decisive. Neonatal mortality has also decreased, so the benefit does not only affect adult life span but life chances at birth.
A baby girl born today has a life expectancy of 102 years! The progressive increase in life span is among the most important phenomena of our time, the first reason is the disappearance of many diseases.
Another determining factor is the improvement of living conditions, not only social, environmental and economic but also for the presence of better food and in sufficient quantities (a hundred years ago people died from malnutrition, and unfortunately it still happens in too many parts of the world). In more recent years, when food has no longer been a problem in quantitative terms, we have found that lifestyle has an effect on survival. There has therefore been a further evolution: it has been understood that if the basic conditions for survival are guaranteed, it is possible to adjust personal behavior to live more and better. (…)
How do we deal with aging? What do we do to help the body and psyche stay healthy and fit? The answer to these questions is based on objective elements, i.e. the results of scientific studies, but also on a dose of subjectivity that can influence the results in terms of health: the DNA, you know, interacts with the environment and with behavior therefore, to better face aging is also a matter of choice.
First secret: accept the passing years, experience an oriental approach to change. The reaction to the years that pass is an important factor in longevity. We can accept what happens or not. The events, positive or negative, can strike us and be faced with a substantial acceptance or they can be removed, rejected, we can fight against them. They remain the same, but we don’t want to notice them.
An example is the attitude of women when they arrive at menopause, the physiological phase in which sex hormones change reaching a different balance. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was considered an inevitable stage: of course, there were wrinkles and the annoyance of hot flashes, but what could be done? Nothing, if not accepting and adapting, that is, not letting yourself be brought down and moving forward.
Today, however, menopause is seen almost as a disease. If there is something that manages to make the quality of life bad, it is the excessive medicalization of normalcy. Without taking anything away from female difficulties in a very delicate period, menopause is not a disease! It is a passage, a change and as such should be experienced. Furthermore, there are useful remedies that alleviate the symptoms and help fight some negative consequences of aging: the administration of hormones under medical supervision to healthy women is one of these possible remedies.
You react to changes and you can find ideas for maturation, reflection, beauty! (…) You feel bad when you reject the idea and want to stick to your previous image. It feels worse because you don’t want to face reality. If, however, the change were accepted, solutions and mechanisms of positive adaptation would be found. Accepting and adapting is the most useful psychological attitude whenever something changes. It is no coincidence that among the pathological, that is, non-positive, reactions to mourning and trauma are removal and denial: removing or denying does not help. Aging puts us in front of physical, energetic, mental changes (I am not referring to diseases, but to an evolution
Never stop loving, with your heart and with your body. Loving is the primary need. Desire and curiosity are inseparable from our existence. Sexual desire can have changes due to different hormonal levels and experiences that shape some aspects, however it is not destined to diminish with age. It is impossible for this to happen, especially in men, while in women desire often changes its characteristics and requires deeper adaptations in relationship life. It changes, therefore, but does not disappear.
You must have the ability to sense its presence even when you perceive a (false) absence because of the absurd pressures of society that would like the elderly without sexual pleasures and impulses. The psychological aspects of sexuality are many and perhaps obvious and must not make us forget the benefits towards the physical body.
During sexual intercourse the movements are complete and aerobic, they involve all the muscular districts and internal organs of the body, and it certainly cannot be said that this kind of exercise costs effort or is boring or unpleasant. In addition, hormones and neurotransmitters, that is substances important for liveliness, are stimulated by sexual vigor: higher mood, interest in life, desire to discover, to act, to be interested in the world.
An incomprehensible mistake for older people is to give up sexual activity. In reality there is no reason for this, either because the body is programmed to function sexually until death, or because any difficulties can be discussed with doctors and resolved with different types of treatment. Sex is the most normal and common form of physical activity that involves us throughout life, with positive repercussions on all aspects of us: there really is no reason to give it up, also because doing it means mutilating one’s desire to enjoy in full of existence. And losing this desire involves throwing away a significant part of the interest in longevity. How do you think about losing your desire?
Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, toast with a glass of red wine. Those who eat little and well live longer. Eating little does not mean depriving yourself of what is necessary: the most significant lengthening of life has historically occurred in countries where sanitation conditions have improved and hunger has been eradicated. In countries that still suffer from hunger and thirst, mortality is tremendous and longevity is still a mirage. In industrialized society people overdo it with food and often take tricks that are nothing more than an excuse to abuse by deluding themselves into practicing correct choices. We think we eat better, according to the dictates of science, but we don’t control the quantity and actually overload the body, and it’s not a good idea.
The first rule should be to cut back on the foods we ingest every day. We do not need a lot of food, it does not give us much from the point of view of health and makes the functioning of organs and systems more burdensome. We must realize that we are made up of chemical reactions, but also by the rules of mechanics and physics: capacity, capacity, speed or slowness.
The heart must pump blood into the circulation, the lungs exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide (and waste substances that remain from internal processes), the kidneys must filter what travels in the blood to eliminate unnecessary elements through the urine: an overload increases the pace of work and in the long run is harmful. Not to mention the liver, a kind of metabolism operations center: sugars, fats, proteins pass from there and find the most suitable way for balance. If we pass excessive quantities of substances through this operations center, we force the cells to go beyond their means.
Over the years, overwork creates wear and depletion of cell regeneration capacity. Furthermore, it is logical to imagine that excessive consumption of food exposes the risk of ingesting poisons, in particular carcinogens: we can make smart and wise choices, but we will never be able to control the origin of each gram of food, therefore reducing the quantity means having less likely to swallow dangerous substances.
In my family and within my staff I am called “the faster” because I arrive in the evening with a macchiato coffee, sometimes a fresh citrus juice and a yogurt. I willingly and effortlessly resist the temptations of those who would like to offer me a dessert, a meal, an aperitif because I believe that the priority is to respect my body. I can socialize well and with great satisfaction even without eating, although this still creates amazement after years of food choices based on the most absolute sobriety. (…)
Quantity, but also quality. About 50% of the most serious and frequent diseases (including tumors) find a genesis in the bad
