Alternative Doctor Anti-Ageing Pages

LIVE A YOUNGER LIFE

Do you want to live forever? Probably not! But most of us would be reassured to know we will feel fit, well and active right up to the end.

It was Jonathan Swift, author of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS who first remarked that nobody wants to die; yet nobody wants to grow old either. Can we do anything about the unhappy paradox here?

Well, yes. The new science of anti-ageing is not about living longer, though I and many doctors like me are convinced that if you do the right things you can extend your life considerably. It's more about increasing the quality of life. It's about feeling good, remaining active, keeping your mind alive and alert, freedom from pain and stiffness and continuing with that most important of human feel-good activities ­sex.

There's a double whammy in this. It's a great paradox of our lives, for corporate men and women such as yourselves, that during the process of striving and achievement, that just as we reach the pinnacle of our careers, the top of the corporate ladder, and socials life, biology begins to let us down. Just as we reach the dreams we always aspired to, the time and the money to fulfill them, we suddenly start to face stroke, heart disease and cancer. It seems that maybe we ruined our health on the way up, due to lack of care and attention. But really, I put it to you that the real negative factor was just ignorance. Nobody in their right mind would deliberately shorten their life or do things can bring about ruin and demise.

But through the folly of doctors and personal doubt or confusion about the issues, we have often chosen to ignore good advice. It has been rather like ignoring a good investment and then, in later life, wishing we had bought shares in something important, for which the value has gone up and up and up over the years.

I'm talking about the value of our lives ­ our own selves. The priceless value of good health, zest and fulfilling sexuality.

Sex and love

We would all like to go on finding or I should say rediscovering love in our partner and ourselves. Sexual vitality is important and its health benefits cannot be overestimated. And I don't mean the love of a rich old boy for a young flirt or a woman who is loaded after her husband's death suddenly finding herself surrounded by admirers. You know the sort of thing...

What I am talking about is the real honest deep-down passion for the companion who has shared your life and whom you want to continue to admire and cherish. Someone you want to hang onto and you wish they were happy and well, as you would wish it just for yourself. Or if he or she is no longer with you in life, that you can re-find yourself and live with new devotion and love that he or she would have wanted to you enjoy.

I'm not talking here about "twilight" years, so much as the dawn of a new day!!

You have to look after your health coupons!

The truth is, health and vitality is a choice. It is not something dished out to us at random, as many people seem to think; it has to be a earned. It works like investments, as I just mentioned: a little set aside each week or month will result in fruitful rewards in later years. But far too many individuals squander their health resources and discover all too late that by a certain age the bank account is empty, all the credits used up. Zip. Zilch.

We may have a state welfare scheme but unfortunately, the government doesn't issue health coupons. You have a full set when you are born (usually) and it is up to you to store these carefully and, if possible, get a return on the investment!

Sadly, people who don't take care of themselves are suffering from the ignorance of yesterday's science: we have always been told by the experts that ageing is inevitable, there is nothing you can do, life is a lottery, it's all down to your genes, and so on. All of this has been shown in recent years to be complete nonsense. Not only is age something that can be held in check, it can be beaten. There are two counter efforts to the ageing process; firstly, that you can extend the likely years you will live, by prudent attention to diet, exercise and lifestyle, much can be done; secondly, you can turn what years you do have in store into something far better, with more pleasure and more energy.

Actually, the two go hand in hand. When we hear the cry "I don't want to live a long time and be an old crock," this is misguided and fuelled by the decrepit appearance of some old folk who have been badly let down by the medical profession and its virtual refusal to address the prevention issue. These sad wrecks are not a valid standard of what to expect; this is a measure of what shouldn't be allowed to happen!

The fact is that for the majority of us alive today, you can say we won't live longer unless we are healthier. Adding years to your life is also a matter of adding life to your years! The few old crocks are the exception ­ by far the majority of men and women who have lived beyond 90 are exceptionally spry and clear-headed for their age.

Take a look at the January 1973 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE; there you will see men and women from Georgia, Russia (as it was) over a century old living a life full of enjoyment and vitality. One game lady whose photograph appears is between 130 and 140 years old; yet she is quite compus mentis; she sits with a glass of vodka in one hand and a cigarette in the other!

What does that tell us about the supposed expertise of the medical profession? Clearly these old folk know something that so-called science doesn't. It also tells us that our human life potential is far greater than we have been duped into believing.

So where is all this leading?

As the average Western life expectancy steadily increases, more and more people are going to live beyond the age they supposed. It would be prudent to ensure that, since you will probably be one of them, that you don't find yourself reaching later years with your health a broken property. All it takes is a little intelligent care now, to reap the advantages later. Get rid of the bravura that "I don't care, I'll grow old gracefully". You cannot possibly know how you will feel about this in later years.

You might meet someone wonderful or start a new direction in life that would fulfill all your wildest dreams, yet your delight ends up cut short because you haven't taken care of yourself properly.

Surprisingly, there are close on 10,000 people in the UK over the age of 100. We have become more aware of this huge group, now that the Queen Mum is one of them. If you found yourself one of them, wouldn't it be great if you could enjoy life, even then? You would want each day to be an experience to look forward to; not to wake up thinking "Oh God, another awful day to get through!" or something equally negative.

The fact is you may not be able to choose when you die. It would be a tragedy to have to endure a forlorn aching old age, with your body ruined, yet be unable to depart this life quietly and so have to continue to suffer it. Even if euthanasia ever became law (unlikely) it would not be allowed for those who have simply made a mess of things and lost their enjoyment of life, due to creaking joints, fading hearing and eyesight, physical weakness and general decrepitude.

It boils down, actually, to being intelligent. Only a fool would squander his or her future in the silly belief that nothing else exciting could happen in life. We already hear about the "Third Age" in life (retirement and beyond); those who have reached it in good shape are finding immense pleasures in life, travelling, finding new hobbies, meeting new friends and, yes, let's not be coy ­ having a vigorous and fulfilling sex life long after the menopause or the male equivalent we've nick-named the "andropause".

You can control the outcome. There is a lot of up-to-the minute science, to guide your footsteps into the right path. A keynote study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1990 actually showed that ageing can be reversed by 10- 15 years, as judged by loss of skin wrinkles, increased strength and muscle mass, reduction in obesity and, of course, feeling great. That's totally at variance to what is being put about, even now a decade later, by the average medical practitioner. It's almost as if the medical profession doesn't WANT there to be any answer to ageing!

Intravenous antioxidant therapy, now widely carried out in the world, can reverse the degeneration of arteries and beat free radical damage, so that more oxygen is supplied to important tissues, such as the kidneys, which excrete toxins, and of course the brain. We add a unique and safe substance which seems to re-open arterial pathways and gets more oxygen to the tissues. That's always good news and the benefits in thinking processes can be immediate and obvious. Some people are finding that they don't need heart by-pass surgery after all and blood pressure and angina improve all by themselves, without drugs.

I am using an entirely new and brilliant additive to these infusions, being demonstrated by doctors in the USA to give outstanding benefits to brain functions. People with neurological conditions like Alzheimers and other dementias, parkinsonism, stroke and multiple sclerosis are making remarkable turn-arounds in their symptoms. I believe it is good for everyone to experience these benefits and put back the appointment with old age.

There is controversy, to be sure, but that comes from people who refuse to objectively acknowledge recent progress in scientific studies. "I didn't think of it, therefore it's bunk", seems to be an all-too-pervasive sour grapes attitude in medical science these days, with everyone jostling for research grants and prize nominations.

A note on dying

We cannot avoid the topic of death, though I like Woody Allen's point of view: "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens".

As the old saying goes, death and income tax are bad news, but everyone has to pay up! But another common misconception, circulated by ignorant doctors who don't understand the facts, is that we eventually "die of old age" ­ we don't: not ever. We die of disease! If we take care to avoid these diseases, then we may go on living, longer and longer. This is easy to come to terms with, if you think how much Western life expectancy has gone up in the last 200 years. The average for a male is now 74 and for a woman 79, though in some areas, the averages are another few years beyond that. This rise is solely due to the disappearance of major killers, such as smallpox, TB, cholera and lobar pneumonia (the last was once known as the "Captain of the White Horsemen of Death", although we hardly see it today).

Logically, you can see that if we eliminate even more diseases (cancer and heart disease would be a good start), then even fewer people will be dying and the expected age span will rise even more. In theory, if ever we could eliminate all diseases, people just wouldn't die! Consider the aforementioned lady from Georgia. Sooner or later she will die but it won't be from age but a dose of influenza, a tooth abcess that sends bacteria all over her body, a fall that leads to a fractured femur, a tumour, or whatever.

We don't NEED to die at all. So it's time to start being prudent with the health coupons we were issued with as a baby!

Cancer and heart disease

These two great killers account for between 80 and 90% of deaths. Yet the formula for beating these conditions is the same, really, as preventing ageing. The benefit to you, as a commited anti-ager, is that you dramatically improve your chances against these two diseases. It comes as a bonus!

The truth is that it has been demonstrated over and over again that these are preventable conditions. Don't be fooled by the trigger factors, such as tobacco smoking and lung cancer. Not everyone who smokes gets cancer and not everyone who gets lung cancer has smoked; the late Roy Castle was a famous example of this. Therefore there are other factors at work. These other factors include nutrition, moderate lifestyle, a cleaner environment and personal health care. Similarly the "genes-for-everything" scientists, who keep announcing that everything from cancer to homosexuality is just a gene are being very unscientific. It will help you appreciate this is you realize that there is HUGE money in genetics and you are hearing the voice of greed, not the voice of science. Most such announcements turn out to be completely false. But this sort of propagandizing does share prices a lot of good, if not human

health! Almost all known causes of cancer and heart disease are environmental, meaning outside the body. You can control them! Children who "inherit" from their parents also inherit bad diet and lifestyle factors, don't forget this important fact.

It doesn't take heroic effort of a monastic lifestyle

There is another misconception to work round - that is the widely held fixed belief that being healthy means behaving like a freak and missing out on all the fun. This is just plain unintelligent - it is an attitude of being childish and indulgent for a few years and then advancing into chronic and not very pleasant health conditions. The same mentality would allow a family or tribe to starve, because it was too much trouble to plant next year's crops and water the seedlings. Until the twentieth century that would have literally cost you your life.

It's the same sensible husbandry with your health. Take a little care now, think ahead, and you can reap the harvest of goodness for many many years to come.

My own heath and longevity plan is based on over thirty years of experience in advanced medical therapies. I have seen the results it produces, consistently, and have no doubt that it will benefit all human beings who want to take good care of themselves. It is evolved from common sense and knowledge of what counts in Nature. In certain places it might be in direct conflict to what orthodox medicine claims to be "science". Know firstly that this plan will work for you; remember also that orthodox medicine has appalling results, with worsening statistics on health in general and appalling tendency to damage patients who come into its ambit.

Figures I published in my new book SUPER HEALING have shown that when the doctors in Colombia went on strike, the death rate plummeted by 35%, only to resume its "normal" level when work resumed. When doctors in Los Angeles went on a work slow-down in 1976 to protest soaring malpractice insurance premiums, the death rate dropped by 18%. Again in Israel in 1973 when the doctors reduced their daily patient contact from 65,000 to 7,000, during a month long strike, the death rate dropped fifty percent during that month. According to the Jerusalem Burial Society business for them was very bad!!

So doctors are about the LAST PEOPLE to turn to for an opinion on what counts in ageing and longevity matters. Find out for yourself. Otherwise you may pay the price for ignorance. You could miss out on decades of happy vigorous life with people you love. The fact is that it doesn't matter how long you live, if you enjoy those years to the full. We like to think we are putting life into your years, as well as years into your life.

THE PLAN HAS FIVE KEY ASPECTS:

1. Red hot nutrition and diet
2. Intravenous antioxidant therapy
3. Direct hormone restoration
4. Stress reduction
5. Structural re-integration of the body

These can be explained in outline.

1. DIET AND NUTRITION

No, not quite the same thing. Proper nutrition is getting what you need, the right amount of macro-nutrients, such as protein, carbohydrate and safe fats, plus micro-nutrients, including vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids.

I put diet in a second category because of my work in the field of food allergies. Let's use the term STRESS FOODS, so that we don't fall into the usual controversy about definitions. A stress food is something that isn't good for YOU as a person; it may be fine for others but it makes you unwell in many subtle ways. The usual result is feeling generally unwell, lacking energy, vague aches and pains, and ­ worst of all for many intelligent people ­ woolly brain syndrome or "brain fag", which are aptly named. My huge experience in this field, with tens of thousands of cases to report from enables me to state categorically that the single biggest factor in antiageing, vitality and health is AVOIDING KNOWN STRESS FOODS.

I put everything I know into my latest book DIET WISE: learn more here

The results are nothing short of fantastic. Within weeks, sometimes days, the person is feeling young again, with bags of zest and a renewed attitude to life. If I had only one anti-ageing tool to use in our clinics, this would be the one I would choose. It's worth can be equal to all the rest put together!

2. CHELATION

Chelation means getting heavy metals out of your body. NOTHING ages us faster than poisonous heavy metals, which sabotage our enzyme pathways and disort DNA. Lead and mercury are notorious, but iron is the worst of all!

There are two ways to do it: oral and intravenous. There is much dispute but I am now satisfied with the evidence that oral chelation works fine. It just takes longer. EDTA, the agent commonly used, is approved as a safe food additive and swallowing it is harmless. It is, after all, just 4 acetic acid (vinegar) molecules with a few extras (ethylene-diamine-tetraacetic-acid).

Intravenous chelation is something I did for years in my UK office. For people in big trouble, with heart disease and peripheral vascular disease, it can be almost a miralce cure. We thought of it as re-opening sludged arteries. I now think that is rather naive and it is probably the free-radical scavenging effect that does the most good. It works much faster than oral chelation.

Properly carried out, IV chelation is a simple, painless and very safe procedure. It can turn back the clock on arterial ageing and a growing army of people have proved it's the ideal alternative to expensive, ineffective and very dangerous by-pass surgery. It requires you to have a weekly infusion, which lasts about 3 hours. I rate it as the second most powerful tool in the anti-ageing armoury.

3. DIRECT HORMONE RESTORATION

There are many proponents of the idea that, since we lose hormones as we age, replacing the hormones will reverse ageing. While it's not entirely logical to put it that way, there do seem some benefits from taking this approach.

The "Big One" is growth hormone (hGH). BUt that's very expensive and far from necessary. I'd put the benefits of chelation and improved diet way ahead of what you'll get injecting hGH.

You can also consider pregnenolone (the "mother hormone"), DHEA, testosterone, progesterone and estrogen look-alikes (on no account take drug estrogens or progestogens). One of the finest anti-ageing hormones comes as a surprise: melatonin. It has good anti-ageing science and is even helpful against cancer, as well as putting us to sleep!

4. STRESS REDUCTION

This is a big subject. All sorts of therapies have been invented and tried. Many are right for some and not for others. We have our own view of things and I have written this up as THE STRUCTURES OF HAPPINESS series. We also have "Transformational Psychology".

All very interesting but maybe not what you are looking for (if it's what you need, we'll tell you).

But I will share with you here and now the simplest and most effective stress management technique ever invented. It was tested on more than 10,000 patients over 20 years by an enlightened doctor and he found that, uniformly, those who kept it up lived significantly longer (and happier) than those who didn't bother.

It's so simple you can do it any time; in fact you should do it all the time, every day and in all your activities. What's more it can be described in just fourteen words! What life-extension technique could be so simple and yet so very powerful?

Are you ready for it?

SAY "YES" TO THE THINGS YOU LIKE; "NO" TO THE THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE.

That's all!

5. MOVEMENT AND POSTURE

I have purposely made this a very wide category; it covers posture, movement, balance, exercise and remedial work towards old injuries.

The benefits of exercise and how it helps us feel better and live longer is without question. Even heart attack victims do better if they get back on their feet early, instead of being told to rest, as yesterday's science used to advize! One study, published also in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, showed that exercise created much higher levels of white cells in the peripheral blood. These defenders help us fight cancer, infections, degenerative disease and tissue damage, so no wonder we feel better. The good news is that it does not need to be strenuous exercise.

Playing squash and riding bicycles can be over-rated! In fact hard physical exercise releases free-radicals and can be damaging.

I think dance is one of the best forms of exercise imaginable; that's for two reasons. One it is musical and therefore more pleasurable and less stressful than games which are competitive (either against other people or the clock). It also does much to loose up the FLOW of energy and teaches you how to think and feel "I am beautiful". It isn't necessary to dance like Fred Estaire or a ballerina; neither is there much help from the spastic twitching customary on the floor of a discotheque. I am thinking simply of flowing gentle movements you can make for yourself, while listening to favourite music in the privacy of your own home. No need to work up a sweat and therefore - ideal for many -­you don't have to get into a sports strip!

If you don't get refreshing and enjoyable sensations, you are not doing this right!

Finally, you can still play squash or swim.

POSTURE:

A healthy body isn't just about getting fit. It's also about balancing energies and posture is a very important clue to general health, as the Alexander Technique people have known for years. From chiropractice and cranial osteopathy we learn that even a tiny adjustment in the body can liberate a tremendous amount of energy that was being bottled up or suppressed.

Sometime it is more obvious. The person stands so badly and off keel it screams at the expert that they have locked-in body problems. Unlike most anti-ageing clinics, I believe that THIS aspect of health is just as important as blood efficacy, lung function and liver or kidney performance. We are living, functioning beings, so the dynamics of health are inevitably important to us. Our bodies must be supple, balanced and integrated. Walking and standing badly can cause you to LOOK and FEEL older than you are.

Need I say more?

Finally, just to tell you that there are many expanding new areas of health care that have direct relevance to anti-ageing and vitality. Homeopathy, for example. Modern methods have shown clearly that we can re-tune the body to more optimum levels. It is possible, given the right regime, to restore secretions of all-important growth hormone, which I mentioned previously. The remarkable thing is that this can be done with nothing more than trace doses of herbal and other substances. All that is taking place is that the body is being persuaded to recharge, to come back to life and continue with the markers of youth and vitality.

It all goes to prove one thing: Nature is quite brilliant, far cleverer than doctors imagine themselves to be. She can actually reverse the process of ageing - if she is persuaded, with a little help from someone who knows what to do.

Now that's good news for us all, especially those on the slippery slope!

 

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