Better With Age

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
— Albert Einstein

In many instances we think of things that are old as useless, not as good, outdated or in need of being shoved to the back of the closet. Most times, anything that is no longer trendy is frowned upon or donated to charity, but should we really have this perspective for everything? Of course, we know that fine wine, scotch, classic cars, antiques of all types and even foods like beef or cheese can all be categorized as better as they have some age attached to them. This classification may be the distinction we need when identifying what’s good and what’s not so good as the years pass by. There is a difference between “age” and “old” and this is the thinking we want to adopt when speaking about being better over time.

I’ve heard many times as I have advanced in age…”you’re still working out?”, “aren’t you too old to be running so much?”, “you should slow down…you’re not young anymore?”. While this type of thinking could be based on concern, it’s very flawed and is a major reason why many health problems are rampant in our society today. Quite the opposite is true…as we advance in age, we need more care! We need to be more active, eat better foods, take better care of our bodies and our minds; we do what we can to have a greater quality of life in the latter stages of our life. So our goal is to get better with age, become stronger with age, use the wisdom and experience we have fought so long to acquire to become more efficient in everything we do.

To exemplify this reality we can refer to 92 year old Hal Higdon who has run 111 Marathons and ran his last one at the age of 75. Ted Corbitt, commonly referred to as “The Father of Long Distance Running” ran an unbelievable 223 marathons and at age 88 walked an incredible 303 miles in 6 days. Will we duplicate these efforts...probably not, but it's a good example of the resilience of the human body to go beyond thresholds not commonly thought of. We can acknowledge that we are able to achieve our own greatness through a lifestyle that promotes and supports vitality with age.

This is an important and worthwhile journey to embark upon and must be the total experience of enhancing mind, body and spirit, so grab your will, call upon your commitment and dedication, pack your determination and let us embark on this journey and take hold of the promise of being Better With Age.

How will we do it? To start, we will embrace these foundational tenets for long term health and wellness:

Exercise

It’s no secret movement is a key part of staying fit and our bodies were designed to be active. Everything from our heartbeat, circulation, nervous system to the bodily functions performed by our organs involveYes motion. Exercise keeps us moving, specifically causing the heart to pump blood and oxygen throughout the body, including the muscles. We can make an analogy between the body and a working vehicle. If you let the car sit in the garage unused, the cables will rot, the battery will die and the parts won’t stay lubricated. This lack of use will result in a poorly functioning vehicle. The same is true with our bodies. We must be active to keep it in good working order and just as the car needs maintenance, so do our bodies so regular exercise must become a way of life.

Nutrition

As we continue with the understanding that movement is key and exercise is necessary, then it stands to reason that our bodies need to be equipped with the ability to function with increased activity. In other words our body needs fuel to be able to perform exercise and operate with increased activity and then recover so we’re able to accomplish the normal routine of our lives. The foods you eat supply the nutrients your body needs to maintain your brain,muscle, nerves, bone, skin,blood circulation and immune system.

The 4 main types of nutrition better known as macro nutrients are as follows:

Carbohydrates
Proteins
Fats
Water

Knowing this, it becomes paramount to eat the proper foods to provide us the best supply of these nutrients, therefore the fuel we need will come from highly nutritious food which we obtain in the best possible state. Let’s get it as close to what nature intended as possible.

Alignment

Most times we don’t associate balance with health and it's not hard to understand why. The word balance is normally associated with being able to stand on our two feet…or on one foot without toppling over. We look at gymnasts as having great balance, especially on the beams 4 inches wide where they navigate with ease. Most of us cannot do this but we feel confident that we have good balance. When I speak of balance, I specifically refer to the body being balanced as a complete unit,having proper alignment and achieving homeostasis. While we go about our lives benefiting from our body doing all that it does, we rarely acknowledge that our neck, shoulders, hips, knees, feet,even our internal organs,nervous and circulatory systems have a blueprint for how they should work together. When they are all in sync, it helps us to perform at our best. Think about a train which has many cars attached. if one of the cars in the middle goes off the tracks just a slight bit, it will impact the rest of the train. It will not operate efficiently…it is a chain reaction. When we have a pain in our shoulders, we don’t imagine that it could be caused by our hips being too tight and the body is compensating for a lack of movement in that area but it is being felt elsewhere.

Just as a tent will twist into a new shape with the re-tensioning of a single guy-rope so the different parts of the body will tilt, shift and rotate in response to strain, warping into new and often dysfunctional relationships with each other and changing the relationship of the body as a whole to its larger environment.

If a person’s hips are rotated, or they have rounded shoulders this will not simply be a consequence of contracted muscles or skeletal deformation but will reflect distortions in the fascial network itself. We need our body to be in balance in order to be efficient, avoid injury, pain and long-term damage.

improper alignment vs true alignment