The bad news is you’ll likely die in agony.
Most Americans will spend the last years of their life in pain and quiet desperation, no longer free to live in their own homes.
So how much would you be willing to pay to increase the number of years you can live, disease-free and active?
Would you like to be driving around town at 92, meeting friends for coffee, planting a tree or two, baking your bread, then taking a well-deserved nap in your own home?
Or would you prefer to be lying in agony in a hospital bed or dependent and frail in a nursing facility?
The good news is that you can radically increase the number of disease-free, active years at the end of your life.
No, there isn’t an expensive pill available for sale for healthy longevity I'm selling. You can't purchase an army of microrobots to flood your body and engage in cell repair. I'm not offering to fuse you with a robot or upload your brain into a computer.
You need to propel yourself into motion to increase your healthspan (1).
You need ten minutes of strength training and twenty minutes of flexibility and balancing every day, first thing in the morning. Add in a dash of thirty minutes of cardio to complete your health investment.
Yes, you read that right. Moving your body every day is the number one way to increase your healthspan (2). Sure, optimum nutrition, avoiding cigarettes, and excessive alcohol and drug consumption will help you too. So if you want to go all in, start eating five different raw veggies daily, switch from sugary drinks to water, eat whole grains, and avoid processed and fast food.
But you CAN have your cake and EAT it too.
For most people, it is too much of a change to give up their two glasses of wine, French fry addiction, or chocolate cake indulgence.
The good news is that you can eat the cake. Just get in your exercise and keep that body of yours moving on and off all day long.
Did you know that physical inactivity is one of the primary causes of most chronic diseases? According to scientific research (5), exercise can prevent, or at least delay becoming ill with chronic conditions. Also, physical activity primarily prevents, or delays, chronic diseases,
You don’t need to spend the last few years of your life suffering, frail, and dependent on others.
Strengthen, stretch, and move your body every day to increase the number of high-quality years of your life.
10, 20, 30 Minutes Mix to increase Healthspan
You need to get your muscle strengthening, stretching, and balance work in first thing in the morning before anything else in your life can get in the way.
Thirty minutes of aerobic activity is also necessary, but strength training, flexibility, and balancing are more important than getting in your cardio. Why?
As you age you start to lose muscle tone. Your body begins to dry out and tighten up. Your balance starts to go. You are only one accident away from breaking a hip, ankle, or other accident away from a slow and steady decline toward pain, disability, the nursing home, and even early death.
A clinical study by Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research found that a hip fracture almost triples the risk of healthy women 80 and older dying within the year. Breaking a hip doesn’t just radically increase the chance of early death for older women.
Women between the ages of 65-69 are five times more likely to die within a year if they break a hip compared to those who don’t.
Once an injury and or surgery forces you into immobility, you will start to lose vigor and your high-functioning life.
Ten minutes of strengthening and twenty minutes of flexibility and balancing practice will increase your muscle tone, range of movement, and power to save yourself from horrific falls and early death.
Add in the thirty minutes of aerobic activity, and you will be decreasing your risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, and stroke.
Studies have shown lower levels of cognitive impairment in active individuals as they age. As an added bonus, you will be improving your digestion, posture, sleep quality, energy level, well-being, and happiness by maintaining regular physical activity.
Strengthening, stretching, and soothing your body through an aerobic activity like walking releases powerful chemicals in your brain that lift your mood.
If someone tried to sell you a one-hour session daily that would decrease your risk of chronic disease, make you look slimmer and more toned, increase your energy, improve your sleep quality, boost your wellness, and make you happier, would you believe them?
You probably would think it was a hoax. It isn’t.
You need to follow a simple plan each morning to strengthen and stretch every muscle group. Add in thirty minutes of aerobic activity directly afterward or later in the day. It is also possible to slit the thirty minutes into three ten-minute sessions instead.
You don’t need to go to the gym each morning. Ideally, you can go straight from bed to your strengthening and stretching routine.
I adore yoga and highly recommend it each morning to both stretch and strengthen your body while adding some serenity to your mind and soul. Add in five minutes of pushups and ab work, such as laying on your back and lifting your legs up to ninety degrees ten to twenty-one times.
My ninety-two-year-old grandfather Dr. Chinchinian, who is still working in his garden, planting trees, making his bread, driving to meet friends for coffee, painting, making homemade jam from his fruit trees, writing, and entertaining family, swears by the Miranda Method.
I've done the Miranda Method, and it feels like a fusion of ballet, pilates, tai chi, and yoga.
So, if you get your ten minutes of muscle strengthening, twenty minutes of stretching and balance work, and thirty minutes of cardio each morning, can you then sit down and relax for the rest of the day? No.
The best way to escape chronic disease and incapacitation as you age is to outrun them.
You need to start moving first thing in the morning and keep moving.
Sit still, and you start to die.
Yes, I’m completely serious.
Do not sit down for more than thirty minutes at a time and increase the number of hours you spend on movement. According to a study following 7,985 participants, sitting for long stretches can kill you, even if you exercise, and sitting for over thirteen hours a day increases your risk for death by 200% versus those who were physically active and sat less than eleven hours a day.
I don’t care if you are 79 or 22. You can start investing in increasing your healthspan right now with the side effects of more energy, higher well-being, and fewer sick days.
Stand up after an hour at your desk, reading a book, or watching TV. Move your body before you sit back down again for at least five minutes.
You can get chores done in between resting or working if you are at home. Fold a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher, or whip up a quick batch of homemade zucchini bread.
You can do some desk yoga or quick flexibility and strengthening exercises at your desk once an hour.
Vast numbers of people work in open office layouts instead of in their own private offices or cubicles. There are desk yoga and desk power-up videos that you can follow discretely at your desk.
FREE Yoga at Your Desk Videos with Heather on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrhFJ6LxdcZ_gqbJ8N1eIvdhGNyCCutgX
So set a timer and get up once an hour to move. Are you watching a movie? Make it a habit of creating an intermission halfway through to move your body. In fact, in Europe, movie theaters stop halfway through a film for an interlude. Follow their lead and make a pause an hour in to use the restroom, drink some water, and stretch your legs.
You can NEVER take a sick day off.
Illness is never an excuse to stop moving your body. You can get in some gentle stretching even if you are in agony in a hospital bed with little range of movement.
Invest in some extremely gentle yoga even on sick days. The movement will warm and loosen your muscles and enable you to return to bed and get higher-quality rest afterward. A stroll or walk is also a good choice if you are ill, particularly in nature. Surround yourself with green and the healing of nature will penetrate your body and aid in your recovery.
A scientific study (3) found that time spent in a forest landscape increases human natural killer cell activity, as well as intracellular anti-cancer proteins while reducing stress hormone levels.
The Japanese somehow understood the healing power of trees intuitively and invested in ‘forest bathing' to improve their health and wellness.
Don’t despair if you don’t have access to a forest for your daily walk or Sunday outing. A garden with bright greenery and fragrant flowers can supercharge your healing.
Roger Ulrich, an environmental psychologist, discovered in his scientific study (4) in a Pennsylvania hospital that looking at green helped patients heal. Patients recovering from gallbladder surgery with a view of leafy trees from their hospital windows needed less pain medicine and healed a day sooner than those looking at a brick wall from their hospital window.
So do not stay lying in bed when you are ill. Take a walk through a park or a turn through your garden to fuel a faster recovery and get your body moving.
You probably won’t listen. You’ll end up Suffering.
Sure, you may live long, but you’ll be frail and dependent. Overeating and lack of exercise cause increased death resulting from lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and some cancer types (5).
Sure, you might take this advice. After all, you want to be that kickass great-grandpa or great-grandma cruising around town in your SUV, planting trees, and making homemade bread.
But you’ll have to get out of bed, exercise, and keep moving on and off all day long. Does that sound exhausting to you?
Remember, a force in motion stays in motion. Once you get moving first thing in the morning, it will be easier to keep the momentum, and movement, going the rest of your day.
Just give it a try.
If you find starting up a lifestyle of movement daunting, don't let it get you down. You aren't alone.
According to the United States Health Report of 2016, just 49.8% of adults eighteen and older in the USA met the aerobic activity guideline in 2015, and only 25% met the muscle-strengthening guideline.
Americans who meet the guidelines for both aerobic exercise and muscle strengthening decline steadily with age. While 56.4% of adults 18-44 got in two hours and thirty minutes of aerobic exercise per week in 2015, only 27.2% of adults 75 years and older did (9).
Keeping strong, limber, and moving could be increasing the number of high-functioning years for millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide.
But we aren’t talking about the billions. We’re talking about you.
What’s your life story going to be? How are you going to spend the last decades of your life?
Increase your health span with daily movement (6).
Start moving now to make every minute of your life one of quality, strength, and independence.
1. Health United States Report 2016.
2. “Physical Activity, Aging, and Physiological Function.” American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, www.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/physiol.00029.2016.
3.
Ideno, Y, et al. “Blood Pressure-Lowering Effect of Shinrin-Yoku (Forest Bathing): a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 16 Aug. 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28814305.
4.
Booth FW, Roberts CK, Laye MJ. Lack of exercise is a major cause of chronic diseases. Compr Physiol 2: 1143-1211, 2012. https://www.physiology.org/servlet/linkout?suffix=B9&dbid=8&doi=10.1152%2Fphysiol.00029.2016&key=23798298
6.
Garcia-Valles, Rebeca, et al. “Life-Long Spontaneous Exercise Does Not Prolong Lifespan but Improves Health Span in Mice.” Longevity & Healthspan, BioMed Central, 16 Sept. 2013, longevityandhealthspan.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2046-2395-2-14.
7
Seals DR, Justice JN, LaRocca TJ.Physiological geroscience: targeting function to increase healthspan and achieve optimal longevity. J Physiol 594: 2001-2024, 2016.
9
Diaz, Keith M., et al. “Patterns of Sedentary Behavior and Mortality in U.S. Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A National Cohort Study.” Annals of Internal Medicine, American College of Physicians, 3 Oct. 2017, annals.org/aim/article-abstract/2653704/patterns-sedentary-behavior-mortality-u-s-middle-aged-older-adults.
8
Lautenschlager NT, Cox KL, Flicker L, Foster JK, van Bockxmeer FM, Xiao J, Greenop KR, Almeida OP.Effect of physical activity on cognitive function in older adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease: a randomized trial.JAMA 300: 1027-1037, 2008. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/182502