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Are You Getting Older or Younger?
by Sarah Edwards, PhD
“I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.” —Bob Dylan
Remember a time when you couldn’t wait to get older? Each birthday was an eagerly awaited milestone. Then somewhere along the way a shift occurred. You no longer wanted to get older. Each birthday was less welcomed; you were no longer growing up, you were “aging.”
For me, that turning point didn’t come as early as I expected. The dreaded “30″ came and went and I wondered why people made such a big deal about getting older. Then 40 came and I was still wondering when this “aging” thing happened. I felt great. I looked great … well, at least still like the me I knew as myself. But then day I saw myself on a television monitor and I thought “Who is that? Oh dear, it’s me! I look so old!”
Not long after that I began to feel old at times too. That’s when I stopped looking forward to having another birthday … until I realized I had choices my grandmother and mother didn’t have.
My grandmother didn’t have many choices when it came to aging. She pretty much had to accept the idea of “aging gracefully.” My mother had more choices. We today we have lots of choices:
We can age gracefully, as my grandmother did without even thinking about it. We can stay active and young at heart despite the effects of aging on our bodies, as my mother whose now 89, has done.Or we could do what neither my grandmother nor my mother had the opportunity to do - take advantage of the many anti-aging regimens available to enable us to look and feel better than ever.
Well, at that point, I decided on the later. Now years later, Paul and I are far “younger” than we used to be. We feel better and look better than years ago. I had confirmation that it was just my imagination when an alumnae at my last high school reunion said, “Sarah, you look better now than you did in high school!” Boy, did that make my day! Paul got a similar confirmation when he attended his high school reunion. We won’t say what year that was, but just that it was long enough ago that the group class photo raised an intriguing question.
Why did some people at our reunions look at least 20 years younger than others?
Although they were all within a year of the same age, some folks at our reunions looked like they could have been the parents of others. Why such dramatic differences? The answer according to Dr. Michael Roizen, author of the book Your Real Age, might surprise you. Genes account for only 25% of the differences between why some people age more quickly than others, says Roizen. Our “real age” is determined by our lifestyle not just our birth date. Roizen has developed a test that tells you what your Real Age is and provides a detailed report for how you could knock years off your “age” by changing certain habits.
Thanks to my anti-aging regimen, it turns out I’m now 11 years younger than my chronological age and I could be “younger” yet if I did a few other things differently.
It seems we have a choice about how we age. Paul and I are choosing to stay as young and healthy as we can. When our doctor asked Paul at his annual physical how he was feeling, he could honestly say, “I feel better and am more fit than I was at 20 or 30!” He felt good saying that and meaning it. And that’s what’s most important, to feel good about our choice and about ourselves, no matter what our age.
You can find out your “Real Age” and what you can do to reverse the clock and grow younger than your years at realage.com.
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