Each one of us in some way or the other has always harboured the yearning to retain our youthful health despite the passage of years. Though it is impossible to completely stop the biological process of ageing, there are ways in which one could slow it down. Read on to get a peek into some natural anti-ageing tips:
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- A well-balanced diet: As we know, eating a healthy, well-balanced diet has a string of benefits attached to it. Some of these include an increase in energy level, better sleep, and a healthy body weight. All these directly contribute to slowing down the ageing process considerably. A well-balanced diet is a mix of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins. You can find a more detailed layout of a nutritious diet in the infographic below as given by the Harvard Medical School.
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- Add supplements to your diet: Supplements especially those that are loaded with anti-oxidants can work wonders in slowing down the speed of ageing. Nobel Prize-winning health advocate, Linus Pauling emphasises the importance of taking vitamin supplements by pointing out that regular intake of these supplements has been known to both enhance and extend the quality of life. The most common supplements that must be considered while laying out a plan to fight off ageing are Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Glucosamine and Coenzyme Q10. Other supplements that you could include in your anti-ageing arsenal are polyphenol-rich matcha tea, resveratrol, and collagen, among others.
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- Increase your intake of Omega-3 fats: It has been well-documented that slowing down the speed of ageing of your brain directly impacts the ageing of the rest of your body, so necessary care must be taken in this regard. A recent study published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia concluded that consuming Omega 3 DHA regularly can take off nearly three years from brain age.
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- Make sure you get enough shut-eye: A night of good sleep allows your body to repair and restore itself after a tiring day, but as you get older it gets harder to get well-rested sleep; this is especially true for women in their post-menopausal years. In a number of studies, lack of good quality sleep has been correlated with accelerated ageing. So, it is important that certain unhealthy practices are avoided. A common example of this is the consumption of caffeinated beverages late in the day that meddles with the quality of your sleep.
- Always be on the move: For anyone aiming to reserve the process of ageing, exercising on a regular basis is the holy grail. Exercising in some studies has been shown to contribute significantly to the reverse ageing process. In one stud, researchers found that exercising can have up to nine years of ageing advantage. So, ensuring that you get in the minimum level of exercise can help you in going a long way in terms of slowing down the ageing process. “A sedentary lifestyle—too much time spent on couches or at desks and not enough movement—is the most common trigger for muscular atrophy. When we move our muscles as little as possible, with a sedentary lifestyle, we turn down our furnaces and literally cause our muscles to atrophy. When the cells atrophy, we feel even more tired because we have fewer mitochondria generating ATP. A vicious circle sets in: less energy leading to less movement, which leads to less energy, which leads to less movement. Atrophy from a sedentary lifestyle leads to weight gain, loss of energy, and chronic aches and pains. But atrophy can be easily prevented, stopped, and even reversed with daily gentle full-body exercise,” writes health writer Miranda Esmonde-White, on the benefits of exercising.
