MEDICAL UNDERGROUND’S ANTI-AGING SECRETS

Who among us does not want to slow the hourglass of time and the ravages that aging brings to our once beautiful faces and bodies? I have been in practice for 40 years, and I have only met a handful of patients who were happy with the way their bodies look presently without the inevitable decline of your looks and organ function that accompanies the aging process.

Let’s face it, most of us are not very happy with the way we look, especially women. Women in my practice are incredibly tough and critical of their bodies, partially because of the barrage of media images of women with perfect, supple, young appearing bodies. Add to that a little middle-aged spread, with some love handles and perhaps a butt that does not fit into those old jeans like they used to, and these women are freaked out.

That is the perfect storm for insecurity and self-loathing. My message to them and you is that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are many different strategies you can employ that will slow the aging process, and we are going to take a deep dive into some of them in this week’s article.

Kinky Fact/Nerd Food:
For most of us, aging is inevitable, and this holds true for different ethnicities and races throughout the planet. Ponder this fact, for the entire planet this statistic holds true:

AFTER YOU REACH THE AGE OF THIRTY, YOUR CHANCES OF DYING DOUBLES EVERY EIGHT YEARS

That is a very sobering thought. Doing the math, by the time you reach 70 you will have a 32 times greater chance of dying than when you were a young buck of thirty. Boy, that sucks. I am turning 70 in October! However, I digress.

WHY DO WE AGE?

You would think that would be a question that scientists and physicians would have answered by now, but you would be wrong. They are not quite sure, they have some theories that seem to be plausible, let’s look at them now.

Aging Overview
First, let me start off by saying that we do know many factors that accelerate aging such as poor nutrition, smoking, toxin exposure, radiation, lack of exercise, and stress, to name a few. They do so by damaging the structure of the body’s cells’ DNA and mitochondrial DNA. Over recent years there have been over 300 different theories of why we age.

Smoking seems to be one of the most readily apparent of the aging factors. You can see how much older smokers look in general. However, as everyone knows these factors affect people in different ways, some seemingly hardly at all.

Our genes have their own preprogrammed biological clock that greatly determines our longevity. Things are not written in stone and various factors can affect our biological clock and help us defer the aging process. More on that at the end of this article.

Why Would Aging Be Programmed into Our Genes?
One theory of why aging and ultimately death would be programmed into our genes, is for the survival of the “tribe”. Allow me to explain. By the time a tribe member has reached their elderly years, they are no longer having children, their capacity to work for the survival of the other tribe members gets more limited with each passing year, and finally they are consuming scarce food resources that younger members who are reproducing need.

From a strictly survival of the fittest point of view, it makes perfect sense to eliminate these elderly tribal members. Nature never does anything randomly or by mistake; that I have come to believe in, in my four decades of practicing medicine.

Allowing the elderly to age and eventually die makes perfect sense from a “survival of the fittest” viewpoint. Even in an affluent society such as ours, the elderly drain a disproportionate amount of finite resources.

Could Our Hormones Be Contributing to Our Aging?
As we age our output of hormones like growth hormone (GH) and its downstream target Insulin Like Growth Factor 1 (IGF 1) decline precipitously, or is it the opposite? The answer remains unclear, but we do know that if you have low levels of GH and IGF 1, then you do show signs of premature aging. An entire market of products designed to boost GH output has developed over the years, but the jury is not out yet on this.

Our sex hormones such as estrogen in women and testosterone in men also decline as we age. Is aging causing the decline or is the decline in sex hormone production causing the aging?

Damage Theories of Aging: DNA, Cell Proteins and Lipids, Mitochondria and Free Radicals

DNA Damage: The gist of this theory is that over time our DNA is damaged. DNA controls the functioning of the cell and directs the RNA to produce proteins that it sends out to fulfill its signals/commands. Here is where it gets a little wonky. If you don’t care about this skip to the next section.

Kinky Facts/Nerd Food:
DNA (our genetic material or genes found on our chromosomes) controls the cells every function. It can carry out its commands via RNA and the RNA then makes the proteins that it is directed to by the DNA.

These proteins are very complex structures, folded many times over in different directions, with the final structure having specific functions based on their final shape.

Think of protein structure as that of a key. If the shape or key is not identical to the lock it has to fit into, it will not work. Hence, any alteration in their folding will change how they function, and perhaps will prevent them from functioning at all.

When DNA is damaged, it produces damaged proteins, and this starts a cascade of dysfunction. Damaged proteins inside a cell are usually devoured by enzymes released by lysosomes, and its parts are recycled, clearing the cell and allowing it to function normally.

Lysosomes are essentially the digestive system of cells. When too many damaged proteins are produced, it overcomes the lysosomes’ ability to destroy them, and they accumulate in the cells, slowing and interfering with its function.

When too many proteins accumulate in the cells, eventually this will kill them. Think beta amyloid and tau proteins in Alzheimer’s disease. That accumulation of damaged functionless proteins inside of the cells that cannot be cleared, is how cells age and eventually die.

Free Radical Cell Damage Theory of Aging
The cell powerhouses known as our mitochondria are responsible for producing all the energy our cells need to carry out their many functions. As mitochondria use oxygen to make energy, they unfortunately produce a lot of waste products known as ROS or Reactive Oxygen Species.

These little bombs are very destructive to the inside of the cell causing what is known as “oxidative stress” and can only be neutralized by antioxidants. Think of your antioxidants as the “bomb squad”, defusing and neutralizing these radical oxygen species before they can damage the cells.

What happens is the antioxidants donate electrons to free radicals which have unpaired electrons in their outer shells that cause them to be so harmful, neutralizing them. This is the very reason why functional medicine doctors like me are always pushing supplementation with antioxidants. There is a method to our madness!

This ongoing damage to a cell’s internal structure, if not neutralized by antioxidants, will lead to the eventual malfunctioning of the cell and even its death. Free radicals bounce around inside the cell damaging vital proteins and the lipids of the cell membrane. This is one of a variety of ways that aging occurs on a cellular level.

When large groups of cells in a certain organ like the kidneys or the heart are damaged, this will eventually lead to renal (kidney) failure and congestive heart failure. This is how organs fail and we age.

The telomeres are the end caps on the end of chromosomes. These eventually shorten with each cycle of cell division, eventually becoming damaged or shortened enough that they cannot perform their function. Genetic material leaks out of the chromosome and the cell dies.

The average cell in our body can divide only about fifty times before it gets too old. Of course that does not include cells like our skin, hair etc.

Telomeres are analogous to the plastic end caps on your shoelace that prevent your shoelace from becoming frayed and unraveling. The telomeres do the same thing for chromosomes. Once they are damaged, the double helix chromosome structure unravels, and genetic material is lost.

Eventually the cell can no longer reproduce and undergoes what is known as senescence. In this state it no longer responds to stimuli such as growth hormone and is near death and useless.

Aging is thought to be the consequence of widespread telomere shortening over time, eventually compromising the integrity of the cell and in turn the organs it is part of.

Could Aging Be from a Decline in the Electrical Power of a Cell?

Here is looking at aging not from a biological or even a biochemical perspective, but rather from the viewpoint of biophysics. Meaning, all cells vibrate at a certain frequency and have an electrical charge. We know that healthy cells have a certain vibrational frequency of about 60-70 MHZ. If that drops into the 50’s then disease begins, if it drops low enough the cell dies.

How the electrical charges and the cell vibrational frequencies are produced and why they decline over time is not yet known but might very well be a key component in our understanding of the aging process, and more importantly, how to reverse it. This research is unfortunately still in its infancy.

HOW THE MEDICAL UNDERGROUND RECOMMENDS SLOWING YOUR AGING

If your goal is to slow down your body’s aging, you must realize that this is not a sprint but a marathon. Depending on your ultimate goals, you will have to adapt a lifestyle that includes dietary changes, frequent exercise, dropping bad habits like smoking, alcohol, and drug use, sleep longer, spend time outside, commit to quality time with friends and family, and find time for prayer or meditation in complete silence.

Any of these changes will positively impact your health and slow your aging, the more of them the better. The good news is that as your antiaging journey continues you will not only look better but feel so much better! Those positive feelings will reinforce the lifestyle choices you made and help you to succeed. That being said, let’s take a look at some of the current ways used to slow aging.

Caloric Restriction (CR)
Many different methods to control aging have been studied over the years. One of the most popular and one that has been repeated successfully in lab animals is caloric restriction. What calorie restriction means is limiting your overall food or caloric intake (the number of calories you take in daily) below your energy requirements, while maintaining optimal nutrition.

Caloric restriction involves not only restricting the overall quantity of calories you eat, but also maximizing your intake of vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. This is the only proven method of slowing aging! Despite the rhetoric of so many proponents of other methods, this is really the scientific gold standard.

Studies have shown that CR can increase your life span by 1 to 5 years, while at the same time reducing chronic diseases and improving quality of life. CR has also been shown to reduce the development of cardiovascular disease.

The earlier CR is initiated the greater its positive effects on both disease and aging. However, as you can imagine, severely limiting your food intake while optimizing your vitamin, mineral, and trace element intake is very difficult. Getting my patients to follow a moderately restrictive diet is amazingly difficult, not to mention CR.

Intermittent Fasting
The good news is that recent studies have suggested that you can get the same benefits of CR with intermittent fasting. I have used that quite extensively in my practice and have found that it is not very difficult to initiate in even moderately motivated patients.

Our bodies are not designed to have an endless variety of food available to us 24/7. The human body was designed to survive and thrive during periods of food scarcity and even short periods of starvation. It does not hurt us, in fact, we actually thrive and can keep ourselves quite healthy by changing our eating habits to include intermittent fasting.

Here is how intermittent fasting works. You get up in the morning and have nothing to eat or drink except water, until lunch at noon. Preferably you will eat a healthy, low carbohydrate lunch with healthy nutrient dense unprocessed foods, such as meat, fish, dairy, fruit, and vegetables.

Shop along the outer isles of the grocery store. Skip the middle isles which are all ultra processed nutrient deficient, toxic laden foods. You practice the same wise food choices as best as you can for dinner. After dinner, which for example is 6 p.m., you once again have absolutely no food intake until lunch the next day.

You should maintain adequate water intake by drinking water all day. There are no restrictions on your water intake, and it is important to both maintain hydration and to help curb your appetite. Although, truth be told, most patients get used to this eating schedule quickly without much suffering.

If you don’t cheat, you will have an 18 hour fast every day. During this fasting period if you provide absolutely no calories from food or drinks, your body will have no choice but to metabolize up stored fat for its energy needs. Thus, the weight loss, and from the point of view of this article, slowing the aging process and its associated disease burden.

Note: You could have black coffee (no sugar or cream), or plain tea as well as water, since they have no calories.

Intermittent fasting can be done in various ways. Above is a good table describing them. There is no right or wrong way, although I have found through trial and error with patients that what I described above is by far the easiest method.

Here are some of the many outstanding benefits one gets from intermittent fasting beyond its effects on aging.

Saving Your Telomeres
As it turns out, preventing your telomeres from shortening or even increasing their size is contingent upon all the same factors that are in our general antiaging strategies.

The easiest way is to incorporate just a few lifestyle changes at first and then layer in others as you go. Here are a few you can start on today:

1. Eat A Healthy, Organic Mediterranean Type of Diet, chock full seafood, seeds, nuts, fresh fruits, colorful vegetables, with generous servings of olive oil, butter, and cheeses, with fermented foods such as yogurt and wine.

Other than the Mediterranean diet, there are many other delicious healthy foods you can incorporate into your diet. Here are a few delicious choices.

2. Exercise: preferably outside in the sun. If you absolutely must wear sun protection, do it. But if you slowly acclimate your skin to the length of the day as the season progresses, you will not burn and have a deep healthy tan. By slowly I mean as soon as there is any redness, apply sunblock or get out of the sun into the shade, but try to stay outside in the fresh air. There are antiaging exercises for your face to make you look younger and those for your entire body that will make you feel wonderful.
   
   By far the best exercises for slowing aging include the following:

   a. Push-Ups: this is the king of antiaging exercises. Push-ups tone your entire body, build bone mass, muscle mass, and overall cardiovascular fitness and conditioning. I have always been a push up advocate.
   
   Truth be told, about 18 months ago I started doing them after a hiatus of over 30 years. I started at a quite pitiful eleven, but for the last six months I have reached 100 in under two minutes, in one clip. Not too bad for an old geezer. I feel great and it has toned my entire body.
   
   Start slow and be consistent about doing them daily (I skip Sundays). For me, that is less than 12 minutes of heavy exercise weekly, and the results have been wonderful, helping my overall strength, endurance, balance, and most importantly my muscle tone.
   
   There are plenty of shorts on YouTube that show the different ways of doing them. Women and Soy boys do them on your knees if you have to until you get stronger or do them on an incline.

   b. Swimming: Swimming, especially long distances, is incredibly good for you. Especially if you have joint problems, this will help keep the weight off your joints.

   c. Planks: Similar to push-ups, you assume a push up position, holding your back straight and yourself in the air. Hold it as long as you can.

   d. Squats: Squatting helps your strength and your balance, helping tone the muscles of your legs and buttocks as well as your abdomen and back.

   e. Jumping Jacks: This old favorite helps tone your entire body. Start with a set time and slowly increase it. This will tone your entire body and help your cardiovascular health and endurance.

   f. Walking: Walking, especially briskly, will help you to maintain your fitness, burn calories and help keep you young. Remember, a body in motion stays in motion!

Below is a chart of wonderful exercises to make your face younger, and who among us old geezers do not want that?

3. Get a Good Night’s Sleep: absolute silence, no chargers anywhere near your bedroom, a wind up or battery-operated alarm clock, in complete and utter darkness. Eight hours is ideal, six is an absolute minimum.

4. Human and Pet Contact: We all do better when we are in contact with others, be it humans or pets. Although, I will have to make an exception for my ex-wife, however I digress.
   
   As humans we crave interacting with others, in friendship, companionship, comradery, falling in love, having long satisfying deep loving relationships. That includes caring for others and helping them.

5. Prayer and/or Meditation: Our lives are so incredibly busy; we tend to occupy ourselves almost all our waking hours. Computers and the internet have opened an entire online world that didn’t exist before, just taking away more of our “down time” and leaving us with less quiet, introspective, soul-searching times that are so very healthy for our bodies and our minds, and if you are praying, then healthy for your soul as well.

I have been in the habit for years of starting my day in prayer, only about ten minutes, in a completely quiet area. It is a good way to start my day, grounds me, and makes me feel closer to God. If you are not religious, then quiet deep meditative practices are for you. What both are doing is severely lowering your stress, and in turn your stress hormones, which are aging accelerators. If you doubt that stress ages you, look at before and after pictures of every president for the last 100 years. They all age horribly. I guess the saying, “Heavy is the head that wears the crown”, has a lot of truth to it. Heavy with stress that is.

6. Supplements: The antioxidants are very important, especially high doses of vitamin C. B complex vitamins especially folate is good for telomere lengthening. Omega-3 fatty acids from marine sources are preferable, but if you don’t want any animal products then you can use walnut oil, chia seed oil, or flaxseed. Vitamin D is also critical since it is involved in so many different bodily functions.
   
   Examples of antioxidants include:

• Vitamins C and E

• Selenium

• Carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, and zeaxanthin

• Glutathione

• Coenzyme Q10

• Lipoic acid

• Flavonoids

• Phenols

• Polyphenols

• Phytoestrogens

I don’t want to give the mistaken impression that the Medical Underground prefers supplements to real healthy food, nothing could be farther from the truth. Without a doubt it is better to get your vitamins, minerals, and trace elements from foods rather than supplements. Especially organic foods that have not been grown in a toxic chemical soup of pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers.

If you want to achieve that goal, then a few steps must be taken immediately. If you are shopping in a supermarket, shop only along the outside isles. The isles inside are full of overly processed, nutritionally empty, chemically laden food. Try to buy organic, I know it’s expensive, but just like stepping up and becoming a paid subscriber to the Medical Underground, it is money well spent. How do you like the way I slipped that in there? LOL.

Besides being high in antioxidants, eating foods listed below are full of fiber, minerals, trace elements, enzymes, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, and lots of phytonutrients (plant-based chemicals) such as my favorite polyphenols, and flavonoids. Buy colorful fruits and vegetables, those colors are produced by very healthy plant-based compounds.

In these troubled times, as the world seems to be heading towards the real chance of a complete collapse, growing your own food is more important than ever. If you have never done it before, start this spring and summer. Plant an organic garden, full of delicious, healthy fruits and vegetables.

If you have limited space, grow them in grow bags or buckets with holes for drainage. Use only heirloom seeds, not F1 hybrids, since they will produce viable seeds that you can save for next year. This might very well save the lives of you and your family.

7. Stop Smoking and Drinking Alcohol to Excess: Everyone knows how smoking makes your face age, well it does worse to your insides. If you have been smoking a while, this will take some time, but it can be done. If you need to use Nicorette patches to help you, they are over the counter.
   
   One method I use with my patients is to reduce their smoking by only one cigarette a week. If you are smoking a pack, then the first week you never ever smoke more than 19 cigarettes. That is a doable goal, and it lessens the pain of nicotine withdrawal. Naturally, it works better if you are not supplementing nicotine with a nicotine patch, but that is up to you and your will power.
   
   Other methods I employ is using swizzle sticks or toothpicks for smokers, most of whom have developed an oral fixation and are used to something in their mouths. Another trick is to put the photo of your children or anyone you love and cherish between the cellophane and the pack to remind you how important it is for you to live and spend time with that person.
   
   As far as alcohol is concerned, there is somewhat of a paradox there. A little alcohol is better for you than no alcohol. That of course begs the question, how much alcohol is a little? No more than one drink a day, or several times a week will give you all the benefits you need, especially if you choose something like red wine, full of resveratrol. For more information on that see my Resveratrol article from a few weeks ago here on Substack.

Well boys and girls, that ends another exciting episode from the Medical Underground. If you are not a subscriber yet, what the hell are you waiting for? If you are a subscriber, please show me how much you appreciate the Medical Underground and up your game and become a paid subscriber. It costs as much as a coffee and a doughnut once a month. We all have to start supporting things like the Medical Underground that help improve the quality of our lives!

As always, until we meet again, May God Bless You and Your Family and the United States of America. And remember, for those of you wise enough to be believers in God: Miracle Shall Follow Miracle and Wonders Shall Never Cease.

This disclaimer provides that such medical information is merely information – not advice.
If users need medical advice, they should consult their doctor or other appropriate medical professional.

***Copyright © 2023-2024 by Dr. Ralph La Guardia, MD***
All rights reserved. This article or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in an article review.