ARE YOU SIGNALING YOUR BODY AND BRAIN TO AGE ?

     If at middle age, you are aging ungraciously, it is likely that for decades you have been signaling your body, and brain to survive by becoming depressed: if you are chronically stressed, physically, or mentally, you have created a low grade state of depression in your body as a healthy, adaptive response to what is understands as your ultimate survival challenge.
     If you suffer from depression, you can turn your take a look at your lifestyle survival strategies, and make different choices.  In nature, depression is normal: it is a survival mechanism. Depression is the body and brain’s response to famine, excess food intake, and inactivity.
As we evolved over millions of years of howling, blizzarding winters on the African savannah, it was this “survival depression” that kept us alive until the warmth of spring.  We hunted and gathered every single day; we were only sedentary if there was a famine. As winter, drought or famine approached, we became sedentary, built up our fat reserves, made our shelters to hibernate: we burrowed for warmth, and safety, in small spaces that made it impossible to move, further slowing down our metabolism. These natural behaviors signaled the critical systems in our bodies and brains to shutdown, decay, atrophy, loose their muscles, in order to survive the winter. Survival depression was our healthy response to our environment.
Now here we are in 2008, with lengthy commutes to work, whole days sitting at our computers, with little movement of our bodies; hours of TV, or checking email, surfing the web, nights of reading alone in our big houses with central heating, and air……….we are sending the signals to our body that it is winter everyday. When we don’t send out the signals EVERYDAY to our bodies to ‘hunt, and forage’; eventually this constant depressed state of decay, this modern equivalent to survival on the Tundra, takes over. And as we chronically age, the rate of this decline, and decay just accelerates. Too many decades of simulate winters.  Our bodies and brains are just responding. No wonder that we have a picture of aging in America that is one of decay, decline. Our modern lifestyle is killing us.   During our evolution, the effect of adaptation on the part of the body to the physical work of hunting and gathering, lead to chemical changes in the brain: optimism ( I will survive); increased energy, curiousity, zeal for exploration, alertness, and a willingness to work with others.
In 2008, we see an overabundance of food supply, particularly the cartoon fun foods of zero nutritional value but tons of age-accelerating sugar; we control the temperature of houses and cars, and the tigers that would be chasing us, are in our zoo’s.  Our need to exercise, move constantly is who we are. This body is really a bunch of chemical and electrical impulses that drive all our cells to function when we are forcing some adaptations on the part of our bodies and brains to occur.
     Without these acts to trigger growth in our bodies, on the cellular level; we decay. We survived over hundreds of millions of years, because each one of our ancestors got it right, and passed on their strength, speed, and smarts genetically. It took us millions of years to evolve to this point: evolve from bacteria going back billions of years. But we are basically unchanged.
     In the absence of these pressures that cause our bodies and brains to adapt, and on the cellular level to “grow”, our bodies and brains start shutting down. Daily we are sending out signals to our bodies to decay, and do so quickly. No matter what we choose to think, this is what our choices tell our body: no need to adapt, no need to get strong, no need to grow: we have to go to work, sit in our cubicle, move information on our computers. Our body is not designed for sitting in front of a computer, or a TV; or driving a car to Northern California to take in 600 miles of incredible sights, or staying in bed all day because it is Sunday.
So, as we repeat this mal-adaptation over thirty years, we reach fifty, and are ‘suddenly’ surprised that we are falling apart. If you find yourself 'suddenly suprised', read on: you change the course of your life. If you are a woman, it is critical that you raise your own awareness about the process of aging: consider that 3 million of the 70 million baby boomers are expected to live past 100 years of age. Of this 3 million boomer centurians, 85 % will be female.
You can change the signals you are unwittingly sending your body and brain: return to this site, and find out how..............