I doubt if at least a single person can be found on earth who doesn’t want to live long. Not only that, everyone dreams to live a disease free life and die suddenly someday without much worries. It’s true no one want to lay on bed for a prolonged period depending on others for even a simple help. Is it possible? Can such dreams come true? How can we live long without diseases and leave the earth without giving problems to others? To increase longevity many paths are there. Also, to keep you young in this life span, it’s also possible. Through this article I am finding ways to increase your life span through control of your age and free radicals.
Life span of cells and organs
What is a man? Just an accumulation of millions and millions of cells, which depends on each other and exist together! If you want to live long, then you need to increase the life span of each and every cell of your life.
How can we increase the longevity of cells and organs?
Two important factors determine the life span of a cell. Most important is mitochondria known as ‘power house of a cell’ which provides energy for each and every cell of our body to work. But the main problem is the emission of free radicals along with energy that are mainly responsible for aging. Some of them are neutralized by free radical scavengers and antioxidants of our body. Yet continuous production of free radicals makes mitochondria weak and damaged which reduces the life span of our cells.
How can we destroy free radicals?
Calorie control, controlling free radicals and using body fuels a lot are the three methods that can be done to destroy free radicals. Let me explain one by one.
Calorie control
Food consumed by cells is often greater than what they actually require. For example: Suppose you light the hearth or gas stove to make a cup of coffee. You can use more or less firewood or gas to boil your tea. But that excess energy supplied will be wasted for sure. Also, more burning of firewood gives more fumes and smoke that is not at all necessary. Exactly same is the case of our living cells. Excess supply of energy can result in wearing out and tiredness to your cells reducing its life span and giving many diseases as well. So, the first formula to live long is to provide minimum calorie food to your cells sufficient enough to produce required energy for your body. Giving excess food can’t significantly add anything to your cells except more work load.
Control free radicals
If you are able to check input calories, next step is to bring those released free radicals under control. For that, it’s needed to deactivate them as soon as they are produced by mitochondria. Antioxidants and free radical scavengers are doing a lot to catch those released free radicals as early as possible. So, we should assure if both of them are sufficient enough to deactivate those released evils. If not, we can supply our body with antioxidants through healthy diet giving preference to multicoloured rainbow food – the food that contains all colours of rainbow. Fruits and vegetables are sufficient enough.
Using body fuels
Mitochondria functions well when it’s supplied with fatty acids and ketones as fuels. When glucose is consumed more free radicals are formed. So integrate metabolic activities of your body to produce energy without the formation of free radicals at all. So, reduce the usage of carbohydrates as much as possible. Even if you eat less calorie food, it may increase the usage of saturated fat.
Sirtuins can help you
When calories are controlled sirtuins function increases. Sirtuins are magicians capable of increasing your life span by acting on histornes of DNA and suppressing them. Also, they are able to regulate the production of genes which in turn balances activities of stem cells thus protecting cell division. To improve production and functioning of sirtuins three things have been found.
First one as told, is calorie control. Include resveratrol contained fruits in your diet. It’s found abundantly in red wine prepared from grape extracts using special methods. It’s also found in Japanese weed, Knot weed. When our body responds to high temperature as shocks, sirtuins are formed.
Resveratrol magic
Now almost all researches for aging process are concentrated around resveratrol. Though scientists have not reached a conclusion of its impact on human beings, experiments on house flies, fishes and bacteria have been successful. Though it’s not available as medicine in markets it’s seen as food supplement which can be used to prevent heart diseases. French people use red wine a lot which contains resveratrol and heart patients are comparatively less in France too. It can also be used to reduce chances of diabetics and cancer and is often used to resist herpes virus. Dried grapes contain resveratrol in abundant quantity and it may not be found in all types of grapes. Also it’s found at certain seasons only. Another reservoir of resveratrol is sprouted groundnuts. Now it’s industrially produced from Japanese knot weed.
Over exercise gives more free radicals
Exercise maximum 1.5 hours daily. How much you exercise, that much energy will be released by mitochondria which increase the free radicals of the body. That can result in aging. It’s the same case of a machine. Over working can damage it. Same way if it’s not given enough work, it may rust. It’s better to walk 45 minutes 5 days a week. If you are going to gym, make it twice a week. You can do some weight lifting exercise an hour. Yoga is also a good exercise to maintain both - your body health and mental health.
Longevity and your body fitness
Will anyone prefer to live 120 years without body fitness and lying on bed as a patient taking a lot of medicines and injections? Not at all! As age passes by, each body part will become weak and loss their strength little by little. Body of a person is most fit when he is at 20-30 age period. After that, for each 10 years a person losses 10% of his muscle mass and 7% of his functioning of heart and lungs. But this loss can be restored up to a limit by regular exercise and strict diet measures. Even if a person is at his 50’s through regular exercise and food control he can overcome those age losses within 6 or 7 months for sure. But power of eyes and ears can’t be restored fully.
Living cells
It’s believed that each cell has a fate and they can divide up to a limit only. Cancer is the only exception. Each time a cell divides, telomere of DNA reduces its length a little bit. A cell can multiply up to 60 times. In the case of cancer cells, telomeres are not losing its length and that’s the reason why they divide in an uncontrolled way, similar to a chain reaction. So, scientists believe that if this effect can be used in a suitable way, it’s possible to increase life span of a person.
Immortal Hereits Lacks
Hereits Lacks was an American lady who died in 1951. She was a cancer patient. But she lived through researches and her cells are still alive. Since those cells haven’t lost their cell dividing power, at suitable conditions it grows. Since those cells belong to a human being it can be used for experiments, giving medicines and vaccines. Her cells are still available in different parts of world in different countries and many labs. That means, even if the owner of those cells have died a half century back, her cells are still alive in labs as normal cells responding to each and every laboratory actions. Those cells have another peculiarity too. Since cloning in human beings is possible, it’s not a difficult task to give birth to another Hereits! Her cells are known as HeLa cells. Same way, many such cancer cells of dead persons are still alive in many labs!
Can antioxidant supplements help you?
Many such products are now available in the market which claims to decrease oxidative stress of human cells. But they can’t contribute much. It’s the real truth. To control oxidative stress of human cells, antioxidant stress is found in our body itself. Even if more antioxidant supplements are used, you can’t get more benefits. Through food control and regular body exercises it’s possible to reduce oxidative stress to a great extend. Also, reduce intake of calorie rich food substituting them with fruits and vegetables. Reserve a part of your meals exclusively for fruits. It can automatically reduce calorie intake and supply a lot of antioxidants without any artificial method.
Conclusion
Through this article I have given an idea about free radicals, its formation and how it adversely affects our health. Yes, many solutions are in our hand. Also time. Just needed is a strong mind to take a decision to keep those free radicals under our control so that we can live a long healthy life without any diseases or medicines, thus controlling our age!