Did you know that your simple indicators such as your ambulatory speed, doing twenty push-ups or being able to stand from a lotus position without using your knees or hands is a good indicator of your biological age?

Being a runner, I pride myself at being able to outpace people on the way to get my morning coffee. However, I thought I better test the other two indicators, both I achieved but the push-ups did humble me, and I made a mental note to start lifting weights again, sooner rather than later.

Ok those are some of the physical measures of your biological age, what about the lifestyle indicators? There are many, and as I have been learning through reading Lifespan by David Sinclair, the following serve to cause DNA breaks in cells which accelerates aging.

• Smoking: Thankfully an old habit.
• Alcohol: Beer once or twice per month.
• Highly Processed Food: I have a weakness for desserts that I try to moderate.
• X-Rays: I am exposed to airport scanners frequently.
• UV Exposure: I like running in the Californian sun.

I consider myself healthy, however, there are ways I am causing my cells damage, requiring recruitment of sirtuins to repair cellular DNA breaks. This distracts sirtuins from their main function of silencing in genes in their home cells to ensure they perform specific functions optimally. Overtime, this causes epigenetic noise where a cell such as a bone cell loses its identity and become dysfunctional accelerate aging.

We have learned that one way to keep our cells healthy is to avoid harmful environmental exposures. However, there are also ways in which we can activate our survival circuit to boost our level the level of NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine nucleotide) in our systems, which acts to increase sirtuin activity to more effectively repair DNA breaks and at the same time silence genes in a cell to ensure 100% of its function is recruited for its assigned performance. So, what are the natural ways in which we can do this?

• Calorie restriction or intermittent fasting: Reducing our calorie intake has been found to minimize epigenetic change over time, slowing aging.
• Exercise: High intensity exercise that elevate our heart and respiratory rates boosts sirtuin activity.
• Exposure to extreme temperatures: Moving outside our thermal comfort zone affects our breathing and heart rate, activating our survival circuit.

It is worth noting that all these methods activate the body survival mode and the chemical boost it triggers improves our longevity. However, we must not go too far otherwise we will feel the effects of malnutrition, overtraining or exposure causing us harm. Therefore, we should be careful how we regulate these activities and consult carefully on the lifestyle changes we choose to implement.

Our bodies are amazing at adapting, transitioning from running in the temperate northern Californian winter to the heat of the summer, I notice how my body is able to adapt and within a week or two, I am running comfortably. At a physiological level, the sweat glands become more resilient and have less sodium concentration to aid water retention. Also, blood flow improves and is routed to the skin surface, dissipating the muscles heat. How, this links to our genes, is not clear but the initial heat exposure could be stimulating our longevity genes initiating these adaptations.

Therefore, I should expose myself to the other extreme where the science is clearer, cold stimulates mitochondria release from our stores of ‘brown fat’ – cold showers anyone? Considering, calorie restriction, I get my recommended daily amount. I have considered intermittent fasting but struggle to see how I can incorporate into my lifestyle. I am now more aware of the options and have my new year resolution planned, to fast one day a week!

All this analysis of the body has shown that exposure to new environmental conditions stimulates, causing chemical releases that can promote an increased healthy lifespan as well as overall longevity. This is analogous to the mind, where acute stress releases cortisol and adrenaline to raise our performance and is beneficial to the body. However, if these hormones remain, we don’t give our bodies time to recover and blood is diverted from our vital organs to our sympathetic nervous system resulting in a range of chronic conditions such as heart disease or diabetes. Equally, mindfulness releases brain waves that puts our bodies in a relaxed state reducing cortisol and increases grey matter.

All the science has highlighted that in all areas of our life we need to stress to train our bodies and elevate performance. However, we also need to actively recover to induce adaptations to our body and mind to realize long term performance gain.

For many of us, it is hard to achieve the behavioral changes necessary to explore the edges of our comfort zone. I like to think of it has a donut, a torus shape where we try to grow the outer edges to stress our bodies and shrink the hole in the middle to make us more complete.

If we understand from first principles the value we derive from a making a change, we are far more likely to develop a habit that will promote our healthy lifespans without relying on willpower alone. This is why putting this down in words has helped to internalize my current habits and the new ones I wish to incorporate in my life. I hope it does the same for you.