The Best Strategy to Combat Aging

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD

When people think about growing old, they blame the passage of time—the years roll by, and the body stops looking younger year by year. But the latest science disputes this view. A person ages because the cells in their body age, and cells live only in the present. This is one reason memory remains such a mystery. Brain cells function through electrochemical activity that occurs the instant a chemical reaction or electrical impulse is able to occur. There are no pauses to think about reacting; if the potential is there, the action must follow.

 

Whatever a brain cell does, it can’t go back to the past. So how do we seem to go back into the past when we remember a childhood birthday party or our first kiss? No one knows, but when the answer is found, it won’t involve time travel, either forward or backward. If you expand this to every cell in the body, they too must function instantly in the present moment when any two molecules interact. So the problem of aging can be stated as the gap between how a cell lives and how a person lives. As people, we repeat the past, get stuck in old habits, cling to stubborn beliefs, fear the future, and in general occupy mental states that are not in the now.

 

If you can return to the now, you close the gap between your life and the life of your cells, and by doing this, you can prevent aging or even reverse it. Aging isn’t one thing but a complex of possibilities. Which possibilities get triggered is infinitely complicated, but no one has ever shown that any symptoms of aging must occur.

 

Even though we can all tick off the disagreeable signs of growing old—creaky joints, wrinkled skin, loss of energy, erratic sleep, declining memory, and so on—there is someone who has actually improved as they aged in each of these areas, except perhaps for wrinkles. However unusual, there are individuals who retain limberness, energy, good sleep, mobility, and memory.

 

In fact, once we abandon the notion that aging is normal, it dawns that aging might actually be the sum of disease processes, and without these disease processes, cells can function at a high level of efficiency for a very long time. (In laboratory experiments it has been shown that a cell can only divide a limited number of times, around 50, which would place a physical limit on lifespan, and this may indicate a genetic barrier that cannot be crossed. However, in real life people live to be 100 already, and the goal is to remain well up to an advanced age, not to aim for immortality.)

 

In our latest book, The Healing Self, we deal in depth with the prospects of anti-aging and the reversal of the aging process. We also outline an anti-aging regimen, which lists things each person can either do or undo.

 

DO

  • Meditate
  • Join a social support group
  • Strengthen emotional bonds with family and close friends.
  • Take a multivitamin and mineral supplement (if you are age sixty-five and older).
  • Maintain a balance of rest and activity.
  • Explore a new interest.
  • Take up a challenging mental activity.

 

  • UNDO
  • Don’t be sedentary—stand up and move throughout the day.
  • Examine your negative emotions.
  • Heal injured relationships that are meaningful to you.
  • Be mindful of lapses and imbalances in your diet.
  • Address negative stereotypes about aging and ageism.
  • Consider how to heal the fear of death.

 

Each of these choices is correlated with maintaining a state of wellness throughout one’s lifetime. In our program, we advise doing or undoing one thing on the list, then not moving on to the next thing until the first choice is well established in your daily life.

 

Of everything on this list, meditating is critical because it brings the mind into the present moment, where the body always lives. There is much more to be said about “the power of now,” but the key here is how aging is affected. Finding a way to live in the present moment can be looked upon as a spiritual aspiration, but as far as your cells are concerned, the present moment is where every decision to survive and thrive is made. That should be our attitude also.

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

 

Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D. is the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University and Vice Chair of Neurology at Mass. General Hospital. Dr. Tanzi is the co-author with Deepak Chopra of the New York Times bestsellers, Super Brain, and Super Genes. His latest book is The Healing Self co-authored with Deepak Chopra. He is also an internationally acclaimed expert on Alzheimer’s disease and brain health with over 500 research publications. He was included in TIME Magazine’s “TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World.”

The “New Old Age” Just Got Better

By Deepak Chopra, MD, Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD

 

For at least two decades we’ve been living with a drastic revision of growing old. What is now dubbed the “old old age” prevailed for centuries; it was a set of beliefs that turned the aging process into inevitable decline physically and mentally. After a lifetime of work, people found themselves set aside, no longer productive or active members of society. Generation after generation these expectations came true. But everyone trapped in the old old age was mistaken to think such expectations were inevitable. Hidden factors were causing beliefs to turn into reality.

 

The “new old age,” created by the baby boomer generation, threw out the previous beliefs, exchanging them for more optimistic ones, and by now we’ve grown used to a set of readjusted expectations. Millions of people over 65 haven’t retired, and few have taken to the rocking chair. To be healthy and active one’s whole life seems possible. But as much good as the new old age has done, it faced two major obstacles. The first was that aging itself has long been a mystery, not explained by medical science because too many changes occur over a lifetime, and these changes vary from person to person.  The second obstacle, assuming that aging could be defined, was how to reverse it.

 

An enormous leap forward in overcoming both obstacles was made by Elizabeth Blackburn, the molecular biologist who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for their discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes a section of DNA known as telomeres, which cap the end of each chromosome like a period ending a sentence. Telomeres are “noncoding” DNA, meaning that they have no specified function in building cells, but they are far from passive. Their function seems to be to preserve cells. Every time a cell divides, which happens constantly somewhere in the body, its telomeres are shortened. Longer telomeres are typical of young cells in the stage of luxuriant growth; shortened or frayed telomeres are typical of weary senescent cells.

 

Now the head of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, Blackburn covers every aspect of cell aging and renewal in her 2017 book, The Telomere Effect, co-authored with her close colleague, UCSF Professor and health psychologist Elissa Epel.  They convincingly describe telomeres and levels of telomerase in the cell as our best marker yet for the multifold process of aging. This also implies that by increasing one’s telomerase levels and thereby causing telomeres to grow longer, a healthy lifespan can be founded on cells that keep renewing themselves for decades.

In their book Blackburn and Epel cite a startling actuarial prediction. There are currently around 300,000 centenarians existing around the world, a number that is rapidly increasing. According to one estimate, reaching one hundred is about to become so commonplace that one-third of children born in the UK will live to be centenarians—the issue of protecting your cells is suddenly more urgent than ever.  We highly recommend reading Blackburn and Epel’s book–its wealth of information needs to be absorbed in detail. But the bottom line is to understand what puts your telomeres at high risk and low risk.

 

            Your telomeres are at low risk if you

 

  • Have no exposure to severe stress.

 

  • Have never been diagnosed with a mood disorder.

 

  • Enjoy strong social support, including a close confidante who gives good advice, friends who listen to you and with whom you can unburden yourself, and relationships where love and affection are shown.

 

  • Exercise moderately or vigorously at least three times a week, preferably more.

 

  • Get good-quality sleep for at least 7 hours.

 

  • Consume omega 3-rich food three times a week while avoiding processed meats, sugary sodas, and processed food in general. A whole-food diet is best.

 

  • Are not exposed to cigarette smoke, pesticides, and insecticides.

 

The opposite is also true.

 

Your telomeres are at high risk if you

 

  • Are being exposed to severe stress in your life.

 

  • Have been diagnosed with an anxiety or depressive disorder that lasted for many years.

 

  • Lack social support from friends and family.

 

  • Lead a completely sedentary lifestyle with no regular exercise, even light activity like walking.

 

  • Suffer from chronic insomnia or cut your sleep shorter than 7 hours a night.

 

  • Consume a diet high in fat, processed foods, and sugary sodas, with no attention to sufficient fiber and omega-3 fatty acids.

 

  • You are exposed to cigarette smoke, pesticides, insecticides, and other chemical toxins.

 

These summarize the research-supported risk factors presented in Blackburn and Epel’s book, and as with any risk-based program, some people are more affected than others. Severe stress is one of the most thoroughly damaging factors—in one study, caregivers who tended Alzheimer’s patients had shortened telomeres that predicted a shortened lifespan of between 5 and 8 years.

 

It’s also significant that the lifestyle choices known to decrease the risk of heart disease, as originally devised by Dr. Dean Ornish at Harvard Medical School, have a beneficial effect on telomere length. Extending the program to cancer, Ornish had another impressive finding. A group of men with low-risk prostate cancer were selected for study (low-risk means that their cancer was at an early stage and slow-growing. Prostate cancer can take decades to advance and the current recommendation advises balancing the risk and reward of doing any active treatments, a change from the era when any cancer was immediately treated and usually aggressively).

 

The men were put on a variant of the heart-disease protocol: they ate a low-fat, high-fiber diet, walked for 30 minutes a day, and attended regular support group meetings. Stress management was included, and there was training in meditation, mild yoga stretching, and breathing. At the end of three months the group that was on the program had higher telomerase levels than the control group, which meant that their cells were aging better. Stress seemed to play a key role, because the greatest increase in telomerase occurred among the men who reported having fewer distressing thoughts about prostate cancer. Ornish followed some of the men for 5 years, and those who stuck with the program showed telomeres that had increased by 10 percent, reversing the usual expectation as cells age.
In short, the era of the new old age has shifted into the “Now old age,” thanks to important Genetic findings by Blackburn and her colleagues, Ornish, and others. In a society addicted to the promise of a silver bullet, drugs may emerge to improve telomerase levels in the cell, leading perhaps to extended telomeres and effective anti-aging at the genetic level. But since no one can predict when such drugs will appear, and what side effects come with them, the best way to enter the now old age is through lifestyle choices, particularly those that counter stress and inflammation. The good news is that the aging process is less fearful and more optimistic than ever before.

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

 

 

Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D. is the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University and Vice Chair of Neurology at Mass. General Hospital. Dr. Tanzi is the co-author with Deepak Chopra of the New York Times bestseller, Super Brain, and an internationally acclaimed expert on Alzheimer disease. He was included in TIME Magazine’s “TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World”.

Good News: You Aren’t a Biological Robot

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD

We live in a golden age for neuroscience, and new findings about the brain emerge almost by the month. with huge government backing, one foresees the day, which could be quite soon, when every significant region of the brain is correlated with all the things we use our minds for. But as often happens with exciting frontiers, there’s a tendency to exaggerate the conclusions being reached.

In the case of neuroscience, the overreach is immense, because from many quarters brain researchers keep piling up evidence for very misguided conclusions. All revolve around the notion that we are prisoners of brain activity, in essence trapped inside the chemical and electrical activity of brain cells. Since this activity follows totally deterministic laws, it must follow that we do the same. In the latest wrinkle of “biology is destiny,” our brains have turned us into biological robots. untitled-design

An extreme statement of this position recently appeared in the New York Times, where Robert A. Burton, former chief of neurology at the University of California San Francisco, writes, with damning finality, “. . . it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the experience of free will (agency) and conscious rational deliberation are both biologically generated illusions.” (Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/opinion/a-life-of-meaning-reason-not-required.html)This isn’t a novel idea, but the fact that others have touted it doesn’t add any validity.

On the face of it, Dr. Burton had to use “conscious rational deliberation’ to write his article, so such a thing obviously exists. He has trusted an illusion to tell him that his own thinking is an illusion, which is totally self-contradictory. If it seems puzzling that a biological robot, however complicated its hard wiring in the brain, could produce the output of Shakespeare, Mozart, and Rembrandt, the reason is that no robot did produce that output–the human mind did.

Getting neuroscientists to back away from the biological robot thesis is difficult, because the vast majority align themselves with an unproven assumption, that the brain produces the mind. Burton admits in his article that no one has any idea where thoughts comes from, yet he proceeds to assure us where they don’t come from, the mind. Brain is all; mind is simply one of its more intriguing byproducts. This is the fallacy of instrumentality, the same as saying that because musical instruments produce music, they also compose it. A piano doesn’t compose ragtime, and there is no proof that the brain produces thought.

All we can say with certainty is that the brain’s physical activity delivers precise correlations with mental activity. Burton makes much of the finding that if you electrically stimulate regions of the brain associated with disgust or empathy, people will experience those feelings. Yet long ago the pioneering Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield stimulated the motor cortex of patients undergoing brain surgery. As a result of stimulating neurons responsible for activating arm muscles, for example, the patient’s arm would fly up automatically.

Yet Penfield, a great proponent of mind over brain, was astute enough to ask the conscious patients if they had raised their arm. The answer was always no. Instead, patients said something like, “My arm just flew up.” This is enough to show that all of us separate the actions we freely choose from autonomic responses. We can’t be fooled about this. We never say, “My mouth ate some food” or “My hand wants to play the violin.” All the complicated findings in neuroscience are instrumental only. They tell us the equivalent of showing that music can’t be played without musical instruments. The piano is capable of nearly infinite patterns of notes when you consider tempo, dynamics, phrasing, melody, and harmony. This activity is the physical correlation of music, not music itself. The brain’s nearly infinite patterns aren’t thinking, either.

Until neuroscience can actually tell us where thoughts come from, until the link is made between the electrochemical firing of a brain cell and subjective experience, nothing valid can be said about how mind and brain are related. Their relationship has to be holistic. Instead of insisting, as neuroscience does, that brain produces mind, or taking the opposite position, that the mind creates the brain, there is no cause-and-effect between them. They are simultaneous phenomena. A thought is instantly registered in the mental and physical domain.

Where did they both come from? A single source, which is consciousness itself. In fact, brain and mind are two aspects of this deeper reality, where consciousness is the only “stuff” that’s ultimately real. At the moment, however, the concept that we are pre-determined, mechanistic brain puppets is pure science fiction. Decades ago someone joked that figuring out the brain is like putting a stethoscope to the outside of the Astrodome to figure out the rules of football. The fact that various brain experts now take the joke seriously indicates a bad misunderstanding of both brain and mind.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. www.deepakchopra.com

Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit and Vice-Chair of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tanzi discovered several Alzheimer’s disease (AD) genes and directs the Alzheimer’s Genome Project. He is now actively developing therapies for treating AD based on knowledge gained from genetics and lifestyle interventions. Dr. Tanzi has published over 475 papers and has received the Metropolitan Life Foundation Award, Potamkin Prize, the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, and was on the 2015 TIME100 Most Influential People in the World list. He also co-authored the New York Times Bestseller, “Super Brain” and “Super Genes” with Dr. Deepak Chopra.

The Health Benefits of Meditation and Vacation

The systems biology research study indicates that meditation provides a clear and quantifiable change in how the human body functions, appearing to provide relief for the immune system, and ease the daily stress of the body constantly trying to protect itself.

Rudy Tanzi Meditation 2016

 


View the Study Systems biology research study reveals benefits of vacation and meditation


 

READ The Health Benefits of Meditation and Vacation:http://go.nature.com/2bPHw2Z #Meditation #Health #WellBeing #Vacation

Press release: Systems biology research study reveals benefits of vacation and meditation

Why a Mental Universe Is the “Real” Reality

livingbodyBy Deepak Chopra, MD, Menas Kafatos, PhD, Bernardo Kastrup, PhD, Rudolph Tanzi, PhD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science concerns itself with reality, in the form of “real particles”, “real organisms”, and the “real universe”. The tacit assumption is that science can answer the question of reality itself. If this wasn’t the case, science would have a hard time explaining why it holds a special place as a human activity. So one must grant that science concerns itself with the reality of “objects”. What this assumes, of course, is that objects exist independent of conscious experience. In the first two articles of this series, we’ve discussed the evidence that our universe is in fact fundamentally mental. What we call physical things and events, as it turns out, do not exist independently of subjective experience.

 

If they did, how would one even prove such existence? Conscious experience is the only way that reality can be known. The implications of this increasingly unavoidable conclusion—that the universe must be approached as fundamentally mental—are often misunderstood. For this reason, the vast majority of scientists cling to the belief in materialism, regarding anything else as metaphysics and not science. The goal of the present article is to address some of these misunderstandings.

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