Are We Aging Faster?
7 Reasons People Are Aging Faster
by Bob Root – the Author of Chemical-Free Skin Health & Keto Plus
I was recently asked in an interview if people are visibly aging faster or slower than ten years ago. The answer is both yes and no. Kudos to some big companies that followed the wallets of knowledgeable consumers. Ten years ago, there was a handful of us screaming that chemicals in everyday products were harming people. You agreed and started buying your laundry detergents and personal care products from reputable natural product companies. Nowadays, Natural products are center-stage at most supermarkets. So to that, the answer is yes. Good!
No is the other answer because natural products companies have relaxed their standards. After all, wholesalers and distribution are demanding cheaper products. In this case, no is because less is not more. Meaning when you scrimp on quality or put less of a natural ingredient in a product, the benefits of that product go away. So, a few of us are still screaming.
No matter, the interview went on to ask if there is a cause for photo-aging and chemo-aging? I said there are seven reasons, not just one. The interviewer later said you should write a book about this. I said, “I did!” it is called Chemical-Free Skin Health®.
For you, here is a synopsis that answers the question of how we are aging by external influences:
UV Radiation is the #1 Ager, By Far
90% of visible skin aging comes from the sun. UVB radiation burns, and UVA radiation ages prematurely by destroying the collagen in our skin. Wearing a daily sunscreen like Keys Solar Rx blocks UVA & UVB radiation. As a moisturizer, it builds skin hydration. The key is to avoid the sun from 10 am to 2 pm and minimize exposure by covering up and wearing sunscreen. UV radiation directly correlates to skin cancers, which is why the FDA requires us to list skin cancer prevention on our Solar Rx label.
But sunscreen is not enough. Wear UV clothing, a UV hat, and UV rated sunglasses will protect you.
Okay, what about Vitamin D. My answer is to supplement and get sun on our toughest skin. A little sun on our legs and arms can provide a Vitamin D boost, but please realize that Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin. Meaning, if your body fat level is too high, neither the sun nor Vitamin D supplements help. They will just be trapped in the fat cell waiting to be sprung loose, but the Vitamin D never seems to get released for those with high body fat percentages. More in this article’s diet section, so read on even if I have already irritated you.
As a personal note, my wellness doc is a huge proponent of Vitamin D. I always used to test low and given higher doses of Bioemulsion D. It bumped a little, but when I lost all my body fat, the Vitamin D number soared. Just a bit of rational awareness.
Bactericides in Skincare Kill Our Probiome
Number two on our list are specifically bactericides used in skincare to make product shelflife longer. Methylparaben and its nasty kin indiscriminately kill all the bacteria in a product. What people do not realize is that it is killing our skins probiome as well. Parabens are high on the Dirty Dozen chemicals list and destroy good colony bacteria that our skin thrives on. The skin is our largest organ, and we destroy its protective barrier with parabens in all the skincare we wear. Parabens are cumulative, and therefore you can multiply their deadliness by how many products you use daily. Ten products equal a paraben load of 5% or ten times the load recommended by the FDA.
Chemicals Age Us Rapidly
The Dirty 30 Chemical list is the top contributor to the chemical aging of our skin. Parabens are one of them, but even baby soaps contain high levels of some of these chemicals. Some skincare contains all of them. Something as harmless-sounding as laundry detergent and dryer sheets age our skin because of high doses of the Dirty 30 chemicals. Avoid these Dirty 30 Chemicals that will clean up your life and save tons of money. Read labels and follow these guidelines.
- If there are no ingredients on a label, do not buy the product.
- If you cannot pronounce the ingredients, it is a good bet they are not good for you.
- New fangled get results quick products are more than likely chemical zones that will hurt you long term. If that invention by a Beverley Hills Dermatologist sounds too good to be true, my experience is not true.
Dehydration
Our society is predominately dehydrated. In grade school, we learned that the human body is 60% water. Somehow doctors missed that class because almost none pay attention to our hydration. Only a handful of blood viscosity machines exist in the US, which is evidence that doctors don’t get it. Or is it that they realize that hydration solves a multitude of human complaints from headache to flakey skin. Hmmm, I wonder?
Think of what you need to survive, really survive. Food? Water? Air? Facebook? I’m going to concentrate on water herein.
Water is of major importance to all living things; in some organisms, up to 90% of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60% of the human adult body is water.
The brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery at 31%.
Yes, visible skin aging has a lot to do with hydration. I have a very fancy Apple scale that measures weight, fat level, bones mass, and, yes, water level. Try as I might, I cannot get my measurement for water above 58%. Realizing that most people walk around at <50% is a clear indication of disease, pain, and terrible looking skin.
My formula for daily water is a minimum of 3 liters. I weigh ~175 on a high day, and my recipe is 1oz per pound of body weight. In my case, that is 175oz. That is about 1.3 gallons per day. Admittedly, I do not get to that number as often as I would like, but it directly affects how I feel and look.
The more water you drink, the healthy you are. For this article, the more water you drink, the better and younger you will look. Equally, some recent research targets dehydration and mood issues. Clearly, if dehydration affects our mood, then it will affect how we feel we look. Interesting stuff.
Now, tell your doctor and see what they say. It might surprise you.
Stress
You should care, but not too much!
Fox News and CNN contribute to our stress by making us painfully aware of things out of our control. CNN presents a “what if” scenario every few minutes. People and friends want to give us their screaming monkies by offloading all their junk on us. Facebook is the world’s emotional trash can. The solution is relatively simple. Disengage by turning off the news and meditating for 30 minutes a day, starting slowly and building until you are a relaxed ball of happiness. A great resource is Dan Harris. Dan is an ABC anchor who had a meltdown on national TV. Eventually, through council, he discovered that learning to meditate, his way, brought him enlightenment and less stress in his life. His story of reporting on wars and crises would stress the best of us. Dan discovered his way of meditation as a path to happiness. I think Dan’s method is a path to better skin, although he would laugh at that. Here is his website for a quick “How To” DIY meditation destresser. Just try it, okay!
I work at Dan’s approach to meditation. Said, I take a walk with my phone in my pocket, not in my hand! This is my form of meditation. Haha, I think I look younger every day after my 2-miles.
Diet
There are two ways you can save half of your skincare products price. Either you get 50% off the price, or you only have to use half as much.
We have always said that a 100ml 4-ounce bottle of Luminos or Tortuga lotion is like getting a 6X bottle of lotion. It is because there is almost no water in the formulation. All of the oils are concentrated and in therapeutic proportions. Avocado oil is our dominant oil, and the blend provides the highest possible concentration of emollients without chemicals. True, but what if you could use only half as much of Keys products and get the same results?
Enter My Keto Diet
Okay, I am lucky that I have tended to lose weight rather than gain as I have gotten older. I went on the Keto diet to lower my blood glucose. The net was that I lost another 20 pounds, went from 16% body fat to 5.9%, and gained lean muscle mass. What was to most exciting side-effect was that my complexion tightened, and my skin was super-hydrated.
Although I love Luminos as a moisturizer, I use Tortuga lotion as my go-to everything lotion, as I have pointed out in previous articles. Although Wendy uses almost all of the Keys products every day, I am a two Keys product guy. Give me my Island Rx and my Tortuga.
So what I noticed after the first month on Keto was that I reduced the amount of Tortuga I was using by half. After three months, I was down to a stabilized 1/3 the amount of Tortuga I was using daily. My dominant fat intake is avocado, cheeses, fish, and some fatty meats. I found that being on Keto and operating at a 74% fat ratio, 19% protein, and 7% carbs, and No Sugar!, my skin became more emollient. Even my dry elbows disappeared. Why? I have become a fat burner, and more fat finds its way to my skin, requiring less product. I now only apply Tortuga to wet skin because I can’t spread a thinner layer without the surface being wet.
My usage of Tortuga has gone down to about 30% of what I used before. Less is more savings. Ironically, my Island Rx usage is also down, but I have not figured out why.
Check out my book “Keto Plus – Becoming a Fat Burner on Amazon Kindle”
A well-spent few bucks.
BTW, sugar is a pain killer that acts like legal heroin. Check out the topic on Google if you dare. Get sugar-free, and the puffy skin will go away.
Now, here is a geeky rub about sugar. In clinical drug trials, half of the people are given the new drug, and half are given a placebo, aka sugar pills. The thinking is that sugar pills have no effect on the body. Can you imagine how may pain drugs failed clinical trials because they were not hugely more effective than the sugar pill? According to more than a few scientists, sugar is a colossal pain killer. Well, so, would those drugs succeeded if the unwashed masses found that sugar is a pain reliever.
I know giving up sugar is blasphemy, but many have to because of a diabetes diagnosis. Hmmm, I wonder if diabetes drugs are tested with sugar pills as the placebo. Not so funny, I think.
Lastly, an interesting point about Keto is that consensus is that we need fewer vitamins and minerals on the Keto diet. Why, because most of the deficient vitamins are fat-soluble. If our body fat level is too high, it traps the fat-soluble vitamins in the fat. Lower your fat levels, and the fat-soluble vitamins flow freely into the body and used. If you have a vitamin level test and are deficient, ask if the vitamins you lack are the fat-soluble ones. The message will be apparent if you listen.
Exercise, but not too hard
You can skip this point if you are a marathoner, interval training freak, or hot yoga fan. You already know what exercise and low body fat percentage do for your skin. For the rest of us, moderate daily exercise is tremendous in improving our skin tone. It can be walking two miles, home gym, TV exercise, or even jogging. The critical thing is not to do too much too fast. You want it to be something that makes you feel alive, ups your heart rate by >20%, and does not leave you tired.
If you do this daily, stay hydrated, and coverup from the sun, you will notice a change in just a few weeks.
Conclusion
This article is a really a 400-page book in condensed form with the typical writers’ justification goop removed. Book authors usually make a few points and then justify with examples ad nauseam. So, above are the seven points to look younger. The new-age way of seeing if I am blowing smoke is to research each on Google for yourself. Haha, or, you can believe that I have already done the research.
All this and more is in my book, Chemical-Free Skin Health – Stop Challenge – Choose. It is available in our store when you order products or available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle.
My parting point is that we are all individually responsible for our own health. Abdicating that to a doctor or even a witch-doctor is irresponsible. Think about it.
Bob
