Synopsis
Book by Null Gary
Extrait
THE GOOD NEWS: AGING IS CHANGING
As Baby Boomers turn fifty, fear of aging has prompted an explosion of interest in slowing, if not reversing, this process. Boomers, and subsequent Generation Xers, are united in their passionate desire to remain young. They work out; they eat foods that are perceived to be healthy; they take supplements; they wear trendy clothes--all to maintain a grasp on youth.
Why is it, then, that some people remain youthful well into what is considered middle or even old age, while others begin to show marked signs of aging in their twenties? In my own family, virtually all the men on my father's side were either prematurely gray or bald. My hair was already thinning and graying at age eighteen and, by twenty-five, I was letting my hair grow a bit longer to make the hair loss less obvious. All the vitamins, supplements, organic foods, and exercise in the world cannot restore hair lost because of a genetic tendency for balding. Like many others, I, too, believed that such genetic programming could not be reversed.
Or so I was taught.
AGE IS ONLY A NUMBER
Like it or not, we begin to age the moment we are born. However, given that our bodies are designed to live productive, vital lives well past age one hundred, this should not be an issue. As a population, we are living longer. This, however, does not mean that we are aging better. Hypertension, congestive heart disease, arterial sclerosis, stroke, dementia, arthritis, diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer; osteoporosis; menopause; graying and hair loss; wrinkled skin; fatigue; weakness; loss of muscle mass and tone; diminishing vision, smell, and hearing; a tendency to overweight; digestive problems, and loss of appetite--I refuse to accept these conditions as normal.
I assert that, while a youthful attitude is helpful, no one needs to simply accept a decline in vitality--be it wrinkles and balding, gray hair, or osteoporosis and loss of muscle mass and tone--as their fate because they have reached a certain age. Once we accept that age is only a number, there is much we can do to retain, and even regain, our youth.
The good news is that we have done just that. Not once, which could be a fluke, but with four successive research groups--more than a thousand people who participated in four separate nine-month programs and two separate eighteen-month programs.
THE SEARCH FOR A WAY TO LIVE FOREVER
In 1993, I began a quest to better understand what really causes us to age prematurely and develop these diseases assumed to be part of the aging process. Frequently, symptoms of these ailments could be alleviated by dietary changes. Diabetics could better regulate their blood sugar through diet and exercise; osteoporosis patients could restore bone mass through dietary changes and weight training; even patients with cardiovascular disease could reduce serum cholesterol levels through diet, but nothing could effectively change the aging process.
During the past five years, I have conducted studies with approximately five thousand people--one thousand volunteers specifically for this project--in my search to create a protocol to slow aging. My goal was to not only alleviate these conditions--lower dangerously high cholesterol levels; help insulin-dependent diabetics get off insulin, etc.--but to find a new way to process disease.
My premise: A healthy body does not get sick with anything. And, in this context, a healthy body does not age prematurely.
From this point of view I began my search for effective ways to slow, and even reverse, aging. This book is a distillation of a powerfully effective protocol that, followed fully, stalls aging, regardless of your current age.
THE QUEST BEGINS
Historically, we have considered everything from gray hair and creaky joints to heart diseases and memory loss to be normal manifestations of the aging process. However, in my travels around the world, I had already seen enough contradictions--even within the same culture--to know that there are things that people do that vary the speed of the aging process, as well as the number of illnesses experienced in this process.
My research took me to Italy several times specifically to interview hundreds of people about their diets, exercise levels, genetics, as well as environmental and stress factors. In town after town, village after village, I found that people who lived in rural areas lived longer, chronologically, and, more important, exuded a sense of calm, joy, and serenity that I did not observe in those who lived in the metropolitan areas of Milan, Rome, and Naples. This was also true of my visits into the countrysides of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France.
It then became a task of trying to isolate which factors changed when a person moved from the more bucolic countryside to the suburbs or the cities, and vice versa. This took years of effort. In the course of my research I reviewed all of the world's available epidemiological research on longevity and interviewed thousands upon thousands of individuals in several countries about their diets and exercise habits, health, environmental conditions, and attitudes about aging. I documented my findings and felt ready to put what I had learned into practice.
THE PROTOCOL EVOLVES
Over the next five years I worked with more randomly selected volunteers from Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Miami, and New York City. I would experiment with different criteria, but I always used the same basic protocol, which consisted of a pure vegetarian diet.
Excluded were all dairy products--including milk, yogurt, and cheeses--and processed foods, refined carbohydrates, simple sugars, artificial preservatives, color and flavor enhancers; foods treated with pesticides and herbicides; carbonated beverages; artificial sweeteners; meat, chicken, and shellfish; caffeine, including coffee, tea, cola drinks, and chocolate, and most salt.
To the uninitiated, this may sound painfully restrictive; however, I assure you, this diet was very versatile. It included a wide selection of whole grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, legumes, fresh herbs, and cold-pressed oils, such as olive oil, flaxseed oil, and macadamia oil. Water was to be pure, free from fluoride, chlorine, and chemicals. And participants were to consume at least one to two liquid meals a day, preferably from quality proteins made from rice or soy, plus a wide variety of phytochemicals from fruits and vegetables. I also suggested a number of cookbooks to show people how creative this regimen could be. Part VI--Eating to Live tells you how to completely restructure your eating habits.
My associates and I then measured parameters and created groups accordingly. At one time, we had five hundred overweight people in one group. Other groups created were for those with arthritis, herpes, Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, food allergies, depression, and anxiety disorders. We soon found that people had difficulty sticking with the program as I outlined it for them. I found it ironic that a person who thought nothing of eating fifty french fries or three scoops of ice cream would balk at taking three or four vitamin capsules.
THE LAWS OF COMPENSATION
The basic nutritional and exercise programs formulated in the course of developing this protocol are not adequate to reverse the damage incurred in the course of a lifetime of neglect. The laws of compensation stress that, to the degree that we have damaged our bodies--through caffeine, sugar, meat, processed foods, environmental pollutants, etc.--we must supply the body with a like amount of nourishment, from whole, pure organic foods and concentrated supplements, to compensate and rebuild our bodies.
Eating moderately, or taking a daily multivitamin, alone, will not undo the damage. That process is so advanced and the damage so incipient that it will require enormous compensation. A little vitamin C, for example, will not repair a body damaged by years of abuse; massive amounts, administered over a couple of years, may.
Society places few limits on what we can do to damage our bodies--alcohol, cigarettes, meats, fried and processed foods, etc. Yet, when it comes to doing something good for our bodies, such as eating healthy, nourishing foods, exercising, even taking vitamins and supplements, we limit ourselves. Remember this warning when you read what I recommend for this anti-aging protocol, when you hear yourself say, "What do you mean I have to take . . ."
We are ultraliberal in creating disease and radically conservative in the areas of preventing and treating it. To live longer and healthier, these conditions must be switched.
Nevertheless, if you only follow the diet from your teens, you would double your life span. Once you reach your mid-twenties, you need the diet and nutritional supplements, exercise, and stress management to stave off aging. Just imagine what is possible if you integrate the entire program into your life while you're in your twenties, thirties, or even forties!
Yes, I can teach you how to retard and even reverse aging even if you're in what is statistically old age. I've even developed a repair and rejuvenation protocol that has proved affective in reversing ailments in people over sixty. Some of the participants have joined in my study as their last chance for relief before resigning themselves to living out their lives in nursing homes.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
The highest failure rate (95 percent) occurred in the study group comprised of people who had been diagnosed with chronic depression. Those participants couldn't make it through the first month. A group of overweight individuals fared only slightly better, with a 90-percent failure rate after three months. One group had nothing wrong with them. Here, there was a success rate of about 40 percent. Less than half of those participants finished either six months or a year with the...
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