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News and ideas worth your attention.
Four decades of writing on living long and living well, with 1,000+ posts on functional and longevity medicine.
451 written by Dr. Frank Lipman
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Jul 8, 2024 · Healthy AgingForget the Scale. Your Body Composition Tells the Real Story.
Body composition matters, and today, our ability to precisely determine the proportion of fat, lean muscle, bone and water in the body has blossomed into a must-have tool for many of us in the wellness and longevity world. In fact, it’s now one of my favorite ways to identify a patient’s current state health and to call out what needs tending to in order to support their longevity and improve their ‘healthspans’ -- the length of time they’re able to stay vibrant and healthy.
Jul 1, 2024 · Healthy AgingYour Estrogen Levels Matter – and Here’s How to Best Support Yours – and Longevity to Boot!
For many women, until the sex hormones veer off course, and the effects are unmistakably felt, hormones aren’t something that’s top of mind. Often, it’s at the start of menopause when my patients become more aware of their down-shifting estrogen levels. For others, entering their 30s and 40s, it may be struggles with issues like fertility, PMS, mood swings, sexual dysfunction that bring hormone imbalances more prominently into the conversation. Your health depends on all of your body’s systems, including your sex hormones, functioning well together so it may be time you and your doc take a closer look.
Jun 24, 2024 · Healthy Aging10 Life-Improving Benefits of Red Light Therapy
Light therapy has been around for thousands of years, but, over the last few decades, red light therapy (or RLT) has emerged as one of the most exciting of the light therapies, and a health therapy with the power to help preserve youthfulness, both inside and out. Besides tamping down rapid-ager inflammation and promoting anti-oxidant activity – and no matter what your age, everyone needs that – red light has the ability to stimulate the mitochondria. Keeping those energy powerplants inside our cells functioning at optimal levels is essential if we’re going to stay active and vibrant ourselves.
Jun 17, 2024 · Healthy Aging5 Thoughts on Fisetin, the Anti-Aging Flavonoid
Unlike our parents and grandparents, we now have a phenomenal number of ways to help us slow the aging slide, support longevity and expand our healthspans -- the length of time we remain healthy. In other words, it’s actually an exciting time to be aging – and to be able to tap into many of the revolutionary longevity-supporting discoveries that have emerged in the past decade or so. Among the more interesting recent discoveries worth considering is one you may not be familiar with: fistein. Though it’s a natural compound that’s been around for a long time (it’s surely older than the human species), only recently has it come to light as a promising longevity candidate – and an excellent addition to your age-defying toolbox.
Jun 10, 2024 · Health & Wellness6 Ways Anger Torpedoes Your Immunity – and 7 Ways to Fix It
Anger. Whether you show it to the outside world or not, whether it seems like an appropriate response to a difficult set of circumstances or not, in health terms, anger is mostly a negative. What makes it especially so is anger’s ability to endanger your health by severely undercutting your immunity, aka your ability to stay well. And, as you age and immunity naturally wanes, that’s the last thing you want to do. What’s the connection between anger and immunity? A lot more than you may realize, so here is some food for thought on the topic, plus a few ways to diffuse anger when it comes knocking.
Jun 3, 2024 · Nutrition10 Ways to Keep Weed Killer Glyphosate Out of Your Body
For well over a decade, I’ve been sounding the alarm about the human and environmental cost of glyphosate – the active ingredient in the well-known herbicide Roundup. This nasty, health-tanking compound has never been anything but awful for your body and the news hasn’t gotten better with time. While awareness about its dangers has increased, much of the world remains all-in on glyphosate -- you can still easily wind up in harm’s way. What can you do to minimize your exposure? The answer is ‘quite a bit.’
May 27, 2024 · Healthy AgingFinding Ikigai: Your Path to Purpose and Meaning and 10 Ways to Get Yours
For generations, countless words have been written on how best to live a good life. Often these investigations skew one of two ways, toward the mystical, emphasizing an inner search for meaning, or they go outward, as in, how to make it in the material world, witness the reams of books about achieving business success. Recently, I’ve come across a traditional Japanese precept that for me combines the best of both worlds. It’s summed up in a single word, ikigai, itself a combination of two Japanese words, "iki" meaning life and "gai" meaning worth or value. At its core, it’s about discovering what gets you out of bed in the morning, your ‘raison d’etre.
May 20, 2024 · Healthy Aging7 Thoughts on How Strong Immunity Can Help Slow Aging
Aging can bring all sorts of gifts, whether it’s wisdom and experience, new opportunities or connecting in a new way with your adult children and grandchildren. Things can get tough though with some of the physical changes that can take place in our bodies, typically, taking root in early middle age and gathering speed from there. Another change that comes with the gift of years? One of the most important ones concerns our immune system, our body’s defense against threats from the outside world and from inside us as well.
May 13, 2024 · Nutrition3 Reasons To Get Off the Grain Train – and 4 Flavorful Ways To Do It
We all want a generous ‘healthspan,’ that is, the time we have on this earth to live with vitality and in good health. Fortunately, there are plenty of everyday habits that can help us achieve it. Good sleep, plenty of movement, keeping stress at bay, social connection, they’re all important. But when you eat right, well, that’s money in the bank when it comes to minimizing disease risk, maintaining youthfulness and extending longevity. One way to approach upgrading your diet is with “food swaps.” Take the bad hombres --we’re looking at you processed foods, sugar, alcohol – and replace them with leaner, cleaner and yes, tastier alternatives.
May 6, 2024 · Health & Wellness7 Types of Rest You Really Need for Longevity
If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that self-care isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. And while self-care may mean different things to different people, the need for adequate rest is universal. To live well and feel well for as long as possible, it’s essential to bake rest into your daily routine, because you can’t really bank or stockpile rest; it needs to be a daily habit. Most people equate rest solely with sleep, but there's a good bit more to it. To truly thrive over the long-haul, be advised that rest is more than just sleeping soundly through the night (though that’s a good start). Fact is, rest has many faces, and there are seven types of rest you need to get to know better.
Apr 29, 2024 · Healthy Aging5 Ways Glycine Helps You Age Better – and Slower
Whether you’re in peak form or dealing with conditions that need attention, I’ve got a helpful health hack for you – and it’s called glycine. I like to think of it as the Swiss Army knife of amino acids, an under-the-radar hero that’s capable of doing your health and longevity a world of good without a lot of extra effort. Augmenting your natural supply with glycine-rich high protein foods, healthy supportive behaviors and strategic supplementation and you can easily keep your tank topped up – and help fight off many of the ills that can age you before your time.
Apr 22, 2024 · Healthy AgingThe Body, Brain and Healthspan Benefits of Anti-Aging Wonder Methylene Blue
While restoring health and sustaining wellness remains at the core of everything I do, focusing on aging well is fast becoming central to my approach. While we can’t stop aging altogether, advances in the longevity field are enabling us to put the process of slowing aging well within reach. With this in mind, I want to introduce you to a fascinating substance called methylene blue that’s showing a lot of promise when it comes to supporting a longer ‘healthspan’ (aka, a youthful life for as long as possible), and is a powerful ally in helping our bodies stand up to the health-eroders that limit human lifespans.
Apr 15, 2024 · Movement10 Ways to Avoid Injury and Keep Moving Pain-free
Movement is one of the cornerstones of a long and healthy life, not to mention one of the underrated joys of everyday life, a reliable mood-lifter. But when we challenge our bodies more intensely, to get greater health benefits or just for the fun of it, we increase the risk of injuring ourselves which obviously defeats the whole purpose. The good news here is that with some planning and observing some basic (but oh so easy to ignore) rules of the road, we can sidestep much of that risk, upping our odds of enjoying a vigorous old age, delaying frailty for as long as humanly possible.
Apr 8, 2024 · Healthy Aging16 Ways to Turn Health Around With Bio-hacking
While many hacks are geared towards automating life’s more mundane tasks – better ways to cook, get your steps in, grow more vegetables, etc. – the kind of hacking I’m most interested in is ‘bio-hacking,’ as in, the kinds of hacks that focus on smarter strategies to improve health, wellness and, ultimately, longevity.
Apr 1, 2024 · Healthy Aging6 Ways Nitric Oxide Amps Up Immunity, Muscle Performance and Circulation
So, what is nitric oxide? It’s a gas that circulates in suspension in the blood, travelling throughout the body doing good things wherever it reaches. It helps neurons talk to each other and to the muscle cells. It helps fortify the immune system. And perhaps most importantly, it plays a critical role in ensuring that blood flows easily through the blood vessels, bringing oxygen and nutrients to every corner of the body. So how to help nitric oxide deliver an even greater load of health benefits? I have a few ideas for you.
Mar 25, 2024 · Healthy AgingUnlocking Longevity: Delving into the Final 3 Hallmarks of Aging (Part 4)
Of the hallmarks of aging discovered in the last decade or so, three of them have been added only recently. Previously they had been folded into the original 9 pre-existing hallmarks, not surprising since all the hallmarks affect each other, one way or another. But now they’ve got their own spot on the marquee, in part because they’re especially sensitive to the daily choices we make about diet, physical activity and stress. Here’s how to take charge of the additional three hallmarks believed to be responsible for making us grow old – ideally not before our time, that is, if we follow some sensible lifestyle advice.
Mar 18, 2024 · Healthy AgingUnlocking Longevity: Delving into the Next 3 Hallmarks of Aging (Part 3)
In this four-part series on what scientists call “the hallmarks of aging,” the specific biochemical processes that are happening in your body every day, every second, which, taken together, take us from our physical peak in our twenties right on through to the end of our lives. The idea, as I explained, is “know your enemy,” as in, if we can identify what’s going on in the body, we can take steps to fight back against it, whether that’s healthy lifestyle choices now or, down the line, with the help of new treatments being studied in the lab today. My advice? Get familiar with the hallmarks – and what to do about them now – so you can get ahead of the aging process.
Mar 11, 2024 · Healthy AgingUnlocking Longevity: Delving into 3 More Hallmarks of Aging (Part 2)
In last week’s post, we looked at the first three “the hallmarks of aging,” the specific bio-chemical processes that are happening in your body every day, every second, which, taken together, take us from our physical peak in our twenties right on through to the end of our lives. The idea, as I explained, is “know your enemy,” as in, if we can identify what’s going on in the body, we can take steps to fight back against it, whether that’s healthy lifestyle choices now or, down the line, with the help of new treatments being studied in the lab today. In this post, we’ll take a look at the next three hallmarks, and what you need to know about them:
Mar 4, 2024 · Healthy AgingUnlocking Longevity: Delving into the 12 Hallmarks of Aging (Part 1)
Most of us were raised to think about aging as this mysterious thing that just happens to us. But over the past decade or so, scientists have made great strides in figuring out what’s going in our bodies at a cellular and even molecular level to explain the differences between a 30-year-old and a 70-year-old and why it is the older we get, the more vulnerable we become to the dreaded “diseases of aging.” The good news is that science is now showing us that you have more control over how well and quickly you age than you may realize.
Feb 26, 2024 · Healthy Aging6 Ways Cold Exposure Makes You Younger, Happier and Healthier!
More than just a change of scenery, stepping outside in winter and exposing yourself to cold can help slow your aging roll and extend your ‘healthspan’ (aka, the life in your years), so take advantage now – before it warms up! Think of winter’s chill as your youth-preserving secret weapon – and here’s how and why I encourage you to harness that chilling power all season long.
Feb 19, 2024 · Healthy Aging5 Ways Stress Ages You All Over – and How to Fight Back
It’s no secret that too much stress is bad for your health. However, what is new is that integrative physicians like me appreciate that health is best understood as the ability to withstand the age-related decline in function in every part and system of the body, starting as early as our thirties. And stress? Cutting-edge research is now starting to pinpoint ways that stress turbocharges this aging process – so its up to you to start fighting back a.s.a.p.!
Feb 12, 2024 · Health & WellnessMeet Metformin – and It’s Anti-Aging Superpowers
By now, my readers may be aware of my interest in longevity-focused medicine, particularly in light of all of the exciting anti-aging and longevity research and promising treatments making news almost every day.
Feb 5, 2024 · Health & Wellness9 Ways to Develop an Attitude of Gratitude
Particularly these days, life is not without its challenges. We live in a time of global upheaval and chronic anxiety, and the prospect of navigating through it can seem daunting.
Jan 29, 2024 · Health & Wellness10 Tips to Banish Blood Pressure Problems Naturally
So, you go for an annual check-up and your primary care doc slaps on the blood pressure cuff and then delivers the bad news. Your blood pressure, which has been steadily ticking up for years, has now crossed the threshold, into either borderline or bona fide hypertension.