Michael Roizen, MD

Michael Roizen, MD

Be Strong • Be Healthy • Be in Charge: At Every Age
10 Tips

1. Celebrate Italy. Put some of Italy in the form of tomato sauce in your mouth. 10 tablespoons a week provides lycopene which relaxes your arteries and helps with high blood pressure and prevents breast, colon and kidney cancer.

2. Know iron and love stepping. Lift weights at least 30 minutes weekly to build lean muscle mass and strong bones. Lifting weights is crucial for maintaining your waist size over the long haul. Download the FREE "Your Body is Your Gym" work out video at www.realage.com. Buy a pedometer and walk 10,000 steps daily. Unlike most exercises, humans can walk their entire life and never get hurt. Walking will also prepare you for both sweating and weight lifting, and turns on a gene that decreases the risk of aggressive breast and colon cancer. Finally, continued walking is correlated with the survival of humans to over age 100.

3. Pick your teeth. Even if you already spend too much time in the bathroom, you’ve got to make sure you get an extra 2 minutes. Gingivitis and periodontal disease cause inflammation in your body and aging of your immune and arterial systems. Floss and brush daily not only to remove unsightly broccoli florets, but also to reduce risk. Also, get a professional cleaning every 6 months to have your gums checked and protected.

4. Vacation with a little sun or if you can't, choose D. Vitamin D 800 IU and Calcium 1200 (with magnesium 400) keeps your bones strong and also reduces cancer rates. Especially if you live north of Atlanta, you will not get the vitamin D you need from the sun in the winter months.

5. Go nuts on fish. Whether it is the omega 3 fatty acids in fish or walnuts get an average of 2 grams daily (or 12 walnuts daily). Healthy fats are precursors to the lubricating prostaglandins in the body and sooth the angry fires that inflame your arteries and immune system. That means going nuts on fish will likely decrease your risk of heart disease, stroke, impotence, decay in orgasm quality, wrinkles, memory loss, depression and cancer…not bad for a few nuts or non-fried fish.

6. Get shot. You already know that flu shots can save you from spending three days in a row in bed, but recently we’ve learned these immunizations decrease inflammation in your body - which improves the health of your arteries to keep you from aging from a stroke or a heart attack. Treat your body the way you should treat your computer, by keeping your virus protection up to date.

7. Hit the sack (with someone) and teach them what matters. Safe sex at least twice weekly (with orgasms ideally) has been shown to prolong life. Male longevity is linked to quantity, but for women, it is all about quality (orgasms). These increase oxytocin levels which give you the warm fuzzy feeling but also calm the body’s autonomic nervous system (or autopilot), so it is more responsive to your control. Since many men don’t have a clue what makes you happy, your mate would probably like to learn how to keep you young.

8. Know your evil enemies. The biggest nutritional villains of all: Trans fat and saturated fat. Both turn on a gene that causes destructive inflammation in your arteries. Try to stick to under 20 grams a day (combined). An average croissant has around 32 grams. A 4-ounce slice of roast pork tenderloin has about 4 grams. Trans fats (hydrogenated oils), found in many processed and baked foods are at least as bad as saturated fats.

9. Sweat. Break a sweat for at least an hour a week. This is the best predictor of whether you will be alive next year. You need to push your heart to rev its engine and stimulate healthy chemicals in your arteries.

10. Memorize these numbers. With a blood test, find out your level of HDL - the healthy cholesterol. Study after study shows the higher the number (above 50), the better. That’s because the clog-clearing cholesterol helps lower your risk of heart disease, stroke, impotence and memory loss. Do what is needed to get it to 50 or more. Keep your waist size less than half your height to avoid the toxic side effects of an enlarged omentum including diabetes, hypertension and low HDL cholesterol.

11. Get 115/75 no matter what way. Seek your best blood pressure, which is the single most important cause of arterial aging in women. The average blood pressure is 130/85, but the average woman dies of heart attacks, so you want to be the optimal blood pressure, which is 115/75. Hypertension also causes strokes, kidney disease, loss of orgasm and wrinkles.

12. Make a call. Talking to friends is a trick to decreasing the aging that results from stress - especially stress that comes from nagging, chronic sources or from a major life event (like a death in the family). Those stresses age our arteries and our immune systems and increase the risk of accidents. Whether it's a phone call at home or, even better, while walking, any kind of social networking has great benefits beyond discussing who just got kicked off "American IdolTM."

13. Have a purpose. Make a difference in the world. Your heart needs a reason to keep beating, so make sure you give it one.

14. Show some love on the 14th. Tell someone you appreciate them. And, if you are to buy someone chocolate on the 14th of the month, show them you really love them and want to make them younger by giving them chocolate with real cocoa, not milk fat based dark chocolate. The flavonoids from cocoa make your arteries and immune system younger and the saturated fat in real cocoa turns into a healthy fat. So show some real love and make it real cocoa.

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