It’s Grey Day – Proactive Anti-Aging

Your chance of going gray increases 10-20% every decade after 30 years. YIKES! That means under this disguise of blond I’m 30-60% grey! But why? Initially, hair is white. It gets its natural color from a type of pigment called melanin. The formation of melanin begins before birth. The natural color of our hair depends upon the distribution, type and amount of melanin in the middle layer of the hair shaft or cortex.

Ok so I start out with white hair and I will end up with white hair. Who put that plan into action? With the white and grey beginning to sprout I’m off to the hairdresser for a much needed toucher up. I wish I could go grey, but vanity will not allow me to give way to my fading melanin. Although I have seen some beautiful grey and white hair it does somehow date you. My girlfriends agree. We’re just not ready to be old, and grey hair somehow symbolizes being old.

It’s all about the hair. We spend hundreds of dollars to keep our locks looking stylish and sleek. Three hours in the hairdresser’s chair may be torture but it is time well spent. Then we spend hundreds of dollars on hair products to keep the hair soft and frizzy free.  It would be so much cheaper and time efficient to just let the hair do its natural thing and go back to the beginning; the white purity of a new life. If only the skin would also go back to the smoothness of a babies butt, I’d buy into the white hair. Oh how happy I would be. White hair and baby smooth skin…ok if I can get that deal I’ll give up the blond and go white. Now that’s real vanity!

Doctor Lynn

http://www,doctorlynn.com

Too Busy to Feel Old

 

 

 

One of the great secret to proactive anti-aging is to be so busy you don’t have the time to think about your aches and pains or your wrinkles and sags. You often hear about people retiring and being busier than when they worked full time. Of course there are those who simply slip into old age way before their time. Those are usually the complainers.

Keeping busy and continuing to be active is the greatest antidote to aging. Of course there will be modifications and compromises, but that is the nature of life. In yoga we call this the three A’s - awareness of the situation, adjustment to the situation and then adaptation.

First you need to assess or become aware. I do get tired some days and when I do I know I need to pull back and adjust my energy. I am adapting to a more moderate and slower pace. When I was younger I never took the time to relax. Now I know I need to pull back a bit and simply replenish my energy.

I’m better at setting priorities and those priorities are the things I enjoy doing. I’ve earned the right to choose not to push so hard to achieve and yet at the same time stay so busy that life is full and rewarding.

I won’t tell you that there aren’t the days when the aches and the pains of aging catch up to me. Like a little tap on the shoulder aging reminds me that my body has been around for a while. So I pull back, put up my feet and thank aging for reminding me that there are many things in my life I don’t need to do anymore. Now I speed walk instead of run and somehow I am busier than I’ve ever been, I get more accomplished and the aches and the pains subside not with a complaint, but with awareness, adjustment and adaptation. After all survival of the fittest is not about the youngest and the strongest, but the one who can adapt to the situation with ease.    

Doctor Lynn

The Stairs in Front of You -Proactive Anti-Aging

 

 

I’m so busy that I hardly have time to focus on my aches and pains. Perhaps that is one of the secrets of proactive anti-aging? Staying busy, social and active keeps the body and the mind focused on what needs to get done instead of what can’t be done. Change your perspective and everything around you changes. Of course there are those days when my arthritis kicks up and my bunion aches. But I remind myself that life is full of aches and pains. Focus on them and life becomes a pain in the butt. Focus on moving beyond them and life moves with a sense of joy.

 Every day after I teach my Spin class I climb three flights of stairs. Some days it seems like a long climb after teaching such a rigorous class and some days I simply run up the stairs with a sense of pride that I can, still at my age, run flights of stairs.

How do I do it? I’ve been doing it for over thirty years. Exercise and moment is what keeps my spirits up, my body strong and my focus on what I can do and not what I can’t do. Aging by anyone’s’ standard is no fun. But with the right attitude, a healthy diet, exercise and some fun the stairs in front of you will seem like an easy climb.

Doctor Lynn

Feed Your Face – Proactive Anti-Aging

 

 

 

There is a wonderful fruit that ripens this time of year. Its name in Latin means “food of the gods.” It’s called the persimmon! What two vitamins are essential for healthy skin? Vitamin A and Vitamin C and guess what?  One Persimmons supply 55% of our daily vitamin A and 21% of our vitamin C. Persimmons are also an excellent source of manganese, a co-factor for the enzyme superoxide dismutase, for healthy mucous membranes and skin, as well as a known protectant against lung and mouth cancers.

Both vitamin A and vitamin C are excellent vitamins for protecting the skin from wrinkles, age spots and loss of collagen.

Persimmons are an excellent source of fiber, which helps keep the digestive system regular. B-complex vitamins are present to stabilize the metabolic system, along with copper and phosphorus which both serve to support cell functioning and tissue repair.

Low in calories and fats, persimmons contain all kinds of phytonutrients, flavonoids, and antioxidants, such as catechins (known to have antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties, as well as protecting small blood vessels from bleeding) and  gallocatechins and betulinic acid, a tumor inhibitor. Other powerful antioxidants found in persimmons include beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, and cryptoxanthin. The zeaxanthin content absorbs into the eyes and helps filter light, protecting against night blindness.

Healthy skin, good digestion, antioxidants and cancer protection; I’d say persimmons are a good source of proactive ant-aging!

Every December I look forward to the persimmon harvest. My face glows with delight as I feed my face the food of the Gods!

 

Doctor Lynn

Http://www.doctorlynn.com

A La Natural’

 

 

 

The other day I saw a young black woman with beautiful braids. I remarked to her about how thick and beautiful her braids looked. She thanked me and then proceeded to tell me that her braids were extensions. Her hair actually was thin and unruly. She knew the braids were destroying her hair, but she just wasn’t ready to go a la natural’.

Later that day I saw an older woman with beautiful white hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked elegant, refined and definitely older. Although her hair was its natural color she definitely had done a little “work” to her face. She was nicely dressed and of course her make-up was applied with care. I noted her hair and by the look of her face I knew she too was not ready to go completely a la natural’.

There are days when I think I would like to let my hair grow out, forget about the Botox, pack away the make-up. This would seem to me to be such a great sense of freedom.  It takes a lot of work to uphold a youthful image; especially in the face of aging. My hair is not a pretty combination of silver and white. It’s a mousy dark blond with a few strands of grey. It’s not that it’s getting thinner, but as we age our hair loses its volume due to shrinkage of the width of the shaft. Extensions might help, but they are expensive and I know they do more damage than help.

When you are young natural is so easy to do. As a young hippie I didn’t wear make-up, color my hair or worry about the lines on my face. At middle age I began to worry about all the fading, sagging and wrinkling my body was undertaking. I struggled to keep myself youthful. Now as I ‘m sliding down hill towards becoming a full-fledged senior I wonder when the day will come when I will succumb to a la natural’?  I’m not sure when that day will arrive, but for now I know I’m not ready.  So I’ll color, eat healthy and workout every day to keep the appearance of a slow progression towards maturity. That’s Proactive Anti-Aging!

Doctor Lynn

http://www.doctorlynn.com

Live to Share - Proactive Anti-Aging

 

 

 

We all want to find a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose in life. At a certain age you realize that purpose and meaning can be as simple as just sharing a word of wisdom.  And perhaps that is the whole meaning and purpose of life- simply to share what you have gained for the betterment of someone else.

If you think about it everything we do is a process of sharing. Life is about exchange. The challenge is in discerning the exchange that best fosters a healthy and prosperous life. This of course only comes with time and experience and both of these bring with them aging.

I now find myself in a position of mentoring young adults. I’m the older and wiser woman who can calmly still their fears and help them to see a broader perspective on life. I’m living now to share.

I admire and compliment the beautiful young women that come to my yoga and cycle classes. Many years ago I would have been intimidated and competitive. Today I see them as beautiful and I remind them to enjoy every moment of being young, energetic and physically near perfection. All too soon age creeps up on you and you find yourself advising, guiding and encouraging. Not long ago I was a young woman questioning, anguishing and confused.  That’s the nature of youth. However, experience provided me with some of life’s greatest lessons. So now I live to share because life without sharing seems pretty meaningless and without purpose.

Aging can be painful and depressing or it can be an enjoyable time to share and smile as you watch passively the wonders of youthful struggle with all the nonsense that you  now realize as you mature is meaningless.  It’s all about living so you can share. That’s proactive anti-aging!

Doctor Lynn

My Brain is full and it doesn’t want to work anymore!

 

 

 

 

My brain feels like it just ate a big Thanksgiving meal. It feels tired and would really like a nice long nap. What is filling my brain these days is trying to keep up with technology and the world of working. Some days I just feel like as the song goes by Status Quo, “ I ain’t gonna work no more.”

It’s not the work that gets to me, but the constant needing to be online and learning new skills. But really it’s not the skills and the learning, but the fact that I just don’t want to compete in the working world any more. I know what it is like to hustle and run to make a buck and try and get ahead. The truth is we never really get ahead. Sure may-be we have made our money and hopefully have a nice retirement, but as soon as you get to retirement they extend the average lifespan  and we wonder if the money we have will last into our really, really old age?!

I find myself slipping behind. And I don’t really care. However, I find myself now becoming a mentor to lots of younger people. They ask for my advice and look to me to encourage them. Today I am meeting with a young woman who is developing an app program. She wants me to give her some input, as if I know anything?! Actually she wants to show me what she has developed and our meeting is a deadline for her to have it ready to show me.   I’m only too happy to help. However, I also want to ask her how to make something go viral. She tells me she knows how to do this and I am curious as to how it happens.

So even though my brain is full it still is curious. It wants to understand, but not to go through all the processing and agonizing of implementation. Because in life it is not what you know or even who you know that counts. It’s how you execute an idea that makes for success. You can have all the knowledge and all the money, but if you don’t have the competitive edge…well it’s not going to happen.

Competitive drive creates stress and stress advances the aging process. I have decided to take a proactive approach to aging. Ideas are a dime a dozen. They come and they go, but to make it all happen takes time, energy and focused hard work. I’ve got the time and I’ve got the money, but I think I’ll put  my feet up, mentor the kids and  do what I like because “I ain’t gonna work no more!”

Doctor Lynn

http://www.doctorlynn.com