I asked my dad, “How does it feel to be 94?”
He said, “One thing that frequently comes to my mind is the past because I know I’m not going to be that long in the future.”
I asked again, “How do you know that?”
My dad replied, “Many of my old friends have already left me, I don’t have any friends anymore, that also reminds me more of the past than future.”
My father is 94 years old now, still walks around the house with a cane, and loves to sun bathe in the yards on sunny days comfortably.
I spend more and more time thinking about how lucky I’ve been in my life seeing him active at this age without specific chronic disease and disabilities.
The whole month of last October, my son and I spent time with him at home, still doing many activities with him and learned a lot of unexpected things from his life.
I made his favorite tea, actually it’s not tea, it’s only black pepper powder and sugar in hot water, he loves it at least two times a day, early morning and late afternoon.
I know sugar isn’t good at his age but black pepper’s piperine phytonutrient, which is an antioxidant and antiinflammatory, helps to stabilize his blood sugar levels.
By the grace of God, he is not diabetic.
As a man, I was taught in our society since childhood that men shouldn’t cry.
But nowadays, I take pauses in my life and my eyes become wet unknowingly because I become emotional seeing my father’s old weak body.
At the same time, I also feel proud that my dad is so positive and vibrant even at 94.
Actually, whatever I remember from my childhood, teenage, and my early adult life, I never saw my dad worried in his life, always had a positive mindset.
“One of the reasons I want to see my dad frequently is to feel more space inside me that strengthens my internal human calibration machine.”
In a book ‘Biology of Belief’, author Dr. Bruce Lipton, PhD, says, “If your thoughts are negative, the protein produced by your DNA is inflammatory. You shorten your telomeres, damage your DNA, and shorten your lifespan. But if your thoughts are positive, all of those would be opposite.”
Seeing my dad at 94, I firmly believe Dr. Lipton’s words, we are nothing but our own thoughts.
Many of my friends ask me how do you find more than a month off every year from work to stay with your dad who lives on the other side of the planet.
I don’t have a clear answer for this yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m able to make my own boundaries in my life.
I learned how to add ‘no’ in many things in my life because I realized that on the other side of ‘no’ I found more trust and a sense of good feeling.
In my experience, if we look for only perfection and more things and more work in our lives, then we’re completely ignoring our own-discovery.
One of the reasons I want to see my dad frequently is to feel more space inside me.
It’s not to avoid my professional work but to strengthen my internal human calibration machine that provides me with accurate guidance, wisdom, and judgement.
“We’ve added a lot of toxins and poisons in our lives, 84000 new chemicals have been added into commercial products since 1900 in the form of obesogens, autogens, xenobiotics, and carcinogens.”
Many times, personal progress is self centered like our own pain which nobody knows, so I rather trust my intuition and inner guidance to make my decisions on what is more important at the moment.
In my experience, conflicts, shortage of time, and wanting more of anything is always a natural part of our lives.
If we create a habit to tolerate the discomfort of these things, we don’t miss blind spots, we live great lives.
Here is a simple exercise.
I would like you to try to experience the discomfort, which I do occasionally as I live in the USA.
Go to old age homes or nursing homes and talk to the elderly parents.
Feed them who can not chew and swallow.
Look at their faces when they struggle to swallow their yummy food.
Wipe their faces.
Help them to go to the restroom and wipe their bottoms if needed.
Bathe them with a scented body wash and ask them whether they feel the scent.
See their faces when they struggle to remember their son’s and daughter’s name.
Watch them how they forget where they are and who they are with at the moment.
When you return from that place, imagine yourself or your dad or mom in the same position and think about what it looks like to have a life with age related disease, disability, and physical and mental deterioration.
You would only regret the time if you’d never spent the time with your dad and mom when they were active and healthy.
Sometimes, I just think for a second, my dad is 94 now, still active and healthy, what will I feel if I reach there?
I’m sure, it would be a whole lot different in many aspects than my dad’s time.
Imagine for a second, 150 years ago, there were no heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia.
In 1930, less than one percent of the US population was obese.
Harvard University recently predicted that by 2030, fifty percent of the US population would be obese.
The US spends 4.6 trillion dollars on healthcare every year.
If 4.6 trillion dollars would be the gross domestic product (GDP), that country would stand number four in the world.
So my curiosity, is there a chance to reach 94 or more like my dad?
I don’t have to wait to get the answers, they are becoming clearer and clearer over the years by extensive research reports.
We’ve added a lot of toxins and poisons to our house and surroundings, so we all will be affected especially when we get old and our immune system becomes weak.
At least 84000 new chemicals have been added into commercial products since 1900.
And each one of them could be obesogens, autogens, xenobiotics, and carcinogens.
Today 60 percent of our diet is ultraprocessed foods so the risk of death goes up by 14 percent.
As far as I remember, my father did not eat bulk of his foods from the market till age 60, everything was home grown, unadulterated, and pure organic.
“The food industry processes sugar in such a way that it is unable to activate the leptin hormone by disrupting its balance, the consequence, we overeat.”
If we don’t act on these toxic surroundings, the picture is pathetic for all of us, we will die with chronic disease way early.
We will have heart disease at 45, cancer at 50, stroke at 55, and Alzheimer’s at 60.
Many families across the globe are already experiencing worse than these situations.
When I think about a healthy lifestyle, toxins are everywhere including our households, the first thing that comes to my mind is BPA, bisphenol A, a hormone disruptor in plastics and resins.
All individual cash register receipts in the markets and shopping malls contain BPA.
Phthalates are all over personal care products.
Microplastics are everywhere, which are heavily responsible for arterial plaque, causing atherosclerosis all over the place.
When we think of any food, there is glyphosate, a herbicide, used in oats to barley to whole grains.
Research shows that this herbicide opens up the blood-brain barrier to allow toxins to enter the brain.
Glyphosate removes vitamins and minerals from our body, starves our cells, and doesn’t allow our mitochondria, the tiny life machines, to produce energy.
Daria Mochly-Rosen, professor of translational medicine and author of ‘The Life Machines’ says clearly in his recent book, “We are only as healthy as our mitochondria because damaged mitochondria have been linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer.”
Glyphosate is a metabolic disruptor for the whole body causing endocrine and gut microbiome disruption.
Remember the power of the microbiome from babies to adults, equally important in all ages.
This also reminds me of my dad’s habit of eating yogurt in every meal, yogurt is his all time favorite.
As we know, yogurt is a good probiotic food for our body.
Here is another fact about the power of the microbiome: one third of calories from breast milk is oligosaccharides, which is not digestible by babies.
But they feed infants’s microbiome, especially Bifidobacterium Infantis, which is responsible for the development of a healthy immune system.
The good microbes like ‘Akkermansia Muciniphila’ love cranberry, pomegranate, and green tea.
This tiny microbe is also necessary for certain cancer treatments, such as immunotherapy to work.
Recent research reports that part of the treatment process is to feed Akkermansia microbes.
Moreover, many toxic ingredients are in every food in the name of artificial flavors, colors, fillers, stabilizers, phosphates, and trans fats.
These all are our metabolism disruptors including disruption of the good microbiome.
How many of you can read the name of ingredients in the food that you just bought?
I’m sure many of us can’t, we even don’t bother to see labels, but we eat the food quite happily.
We eat because it’s quite yummy, and we can not resist the power of instant gratification of its taste.
The processed food industry turns these ingredients into big sales and yummy addictive taste into a stack of dollars.
Remember, leptin is a hormone that signals to the brain that you are full at the time of eating lunch and dinner.
It warns us to stop eating more.
But, the food industry processes sugar in such a way that it is unable to activate the leptin hormone, the consequence, we overeat.
High fructose corn syrup is one example, it is mitochondrial poison, it impairs ATP production and invites cellular inflammation.
It doesn’t trigger fullness in our stomach by disrupting the balance of hunger hormones like leptin and ghrelin.
“We can reverse our biological age through simple interventions such as supplements, lifestyle, diets, hormesis, fasting, cold plunges to improve our epigenome.”
Research shows that hot dogs, another highly consumed processed food in the Western World, contain nitrites that develop leukemia.
The results from processed foods are a lot more, we suffer from obesity, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer at very early ages.
And big pharma makes a stack of dollars from these diseases because these are the cash flow for their businesses.
This is the vicious cycle of our life, we are poor trapped consumers.
The human body has 37 billion billion reactions in one second.
It’s beyond our capacity to understand the complexity of our body mechanism.
But still we can fine tune this complex body by creating balance in our systems especially when we pass age 40.
Let’s take one example of how to create balance.
There is a debate in society about salt and sugar which increases high blood pressure.
In reality, there are hundreds of reasons for high blood pressure in our body, we cannot understand all of them.
But what we can do is eat both of them less, this is called fine tuning in our system.
Of course, excess salt causes the body to retain water to dilute the excess sodium which increases blood volume and raises the pressure against the walls of the blood vessels.
In the old literature, more than 100 years ago, French scientists concluded that a diet high in salt increases high blood pressure.
This research conclusion at that time was based on the basis of six patients.
Now, the current more sophisticated research study is showing that sugar is more dangerous than salt for high blood pressure.
Having high blood sugar after eating carbohydrate loaded food inhibits the production of nitric oxide, the molecule responsible for vasodilation.
This chemical helps to regulate blood flow and blood pressure.
When the blood vessels constrict because of lack of nitric oxide due to high blood sugar, the heart has to work harder to increase blood pressure.
The fine tuning in the system for not having high blood pressure is to eat natural foods containing high nitric oxide, such as beets, leafy greens, spinach, kale, arugula, and citrus fruits.
What I learned from my dad is he mostly eats only two small meals a day almost at the same time.
Recent research shows that we not only have to eat less especially at old age but also eat on time.
Dr. Satchin Panda, PhD, a scientist in circadian biology, and author of “The Circadian Code’ underscores the importance of not just what we eat, but when we eat.
We have to maintain a feeding window of 8 to 10 hours by aligning ourselves with natural order for balance that brings long term well being and positive epigenetic change.
Dr. Steve Horvath, PhD, a professor of human genetics, discovered an epigenetic clock in 2013 at the University of California Los Angeles.
Epigenetic changes can be done by giving methylation factors to DNA such as vitamin B6, folate, B12, choline or phytochemicals.
This determines which genetic variations are turned on or off.
This means we can reverse our biological age through simple interventions to improve our epigenome.
Supplements, medications, lifestyle, diets, hormesis, fasting, cold plunges, all are hacks to reverse aging.
Dr. Horvath’s ted talk “Epigenetic Clocks Help to Find Anti-Aging Treatments” is worth watching.
“When we feel healthy we don’t do 20 minutes walking everyday, we make a lot of excuses, but once we become sick, we start walking. By this time, it’s already too late because we’ve already done a lot of damage.”
My dad has a meditation ritual for more than an hour everyday, he’s been doing this for the last many many years consistently.
I’m sure this has a lot of positive impact on his physical, emotional, and spiritual well being.
One of the hallmarks of healthy living is always doing some kind of exercise, yoga, meditation especially when we get old.
When we pass 40, we must follow simplicity in life, this is kind of opposite of what we do before 40.
As far as I remember, I never saw my dad doing any of the following after age 50.
No eating excess sugar to keep BMI less than 25 all the time.
Dr. David Ludwig, MD, PhD, author of ‘Always Hungry’ at Harvard has established the sugar-insulin hypothesis of weight gain and diabetes.
No meat.
No smoking at all.
No alcohol drinking.
Sleep at least seven hours well at night.
Lack of sleep drives many symptoms of aging such as inflammation, mitochondrial damage, altered hormonal and nutrient sensing pathways.
Recent research shows that lack of sleep is a hidden poison.
Dr. Matthew Walker, PhD, the author of ‘Why We Sleep’ explains the crucial role of deep sleep.
The glymphatic system which is a waste clearance system in the brain becomes highly active during deep sleep.
During deep sleep, cerebrospinal fluid flows more freely through the brain tissue removing toxins like beta-amyloid.
Beta-amyloid is associated with Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive decline, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Many people don’t understand the power of simple things for a healthy living.
If I give you $1 a day for 30 days, you would have $30.
But If I give you 1 cent and double it everyday, in 30 days you will have $10 million.
Our mind can not comprehend the power of exponential growth.
Research shows that simply walking for 20 minutes a day can reduce your risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia by 40 percent.
This is exponential growth in our health, it is 40 percent risk reduction in many chronic diseases.
Many people have a hard time understanding this because excellent health has an intangible value, no upfront face value.
When we feel healthy we don’t do 20 minutes walking everyday, we make a lot of excuses of not having enough time.
But once we become sick and see a dark hole in life or doctors compel us to walk, we allocate time and start walking.
Remember, by this time it’s already too late because we’ve already done a lot of damage.
Conclusion
I’m a scientist, not a medical doctor.
I write these things not as medical advice but as a human experience of a research scientist with decades of personal and professional experiences, training, judgements, and wisdoms.
I hate forcing or lecturing people for eating less or doing regular exercise or meditation or seven hours of good sleep, rather I love to share what I do everyday.
I’m proud that I became a scientist but many of these things I learned watching my dad.
I am heavily influenced by Kevin Kelly, a prominent thinker and author of the must read book ‘The Inevitable’.
Kelly says “Embrace things rather than try and fight them, work with things rather than try and run from them or prohibit them.”
Globally, scientists account for just 0.001 percent of the human population.
Sometimes I think, how much more progress would science bring if we were to add even a small bit of the physical and intellectual capital to science and technology?
As we all know, the best way to create human progress and prosperity for all of us is to build and attract innovative companies that hire and train more human talents.
Similarly, the best way to create good health till old age is to build good habits to attract good genes to turn on by developing a good lifestyle.
If you want people to flourish in their health that others envy, teach them not to worry about their chronological age, encourage them to reduce their biological age by lifestyle interventions.
After Yamanaka’s discovery, Shinya Yamanaka, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of iPSCs, induced pluripotent stem cells, we can reprogram our genes to create a younger version of ourselves.
Keep your status healthy, productive, vibrant, and destroy all barriers to get access to education and innovation for healthy living so that your body will be fit all the time.
This is my imagination to make this world a little bit happy and healthy, when my son and I were spending time with my dad in Nepal.
Remember, one day you will wake up and there won’t be your dad anymore with you to do the things you’re always wanted to do. Do it now.
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.”
