Norman Lazarus was interviewed for this podcast, Health is not destiny: the resilient lifestyle, by Declan Doogan, Chief Medical Officer of Juvenescence, about how our bodies age, how they are supposed to age, and how to support your physiology at any age to get more life out of your years.
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When I was a young boy in rural South Africa, I spent a lot of time outdoors, moving. We didn’t have electrical gadgets or gizmos then, so we had to make our own entertainment, which usually meant romping around and doing physical things, including school sports.
But I went to university and studied, and worked, and when I got to middle age, my weight had started to creep up. Not until I was 55 did the penny drop and I decided to do something about the extra weight, bestowed on me from my mother’s side of the family.
I committed to it, and before long I had a new, lean body that did things and was much more serviceable. It took me to places I didn’t realise I could still go.
My relationship to exercise changed. As a physician-scientist I became interested in integrative physiology. I became my own longitudinal study of the effects of ageing on my own body. I became conscious of how lifestyle impacts the way we age.
We’re not actually various bits of anatomy stuck together like Frankenstein’s monster – we’re one synchronised, symbiotic system, all parts working together, so we need to look at a holistic way to keep everything running properly.
How to lose weight in middle age
I made a vow to keep my body working optimally as I continued to age. I had inherited a genetic propensity to put on weigh - but that genetic component actually only accounts for about 20% of the problem. The good news is, you can override it by your behaviour.
You’ve got to understand yourself. Absolutely commit to yourself, as if it's a binding contract. Nobody else can do it for you. There’s no magic pill or magic diet. It’s pure self-understanding and commitment to your future.
By making a vow to myself I was able to alter the course of the rest of my life.
The key to healthy ageing
As a nation of people growing older, the UK really hasn’t begun to address healthy ageing. Nobody is confronting the fact that people who are now in their 40s or 50s, are going to be a ‘problem generation’ by 2050. Our health service, our economy, our family structures will all be overwhelmed.
So if you've been a bit too sedentary, it’s important to begin to change your lifestyle by the time you reach about 50 to avoid becoming part of that problem.
Government, scientists and think tanks all need to change their own lifestyles and show us how we should live.
It would be lovely if the people in charge began to lead by example. Then they become part of the solution, and we could see healthy 80-year-olds in 2050 who continue to make a positive contribution as society.
We must stop looking at old people as a burden. With a healthy and active older population we create a healthier, more dynamic, more equitable society and a stronger, less burdened economy.
Sure, everyone has got to die. But do you want to add life to your years, or merely years to your life?
Do you want to suck up your country's medical resources to keep you struggling through the last 30 years of your life, or do you want to have an active, productive 30 years with a much shorter decline at the end?
Evolution and natural ageing
Take Newtonian physics, then add time as a fourth dimension, and your perception of the universe alters. And of ageing physiology.
Our ancestors survived by hunting and gathering. They evolved a physiology perfectly attuned for that – we had endurance, strength, problem-solving, that eventually allowed us to build civilisations. But we haven’t yet had time to evolve any further – 40,000 years isn’t long enough to change how we’re built, or how we age.
However, the removal of exercise is very new in evolutionary terms. For millennia we all toiled and walked and lifted all day long. Then we stopped. It has a profound effect on our physiology. Our bodies are designed to move. What happens when you take that away?
I can tell you the answer to that, because I've studied it. There’s a stark difference in how that phenotype ages. One of the essential pillars of our survival has been removed.
There’s an accidental experiment taking place across the world: what is the effect of a sedentary lifestyle on physiology?
Look around and see how many people are obese, or how many older people develop diseases as they age.
Compare that to people who continue to follow the active lifestyle our bodies evolved for. If we remove variables such as diet, housing, mental attitude and different exercise regimens, we can create our control group and compare the direct impact of exercise alone.
How athletes age
How about athletes, aged 40-80? They’ve always been active and they generally still are. How about we look at a group of American 1500m swimmers? (Which we did, by the way.)
We can follow their cohort as they age, as a cross-section of people doing the same exercise and adopting similar lifestyle principles. Because we’ve eliminated other variables, we can clearly see (in our beautiful 11-year study), we see their sporting performance decline gradually, smoothly, until they reach 75 when their decline accelerates.
But that is a smooth curve. It doesn’t drop off a cliff. There’s no disintegration of physiology. This is how our active bodies are designed to age.
Our studies on ageing athletic runners (across each discipline) reflected the same result. They gradually ran slower as they aged, and then declined more sharply after 75.
Age is the factor that drives their decrease in performance.
I am in my 80s. If I decide to take up swimming (not that I'm built for it!), if I eat well and motivate myself to swim the best I can, I see no reason for my performance drop-off not to follow the same pattern. Our ageing process applies to all humans. So why do we see people ageing at different rates?
It’s because some people have removed exercise from their natural physiology. As a result, their physiological systems start to disintegrate. We go from integrated physiology to a disease model. And different things go wrong at different times, depending on the individual.
Some diseases can even take root before age is even a factor. Seeing a 20-year-old develop Type 2 diabetes is a new phenomenon, and it’s scary. This is a disease of lifestyle. Lifestyle has begun to affect the ageing process on our physiology, even this early in life.
In the Lazarus Strategy, I share more about these studies and how to live a longer, healthier, more productive life. But the core message is very simple. Move your body, every day, as much as possible, to help it perform as it is designed to.
The Longevity Forum Podcast
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