Healthy Aging: 6 Longevity Tips for Graceful Aging

Every year we age is another chance we have of doing things just a little differently. We learn more information, understand our bodies and ourselves better, and find ourselves able to make decisions that can support a happier, healthier life.

Most of us also begin to think about “the end” a bit more than we ever did when we were younger. Many of us aren’t so much focusing on the end of our lives as much as we are focusing on what we can do to make sure that we’re aging healthfully. We want to be able to enjoy the same activities and stay as mentally sharp as we are right now. 

Aging healthfully, also known as your healthspan, is a factor of our health that we can manipulate through lifestyle changes and habits. It’s never too late to start making changes, which is good news for older adults who may already begin to feel the natural decline in their bodies that can come with aging. 

Together, we’ll talk about aging and give you some tips on how to lengthen your lifespan, age healthfully, and still enjoy the activities you love for years to come.

Chronological vs. Biological Aging

Before we dive into how our lifestyle affects our aging, it’s important to understand there are two different ways in which we age. 

First, we age chronologically. Chronological aging happens with every birthday we celebrate and represents how long we have been alive. There’s not much we can do about chronological aging but how our body ages is less important than biological aging.

Biological aging refers to the age of our cells. Our cells are the foundations of every tissue and organ in our bodies. Healthy cells translate to healthy bodies, whereas fragile, weak cells translate to age-related diseases and illnesses. 

If our cells are very healthy, we may have a biological age that is years younger than our chronological age. Likewise, if our cells are unhealthy, we may have a biological age that exceeds our chronological age.

The good news is that our biological age can change. We can take steps to reverse cellular aging and turn back the clock inside our cells, giving us the ability to live a healthier life for a longer period of time. 

6 Tips for Aging Gracefully and Healthfully

Taking care of your cells isn’t a daunting task. You won’t need a degree in cellular biology, and you won’t even need to start a raw diet or do a five-day juice cleanse. 

Instead, you’ll just need to take a more proactive approach to your health care, make some changes in your physical activity levels, and adjust what you put on your plate.

1. Keep Moving

It’s a natural tendency to associate aging with slowing down, but to support healthy biological aging, we need to keep moving. The American Heart Association recommends 30 minutes of aerobic exercise per day to support heart health. 

Interlacing your cardio with weight lifting helps you build (and keep) muscle, helps balance your mood, improves your cholesterol and blood pressure, and supports a healthy weight. Regular exercise can be a challenge as you age, but there’s always something you can do. 

Walking, biking, swimming, and yoga are all lower-impact activities that keep you active and help improve your well-being. With movement, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Don’t stop moving in the ways you enjoy, or you could find yourself unable to perform those same activities in a short period of time. 

2. Get Check-Ups

Regular health screenings are a must for maintaining your overall wellness. A yearly or bi-yearly blood panel can detect a myriad of health problems before they become serious. Your healthcare provider is the best person to help you manage your health through regular checkups and suggested screenings. 

If you have no existing medical conditions, the best way to ensure you’re able to continue living without them is to get regular checkups to rule them out and ensure your health is consistent. If your doctor determines you have risk factors for certain illnesses, you may be able to prevent them by making adjustments to your diet or undergoing certain types of treatments. 

Taking the time to visit your doctor pays dividends in your ability to age healthfully, and it’s an easy way to get a baseline read on your overall health.

3. Don’t Ignore Changes in Your Mental Health

Close to 60 million Americans suffer from mental health issues. Even if you have never experienced problems with your mental health, it is possible for your mental health to change with age. 

Symptoms of changes in your mental health include:

• Feeling sad most of the time
• Sleeping more or not being able to sleep
• Loss of interest in friends or activities you once enjoyed
• Feelings of hopelessness and despair 

Mental health changes can indicate a change in your overall health, and as such, you should see your healthcare provider right away. Mental health changes may also indicate you are experiencing a difficult time in your life, but there is help available for you as you navigate these challenges.

4. Protect Your Brain Health

Cognitive decline does not have to go hand in hand with aging. It’s true that some adults may develop dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, but far more of us simply lose the ability to think as clearly or stay as sharp as we once were. 

Research shows we can keep our cognitive health protected by exercising regularly, eating a balanced diet, and making a few adjustments to our lifestyles, like:

• Stopping smoking
• Not drinking in excess (more than two drinks/day for men or one drink/day for women)
• Following a Mediterranean-style diet
• Learning new skills
• Engaging in games and activities that require thought process, like reading, writing, or playing chess

Each of these activities add up to big changes in the cognitive health of older people, and it is never too soon or too late to start. Actively engaging our brains helps prevent memory loss, helps us stay focused, and has the benefit of keeping us sharp.

5. Eat a Balanced Diet

In addition to physical exercise, our diets are one of the primary ways we can take good care of ourselves and improve our overall health. Small changes in our diets can make huge impacts in our health span. 

Dietary information is more accessible to us than ever before, but that also means we are exposed to misinformation. It can be challenging to clearly define “healthy eating” and understand what foods to eat and what foods to avoid. Further complicating the issue is how much of the good foods to eat. 

If you’ve watched Blue Zones, you know that people who are living the longest on earth eat a primarily plant-based diet with healthy fats, lean protein (mostly from fish), limited dairy, nuts, seeds, and fresh fruits and vegetables. 

This Mediterranean-style diet is particularly helpful for lowering cholesterol, lowering high blood pressure, helping with weight loss, and supporting better insulin regulation. Knowing that you can access many health benefits by simply changing your diet is good news for people who want to support aging well.

Even better news is that a particular fatty acid known as pentadecanoic acid (or C15:0) has been shown to complement the Mediterranean diet by supporting the body even more than the diet alone. Not familiar with C15:0? Time to get acquainted.

6. Fix Your C15:0 Deficiency

C15:0 is an odd-chain, saturated fatty acid that is essential to our bodies. Essential means we need this fatty acid to thrive, but our bodies can’t make it on their own. We have to get C15:0 from our diets or from supplements. 

C15:0 helps support our bodies at the cellular level, keeping them strong and helping them continue to function as we age. Unfortunately, a lack of C15:0 in the diet has been associated with negative health impact. 

A paper published in the scientific journal Metabolites shows that having low C15:0 levels causes a newly discovered nutrient deficiency called Cellular Fragility Syndrome. This deficiency syndrome is so widespread it may affect as many as one in three people worldwide. 

The only way to know for certain if you’re deficient is by ordering the fatty15 C15:0 at-home test or having your doctor perform a blood test. Additionally, you can determine the result of increasing your C15:0 levels by monitoring your complete blood count, fasting lipid panel, and liver enzymes.

C15:0 levels should be above 0.2% of your total fatty acids to prevent nutritional deficiencies and Cellular Fragility Syndrome. It’s worth noting that in blue zones (where people consistently live to be 100), C15:0 levels usually measure between 0.4% and 0.6% of total fatty acids.

This is important for several reasons. First, nutritional deficiencies in well-developed countries are almost unheard of (consider vitamin C deficiency and scurvy). Having a vitamin deficiency in countries where ample food supplies are accessible is alarming. 

Second, this nutrient deficiency affects the most foundational parts of our bodies, our cells. Researchers who study longevity understand that the process of biological aging occurs in our cells, meaning that if our cells are unhealthy and aging quickly, we are unhealthy and aging quickly. 

Third, if we can correct this nutritional deficiency, we have a genuine chance of improving global health and living longer, healthier lives. Fixing Cellular Fragility Syndrome means consuming more C15:0, and thankfully, there’s an easy button. 

Fatty15: The C15:0 Solution

The researchers who discovered C15:0 and found it to be essential also discovered that the reason why most of us are deficient is due to our diets. C15:0 is found primarily in whole dairy products like whole milk and full-fat butter. People rarely drink whole milk anymore, and reduced-fat milk doesn’t contain enough C15:0 to support our bodies. Plant-based milks are completely void of this essential nutrient. 

Increasing our intake of whole dairy wouldn’t be the best way to increase our C15:0 levels. In addition to trace amounts of C15:0, we’d be consuming a wallop of calories from whole dairy, increasing our sugar intake (from lactose), and requiring more from our bodies in terms of digestion. The C15:0 found in whole dairy has to be broken down through numerous steps to be usable by the body, which makes it less viable overall. 

A solution? Fatty15.

Fatty15 is the first and only supplement that contains the pure, vegan-friendly version of C15:0. Just one capsule per day is all that is needed to increase your circulating levels of C15:0. Taken once per day, fatty15 supports your body by:

• Keeping cells strong. Fatty15 integrates into cell membranes and strengthens them by up to 80%.
• Lowering “bad” LDL cholesterol.
• Improving liver enzymes. 
• Strengthening gut microbiome.
• Targeting six out of the 12 hallmarks of aging (even better than rapamycin). 

When used with the Mediterranean diet, the C15:0 found in fatty15 improved the benefits of the diet by lowering total fat mass, visceral adipose tissue, and subcutaneous adipose tissue. It also helped lower LDL cholesterol levels compared to simply following the diet alone. 

Taking fatty15 once per day is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve both your healthspan and your lifespan.

Live Long and Take Fatty

Preventing age-related health conditions and living a healthier, longer life is possible. Adopting a healthy lifestyle and being proactive with your care is the key to being around longer for your loved ones. 

Taking fatty15 is the smart way to prevent a common nutritional deficiency and improve your ability to live a long, healthy life. 

Sources:

American Heart Association Recommendations for Physical Activity in Adults and Kids|Heart.org

Mental Health By the Numbers | NAMI

What Do We Know About Healthy Aging?|National Institute on Aging|www.NIA.NIH.gov

Effect of an Asian-adapted Mediterranean diet and pentadecanoic acid on fatty liver disease: the TANGO randomized controlled trial - ScienceDirect

The Cellular Stability Hypothesis: Evidence of Ferroptosis and Accelerated Aging-Associated Diseases as Newly Identified Nutritional Pentadecanoic Acid (C15:0) Deficiency Syndrome

Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe|PubMed

Efficacy of dietary odd-chain saturated fatty acid pentadecanoic acid parallels broad associated health benefits in humans: could it be essential? | Scientific Reports

Effect of an Asian-adapted Mediterranean diet and pentadecanoic acid on fatty liver disease: the TANGO randomized controlled trial - ScienceDirect

Pentadecanoic Acid (C15:0), an Essential Fatty Acid, Shares Clinically Relevant Cell-Based Activities with Leading Longevity-Enhancing Compounds