Hi,
Well can you believe it’s March already? Life is certainly not slowing down is it? At least it isn’t for me. I sometimes consider retirement but then my retired friends tell me they are so busy they don’t know how they had time to work. I actually think that time is like your bank balance or the space in your cupboards. What you do with it just expands depending on how much of it you have.
I must say that I’ve been very pleased with myself lately. I’ve been much more disciplined in how I spend my time. I have to confess that I am a workaholic. That probably won’t come as a surprise to you. I love my work and it seriously is my purpose on the planet. Last year I turned 60 and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to look after my body as well as my business. If I claim to be the Health and Happiness Guru then I need to practice what I preach.
So, I’m now swimming every Monday, I do a Yoga Class (at Simply Natural with the amazing Maleea) on a Wednesday and I’m doing Pilates at my Osteo’s Clinic on Friday. I’ve always had an aversion to gym type exercising and personal trainers terrify me but I’m loving my new routine. I also got a Fitbit (a wrist band to measure steps, stairs, heart rate, sleep etc.) recently so I can measure how close I get to achieving my goal of 10,000 steps a day. Some days are definitely better than others.
The underlying goal of course is to be happy, healthy and comfortable in my body well into old age. Many years ago I reset my belief about when and how I would die. I know that our Western culture is not very comfortable talking about death but let’s face it, life is terminal. No one escapes alive. Anyway, I reset my lifespan during a Kinesiology session. It was when I was in my early 50’s and apparently my subconscious had decided I would die at 53. This was the age of my mother when she died and I have to admit I had an uneasy feeling about reaching that age.
Apparently it’s quite common for people to expect to die at the same age as a parent. I decided to change that expectation so I choose 120 years old. Now before you say you couldn’t bear to live that long and be sick, dependent and in pain let me tell you that I also set the intention to be well, mentally alert and happy right up to the day that I die peacefully in my sleep. I quite like the idea of “Death by Chocolate” like in the movie Chocolat. I think that would be quite a good way to leave my body.
Of course I know that just setting the intention to live a long, happy, healthy life doesn’t guarantee that it will happen but I do know how powerful our beliefs are and that they can actually affect your cells and your DNA. You may have heard of the study conducted by the Heartmath Institute where a number of individuals succeeded in unwinding strands of sample DNA by generating a positive mental state, visualising them unwinding and feeling the emotion of a successful outcome. This positive state was measured by heart coherence. The control group, who had low heart coherence, were unable to alter the DNA.
After two decades of study the researchers discovered that factors like love and appreciation or anxiety and anger influence our genetic blueprint. Many genes will switch on and off according to our emotions and beliefs. .
Another study by Dr Dean Ornish, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that over 500 genes were affected by lifestyle changes. Certain genes that prevent disease were turned on and certain disease promoting genes, including those genes involved in cancer, were turned off with an improved lifestyle. That’s pretty exciting and empowering.
Dr Ornish had initially developed a lifestyle program to treat cardiac patients. He thought it was pretty crazy that every year $100 billion was being spent on Angioplasty and all the standardized random controlled studies show that Angioplasty doesn’t prolong life in most people.
The Ornish Program was trialled in 10 hospitals in the US. It includes Yoga, Meditation, stress management, exercise, nutrition and ensuring you feel loved and supported. These patients actually did better than those treated with drugs and surgery and the hospitals saved $30,000 per patient! They found that medication slowed the degeneration of the heart but lifestyle changes actually led to regenerated heart tissue. This approach was so successful that it’s now covered by Medicare in the US. It’s also been expanded to be used on patients with prostate cancer with equal success and rolled out across the US.
If you are into the science behind how things work the fascinating thing about an improved lifestyle is that it protect the ends of your chromosomes. Why is that important? Well the end of each chromosome is covered by something called a telomere. These tiny structures are a bit like the plastic ends on shoelaces. They basically stop the chromosomes and your DNA fraying at the ends. These tiny structures are gradually damaged and shortened as we age. This is the physiology of ageing. In fact the length of your life is directly related to the length of your telomeres. When your telomeres are gone the cell dies. When enough of your telomeres are gone YOU die.
The things that damage your telomeres and literally shorten your life are all the usual suspects like alcohol, smoking and junk food but the most toxic is stress. That’s why lifestyle changes that promote longevity include Yoga and Meditation. The other culprits are unhappiness and loneliness. Any changes you make in your life need to enhance your happiness. If exercise and dietary changes don’t make you happy then you’re on the wrong track. You definitely don’t need to suffer and struggle with restrictive diets and gruelling exercise. It’s far more important to feel loved and happy than to eat celery and bench press twice your body weight.
The longest study ever conducted on human happiness was done by Harvard University over a period of 75 years. One of the comments from a researcher was “One of the greatest lessons and mysteries of the study and probably the greatest human skill is the ability to take in love and metabolise it. That’s how you grow. Nobody knows much about that.” I found that such a profound statement and I’m sure it won’t be long before we understand the quantum science of how love nourishes the body.
So, If you’d like to live a long, healthy life then happiness is not a luxury it’s vital to your wellbeing. And the things that make us happiest are our connection to others and our contribution to the world. So whether you’re busy working or busy being retired making time to take care of your telomeres can mean that not only do you have more years in your life but you will have more life and happiness in your years. Quality and quantity, I say.
By the way, you’re all invited to my 120th birthday on March 15th 2075. We’ll be eating lots of chocolate,
Have a great week,
Warm Regards,
Alison Burton
Health and Happiness Guru
