Fitness Beyond Forty

Fitness Beyond Forty (FB40 ) Program

Many people seem to regard health as being the absence of sickness, but the aims of the Fitness Beyond Forty (FB40 ) Program go far beyond creating this condition. The FB40 Program aims to create a state where we feel vital and full of energy. Mentally, we are alert, positive and optimistic. Physically, our bodies have stamina, good muscle tone, suppleness and flexibility. Both mentally and physically, we feel balanced and co- ordinated.

Aiming for Health, Energy, Vitality and Well Being.

This approach can have real consequence. Focusing on positive aspects of life has much more beneficial effect than focusing on negative aspects. Getting up every morning and saying ‘I am not sick!’ is not as beneficial as getting up and saying ‘I am healthy!’ The reason for this is that your subconscious mind works with images rather than words. Summoning up the image of sickness rather than health simply programs the subconscious with continual images of sickness.

For instance, if you have a health issue, such as arthritis, the focus should be on controlling the arthritic condition and reducing pain but on becoming supple and flexible with free and easy joint movement. The focus needs to be shifted from being a focus on disease to a focus on health. We are not aiming to avoid arthritis or reduce the pain of arthritis, we are aiming to feel full of energy and vitality.

Long and Healthy Life

Long and Healthy Life

To have long and healthy life, firstly, we need to know what we can do with our lifestyle to offset or prevent these physical changes – for example, how we exercise, how we eat, what stress we put ourselves under, and what type environment we create around us.

Another aspect of lifestyle- related ageing is that the body can start to ‘rust’. Just as a piece of iron oxidizes (or reacts with the oxygen to break down into iron oxide) so, too, the body can start to oxidize as cells and tissues are broken down. This is the work of free radicals.

Essentially, free radicals are simply positive ions. (most of the body’s chemicals have a negative charge.) The free radicals come along and bond with the negative Charge of the body’s atoms, effectively interfering with the atom’s function and the structure it forms. If this happens frequently enough, then the whole structure collapses.

The ‘rusting’ of the body is largely due to the presence of these free radicals in our environment. Unfortunately, the society that we have created is a highly toxic one, loaded with these destructive positive ions. Again, however, this process is not inevitable.

If we want to slow down the ‘rusting’ of our bodies, we can begin by doing the following:

• Reducing the toxic load in our living environment;

• Ensuring our diets contain loss of antioxidants to combat these positive ions; and

• Making sure our circulatory system operate efficiently, so that the antioxidants are effectively delivered to all parts of the body.

In addition to the damage caused by positive ions, our bodies take longer to repair as we age. However, we can offset this problem by :

• Reducing the amount of damage that our body has to repair in the first place.

• Reducing ‘stress’, because stress has a damaging effect on many of body’s systems

• Making sure that the body has all dietary resources that it needs to maintain itself such as minerals, vitamins, proteins and carbohydrates.

Ageing Process

Understanding the Ageing Process

First thing that we have to understand is that weakness of mind and body, are not natural consequences of ageing, but more a result of the lifestyle that we adopt as we age. Nature seems to have one unbreakable rule:  ‘Use it or lose it!‘ If we do not exercise the mind, body and emotions then these functions degrade.

We have all met older people who are more alert and active than much younger people. When we meet such a person, we should not regard them as miraculous occurrence. This is what we should all expect as we advance through our lives. Too often we have blinkered view and believe that such people are lucky to be healthy and alert, able to walk for miles, maintain interests in hobbies and creative pursuits, and assist in the community. We should realize that the very healthand alertness of these older people comes from engaging in these activities, not the other way round!

Our scientific studies are showing that the things we tend to associate with old age, such as loss of muscle tone, need not occur if we maintain an active lifestyle, and that IQ relates not so much to age as to mental activities that we perform. The studies are also finding that the more we engage with others, even pet animals, plants, birds. The fitter we are becoming, the longer we are living.

If human beings become still and sedentary, they would also stagnate, their minds and bodies would deteriorate, and illness and disease would follow.

This does not mean that there are not physical changes that occur as we age. The speed of cellular regeneration is slower, so it takes longer to repair damage to the body. Our digestive systems do not work as efficiently and our immune systems are not as effective. Our hearing and sight also tend to deteriorate, although there are many people of advanced years who have good sight and hearing.

Living Longer - Living Better

Life After Age 40 in the Third Millennium

You have probably heard the saying ‘ Life begins at 40’ but perhaps your experience might be more that ‘ Life Begins to Show at 40 ’ !

Certainly, as you approach or pass this age, it is likely that you will become more and more aware of health issues and how they can impact on the quality of life you want to lead. For instance, if you have played vigorous and active sports, you may be noticing an increasing frequency of injury and the fact that it takes longer to recover from such injury. On the other hand, if you have led a largely sedentary life, you may be beginning to notice other problems, such as reduction in stamina, energy and flexibility.

Even if you have not experienced any of these things, you are almost certainly beginning to notice a rising incidence of medical ‘issues’ among your friends and acquaintances of this age group. The condition of health of surviving parents may also cause you to reflect on what you might expect from life as you move into its later stages.

Most people born in the latter half of the 20thcentury are starting to become aware that, unlike generations born in previous centuries (who considered themselves lucky to survive a few years beyond the end of their working lives), they face the prospect of a reasonable percentage of their lives being spent in the ‘post retirement’ period. These days, at age 40 you can expect, on average, to have as many years ahead of you as behind you. Whether we find the prospect encouraging or discouraging reflects, on what we feel will be the quality of this period of life.

What implications are there then for this extended post-retirement period? Well, for one thing, health experts are now starting to talk of the ‘Third’ and ‘Fourth’ stages of life rather than ‘old age’ or ‘retirement’. These new terms are considered necessary to spell out a very important distinction in how we live our lives in these periods.

The Third Stage of life is seen as a positive and enjoyable period of life that takes place after you have finished your formal working life (or finished raising your family). You are still living an active and independent life and you may well be making significant social contributions or perhaps exploring and developing skills, hobbies and travel that you did not have time during your working life.

The Fourth Stage is that negative period of your life when deteriorating health has made you dependent on others for care and attention. You no longer live an independent life and this period is regarded as being of low quality. Obviously, you want to live a life where you spend a long time in the Third Stage and little or no time in the Fourth.

If you keep yourself healthy then the Third stage of your life may well amount to a period of 20 or 30 years. If on the other hand, you fail to maintain your health then, with medical technology now available, the dependent, low quality Fourth Stage of life may grow to cover that 20-30 year period.

This is unlikely to be something that you cheerfully contemplate! In fact, the prospect is so depressing that many people choose not to think about the Fourth Stage and the life ahead of them. Consequently, they fail to take a few simple steps that can prolong the Third Stage and vastly improve their prospects of having a long, healthy and enjoyable life.