HOW HEALTHY ARE YOU RELATIVE TO YOUR ACTUAL AGE?

Before the 19th century, it was widely believed that human lifespans had been less limited (or even infinite) in the past, and that aging was due to a loss of, and failure to maintain vitality.1 Unfortunately, our lifespans are finite; fortunately, there’s something we can do to maintain vitality at any age!

HOW OLD DO YOU FEEL?

Age is just a number, but it’s also the best measurement we have with which to compare the progression of what happens to the body over time.

Some lifestyle factors have bigger impacts on our bodies than others- some negative, some positive. By taking a look at what is impacting us positively and negatively, we can make a generalization about our vitality age. Have you ever thought to yourself, “gosh, I feel much older than I really am!” Or, the opposite, feeling a surge of youth making you feel younger than you are?

EVALUATE YOUR VITALITY

Vitality age is a measure of how healthy you are relative to your current age, and can be used to measure improvements (or lack thereof) in lifestyle changes. Vitality is not only how we feel, but it’s how our bodies function and perform, and how healthy we are.

Consider some of the factors that impact how your body functions, heals, performs, feels, aches, and more. Everything from your diet to exercise to stress and more can impact your vitality age.

What lifestyle, environmental, physiological, psychological, biological, behavioral, social, and other factors impact the way you feel and function the most? Do they impact you negatively or positively? Let’s explore some of the most agreed-upon variables and how they are shifting your vitality age relative to your natural age.

7 FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO VITALITY AGE

  1. Healthy eating and nutrition
    • Poor nutrition and poor eating habits not only make you age faster, but healthy eating habits and certain superfoods can actually help slow down the natural effects of aging.
  2. Physical activity and exercise
    • Getting regular exercise and activity has shown to help keep your body in better physical condition, and a lack of exercise has shown to do the opposite, especially impacting heart health.
  3. Stress (and stress management)
    • While we can’t completely eliminate stress, studies have shown chronic stress to have a direct correlation with some physical and psychological ailments, like anxiety and heart disease.
  4. Smoking history
    • Our bodies show remarkable ability to recover from smoking habits – and the longer the habit, the longer it takes the body to recover.
  5. Alcohol habits
    • Excessive alcohol consumption can cause damage to organs, prematurely aging the body. On the contrary, studies have shown beneficial effects of red wine on the heart.
  6. Blood pressure
    • It is no secret that high blood pressure carries a direct correlation with heart disease. It is also generally understood that blood pressure increases with age, consistently for healthy adults by age group as follows:
      Normal Blood Pressure By Age for Males
      Age SBP DBP
      21-25 120.5 78.5
      26-30 119.5 76.5
      31-35 114.5 75.5
      36-45 120.5 75.5
      41-45 115.5 78.5
      46-50 119.5 80.5
      51-55 125.5 80.5
      56-60 129.5 79.5
      61-65 143.5 76.5
      Normal Blood Pressure By Age for Females
      Age SBP DBP
      21-25 115.5 70.5
      26-30 113.5 71.5
      31-35 110.5 72.5
      36-45 112.5 74.5
      41-45 116.5 73.5
      46-50 124 78.5
      51-55 122.55 74.5
      56-60 132.5 78.5
      61-65 130.5 77.5
  7. BMI
    • A healthy BMI is important for overall function of vital organs and physical condition. Too low or too high a BMI can cause physical problems and require the body to work harder to perform normal functions.

HARNESS OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVED VITALITY

One way of evaluating your age vitality is to add or subtract values from your age based on the seven factors listed above. For blood pressure specifically, it is easy to see whether your natural age matches up to what is average for your sex and age group. Start at that number, and add and/or subtract digits for whether or not your other six contributing factors are helping or hurting your age.

Where do you end up? Is your estimated vitality age close to your actual (natural) age or is there a big disparity? Have you identified which factors might play the biggest roles in aging you prematurely?

According to the World Health Organization, we have a global problem with age vitality inequity due to many factors, like the families we were born into, our sex, or our ethnicity, for example, all of which have a cumulative impact throughout the course of one’s life. “Public health policy must be crafted to reduce, rather than reinforce, these inequities,” says the WHO, which lead the Consultation on Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health.

By prioritizing a commitment to healthy aging, we can improve the world’s understanding of aging, making an impact on the global age vitality inequity. Some of the factors that impact our age vitality are within our control, and we can make a positive impact by harnessing those. While we can’t control all the factors that contribute to our vitality age, if you can control some, it is better to make a positive impact with those than not at all.

GET A VITALITY ADVANTAGE
WITH NMN+ NAD

Our cells are already impacted by the natural aging process, and some of us are at a bigger disadvantage than others, so any additional support we can leverage will help slow down the inevitable outcome of time’s impact on our bodies. Get to know NMN + NAD to learn how to get your own vitality advantage, and take edging back into your own hands.

Sources:

  1. “Prolongevity”. Encyclopedia of Aging. Retrieved September 30, 2020 – via Encyclopedia.com. Until the nineteenth century, writers often harked backed to a primitive past, when ancient patriarchs supposedly counted their days in centuries rather than years. Pointing to a loss of vital energy as the cause of old age decay, they searched for the means to maintain the body in an active state, uncorrupted by a loss of vitality.
  2. https://www.medicinenet.com/blood_pressure_chart_reading_by_age/article.htm
  3. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health