Most people accept that sickness and physical deterioration are unavoidable parts of life. But we fail to recognize or maybe even refuse to look at a basic health fact: Our thoughts, attitudes, emotions and beliefs create health or sickness, enduring youth or old age.
People like Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and New York Times bestselling author have proven that healthy longevity is possible.
Buettner is the man who coined the phrase Blue Zone to describe any area of the world where people live far longer than average. The phrase Blue Zone first appeared in Buettner’s November 2005 National Geographic magazine cover story, The Secrets of a Long Life.
If we don’t live in a Blue Zone we can still mimic many of the practices of the Blue Zone people. We can create lifestyle strategies for ourselves that we practice not just from time to time but everyday.
This is how we can ensure a wonderful quality of life, often running circles around people decades younger.
The first strategy excerpted here from our e-book, the Art of Ageless Beauty, focuses on our physical structure. It involves the skeletal system, musculature, and connective tissues that form our posture.
The Long Tall Posture
A long tall posture makes us not only look but feel beautiful and confident and grounded in our bodies. We want to aim for a neutral, upright spine that’s not flexed either too far forward or backward.
In a body with excellent posture, the organs all have enough space to function. Compression caused by poor posture causes organs to function in less space. When compressed, our organs don’t function quite as well.
Poor posture can cause many conditions:
back, neck, shoulder pain; even headaches and jaw pain
poor blood circulation
impaired lung function
poor digestion
constricted nerves
misaligned or curved spine
stress incontinence (when you leak a little urine if you laugh or cough).
You might think physical posture is only affected by a weakening body. But it’s also affected by our thought patterns.
Dwelling on the inevitability of sickness and death, family worries and drama, or fear of not being able to survive, for example, affect our physical health and structure. Feelings of hopelessness, dread, anxiety, depression, sadness and more reflect in our physiology, including the posture.
According to traditional Chinese medicine, people past the age of 60 enter the Water element phase of life. The principle emotion of Water is fear.
As many people grow older, their end of life rather than their contributions to it takes center stage in their minds. They become out-of-balance in the Water element and with the emotion of fear.
We must always strive for emotional balance for the best health possible.
We can prevent or remarkably lessen fear from gripping our psyches when we embrace one or both of the Water archetypes. The positive archetypes of the Water element are:
the Sage/Philosopher and the Curious Child.
Theirs is a slower rhythm. They take their time. They have patience. Hurry is not part of their consciousness. Calm is evident in their manner of speaking and speech, their gait, their breathing and their response to life.
Learn more about these archetypes in our blog, The Water Type Personality According to Traditional Chinese Medicine: Understanding Your Archetype for Harmony and Balance.
Incredibly fearful or maybe just plain exhausted with life, some people will trudge the rest of their lives with a physical and mental posture of holding back. Rather than living actively, joyfully and by their design in the way of the balanced Water archetypes, they give up and give in.
People who live in joy and appreciation are open, expansive and their postures are upright.
Those who live in fear, feeling downtrodden and full of worry are pulling physically inward and closed. So much fear affects the body badly. The body responds to fear on a hormonal level, has difficulty accepting nutrients, becomes weaker and begins shutting down on many levels.
And it’s all also reflected in the bent or hunched over posture.
The Emotional Support Called Happiness
So we see that our emotional state is just as important as our physical health. Our emotions and physical function work in a symbiotic cipher of energy. One feeds the other and back again.
One way to uplift and help balance emotion is to create a robust practice of appreciation and high minded thinking. This daily practice can help lead to happiness.
When we feel negative emotions our shoulders slump. But when we feel happy our physiology begins straightening because we feel more energetic and alive.
In our blog, A Theory of Happiness: We Probably Can’t Be Totally Healthy and Well Without It, we said:
We can learn what makes us happy and how to get there more of the time… Happiness is what reinforces our innate sense of our true self. It is when life brings to our experience people, things, places, and conditions that resonate with us on a deeper level—the level where we feel peace, inner joy, and happiness. Happiness is also felt when the mind is at rest and free of worrying thoughts.
Physical Factors that Negatively Affect Posture
Two major factors that contribute to poor posture in older age are osteoporosis and osteomalacia.
Osteoporosis is the loss of bone mass. Osteomalacia is the softening of the bones.
Over time, bones tend to lose some of their minerals and become less dense (a condition called osteopenia in the early stages and osteoporosis in the later stages). Older adults often lose height because of osteoporosis when bones become weak and fracture.
Older adults also can lose lean muscle mass while gaining fat. This condition is called sarcopenia and it too causes weakness, frailty and a loss of height.
You can help prevent height and stature loss by consuming a consistently healthy diet and staying physically active. Both of these may help prevent bone loss.
Dietary intake is an important modifiable factor for bone health. Inadequate intake of nutrients important to bone increases the risk for bone loss and subsequent osteoporosis. The process of bone formation requires an adequate and constant supply of nutrients, such as calcium, protein, magnesium, phosphorus, vitamin D, potassium, and fluoride. However, there are several other vitamins and minerals needed for metabolic processes related to bone, including manganese, copper, boron, iron, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin C, and the B vitamins.
— Cristina Palacios in The Role of Nutrients in Bone Health, From A to Z
Women more than men develop hunchback or age-related postural hyperkyphosis. Hyperkyphosis impairs mobility and increases the risk of falls and fractures associated with older age.
All the exact causes of hyperkyphosis have not been fully established. But experts believe it generally develops from one of two conditions:
muscle weakness and degenerative disc disease (causing vertebral fractures and worsening hyperkyphosis), or
vertebral fractures that occur first in the spine and then precipitate development of a hunched over back.
Proactive Prevention of Bone Loss and Degrading Posture
Ideally, we don’t want to wait to take action until we start suffering bone loss and poor posture. Even if you’re well below senior age, healthy diet and sensible exercise will keep you feeling strong, walking straight and tall all the way into your advanced years.
But as soon as you notice your posture is weakening, no matter what age that is, you should aggressively work to mitigate or even reverse it.
Consume a diet rich in dark leafy greens to enrich bone density and improve your health. Be sure you get enough vitamins and minerals like the ones mentioned in the Palacios quote above.
It’s best to get your nutrients from food. Make supplementation a secondary option if you can’t get all the nutrition you need from food.
Like diet, exercise will also not only strengthen your musculature but nourish your skeletal system as well.
Include a weight resistance exercise program and a regimen of stretching exercises (or yoga).
Give your spine specific flexibility exercises while you also develop flexibility over your entire body. The more flexible the spine is and stronger your core, the greater your health. Many gyms offer equipment to help improve spinal flexibility and strength.
Make a good set of core-strengthening exercises the foundation of your exercise program. It’s a strong core that holds the body up, not the bones or spine. What you're really after is developing the abdominals underneath the surface abdominals—the transverse abdominis.
Often, just getting in to the gym consistently improves your self-image so much your posture naturally straightens and rises.
A great benefit of weight resistance is that it’s very grounding. It will make you feel like you’re fully in your body. Your body will feel more substantial, agile and stable. You’ll rarely fall, if ever, and nearly eliminate your risk of bone fracture from falling.
Create an all around good posture improvement program. Blend a sensible yoga or stretching practice with weight resistance workouts, nutrition, appreciation, balanced emotion and high minded thinking.
Tip for Posture Improvement: Direct your awareness to your center chest and imagine a string pulling upward from your heart. Let the upward pulling string lift your chest and encourage your taller straighter posture.
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Sources:
Katzman, Wendy B, et al. “Age-Related Hyperkyphosis: Its Causes, Consequences, and Management.” The Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy, U.S. National Library of Medicine, June 2010, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907357/
Zamon, Rebecca. “Want To Improve Your Posture? Walk Around Barefoot.” HuffPost Canada, HuffPost Canada, 23 Nov. 2015, www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/23/barefoot-walking-benefits_n_8629098.html
Palacios, Cristina. “The Role of Nutrients in Bone Health, from A to Z.” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2006, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17092827.
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