Aging can create many physical changes, including wrinkles and muscle loss, that impact us all. At the same time, men and women age in specific ways. Women, for instance, develop more and deeper wrinkles than men.
One study found that around age 50, the aging process shows more prevalently in women’s faces. Menopause, when the levels of hormones such as estrogen fluctuate, likely contributes to this condition.
As you age, you also lose collagen, the body’s most abundant protein. Collagen provides structure to your skin but also bones, muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Studies show that combined with resistance training, supplementing with collagen powder could reduce the muscle loss that can occur with age.
Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, can begin after 30. At that age, you can lose three to five percent of your muscle every decade.
Overall, men lose more muscle mass than women as they age. Over his lifetime, a man may lose 30 percent of his muscle mass. Muscle loss can decrease mobility while increasing your risk for fractures and falls.
Regardless of gender, you have plenty of control over these and other conditions. With the right approach, you don’t need to accept problems like wrinkles and weaker muscles as you age.
4 Factors that Accelerate the Aging Process
Underlying problems such as wrinkles and muscle loss are four factors that contribute to aging and most age-related disease:
- Free radicals. The free radical theory of aging says that oxidative damage – called oxidative stress – creates many age-related problems. The body has a powerful antioxidant defense system that can combat damaging free radicals. As you age, however, that defense system weakens, increasing the potential damage of free radicals.
- Studies have shown that eating excess sugar can accelerate the aging process and age-related disease. Sugar can lead to glycation, a process that makes proteins sticky and inhibits them from working effectively. Advanced glycation end products, with the appropriate acronym AGEs, is the end result of glycation.
- As you age, stress can come in different forms, including the loss of a loved one or a big life transition. Regardless of how it shows up in your life, chronic stress can age your cells more quickly and increase your risk of many diseases.
- Researchers have coined the term “inflamm-aging” to describe the chronic inflammation that can contribute to age-related diseases including dementia, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
The good news is that how you eat, think, move, and relax can significantly reduce the impact of these factors.
7 Ways to Fight Aging
With a healthy aging mindset, you never need to settle with the ravishes that can occur as you grow older. These seven strategies will keep your skin glowing, your mind sharp and alert, and your body strong and vibrant at any age.
- Eat the right foods. To fight aging, you’ll want to eliminate sugary, processed foods. Instead, incorporate the nutrient-rich foods in our Core and Advanced Plans that allow your body to thrive at any age. They include:
- Protein-rich foods such as nuts and grass-fed whey protein
- Healthy fats such as coconut and grass-fed beef
- A colorful array of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables
- Anti-inflammatory foods flaxseed, wild-caught seafood, and turmeric
- Minimize toxins. The food you eat, water you drink, air you breathe, and many products you use everyday contain harmful toxins that can create hormonal imbalances and much more that impact aging. Learn more about how to minimize these harmful toxins here.
- Focus on fitness. Studies show that regular exercise has numerous anti-aging effects, including supporting muscle mass, reducing falls and fractures, and balancing hormones. Every kind of movement counts, including walking. Our Max T3 program provides an intense, full-body workout in just 12 minutes in the comfort of your home.
- Get your beauty sleep. Deep, restorative sleep is critical for the body and brain to function optimally. Studies show that alterations in sleep quality and quantity mean that many older adults don’t sleep as well as younger adults. Aim for eight hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep every night. Our Sleep + Mood Formula can help you safely fall and stay asleep so you get solid, uninterrupted shut-eye.
- Manage stress levels. You can’t eliminate stress in your life, but cultivating ways to effectively manage it means that you age more gracefully and happily. Learn 16 ways to manage stress here.
- Visit your chiropractor. The most common reason older adults seek chiropractic care is for musculoskeletal pain, most often lower back pain. Chiropractors can also address other age-related concerns including flexibility, posture, and strength. Your chiropractor can also custom-tailor a diet, exercise, and mindset plan that works with your lifestyle. Click here to find a chiropractor near you.
- Take the right nutrients. Aging gracefully requires a proactive focus on your health. Along with a healthy diet and lifestyle, specific nutrients can help you ease into your 40s, 50s, and beyond feeling vibrant, energetic, and youthful. Our Healthy Aging Bundle contains all the nutrients that your body needs to age beautifully. They include:
- Max Collagen. Each serving supplies the body with 12.5 grams of collagen peptides from Fortigel®, Verisol® and Fortibone®, which are highly-researched and produced with cutting-edge technology that supports healthy bones, skin, muscles, and tendons.
- Hair, Skin, & Nails. This comprehensive formula of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and botanicals provides all the necessary building blocks to keep your hair, skin, and nails healthy.
- Broccoli Blend. Sulforaphane, a nutrient found in cruciferous vegetables, provides powerful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-aging properties. Our formula contains a combination of broccoli seed extract and broccoli sprout concentrate to provide sulforaphane glucosinolate (SGS) and the myrosinase (MYR) enzyme for maximum bioavailability and absorption.
- Probiotics 50B. Gut health can decline with age, creating hormone imbalances and more.  A probiotic supplement can restore and support gut balance. Formulated with 10 of the most highly-researched probiotic strains, MaxLiving Probiotic 50B features delayed-release technology for the proper timing of the release of the probiotics into the lower gastrointestinal tract and offers a strong adherence to intestinal epithelial and mucosal walls.
- Curcumin C3®. Curcumin C3® complex is anti-inflammatory and antioxidant formula containing highly absorbable turmeric extract standardized to 95% curcuminoids and BioPerine® black pepper extract standardized to 95% piperine, which enhances bioavailability and absorption.