Exploring Longevity: Insights and Perspectives on Living Longer

In the health and fitness industry, along with weight management and muscular development, term longevity has become a trend.  Definition of longevity is defined as “living a long and healthy life, or the ability to live beyond a species’ average age of death”.  In my mind I feel like we are missing something.  That is the purpose of long living and healthy life.  If the purpose was to sit in the chair and watch TV, then you probably can get away with just being healthy.  However, if you want to travel, hike, play sports, gardening, or fishing, you will need to optimize your health and fitness.

We Only Live Once 

We are only live once.  That is why life is so precious. From the day we were born until we pass, there are things that we want to accomplish.  What we want to accomplish will vary from person to person.  However, whatever task or goal that you may want to accomplish all comes with a requirement.  Majority of time when we give up on those tasks is because we are not meeting requirements.  However, if the requirement is something that you can work on to meet, wouldn’t you want to give a try? 

With health and fitness, if you spend 6-12 months for 3 hours per week on planned exercise and 5 days per week of planned nutrition, you can improve your condition drastically.  

Key Factors to Longevity

Health and fitness are two key factors to longevity.  There are other factors too, such as time and money but me being a personal trainer, I will just stick with health and fitness. 

We can live without working on health and fitness but there may be consequences.  One of the consequences is that we may need to rely on medical services and technology.  It is not all bad because if you are genetically having high blood pressure or cholesterol, having medication to control will be beneficial.  However, if you have too many conditions and are not working on improving through exercise and nutrition, then you may need specialists and medications for each condition.

This will lead to another consequence which is limitation on what you can do.   When you are unhealthy or unfit, there are things you may not be able to do.  Take traveling for example.  Traveling does require adaptation to the environment including, climate, time changes, food and so forth.  The body needs to be able to handle the changes and with health conditions, the body may not be able to handle the changes.

Few of the important factors that are important to longevity are purpose, health and fitness. Even when you have money and time, if you don't have health and fitness real longevity cannot be accomplished.

Healthy VS Optimal

In my training practice, regardless of gender or age, I always focus on training my clients as athletes. Reason is athletes has optimal performance and health which we all want. Of course, there will be a limit as to how far I can push my clients, however, if I push my clients to 100 where they are at 60 but ended up in 85, this to me is ideal.

When looking at you fitness or health, it is important to get yourself in healthy status, however, we all should strive for optimal for what we want to accomplish. What is the difference? Let's say blood sugar level for example, when you search it say 70-100mg/dl is considered normal. However, science also know that blood sugar level that is higher than 86mg/dL will have a higher chance of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and increase risk of infection.

My personal advice to those who are wanting to pursue longevity is never satisfy with normal and strive for optimal. What "optimal" is should be suggested by your physician and your trainer if you have one.

My Take on Longevity

Human body has so much potential than any trainer, nutritionist, and physician can imagine. With proper exercise, nutrition and medical support, our body can handle so many different tasks.

As mentioned earlier, we get to live only once. It's never too late to improve your health and fitness, but earlier the better.

If you are working on longevity, never satisfy with being healthy or normal, which is regulated by statistics like 70% of adults in U.S. being obese or overweight, cardiovascular disease being number one cause of death, 10 million Americans have osteoporosis (80% women). This means, even when you are considered healthy, you may not be able to accomplish.

Always, focus on what you want to accomplish and work on health and fitness accordingly.

Kota Shimada