Staying Young

I never imagined that I would ever get old. It never occurred to me. I watched my parents age, I watched my friends get old and fat, but never thought it would ever happen to me.

Upon entering the fifth decade myself, I began to notice alarming signs that I was no longer as young as I used to be. It began with my eyesight—which was fine one day, but then suddenly my arms just weren't long enough—and ended with my waistline suddenly swelling like the top of a banana walnut muffin.

To understand how to stay young, you must first know what makes you old. Signs of agedness—grey hair, creaky swollen joints, loss of waistline (when the six pack degenerates into a keg), farsightedness, dry skin and bat wings—have a lot to do with what Chinese Medicine calls Jing Cycles, which are sets of years in which we grow, mature, age, and die. Here's a quote from the Su Wen (Simple Questions), written sometime around the Second Century BCE:

In a man, at the age of 8 the boy's kidney energy is abundant, his hair and teeth grow. At the age of 16 his kidney energy is even more abundant...and he can produce a child. At the age of 24, the kidney energy peaks, ...the wisdom teeth appear, and growth is at its peak. At the age of 32, tendons and bones are at their strongest, and the muscles are full and strong. At the age of 40, the kidney is weakened, the hair begins to fall out and the teeth become loose. At the age of 48, Yang Qi is exhausted, the face becomes darker, and the hair turns grey. At the age of 56, the liver energy is weakened, the tendons cannot move...and the body begins to grow old. At the age of 64, hair and teeth are gone.

In Chinese Medicine, we talk a lot about the Kidneys. The Kidneys store your Essence, also known as Jing. Jing controls your growth and development, as well as your sexual energy and fertility. As such, it is seen as a very important and precious substance.

Basically, in a nutshell, longevity is based on two main things: your pre-natal Jing (which you inherited from your parents) and your post-natal Jing (which is entirely up to you). There are two things that determine the state of your Jing:

1. The food you eat
2. The balance in your life

This is why we talk so much about balance in Chinese Medicine. Aging really can be controlled, but it takes a considerable amount of discipline. The more stressed out you become, the more you work overtime, the more alcohol you drink, the less you exercise, and the more double-ended burning you do on your candle, the faster you will age.

Luckily, the aging process is reversible, and it's relatively easy to do. Besides exercising regularly and eating healthily (which only you can do), regular acupuncture or BodyTalk treatments will bring your body back into balance. And you can eliminate your food, hormone, and enzyme sensitivities, which will repair broken energetic pathways and allow your body to function optimally, like it did when you were twenty. Honestly, it's the best preventive medicine available anywhere.

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