Have you seen RealAge, the online health quiz sensation? You may have heard about it from Dr. Oz on Oprah.
Here’s how it works…
You answer 150 questions about your personal life. Everything from health problems and medications to personal beliefs and sexual details. It gives you an idea of what you need to do to stay young, but his survey is flawed and it can take hours.
I’ve got a simpler quiz that’s more accurate. After answering just 11 questions, you’ll have in hand an instant evaluation that will help you add years to your life.
I’ll also reveal your true bio-chemical markers of agingand show you exactly how to turn back the clock by a good five or 10 years. You’ll know the secrets of anti-aging—and the science behind them.
Dr. Michael Roizen, RealAge’s co-founder, “pored over more than 33,000 medical studies” to come up with his massive anti-aging quiz.1
I respect Dr. Roizen. I was even a guest on his radio show up in New York City. (He introduced me as “one of the most brilliant anti-aging doctors in the world.”)
But you don’t need to answer (or ask!) scores of questions to beat aging. We already know the biological markers of aging—and where to look for them.
We also know the lifestyle decisions that affect aging.
Here’s the simple way to start putting the brakes on aging right now.
 Find Out Your Real Biological Age… in MinutesHave a look at this brief survey. It allows you to estimate your lifespan. According the Centers for Disease Control, the average life expectancy in the U.S. is 78 years.2 Start with that number. Add or subtract from it depending on your answer:
The total is your estimated lifespan. |
If you’re happy with the number of years you’ve got left, good for you! If you’d like to know how to tack on a few more, here are the true keys to reversing the aging process.
Restore Your Youth with the Four Benchmarks of Aging
Here are the substances within your body most closely linked to preserving youth… or ending it. Think of the first two as allies, the third and fourth as enemies. They play a role in several key age-related processes within your body. By monitoring them—and harnessing them—you can reverse the effects of aging.
1) Human Growth Hormone — You’ve got it in abundance in your youth. With good reason.3 Your body relies on its many powers to fuel healthy development. In adults, HGH has been shown to:
Increase Energy
- Enhance sexual performance
- Build muscle and bone
- Eliminate wrinkles
- Enhance immune function and mood
- Improve cholesterol and vision.
But you’re losing it with each passing year. Here are three simple ways to unleash its rejuvenating power:
- Eat More Protein: HGH levels rise with a high protein diet, especially when combined with exercise that increases muscle mass.
- Perform Strenuous Exercise: High-intensity exercise boosts your HGH. Do this only if you’re conditioned. If you’re not ready for this yet, work your way up to it by following my PACE program.
- Take Glutamine: Researchers from the Louisiana State University College of Medicine found that just 2 grams of glutamine raised HGH levels more than four times higher than those who took a placebo.4 Take 2 grams at bedtime.
2) HDL — You already know this as the “good” cholesterol. It’s critical to the health of your cell membranes. Your skin, hair, and nails use it to stay healthy. Your body needs it to make all your sex hormones.
These are critical to staying young… and chances are your levels aren’t where they should be:
| Low | Normal | Best Anti-Aging |
| < 40 | 40-80 | > 80 |
Luckily, there are safe, natural ways to restore it to youthful levels:
- Get more omega-3. Wild-caught fish, grass-fed beef, free-farmed, organic poultry, nuts, olive, eggs and avocados are all rich in this “good” fat. Cod liver oil – the best omega-3 supplement on earth – will also boost your HDL levels naturally.
- Policosanol – 40 mg. This safe plant extract naturally ramps up HDL, as much as 29 percent.5
- Niacin – 20 mg. Nuts, dried beans, liver, poultry, and fish are all rich in it. Or take 20 mg a day in supplement form.
- Garlic – 2 raw cloves. Raw garlic can lower blood pressure by as much as 73 percent.6 You can also find its active ingredient as a supplement in most health food stores. It’s called “allicin.”
3) Homocysteine — One of the key aging factors most doctors overlook. Every cell in your body makes it as they turn fuel into energy. It gets dumped into your bloodstream afterwards. Think of it as a waste product.
Homocysteine is responsible for system-wide inflammation, Enemy Number One in the battle against aging. Inflammation lies at the core of almost all age-related conditions, from heart disease to arthritis.
That’s why homocysteine is probably the most powerful measure of how fast your body is aging. In high concentrations, it actually causesrapid cell death. In fact, one study found that homocysteine tripled the speed of the aging process.7
Get your homocysteine level measured with a simple blood test. A level above 10.4 mmol/L is abnormally high. I usually get my patients down to around 7.
You can easily reduce it with these safe, natural supplements (amounts are daily):
- Vitamin B12 – 500 mcg
- Folic Acid – 800 mcg
- Vitamin B6 – 25 mg
- Riboflavin (B2) – 25 mg
- TMG (trimethylglyceine) – 500 mg
4) Triglycerides — Triglycerides are a type of fat found in your blood. They provide a major source of energy between meals. Your body stores unused calories as triglycerides in your fat cells. But if you eat more calories than you burn, your levels ramp up. This is how your arteries get clogged.
Simply put, triglycerides speed up time for your cardiovascular system—and take years off your life.
Get your levels tested the next time you see your doctor. Here’s an idea of where they should be:8
| High | > 200 mg/ dl |
| Normal | 150 to 199 mg/dl |
| Best Anti-Aging | < 100 mg/dl |
There are safe, natural ways to bring triglyceride levels within your ideal anti-aging range.
- Boost the amount of omega-3 in your diet. This is far and away the best way to lower triglycerides. I recommend a teaspoon of cod liver oil daily.
- Eliminate starchy, high-carb foods.
- Niacin – 20 mg. Just as it raises HDL, it lowers triglycerides. I recommend a sustained release formula for maximum anti-aging benefit.
Unleash Your Body’s Age-Defying Power
Anti-aging medicine has achieved historic breakthroughs in recent years—and you can benefit from them. Here’s how:
1) Get Your Antioxidants— Your body is under constant assault from free radicals, the rogue molecules that bind to healthy cells… and lead to breakdown and death.
They’re the first “aging accelerators” we discovered.
You can easily hold them at bay with these six antioxidant powerhouses:
| Antioxidant | Food Sources | Daily Amount |
| Vitamin A | meat, milk, eggs, liver, carrots, and spinach | 2,500 IU |
| Vitamin E | Nuts, seeds, avocados | 400 IU |
| Vitamin C | Citrus, strawberries, broccoli, peppers | 1,500 mg x 2 |
| Alpha Lipoic Acid | Red meat | 100 mg |
| Lutein | Red grapes, egg yolks, squash, peas, and oranges | 20 mg |
| Lycopene | Tomatoes, guava, watermelon, pink grapefruit | 20 mg |
2) Ramp Up Your CoQ10 — Ninety-five percent of all the cells in your body need it to turn fuel into energy. Your energy-intensive organs, like the brain and heart, burn through it at lightning speed.
Of course your body is running out of it with each passing year. From age 30 onwards, the telltale signs of aging start to appear—a weaker heart, duller mind and flagging energy.
You can reverse this process with supplements. I recommend at least 100 mg per day. Instead of the CoQ10 you find on most health food store shelves, try to find an easily absorbed, potent source.
3) Switch on Your “Immortality” Genes— The new frontier in anti-aging science. Geneticists call it “gene expression.” You can now take advantage of it… and bring the aging process to a grinding halt.
It turns out that hidden within every cell of your body are genetic “switches” that remain in the off position most of your adult life. Normally they’re active only in the very first stages of life.
We’ve recently discovered several safe, natural compounds with the remarkable ability to flip your anti-aging switches back on. You don’t need high-tech surgery or laboratory equipment to get the benefit. Just a glass of water.
I call this new dawn in anti-aging medicine nutritional engineering. It means you can safely re-activate these life-giving forces at the cellular level.
Here are the two heavy hitters:
- Resveratrol. New research has uncovered a class of genes that can increase lifespan dramatically, as much as 100 percent in one study.9 They’re called sirtuins (“silent information regulator proteins”).This natural compound found in grapes has the power to activate them. You can find it in health food stores or online.A good dose for health promotion is between 20 mg to 50 mg per day. For anti-aging, I recommend at least 100 mg. You can try my formula here.
- Michael F. Roizen. The RealAge Makeover:Take Years Off Your Looks and Add Them to Your Life. 2004. New York: HarperCollins. p. 21.
- Hsiang-Ching et al. “Deaths: Final Data for 2005.” National Vital Statistics Reports. Centers for Disease Control. 2008. 56(10):1-2.
- Klatz, R. Grow Young with HGH. Harper Collins, NY: 1997; and Gibney J. et al., “The effects of 10 years of recombinant human growth hormone (GH) in adult GH-deficient patients.” Journal of Clinical Endrocrinology and Metabolism. 1999. 84(8): 2596-2602.
- TC Welbourne. “Increased plasma bicarbonate and growth hormone after an oral glutamine load.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1995 61:1058-1061
- Más et al. “Effects of policosanol in patients with type II hypercholesterolemia and additional coronary risk factors.” Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 1999. 65:439–447.
- Benavides G, et al. “From the Cover: Hydrogen sulfide mediates the vasoactivity of garlic.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2007. 104:17977-17982.
- Xu et al. “Homocysteine accelerates endothelial cell senescence,” FEBS Letters. 2000. 470: 20-24. Adapted from Regelson W and Colman 11.
- High Triglycerides.WebMD in collaboration with HealthWise Incorporated, August 2004.
- Howitz et al, “Small molecule activators of sirtuins extend Saccharomyces cerevisiae lifespan.” Nature. 2003. 425(6954):191-6.