Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (5 page)

We think of aging
as the things we lose or that grow worse with time: wrinkles and lost looks, creaking and aching bones, loss of muscle, loss of energy, chronic disease. But with
Bombshell
I’m going to flip that scenario on its head and show you that we don’t have to fear these things. With the new science and future medicine in this book, we can age to perfection. But to do that we must first understand what’s standing in our way.

So the big questions that must be answered before we move on to anything else are, Why do we age? Is aging inevitable? Is it a disease? What exactly happens in our bodies?

Scientists theorize that aging is a downward spiral of accumulated wear and tear from toxins, free-radical molecules, DNA-damaging radiation, disease, and stress. The thinking is that eventually your body can’t fight back. But this theory has recently been challenged by Stanford University Medical School through research that suggests specific genetic instructions drive the aging process. If aging is not a cost of unavoidable chemistry but actually driven by changes in regulatory genes, then the aging process as we know it may not be inevitable. In other words, as we have suspected:

The choices we make on a moment-to-moment basis regarding our thoughts, how well we oxygenate our bodies (through exercise), and the fuel we choose for nutrition all affect the aging process. The end goal then is to slow this process and promote health. Before we do that, let’s understand what’s driving aging in the first place.

Clearly, the more you abuse your body by bombarding it with toxic substances, the more likely one of your repair systems will undergo a breakdown. One of the most damaging processes to happen is oxidative stress due to free radicals.
Free radicals
are molecules, like toxic waste in your cells, produced in the energy center of your cells (the mitochondria), which are the tiny power plants that convert the food you eat into a usable form of energy for your cells. In the simplest of speak … antioxidants “eat up” these free radicals, or clear out the waste.

As we age and in times of extreme stress our antioxidant systems cannot always keep up with the amount of free radicals being imposed on the body. When this happens, a tremendous amount of damage is done to nearby tissues, glands, and organs. In addition, the immune system goes into full swing and releases these free radicals to destroy the invaders.

We all recognize inflammation when it happens to our bodies: you cut your finger and it swells; you get an infection and it gets red and inflamed. You get the picture. What is less understood is that we also get inflamed
inside
our bodies. The problem is that we can’t see it. Sometimes we feel it—an ache, a pain, some discomfort—but most often it is silent: plaque in arteries, bacteria, yeast (as in candida infections), or cells dividing uncontrollably as in cancer. Some experts believe that if you reduce your bodywide inflammation, you can slash your chances of heart disease and cancer in half, which may also be the key to preventing Alzheimer’s, arthritis, and diabetes.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, one of your cell’s components most severely affected by free radicals is DNA, which is the material that makes up your genes. DNA is the storehouse of all the information that makes up who
you
are. In Dr. Burzynski’s interview (
this page
),
he explains how the reaction of DNA with free radicals can change the shape of or mutate part of the DNA and possibly cause certain genes to be turned “on” or turned “off” or even destroyed completely. If these disruptions affect critical genes, often the result is a cancerous cell. So keeping free-radical damage to the very minimum in a toxic world is an important job for all of us today. Fortunately there are now potent plant compounds that suppress free radicals much more effectively than conventional vitamin supplements. This is explained in
chapter 18
, “Advanced Age Reversal.”

Nearly everything about the way we feel and the way we age in today’s world has to do with the increasing environmental assault we undergo each day. Never before have humans been attacked by chemicals, poisons, and toxins to this degree; the result is widespread cancer as well as potentially other deadly diseases from this free-radical damage. Cancer is soon to be the biggest killer in the world, and toxins are one of the key reasons why. I was stunned early in 2012 when the President’s Cancer Panel report came out, written by conservative doctors and professionals, I might add, which concluded that clearly, we are getting cancer from chemicals.

Yet major media outlets did not pick up on it. The president himself didn’t mention it. Why? We know why. What happens to big business (so dependent on chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and mutated food) if the secret gets out? So this fine report got quietly and carefully tucked away. (To read the report in its entirety, go to my blog at
www.suzannesomers.com
and search for “President’s Cancer Panel.”)

Wrinkles are just part of aging, right? Do you know that free radicals are involved in skin aging? Arthritis—yep, free radicals. Cataracts? Blindness? Macular degeneration? All free radicals. These little menaces are also involved in heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.

Okay, so how do we stop these little killers?

It’s no big surprise: The right diet, daily exercise, and proper supplementation can do so much to prevent their damage. The antioxidants in food (think plant foods like pomegranates, blueberries, cabbage, broccoli) are potent suppressors of free radicals. And then supplements such as resveratrol can do a world of good. (A unique supplement has a resveratrol potency equivalent to seven hundred glasses of red wine; it also contains pterostilbene, an antioxidant, equal to twenty cups of blueberries and the amount of quercetin, another powerful antioxidant, in nine apples.) Imagine, one little pill every day doing so much good. (See
part III
, “Putting It All Together,” to get a complete list of life-giving foods and supplements available to you.)

Yet even with the best supplementation, there is no substitute for the benefits of eating real organic, fresh food. Nutrition is the fuel of the body, and a diet high in antioxidants can help you control free-radical damage. Eliminating bad oils (omega-6s, found in corn, sunflower, and safflower oils) keeps the mitochondria (the energy centers of your cells) from working as hard and reduces the amount of excess glucose (a culprit in diabetes and insulin resistance) in your bloodstream.

To understand the science of why we age, it is important to know the factors that are the age promoters. This next section is technical, but if you gain control over the causes of aging discussed, you will be able to have health and a long life. These causes of aging are controllable, but if not kept in check, they can cause serious problems. These aging processes often work in concert, making one another stronger, which, in turn, accelerates aging. To get on top of these conditions requires a nutritious diet, lifestyle changes, and regular detoxification and supplementation.

OXIDATION

You know how quickly a freshly cut apple turns brown or exposed steel becomes rusty. These processes are known as oxidation. In the living body, oxidation creates by-products called
free radicals
that inflict enormous damage on our cells. Free radicals are bad guys, and they are unstable because each has a single unpaired electron in its outermost shell; essentially it’s homeless, so it keeps trying to find a partner. These free radicals roam through our bodies interfering with normal cell function. They are constantly “hungry,” latching onto any nearby molecule and damaging it by changing its shape, which makes it useless or even dangerous. This process results in a cascade: Each unpaired electron passes on unpaired electrons to other victims, creating further damage.

Right now, as you are reading this you are on fire. I’m not kidding. Free radicals are fiery unstable molecules that have been implicated in most diseases associated with aging. At the molecular level, the continuous chemical reactions that keep your heart beating, your blood moving, and your brain working look like controlled infernos. The constant exchange of electrons wheeling inside the powerhouses in your cells called the
mitochondria
throws off enormous quantities of energy. Without getting into the heavy science, let’s just say that without free radicals, we’d be dead. Free radicals play an important role in cell signaling and communication; however, excessive amounts of free radicals are bad.

The problem is that as we get older, the cellular structures that once kept these free-radical fires under control begin to degrade. Our mitochondria degrade too, given the onslaught of free-radical damage over time. One expert has estimated that every single one of the trillions of cells in our bodies must withstand up to ten thousand individual hits from free radicals each day. Aging causes our cells to lose control over these reactions and makes them vulnerable to destruction.

Unfortunately, free-radical damage to your DNA increases as you age. Certain areas of your DNA are especially vulnerable to this damage, and only a limited amount of DNA is available. So when the cellular situation in your body becomes unbalanced, that’s when problems begin to occur. You now have what is called
oxidative stress
. Oxidative stress happens when too many free radicals exist in the body and the regenerative and repair machinery of the cell is too sick or too old to neutralize the damage. Now you are set up for diseases like atherosclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, heart failure, and cancer. In
part III
, I will explain what you can do to offset oxidative stress. As you’ll
read next, while suppressing damaging free radicals is important, it is only one component of a program that will protect against aging in a meaningful way.