Your body only gets worse - so take good care of it

Just in case your parents or doctors forgot to tell you, as you get older your body only gets worse. My guesstimate is that one physiologically peaks in the late teens to early twenties. I agree with Farah Fawcett that the 40's are the best years of your life - but that's only because you are so much wiser by then, not because your body looks or feels any better. The two major themes of aging are the narrowing of your arteries and joint spaces. You need blood to nourish your body's cells and to carry away the by products of metabolism. Atherosclerosis is the process by which your arteries narrow over time and this process is accelerated by smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure, and peripheral vascular disease are the consequence of not enough blood getting to your brain, heart muscle, kidneys, and extremities respectively. What can you do to help retard the narrowing of your arteries? Make healthy food choices, engage in physical activity that you enjoy for 45-60 minutes most days of the week, and don't ever smoke. As for your joints, age is their enemy. When you are young, the joint spaces found in places like your shoulders and knees are nice and roomy. There is no friction or pain when you throw a baseball, comb your hair, walk, or go up and down stairs. As you age, the bones on the two opposing sides of your joints get closer and closer together, pinching and damaging the cartilage, ligaments, and tendons that formerly lived in peace and quiet. This process is accelerated by overuse (the baseball pitcher who throws too much), repetitive high impact weight bearing activity (running on hard pavement), and repetitive trauma (the soccer player with recurrent knee injuries). Here's what you can do to help your joints last longer: don't keep working through pain (pain is your body's way of saying "give me a break for a while"); cross train (engage in a variety of exercises as opposed to the same one over and over again) so that you won't overwork any particular joints; keep your weight within a reasonable range (obesity will accelerate the progression of your wear and tear arthritis); and don't choose running as your primary aerobic exercise unless you have no other choice and/or experience the rare but addictive "runner's high."