Having written my latest book on this subject "Young Inside and Out", I can tell you that aging is one of the hardest things for the body to do. You have to expose the body to oxidative stress (from exposure to sun, chemicals, pollution) and you have to starve it.
So, you have two objectives to slow or even reverse the aging process, repair and prevent the mutations occurring within the cells and make sure you are feeding the body's two hundred different cell types to make sure you are building the healthiest cells possible.
Most approaches to anti-aging marketed today are aimed at temporary solutions that give a temporary result like Botox, fillers and dermal applications. None can or do achieve the objectives I have stated.
Do you think it's important to take a holistic approach to anti-ageing, and why?
You really have no choice if you are seriously interested in slowing or reversing the aging process but to take a holistic approach. We are a nutrient dependent organism, there is very little the body makes (about 30% of its nutrient needs, but you need to ingest the 70% it does not make for it to be able to make the 30%).
Feeding the body its' nutrient needs is the most important first step to anti-aging.
I am always asked for the sound bite or bullet that sums up aging and health and it is such an easy response, most people are just starving to death. There is so little understanding out in the general public about what it takes to achieve the body's nutrient needs on a daily basis.
What is your attitude to cosmetic surgery?
Cosmetic surgery can provide benefits for some people, but most people are not even candidates for cosmetic surgery. The reason being that their skin is not healthy enough, the dermis is dry and the collagen matrix of the skin has lost its’ youthful elasticity. The results can looked pulled with scar tissue forming at the incision sites due to the inability of the skin (collagen matrix) to heal properly.
Most people do not realize that when you cut into the skin, no different when you cut yourself and a scar forms that dermis does not knit back together but the collagen matrix skin is built on cross-links together to seal the wound forming a scar.
When advising people who are considering plastic surgery, the advise is spend a year feeding the 60% of skin that is fat and the 40% that is collagen and then if you decide you still want to proceed you will be at least working with healthy skin.
When it comes to looking younger for longer, how do you rate skincare in importance, compared to nutrition/lifestyle factors?
As stated above if 60% of skin is fat and 40% is collagen then healthy skin has to start from the inside out. Skin is the fastest replicating cell out of the body's 200 cell types, as such skin has the most voracious appetite for nutrients daily and again the body makes none of them, they have to come from exogenous sources. You give the body these nutrients and it builds healthy, supple, beautiful skin.
Having said this skin care is equally important, for example there are a few things that can only be achieved from the outside in. Dissolving cross-linked collagen associated with wrinkles can only be done this way, you can repair the collagen matrix restoring the elasticity to skin but dissolving the wrinkles has to be from the outside in. There are only a handful of products that can achieve this, most of what is marketed for this purpose is useless.
Keeping the skin hydrated is another benefit skincare provides, forming a moisture barrier that slows down the loss of moisture. Most people do not realize that they can loose up to a pint of water an hour out of their skin on a hot day, the same amount lost in an airplane at 30 thousand feet (one pint an hour.)
There are many cutting edge products that have entered the marketplace that also help reduce the oxidative stress that skin cells receive because they are 60% fat and can receive up to ten thousand free radical hits a day. Also products that repair the mutations that accumulate within the cells and get carried into subsequent generations which is the genesis of the aging process. Finally, products that inhibit Thymine dimmers and sunburn cells caused by UVA radiation from the sun.
Do you think that nutrition and skincare are merging to create a more holistic and integrated style of skincare - ie many skincare companies are now offering supplements alongside their topical ranges, and using more and more super food-style ingredients in these skincare products (msm etc)?
There is definitely a growing awareness that a vertically-integrated approach to skincare that provides long term results are what the public is demanding. The advent of all the super foods you reference are educating the public on the importance of anti-oxidants and the vital role they play with skin cells as an example are forcing the skincare companies to take notice.
There seems to be a growing demand by the consumer for solutions, not just temporary results. The problem is understanding what nutrients it takes to achieve this and how they have to be taken to allow the body to realize a benefit. (I wrote a book called the "24 Hour Body" that covers this subject specifically). Unfortunately there is little understanding or education as to how nutrients get into the body and just because you took something that in principle will provide benefit does not mean that benefit will be realized.
The body has a lot of rules when it comes to how it accesses nutrients and unless you play by those rules do not expect much. In fact let me throw out a statistic to you, 90% of people who take supplements get nothing from them, because they are taking them the wrong way. The body only recognizes three molecular structures (water soluble, fat soluble and large molecular structures) and treats each one differently in terms of how it assimilates them.
Sincerely,
Richard Helfrich
Health Spectrum at The River
Richard Helfrich
Health Spectrum at The River
71-800 Hwy.111,A149
Rancho Mirage, CA 92270
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