By Michael Edwards, Organic Lifestyle Magazine
Of all of these tips for looking, feeling—really, just being younger -the most important thing you should remember is this: don’t eat junk, don’t inhale junk, don’t drink junk, and don’t put junk on your skin.
Allow yourself to have beautiful, young looking, vibrant skin, a full head of hair with no or very little gray, perfect teeth without cavities, and clear eyes. You'll feel sharp, alert, and young. This is how we at OLM enjoy life.
Eat Right
That means eating a lot of fresh raw fruits and vegetables. A wide variety of organic raw vegetables should be your staple. There is no vitamin tablet, green smoothie, or serum that results in better health than a diet primarily consisting of fresh raw produce. If you can find a local farm that practices crop rotation, buy as many of their vegetables as you can. You will notice a huge difference in your health almost immediately. Eating right is the best way to get phytonutrients, micro minerals, antioxidants, enzymes, and other nutrients we don’t even know about. If you want tips on incorporating more raw foods into your diet, check out our Raw Food Diet article in this issue.
Eliminate Toxins
Obviously, don’t smoke. And don’t eat refined sugar or drink alcohol, and do everything you can to reduce your body’s toxic
load. Looking younger and feeling younger is all about health, and health is primarily about your body’s nutrition to toxins ratio.
Take Care of Your Skin
This is where most ‘experts” tell you to moisturize and use sunscreen. Not us. Healthy skin comes from within. If you are eating well and exercising and you still have bad skin, you need to detox. Collagen and enzymes can help give you healthy skin as well (see below). We don’t recommend makeup, we don’t recommend moisturizers, and we don’t recommend washing your face on a regular basis. But if you do need to have a face regimen you can do no better than Terressentials. We are in love with this skin care company. They are absolutely phenomenal.
Conventional skin products, including those that entice you because they claim to include a few organic ingredients, make your skin feel tight, refreshed, clean, and invigorated. But they also toxify your skin as they strip important oils. A day later your skin feels worse than before. You use the product again and it feels a bit better. The addiction cycle begins, though many people don’t realize their skin was actually better off before they tried the product.
Take Care of You Hair
Losing your hair and/ or going gray certainly make you look older. The best way to slow this process is to be as healthy as possible. Gray hair is a sign of mineral deficiency (copper and possibly others). Hair loss is a sign of an overall toxic lifestyle. If your diet is unhealthy (and/or you smoke or use other drugs) your blood is too thick. This is what causes high blood pressure. Your heart beats harder to get your blood where it needs to go. It doesn’t get to do its job at at the hair follicles.
Don’t use conventional shampoos and conditioners on your head. The best hair care products we have tried so far are from Morrocco Method.
Workout the Right Way
Don’t just lift heavy weights, or run, or do the same aerobics class every time you go to the gym. Mix it up. Practice developing real world fitness with lots of different exercises and routines. Recovery time is vital. Mixing up your routine and eating right can allow you to exercise every day and still allow your body to recover and not become over worked. A good exercise program simulates an active lifestyle and develops “real world” strength.
Our chief editor lifts weights, practices yoga and martial arts, does lots of body weight exercises, rides bicycles, and uses different cardio equipment at the gym. He also works out anywhere between 1 and 3 times a day 4 to 7 days a week. “I listen to my body, but I also push it hard,” says Michael. Some of his workouts consist of as many pushups and body weight squats as he can do as fast as he can do them. Other workouts consist of a 60 mile bike ride or a 90 minute routine at the gym.
Hot and Cold Hydro Therapy
Second to eating a healthy diet, hot-cold hydrotherapy is the best thing you can do to clean your blood and restore vitality. It can cure so many ailments. See our article in issue 3 and read why this is so important and how to do this regime.
Enzymes
The best way to get lots of enzymes in your diet is to follow the first
tip, eat fresh and raw. Also, eat pineapple and papaya to get lots of enzymes (both have to be fresh and raw or there will be no enzymes). You can also take a systemic enzyme such as Vitalzym which will help your body rid itself of foreign proteins. Keep digestive enzymes handy for when you aren’t eating so healthy
Collagen
Dr. Tim O'Shea, one of our contributors, offers a collagen supplement at his website that he assures us is of the highest quality. We are told by some doctors that if you are taking a systemic enzyme such as Vitalzym you should alternate between the enzyme supplement and collagen on a weekly basis as the enzymes would consider the collagen a foreign protein and render the collagen useless. We’re not sure if this is true, but it seems plausible.
Calm Down
Don’t let little issues bring you down or get you riled up. Don’t even let big things upset you too much. If you have a bad temper, learn to let things roll off of you. If someone is trying to “get to you” then don’t let them win. If someone unintentionally upsets you, why be upset? Rage is very bad for us. Hate is very bad for us. Life is too short.
Relax
Learn to stop and smell the roses. Enjoy and appreciate life. Relax. Meditate. Contemplate. Even if this doesn’t help you live longer, what’s the point of living a long and healthy life if you don’t enjoy it?
Do What Makes You Happy
Again, life is too short.
