Recently I was privileged to complete our community connection lecture series with my presentation—The Golden Years. With a primary focus on ageing, the point I was trying to make was that although our chronological age is set, our psychological and physiological age is determined by us. Despite the many scientific theories of ageing—oxidative stress, mitochondrial integrity, telomeres and cellular senescence, apoptosis and genetic mechanisms—there is a holistic progression that clearly influences our life journey.
Firstly, where we start in life creates the initial variable. You won’t be surprised by the fact that those born into privilege have a distinct advantage over those born into poverty. But it is not the financial difference that is the key beneficial driver. Although, infectious disease, famine, war and civil unrest provide enormous obstacles to lifespan, when these are taken away the biggest issue is health literacy. In short, the less priority we put on learning about our health, the poorer our lifetime health outcomes. Understanding health and expanding our knowledge around the subject will see us make better choices. It’s the choices that we make around lifestyle and disease correction that are the most impacting on our health span.
On the night, I expanded on the following continuum – life history affects health literacy, health literacy affects perspective, perspective affects lifestyle and environment, lifestyle and environment affectmicrobiome, microbiome affects genes, genes affect disease expression and disease expression affects ageing.
It was fascinating to research the topic and lots of fun to present it. We had a packed house and it was great to see both old and new faces at the event.
I have a huge thank you to make to the following business who supported us by donating to our gift bags on the night. Just like us, they are small businesses so we encourage you to support them.
- Nutra Organics
- Upstate Yoga
- Golden Grind
- Kapai Puku
- Geelong Pilates Studio
- Pukka Teas
- Glenelg River Herbs
- Who Gives a Crap
- Amazing oils
- Screaming Seeds
- Payne Therapies
A big thank you for those of you who attended, I hope you enjoyed the presentation and the knowledge that 100% of your entry fee went to my designated charity ONE HEALTH who are dedicated to providing health literacy to those less fortunate. An even bigger thanks to all those who helped to put the night together, in particular, my family and my Naturopathic team—Lindsay, Emma and Ellie. Every time we have a community event it is a huge team effort and I am grateful for all of their support. It makes it clear to me that Together Everyone Achieves More!
If you want to learn more about healthy ageing my April 2018 blog provides a good start.
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