Stay Young While Adding Calendar Years

If there is one phenomenon that can help us take control of our aging destiny, it's exercise. By now we know that exercise - both aerobics and strength-training - can make us look and feel years younger, literally from the inside out. Everything that decays with aging can be reversed with muscle, sweat and a healthy does of enthusiasm. Among the area most vulnerable to the functional decline that exercise helps to protect are:

• Muscle - which withers at a rapid paces in sedentary people as they start to get older;
• Bone,  which may thin with age and inactivity, leading to osteoporosis;
• Metabolism, which slows as body composition shift to less muscle and more flab; and
• Joint, where inactivity restricts motion and excess weight causes strain, especially when surrounding muscles are weak

Take Back the Battleground

The exercise prescribed here to break the age barrier target those areas especially vulnerable to the constant harassment of Father Time. We are talking about the rusty spots that are the first to go as we gray. The goal of this program is to polish, buff and oil those shaky and stiff places, bolstering existing weakness and preventing others from arising. The battlefronts we have in mind are as followings:

Posture

While eyeing the crow's feet in the mirror, step back a few feet  -you may find an even more obvious sign of advancing years. Posture, or lack of it, can be the mark of successful - or disastrous - aging. As your back slouches, your neck droops and your shoulders fold inward, the little crinkles by the eyelids become insignificant. What's worse, what's going on outside your body is hurting your insides, too.

As the neck begins to come forward and the back starts to slouch more and more, you actually start cramping up the internal organs. This can get so bad your last rib can actually touch your pelvic girdle. A Proper strength-training program, however, can prevent your body from looking a ? and more like a !.

Exercises that build up and preserve muscles in the neck and back are extremely important in helping to maintain correct posture throughout our lives.

Flexibility

As posture falters with age, so does flexibility, especially in the area of spinal mobility  - our ability to flex and extend our backs and the range of motion we need for basic back movement. Rigidity and stiffness can start in our 30s and really speed up in the later decades. Recent research suggests, however, that adults with restricted  mobility can reverse the decline with a simple program using flexibility exercise. By performing exercise that use the entire range of motion of joint and muscle, you enhance flexibility, which has another benefit. The flexible you are, the lower your risk for becoming injured.

Lean Body Mass

As you age, you can lose about one-half pound of muscle per year. While you lose that, you're loading up on body fat. In fact, between age 20 and 80, body fat can jump from 15 to 40 percent in men and from 20 to 40 percent in women. Think about what that does to your body: You get weaker - while you're carrying more excess baggage around. Plus, that change in body composition wreaks havoc on your metabolism. With less high-metabolism muscle, you burn fewer calories, which means you'll gain even more weight - with much more dreadful ease.

Shoulder

The key shoulder muscles - called rotator-cuff muscles - are often the most neglected muscles on the body when is comes to strengthening exercise, creating an imbalance between the often-used large muscles of the chest and these more obscure muscles. It's these small, vulnerable muscles that help maintain the integrity of the shoulder, holding it in good posture.

The rolled shoulder - when your upper body hunches inward, with your chest sinking - can be tied to weakness and imbalance in muscles of the shoulder girdles. Thankfully, a few minutes with light barbells can reverse that decline. By pumping the chest muscles and the upper arm's biceps muscles regularly, you can make sure you end up on the stronger side of the next survey.

The knee

The ligament in the knee can wear away to half their strength in just two decades. But this decay may ne slowed by building up the muscles around the knee, primarily the quadriceps, hamstring and to a lesser extent the calves. Strong quadriceps muscles offer more than knee support. throughout our lives they're responsible for our movement - when we're going up and down stairs, walking and running. In fact quadriceps muscles can lose 40 to 50 percent of their strength between the ages of 20 and 60 if those those years are spent largely inactive. This loss can potentially be reversed, however, by inducting those muscles into strength-training program.

Your Skeleton

Women can lose up to 4 percent of bone each year after menopause, which increases risk for fracture in areas like the spine, forearm and hip. Even worse, half of all falls that involved fracture require hospital admission, with the persons discharged to a nursing home. By increasing bone density, however, the tendency for calcium leeching to occur from the skeleton is likely reduced.  Exercise can stimulate the chemistry associated with maintenance and increase of bone.

Your Midsection

To really trim fat on the belly, you need a potent stew of aerobic exercise, abdominal work and a healthy, low-fat diet. The benefits aren't just cosmetic. Excess fat around the midsection has been implicated in raising the risk of breast cancer, heart disease and diabetes. One important component of that strategy - building the abdominal muscles - has other benefits as well. It helps your lower back, a prime target of pain as wee get older. Researchers have found a strong correlation between weak stomach muscles and chronic back pain and that persistent pain may be helped with simple and slow concentrated exercise hitting the abdominal muscles.

Your Brain

Human still have all the markings of hunter-gathers - creatures who need strenuous activity to survive. It's the emergence of the sedentary lifestyle - sofa, television, remote control and corn chips included - that has softened us, contributing to deterioration of physiological and cognitive function during so-called normal aging. Here's is the good news: Exercise may not only cut risk of physical disease but also help that mighty "muscle" above the neck that keeps us on our toes. We are talking about brain power.

Oxygen is essential for the metabolism of glucose, which maintains brain energy level, and also for the metabolism of several other brain chemicals like neurotransmitters.  Exercise makes you feel better and elevates your confidence that allows you to focus better on the activities at hand, so your work capacity undoubtedly improves.

10 ways to Look 10 Years Younger

• Try a mask

• Give your skin a good foundation

• Blush

• Perfect your brow line

• Erase the circles and puffiness

1. Sleep on your back or with your head elevated by several pillows to keep fluid from pooling around your eyes.

2. Don't drink too much water before bedtime.

3. Cut back on salt and foods high in sodium in your diet.

4. Consider allergies. If you use a down comforter or pillow, try switching to a different type.

5. If you still have residual puffiness, try splashing your face several times with cold water to help stimulate the circulation away from your eyes.

• Perfect your lips and lipstick

The second way is by getting vertical lines that lipstick seeps into. To prevent this, use a neutral-colored lip pencil to outline and fill in your lip line. This keeps your lip line neat and defined. But first try the consistency. pencils that are too soft bleed as badly as lipstick; pencils that are too hard pull the lip and give a choppy line.

• De-stress your face and body

1. Run a clean cloth under cool water. Cover your eyes with tissue and blot all over your face with the cloth.

2. Sit comfortably with both feet on the floor. Tell your body to relax your shoulder. Tilt your head back slightly, then lower your jaw as far as you can. Relax your jaw and allow it to raise naturally.

3. Bend your body toward the floor as far as you can, and then bob up and down from the waist for a few minutes with your neck, arms and hands totally relaxed.

3. Get outside for 5 minutes and breathe some fresh air.

• Practice good posture

• Handle your hands with care

• Give yourself a face-lift

Exercise to Break the Age Barrier