Aging. Why are we failing so miserably to achieve our full potential of 122+ years? Why is it that we are currently, as a species, only achieving around 75 years? Let that sink in. This is a universal problem. Yes, there are some exceptions to this average. Outliers that only make it into their forties and some that make it into their nineties and a few that will join the club of centenarians.
There will always be the problem of genetics that will prevent a small number of newborns to lack certain physical traits that prevent them from living a full, unhindered lifespan and that is unfortunate. But for the rest that are born with all of their functionality intact and working properly, they are still, on average, failing miserably to achieve our full potential.
Over the last 8 years, I have spent much time, reading, researching, contemplating, and experimenting with all manner of different life practices to improve my own individual odds to appreciate a status that places me on the upper end of the outlier scale landing me somewhere above one-hundred years of age before I begin the next step of whatever it is that we call the afterlife.
Sleep, hydration, nutriment, and movement, in my opinion, appear to be at the top of the list of things that we have control over that can tip the scales in our favor. Direct environment is another key driver that will also determine the outcome of our existence. Our direct environment, which the outside of our body comes into contact with throughout our entire existence, covers a whopping 1,200 square feet. However, we only ever see about 22 square feet of it while the majority, the other 1,178 square feet starts at our lips and ends at our anus.
That means that what we call our skin, the part we can easily touch, on what most people refer to as the outside of their body, only makes up about 1.67% of our body’s total surface area. The rest of the body is not directly exposed to the outside world, aside from the sinuses and the lungs. The actual entrance into our body lies within the small intestine, where the food we put in our mouth passes through the tight junctions of the epithelial lining of our small intestine, which enters our portal vein, headed for its first stop, the liver, for further processing.
What are the environmental factors that negatively impact our bodies, hindering our ability to reach our full potential?
Time is our most valuable asset. It is our bank account that we spend from to purchase the things we need or want. We can do that in a number of ways, however, the most common these days is to simply work for others in what we call a job where we exchange our time for fiat currency to trade with others for the time(work) we don’t want to do, like hunting or farming for our daily bread, the clothes we wear, and the place we lay our head.
At this juncture, you are probably wondering when I will get to what I believe is the hurdle that is keeping us from achieving more than merely aging more gracefully. I want to age better, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Being a universal problem that, for the most part, we are all, as a species experiencing, it would be nice if there were only one thing that could be adjusted to fix the problem. That is likely not the case, however, it is not outside of the realm of possibility. And even if there are many factors that lead to a diminished outcome, there will be one factor that shows up to the proverbial party more than any others. And that is the factor that I have been looking for. The factor that we can knock out first. Then we can continue working our way down the list solving for all of the other factors that will eventually leave us with the ability to make it to an unhindered 122+ years.
To be continued…