Longevity, the whole picture – or why your best time is right now

Longevity – the science of a long life, healthy ageing and keeping your youthful strength for life. At RehaGym we don't see longevity as a science-fiction term from Silicon Valley laboratories where people swallow dozens of pills a day. We look at it with respect for movement, for health and for common sense.

Together with our nutrition therapist, co-founder of the Institute of Modern Nutrition and a longevity expert, we bring you a view of how to eat smart, age more slowly and live longer at full strength. No tedious lecturing – just evidence-based facts turned into practice.

The myth of a bad hand: is your genetics really set in stone?

We often hear sighs like: "My grandmother had diabetes, my dad has high blood pressure, there's nothing I can do about it – it's just in my genes."

We have great news for you: this is the biggest myth about ageing!

Current science clearly shows that genetics determines only 15 to 25% of how long we live. Genes are the cards we were dealt, but how we play the game of life is entirely up to us. The rest – a full 75 to 85% – is firmly in our own hands. Our daily habits, physical activity, a diet for longevity, the quality of our sleep and how we handle stress act as switches. They can "switch off" unfavourable genetic predispositions and "switch on" the protective ones.

The grand tour called healthspan: why we don't just want to live longer, but to age more slowly

Picture two different scenarios. In the first, you live to ninety, but you spend the last fifteen years in and out of hospital, with a handful of pills on the bedside table and unable to tie your own shoelaces. In the second, at eighty you are still going on trips to the mountains, playing on the floor with your grandchildren and have a sparkle in your eye.

Which path would you choose?

Modern medicine distinguishes two concepts:

• Lifespan: The total length of life (the number of years we live).
• Healthspan: The length of life lived in health, vitality and independence.

Our aim should not be merely to extend our years mechanically at the expense of quality of life. We want to age more slowly. The great thing is that the two are connected. If we focus on prevention, keep chronic inflammation in the body low, look after our mitochondria (our cellular power plants) and protect our muscle mass, we will live to a much greater age as a side effect. And what's more – we will truly enjoy that time.

Muscle as the holy grail of longevity – and why it isn't just for show

Say "muscles" and most people picture bodybuilders in the gym. In the concept of longevity and healthy movement, however, muscle is seen as one of the most important metabolic and hormonal organs in the body.

Muscle mass works like a giant sponge for glucose. It helps keep blood sugar stable, improves insulin sensitivity and dramatically reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes. Muscles also produce so-called myokines – protective substances that travel through the body and dampen inflammatory processes in other organs, including the brain.

Muscle loss (sarcopenia) quietly starts knocking at everyone's door around the age of thirty. If we don't actively stimulate our muscles with strength training and give them the right nutrition, we lose them. It doesn't hurt... until one day we wake up and find that getting out of a deep armchair or carrying the shopping upstairs takes a superhuman effort. Strength training combined with cardio is the best investment in the pension account of your health.

Nutrition for longevity: forget superfoods, focus on the basics

The shelves of supplement shops overflow with exotic berries, powders from the rainforest and miraculous elixirs of youth. People often spend thousands on these details while ignoring the basics that make up 90% of success.

There is no single universal diet for longevity. There is no magic diet that will save the world. There are, however, iron principles of sensible nutrition that have a proven effect on our biological age:

1. Optimal energy intake and body composition: The greatest enemy of longevity is excess visceral (internal) fat, which wraps around the organs and produces inflammatory substances. Maintaining a healthy weight is the basic building block.

2. Enough quality protein: Essential for recovery, tissue renewal and maintaining the muscle mass mentioned above. Paradoxically, the need for protein does not fall with age – it rises slightly.

3. Fibre and minimally processed foods: Our gut microbiota, which communicates directly with our immune and nervous systems, loves vegetables, fruit, wholegrain products, legumes and seeds.

4. Quality fats and less alcohol: Olive oil, nuts, avocado and fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids keep your vascular system well oiled, while minimising alcohol and industrially processed foods gives your liver and metabolism a break.

Quiet warning signs: listen to your body before it starts to shout

Lifestyle diseases such as heart attack, stroke or metabolic syndrome don't develop overnight. The road to them takes years, often decades. All that time our body keeps sending us gentle text messages. But we often successfully ignore them or "drink them away" with caffeine.

These quiet warning signs include:

• A slowly but steadily growing waistline.
• Getting out of breath on stairs you used to run up without a second thought.
• Fatigue and heavy brain fog after every meal.
• Poor-quality sleep that leaves you more tired than when you went to bed.
• Stiff joints in the morning and a feeling that the body takes longer to recover.

If you catch these signals in time, this is exactly the stage at which prevention and the integrative approach we practise at RehaGym have the greatest power. You don't have to turn your whole life upside down at once. Small, sustainable steps are enough to start.

How to make it a lifestyle: the RehaGym philosophy

The difference between conventional fitness, ordinary rehabilitation and our approach at RehaGym lies in how we look at the future. We don't want you to break speed records in the gym or lift extreme weights at the expense of your health. Nor do we want simply to "remove pain" passively on the massage table without removing its cause.

We teach you movement literacy and sustainability. We connect the science of training (a combination of strength work for muscles and bones, endurance training for cardiovascular health and high-intensity intervals for the capacity of the lungs and heart) with smart eating.

We also teach you to work with useful stress (hormesis). Brief cold, heat in the sauna, intense training or well-timed fasting are positive challenges that force the body to grow stronger. The important thing is to know when to push and when to give the body deep recovery and sleep instead.

Your best time is right now

Perhaps you're telling yourself it's too late to change, or that you don't have time for it right now. So let us finish with a thought we recommend writing on a note and sticking on the fridge:

"The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today."

It doesn't matter how old you are, what shape you're in or how many times you've failed in the past. Every single healthy meal, every session at RehaGym and every hour of quality sleep counts. Your body is the only place you have to live in. Let's look after it with the respect it deserves.

Drop in to RehaGym and take the first step towards a younger, healthier you today!