If You're Older Than 25, You Need to Watch This

Most people think aging starts somewhere in their 40s when the gray hair shows up, the back starts aching, or the weight doesn't come off like it used to. But the truth is, aging starts a lot sooner, already in your early 20s. You just don't notice it. In this video, I'll reveal the hidden aspects of aging that already start in your early 20s. And more importantly, what you can do to slow it down. The first thing that starts declining is your cardiorespiratory fitness, which reflects in your V2 max. It peaks when you're 20 years old and steadily decreases after that. A higher V2 max above 50 milliliters per kilogram per minute is associated with a lower risk of mortality and a V2 max below 17 means you've lost physical independence and you can't do everyday activities without assistance. V2 max is a matter of use it or lose it. If you don't do cardiovascular exercise and you don't train your V2 max, it's going to decrease. And the faster it decreases, the higher your risk of future heart disease, dementia, and all cause mortality. To increase your V2 max, you need to do aerobic training or high-intensity interval training. High-intensity interval training is more time effective, but it's recommended to do both because they train different systems. However, you shouldn't do just low inensity cardio or endurance training. That's because with age you see a decline in fast twitch muscle fibers that can be trained only with lifting weights at near maximum intensities, jumping, sprinting, or high-intensity training. The reason these fast twitch muscle fibers are important is that they help you to maintain agility and speed. When you get older, if you fall off the stairs, you can break a hip and die. And if you're slow, you're not able to catch yourself or you're not able to maintain balance fast enough. You're more likely to just fall. Having more fast twitch muscle fibers and restoring them with exercise has been seen to counteract the age related loss of muscle mass and metabolism. It means that by sprinting or lifting something at near maximum intensities like Olympic weightlifting, you maintain fast twitch muscle fibers that help you to maintain more muscle and a better metabolism as you age. It's been seen that the elderly people who do just endurance training have much fewer fast twitch muscle fibers, whereas those who do strength training have significantly more. When it comes to overall muscle mass and muscle strength, then you can get away with not lifting weights until your 40s. That's because natural muscle mass and strength peak between the ages of 30 and 40 in men and in early 40s in women. However, if you want to get ahead of the curve, you should start doing at least some resistance training in your 20s already. Having low muscle mass later in life is a predictor of death from all causes. That's because with low muscle, you're at a higher risk of diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's, and falling off the stairs. However, when you compare muscle mass and muscle strength, then muscle strength is a stronger predictor of mortality than muscle mass. And usually if you have good muscle strength, you already have adequate amounts of muscle mass. And when you compare muscle strength and muscle power, then muscle power is even stronger of a predictor of mortality than strength. So your training, your resistance training should actually be focused on speed, power, and strength, not muscle mass, per se. The muscle mass should be the byproduct of your strength and power training. You don't want to become a massive bulky bodybuilder mass monster. You want to be something like Olympic weightlifter, a leaner powerlter, or a gymnast. I want to take a quick break to tell you about the Bond Charge infrared sauna blankets. My go-to way of getting 20-minut sauna sessions on the go without needing to spend an hour to warm up a regular sauna. Taking the sauna is, in my opinion, one of the best things for your overall health and heart function. Studies show that taking a sauna regularly is associated with 63% lower risk of sudden cardiac death, 63% reduced heart disease mortality, 46% lower risk of hypertension, and 40% reduced all cause mortality. This is mediated by an increase in body temperature and increased heart rate that mimic a cardiovascular workout while at the same time improving arterial stiffness, endothelial function, blood flow, immune system function, blood pressure, and metabolic health. It doesn't matter if it's a traditional wooden sauna and infrared sauna and infrared sauna blanket, or anything else that elevates your body temperature above what's normal. One charge infrared sauna blankets have the advantage of shining far infrared light that can penetrate deeper into your tissues than regular saunas can. It warms up in 2 minutes to the optimal temperature of 70° C and it's low in EMF. You can get a 15% discount by heading over to bunchcharge.com/seamund and use the code seam for 15% discount. All right, back to the video. Let's talk about skin aging because that's something most people don't think about until they get their first wrinkles. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the body, making up 30% of your entire body protein. Unfortunately, starting already at the age of 20, you lose a bit less than 10% of your skin's collagen content with every decade. By the age of 70, you could have lost up to 50% of your skin collagen content. Another compound in the skin that declines with age is hyaluronic acid that maintains lubrication and skin hydration. Hyaluronic acid in the skin starts decreasing after the age of 25. And a 75year-old person has only 1/4 of the hyaluronic acid as someone who's 19 years old. So, how do you counteract this? For skin collagen maintenance, you can do things like micro needling to trigger collagen synthesis in the skin because there's a lot of studies showing how micro needling helps with acne, scars, and wrinkles. Take oral collagen peptide supplements because they improve skin elasticity and firmness. For skin hydration, you can use a moisturizer that suits your skin type and take oral hyaluronic acid supplements. Hyaluronic acid supplements have been shown to benefit skin wrinkles. Drink enough water because skin hydration decreases with age and drinking more water has been seen to improve skin condition and reduce wrinkles. Sunscreen is probably the most powerful way to reduce photoagging caused by the sun. You will see an insane difference over the course of decades on areas you use sunscreen versus not. For example, this old farmer, he wore jeans everyday, but he wore a short sleeve shirt and you can see the skin on his legs looks very youthful, almost like the skin of a 20-year-old, whereas the skin on his arms is wrinkled and sun damaged. There's more examples of other people who put sunscreen only on their face but not the neck and the neck looks wrinkled and photo damaged whereas the skin on the face looks a lot younger. Something that you can't see that declines with age is bone density. It's not a very exciting topic. Bone density it's kind of boring but it's very important because low bone density increases your risk of hip fractures and dying later in life. The bigger problem is that it becomes increasingly more difficult to increase your bone density after the age of 50. Especially for women who see a massive drop in bone density after menopause due to the drop in estrogen. Bone density peaks when you're 30 years old and begins declining in both men and women after that. The most powerful and most reliable method of increasing bone density is to do weightbearing exercise. Resistance training with weights, jumping, plyometric training, or carrying weights around like a weighted vest. That's because the bones trigger bone density growth when they encounter physical stress. If you're just exposed to gravity, it's not enough. So, if you get a DEXA scan in your 40s and you can see that you have low bone density, you need to start working to improve it ASAP because it's not too late, but you're already behind. If you get a DEXA scan in your 30s and you have normal or high bone density, it doesn't mean you can just stop resistance training because your bone density will decline. So, you want to maintain it. If you're 60 years old and you have low bone density, then the answer is still to do resistance training because there's no other way to increase bone density at that age. As you can see, aging is slowly happening under the surface already in your 20s. So, it doesn't really matter how old you are. Aging affects us all in different amounts. Of course, genetics plays a factor. Some people have better genetics, they age slower, and others have worse genetics. They age faster. You can't control that. But you can control your lifestyle and habits. If you want a full guide to longevity, then check out my evidence-based longevity routine video