Health Markers

People tend to accept their daily energy level and their sense of physical decline beginning in middle age as normal and unrelated to diet. "Normal" in this sense means average, it means what is happening to the vast majority, it means acceptance of disability and death in your seventies or eighties, rather than freedom from disease and the enjoyment of an active, vigorous, youthful life to well beyond the century mark. Many people simply have not experienced the increased well-being and remarkable physical transformation that a truly wholesome diet guarantees.

There are tests you can do yourself, or have done by your doctor, which give an indication of your "functional" age and/or your health status. Both types of tests are often referred to as biomarkers. While there is some overlap between biomarkers of "functional" age and those of health, the two categories are not the same. Biomarkers or indicators of health status mainly reflect susceptibility to disease. If you are a relatively sedentary person on a diet high in saturated fats and fairly high in total calories, you are almost certainly developing arteriosclerosis at a rate much higher than active persons on a good diet. This situation can be estimated rather well by certain health indicators, mainly your blood fat profile. But having severe arteriosclerosis, even though it may kill youfrom a heart attack or stroke, for exampledoesn't necessarily mean you are "functionally" older in your whole body. You may have skin that is unwrinkled and hair that is without graying, but still have blood vessels in your heart that are progressively clogging up. Your blood fat profile will tip you off to this situation while you still have time to effect a change.