What would you do if you had only two options and must choose one, a short life that was healthy from the beginning till the end  or a long life that ended with many years of disease and its attendant sufferings, pain, surgeries, disability, immobility, bed sores and many others?

These are the two options available in a world where cure for incurable lifestyle diseases is sought after instead of prevention. In a world without preventive health education and motivation for lifestyle change to prevent diseases like cancer, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, chronic obstructive lung disease, degenerative joint diseases and other diseases of civilization, the only people that would escape the above-mentioned sufferings are those that die early before disease strikes.

None of us would choose to die early or commit suicide for the sake of escaping disease or its attendant sufferings and neither would any of us want to end our long lives like many who worked so hard only to suffer heart, kidney and organ failures, paralysis from stroke and degenerative diseases affecting the spine, cancer and other preventable but incurable diseases.

If it turns out that I’m right, then it means nobody wants to die young and nobody wants to live a sadly- ending long life. For those of you that belong to this category, I’ve got good news for you: “You can remain young even in old age by slowing the ageing process and staying disease-free. In other words, even though you can’t reduce  your calendar age, you can do something about your biological age such that you can have the anatomical, physiological and biochemical systems of a 30-year old in a 90-year old.

Did I hear you say impossible? Then you must not have seen the 90-year old woman climbing trees the other day on CNN because you needn’t be a mathematical genius like Einstein to figure out that her muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints could not be functionally older than yours when you were 30 provided you could climb trees then.

Experts now know that our health would benefit more from a slowing down of the ageing process by a new approach that teaches prevention instead of traditional medical approaches that passively address prevention and target individual disease. The people in developed nations who get the best curative management are increasingly experiencing more than one age-related disease and now, co-morbidity, the term used to describe the presence of more than one disease in an individual, has become a big health problem in these parts.

Recent advances in the study biological mechanisms responsible for ageing, which give rise to most diseases and other age-related health problems show that aging can be slowed down and disease can be prevented when we adopt healthy lifestyles as preached by medical professionals genuinely interested in prevention instead of cure. Embracing this new model of health promotion and disease prevention will not only guarantee a longer healthy lifespan but also a longer calendar lifespan and independence of invasive medical and surgical management. We must therefore be wise and embrace health promotion and disease prevention.

Here are a few rules you must follow to slow down aging and prevent disease:

Always seek preventive health knowledge from experts: By attending seminars and trainings organized by orthodox medical professionals like physiotherapists and doctors in preventive health, you will understand how your body works and you will acquire lifestyle change skills necessary to change your lifestyle from a disease-promoting to a disease-preventing lifestyle. Disease and its medical and surgical management make you age fast while a positive lifestyle change helps you slow down aging and prevent disease.

Do not lose your muscle strength:  Muscle strength declines with age and the faster you lose muscle strength, the older you become. Strengthen all muscles in all parts of the body as advised by your physiotherapists and certified trainers. Note that exercise in the hands of people who don’t understand your anatomy and physiology is dangerous. Many orthopedic patients referred to me damaged their backs, necks and joints while exercising.

Do not lose your balance and co-ordination: Balance refers to your ability to remain stable especially when in the upright position. Coordination refers to your ability to use the right muscles at the right time and in the right sequence of steps that make up an activity and at the right intensity. The faster you lose them, the faster you age. When balance is lost, people begin to rely on walking sticks and frames and loss of coordination makes simple tasks like taking a spoon from a plate of food to the mouth impossible such that the individual has to be fed.

Do not lose your muscular endurance: Muscular endurance refers to the ability of a particular muscle group to perform repeated contractions or work over a period of time. The faster you lose your muscular endurance, the faster you age. The more your muscular endurance, the more your ability to work for prolonged periods before fatigue sets in.

Do not lose your cardiopulmonary endurance: This refers to the ability of your heart and lungs to supply your tissues with the amounts of blood and oxygen required in long periods of activity involving large muscle groups. These activities include, brisk walking, running, swimming, biking for long periods. The faster the rate at which the time you can safely spend on these activities diminishes, the faster you age. Your preventive health physiotherapist can safely help you increase the amount of time you can safely spend on these aerobic activities.

Do not lose your flexibility: flexibility refers to the ability to move your joints, knees, hips, ankles, elbows, shoulders, the joints in your neck and back and other joints in the body through an unrestricted, pain-free range of motion. This depends primarily on the ability of the muscles to lengthen and this depends on how often these muscles get stretched through the maximum possible range. Muscles that don’t get stretched regularly become permanently shortened and lose the ability to lengthen to allow full movement.

The old woman climbing the tree on CNN could because she never stopped flexing her hips to climb trees and so the muscles which allow flexion, the hamstrings did not get shortened. Many people half her age will hurt their hamstrings if they attempt to climb and so, even though younger in calendar age, their hamstrings are biologically older than hers. I'm not advising you to start climbing trees so I will not be responsible for any fractures or deaths through falls from trees. Your physiotherapist can design a programme that will help improve your flexibility.

There are many other determinants of aging and your preventive health physiotherapists and doctors will teach you to improve them and stay young and disease-free.