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Getting Older, Better The State Journal-Register Springfield, IL JULIE CELLINI CORRESPONDENT February 12, 2001

If a well-known doctor says sex, seatbelts, and dental floss can lop years off your biological age, are you interested? Judging from the 25 million hits Dr. Roizen's RealAge Web site has racked up since its inception two years ago, people are not just interested, they're eager to find out more. "RealAge is a term I've coined to represent how fast the body is actually aging," says Roizen, an internist, anesthesiologist and preventive gerontologist at the University of Chicago. "Calendar age is measured by the number of birthdays you've had. Your RealAge can be years younger or older, depending on how you choose to live your life." Until recently, Roizen says, doctors believed genes largely determined a person's life span. "Now," he says, "studies show that genetics accounts for less than 30 percent of all effects of aging. That means we can control about 70 percent of the aging process." If that sounds too good to be true, Roizen backs up his theory with scientific research. He and a team of internists, epidemiologists and nutritionists combed through 25,000 health studies, distilling the information down to 125 factors that reveal how everything from owning a dog to eating cooked tomatoes affects aging. To determine RealAge, Roizen devised a test that considers each of those 125 factors and allows the person being tested to add or subtract from their chronological age, depending on how Roizen's team rated each behavior's effect on mind and body. The payoff is that by making even simple changes in lifestyle, people can trim years off their age. Short, slender and energetic, Roizen is 55, but looks closer to his RealAge, which, according to his test, is 39. He practices what he preaches, braving Chicago weather to take his daily six-block walk to work while calling friends on his cell phone, just to say hello and stay connected. He takes vitamins and supplements and invests an hour a week in weightlifting and about 80 minutes in aerobic exercise. And he assiduously avoids cigarette smoke. "Stopping smoking alone can trim eight years off your age," he says. "That's one of the great things about my work with RealAge. So far I've gotten 140 people to quit smoking. But people need to be mindful about breathing passive smoke. The effect on the immune system and arteries seems to be almost as strong for people who are exposed to passive smoke as it does for those who inhale." That's the obvious stuff, of course. Most people know that diet, exercise and an end to smoking will reap health benefits. What else slows down, or reverses, the rate of aging? How about brushing and flossing your teeth every day? "It only takes a minute to floss," Roizen says. "It makes you up to 6.4 years younger because studies show that gum disease actually ages the immune and arterial systems." OK, what about those tomatoes? "Tomato paste and other tomato products reduce the risk of prostate cancer. New evidence also shows tomatoes may ward off a number of other cancers, including breast cancer in women. But drinking tomato juice or eating the vegetable raw won't work. To absorb the cancer-preventing lycopene from tomatoes, you need to ingest some fat at the same time. So drizzle a little olive oil over roasted tomatoes, or choose a tomato sauce that contains a small amount of oil." Besides the fact that it tastes good, Roizen says ingesting lycopene 10 times a week can lop eight years off your age. Of course, other behaviors can add those years right back. For example, living beyond your means (especially going bankrupt) can make you eight years older. Among the more difficult changes to make in the RealAge age reduction plan is keeping blood pressure under control. Roizen's team found that a consistent reading of 115/76 or lower makes a person 10 to 15 years younger. Blood pressure of 140/90 or above makes you 10 to 15 years older. The good news is that even modest reductions can reap significant benefits, provided they are achieved before permanent arterial damage occurs. Roizen says he can't overstate the importance of exercise. "It's 10 times riskier to not exercise after age 50 than it is to drive a motorcycle," he says. "Not exercising carries the same risk factor as being a smoker." Stress is another factor that adds years to one's RealAge. Three or more traumatic life events, such as death in a family or divorce, in one year can make one's RealAge as much as 32 years older. With strategies in place for stress reduction, the additional aging drops to just two years. Roizen says a strong support network of friends and family also makes a difference. "Anger is a much bigger deal than high cholesterol. Only 50 percent of people with high cholesterol have heart attacks. Get your anger under control or you'll get heart disease." So, want to know how "young" you really are? Take the RealAge test at www.realage.com or in the book "RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be?" by Dr. F. Roizen with Ann son. © 2001 The State Journal-Register Springfield, IL. via Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company;