Genetics certainly plays a role in your overall well-being, but lifestyle choices have the greatest impact. In fact, by the time you are 50, your behavioral choices account for more than 80 percent of your overall health and longevity.  Genetics account for less than 30 percent of all aging effects.  The vast majority of us do not live as long, or as well, as our genes would allow. That means, aging becomes a matter of choice.  By choosing to "live younger," you choose to live longer—and healthier, with less disability at all ages.

If you chart the health and longevity of people born in the same year, you will see that, with few exceptions, everyone ages at the same rate through their late twenties.  Then, you begin to see variation.  By the time people are seventy-five, the variation runs the spectrum: some people are young and fit as forty-five-year-olds; others are bedridden and suffering from disease or disability.  This difference is known as your RealAge—the biological age of your body (to find out your RealAge and what you can do to make it younger, visit www.realage.com).

These differences have little to do with genetics, and almost everything to do with lifestyle choices.   More than seventy percent of all cardiovascular disease can be attributed to behavioral choices.  Eighty to ninety percent of all cancers are due to environmental causes (or lack of vitamins).  And more than 80% of all accidents are preventable.   That means that you have enormous control over how fast—or how slowly—you will age.

There is great power behind making lifestyle changes rather than looking for a “quick fix” that simply puts a Band-Aid on the problem. If you don’t treat the cause of what is keeping you from optimal health, it keeps coming back. It is important to remember that what you include in your life is just as important as what you exclude; YOU have the power to live life fully and make sustainable, positive changes. Commit to stop being reasonable and being limited by your past excuses. There’s no time like the present; and in this present moment, all that lies before you is possibility – the possibility of a vibrant life!

Sources: Michael F. Roizen, MD., Wellness Management, Spring 2003, National Wellness Institute; Dean Ornish, MD., 2005 American Journal of Health Promotion Conference