Do-It-Yourself Prevention
Recently, a new approach emerged on how medicine should be practiced to keep us far healthier than we used to be.
Instead of acting only when something is broken in our body, the preventive approach takes preemptive measures to optimize our body's performance and either prevent the outbreak of diseases in the first place or catch them as early as possible, when treatment is still relatively easy.
On the most basic level of prevention, we don't even need specialized tests or equipment.
We start by evaluating how to protect the vital components of our body from disease and aging. Also, we implement a daily supplementation regimen that includes countermeasures to the known aging processes wherever possible.
A Word on Supplementation
Supplementation only makes sense if we at least follow a healthy diet. And it can only reach its full potential when we exercise, detox, and strive for mental well-being. Implementing such a foundation - especially without proper nutrition- will be inefficient, bordering on a total waste of time and effort.
However, if based on the proper foundation, supplementation can help us boost our health far beyond what is considered normal for our physiological age.
In the media, we see a lot of back and forth on whether supplements are helpful, useless, or even harmful. Oversimplification is used to offer easy answers to complex topics. The view is narrowed down to cheap multivitamins containing only a few vitamins and minerals that can easily be obtained from a balanced diet and do not consider the targeted and scientifically proven compounds that make up a good supplement regimen.
We consume media and studies on supplements carefully since the parties involved frequently do not have our best interest in mind but follow their own agenda. Research is often sponsored by large pharmaceutical companies who obviously won't spend money to prove that cheap, non-patentable plant extracts can prevent or heal the very same diseases they make a fortune on by selling their expensive products. Studies based on experimenting with mice or other rodents can only be partially transferred to the human realm.
Backing up our Stem Cells
A lot of exciting research is going on in the field of regenerative stem cell treatments. New organs are already being created in the lab from stem cells, and therapies to rejuvenate individual parts of the body, like the complete cardiovascular system, are being developed. If we want to take advantage of these technologies, we need stem cells to start with once they are available. Those can be generated by changing normal skin or fat cells back into stem cells that can be multiplied and used for treatment.
Unfortunately, when we require stem cells a few decades from now, we will use skin or fat cells that are 30 years older and might have accumulated genetic errors and other damage. It would be best to have cells as young as possible, preferably already stem cells, when we need them. There is a general procedure for newborns to extract stem cells from the umbilical cord and deep freeze them for future use.
Now, adults can store their stem cells, too. The body keeps stem cells for blood production in the bone marrow. Using a particular medication, part of these stem cells can be released into the bloodstream, where they can be extracted in a dialysis-like procedure and deep-frozen for much later use (decades). The body replenishes the remaining bone marrow stem cells automatically.
Today, various companies are offering adult stem cell extraction and storage.