Did you know it is possible to reverse aging from the inside out naturally in just 28 days? Sounds like a catch phrase or at the very least a supplement commercial, doesn’t it? Before I jump into the topic let me just tell you – it’s not a catch phrase, I personally tested it and it actually works. By now you’re probably wondering why the heck 28 days?? Well, you will actually see the results much earlier than that. Gets even better, right? Here is the thing, your skin completely renews itself every 28 days – that means all the old cells die and peel off little by little leaving you every month with a brand new skin, new cells, new chance to look stunning.

A couple of years ago I dealt with a kidney infection and as a part of my post-recovery I decided to do a 7 days juice fast to fully detox and strengthen my kidneys and immune system to prevent this kind of infections in the future. Juice fast – meaning juicing fresh and organic vegetables at home and drinking at least a glass of juice every time I felt hungry (for me it was about every 1-2 hours). After a couple of days I started noticing amazing “side effects” of my juicing recovery on my skin and hair. It was noticeable to the point, that my friends kept asking me if I was pregnant. Well, I definitely wasn’t but I certainly had that recognizable glow – my skin thickened and looked flawless like never before, blemishes and fine lines on my face looked like somebody just erased them, and even little spider veins on my legs started disappearing.

That experience made me want to research the topic thoroughly to find out what was actually happening in my body from the biochemical point of view. I stumbled across a very interesting article about aging written by a brilliant person – Dr Libby Weaver Phd, Australian biochemist and nutritionist – about the processes that govern the whole “aging thing”. Understanding these processes can help us all make a conscious decision to age with a style and look young and beautiful regardless of the age, sex or race.

How do we age?

1. Inflammation

This is one of the most important processes that influence the way we age. Inflammation is your body’s natural reaction to any potentially harmful stimulants that entered our body – pathogens like viruses and bacterias, damaged cells and all sorts of irritants. Whether it’s something we ate, breathed, absorbed through our skin or injected, the reaction is the same. In a response to a threatening situation our immune system creates inflammation in order to remove the “intruder” from our body. All the signs and symptoms of inflammation that we recognize as heat, redness or swelling mean that the body is trying to heal itself.

This is a self-protection mechanism that occurs wherever our immune system is currently fighting a problematic situation – tissue of your skin, your arteries, vital organs etc. This crucial and life saving process however has its downsides. The more our body has to be engage in self-defense battles, the faster it ages causing a visible damage such as scarring and wrinkling.

Solution: One of the best things you can do to your body to significantly decrease the need for inflammation is to make sure there is a plenty of Vit. C in your diet. The more the better! You can get if from fruits or supplements (remember to choose a natural one with bioflavonoids). Vit. C does amazing things to the cells of your body and it’s critical for the synthesis of collagen leaving you with wonderful “side effects” like thickened skin texture and glowing look.

2. Oxidation

This is another important factor to consider in aging. I’m sure you’ve heard about free radicals. They are single molecules that form from splitting apart oxygen right after we breathe in. Imagine these molecules as single guys floating around your body all angry after losing their mate. Their role in the body is rather minimal and it includes assisting white blood cells to reduce infection. They can however hurt tissues and other vital substances in your body by destroying cells which causes them to age, form a scar tissue and die. They are what causes sliced apple to turn brown shortly after we leave it outside. As I mentioned, they are created by normal metabolic processes in your body like breathing and your body is meant to deal with them appropriately. The problem starts when amount of free radicals gets increased by other factors like stress, medications, x-rays, inflammation, pollutants like heavy metals and toxic chemicals, extremely high intensity exercise etc. They then over float your body causing serious chronic health problems and visibly – make you age faster by shrinking the collagen in your skin (wrinkles).

Solution: Luckily we have a fantastic solution to the oxidation problem – antioxidants. You can find them mostly in colored foods – fruits and vegetables especially the ones rich in vit. C and E – berries, tomatoes, turmeric etc. Now imagine a happy colorful antioxidant donating one of its oxygen molecules to that angry single guy floating around (yes, I’m talking about free radicals) and they pair up. As a result oxygen molecules no longer harm the tissue creating a peace in your body.

3. Glycation

We all know that naturally occurring sugar in moderation can be beneficial in our diet. It gives you energy and boosts your brain functions. However if we start incorporating processed foods or even excessive amounts of natural sugars to our diet, then the real problem begins.
Another process that has a huge impact on the way we age is glycation. It occurs when cumulated sugars we consumed bond with parts of our DNA, proteins and lipids, leaving them unable to do their jobs. Together they create new sugar proteins called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Since human body doesn’t recognize AGEs as their own, it will automatically produce antibodies that cause inflammation in the skin that results in much faster aging. Once formed, AGEs tend to gravitate toward dermal collagen and elastin which visibly results in wrinkling, loss of elasticity and stiffness.

Solution: Limit your sugar consumption! It’s one thing to get sugar from nature – this is actually good for you. But we live in the world where highly processed foods containing tons of toxic chemicals and overloaded with sugar is a socially accepted norm for many people. An average American kid consumes 2.5 pounds of sugar every week. How do you think will look all these over-sugared kids and how healthy they can possibly be by the time they reach their 30th?

4. Stress

We all know how tremendously stress effects our appearance. Being worried about something, stressing out about finals or going through some emotional stuff – these can all drastically change the way you look.
Let’s explore a little bit how stress really effects your body. Stress is anything, that puts our nervous system in the parasympathetic dominant state, other words known as “Fight or Flight”. This state is necessary and life saving in threatening situations in order to keep you alive by fighting the enemy or being able to escape quickly.

With that being said – there are actually 3 types of stress: physical, chemical and emotional. All 3 of them are tightly connected together and a lot of times they actually come from one another. Physical stress can be caused by a tissue damage, subluxation, X-ray, obesity, lack of sleep etc. Chemical and emotional types are pretty self explanatory. Chemical stress can come from anything, that our body recognizes as toxic or generally bad for us. Emotional stress is probably the most obvious one – it can be caused by fear, grief, sadness, pressure etc. Whether it’s a wild animal we suddenly fear, toxic substance or a knife cut – your body’s response to stress is the same. It immediately secretes three hormones – adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol. Because of them our body shuts down or significantly slows down most of organs, metabolism, ability to heal and all the other functions that are not directly needed for physical strength to “fight or flight”.

It’s easy to see how our skin and the glowing look would be the last thing on the list needed in the surviving mode. Your skin can’t heal properly resulting in water loss, cortisol causes an increased oil production, that leads to acne and other skin problems – and this is just a tip of an iceberg. Parasympathetic dominant state is crucial to survive, the problem starts when we live in a long lasting state of stress. Chronic stress results in many of the internal health problems as well as the visible signs like hair loss, faster aging skin and generally “dry look”.

Solution: Determine and eliminate anything you can from all 3 types of stress.
Learn amazing tactics to help you calm your nerves down like deep breathing, exercise etc. Detox your body – healthy, organic diet is a good start. Try to get some restful sleep (REM stage of sleep is the most beneficial one for regenerating). Heal your body and mind from whatever stress it currently is exposed to. As far as dealing with the emotional stress I personally have found a great, very logical way of dealing with emotional stress called Demartini Method. In my practice I also use elements of NLP. I highly recommend doing your own research and find what works best for you.

3 days “Glow” Challenge

Now, that we cleared what the main factors in the aging process are I invite you to join me in a “3 days Glow challenge”. Here is how to do it:

Start with a one full day of juice fast to reboot your entire body to function better and metabolize faster. That means – if you have a juicer at home just drink a glass of freshly squeezed vegetable juice (you can add apples to make it sweeter, sour it with lemon or spice it up with some ginger etc.) every time you feel hungry. For me it’s usually every one to a couple of hours. I did my first juice fast when I worked full time for a very busy photography studio so I know it can be challenging but hey! If it wasn’t challenging it wouldn’t be called a challenge on the first place, would it! I just packed a few jars of juice I made a night before to a cooler bag and sipped on it throughout the day. If you don’t have a juicer, there are always juice bars – it adds up to be more expensive but think of all the money you saved up by not having a regular food during your fast! If you’ve never done a juice fast, be careful! It can cause temporary diarrhea, light headed feeling or even head and muscle aches – don’t get discouraged, these are the symptoms of detoxing and they go away when the majority of built-up toxins leave your body.
On the second day incorporate some fruit smoothies to your juice fast. You should feel the immediate boost of energy and you start seeing the first results on your skin the following day.
On the third day you can start adding whole fruits and vegetables to your fast. By the end of the day you’ll feel much lighter and starting to notice “the glow”. Enjoy!
After the three days of rebooting your body, you’ve given your liver and kidneys enough time and nutrients to get a fresh start for the next step of the Challenge. It’s time to start eating normally. Firstly, lets go back to the four main factors to consider in aging process – Inflammation, Oxidation, Glication and Stress – and focus on the solutions. Make sure your diet is rich with vit. C, you can even do the High Dose Vit. C Therapy – if you’re taking supplements, make sure you chose the ones with bioflavonoids, otherwise you won’t be able to properly absorb vit.C. Incorporate a good amount of antioxidants to your diet: berries, green tea, colorful veggies and fruits etc. You can replace your sugar with xylitol, honey, stevia or other raw, unprocessed forms of sugar. Take your physical, chemical and emotional stress under control. That also means to make sure you’re getting a proper sleep during that time, your body can’t utilize all these good nutrients and get rid of toxins if it doesn’t get a proper rest.
Do High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). That means:
* warm up for 3 min
* exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds
* recover for 90 seconds
* repeat 7 more times
A good thing is, that you can do it with any type of exercise depending on your ability. Whether you chose running, push-ups or intensive walking, by the end of the 30 seconds period you should feel burning in your muscles, be in oxygen debt and begin to sweat profusely around the 2nd or 3rd repetition. It is an amazing way to get your lymph moving in order to get rid of all the toxins you’re gonna release during the challenge. And as a nice side effect you’ll be prized with having a firmer body by the end of the month. It’s gonna be well worth it, I promise!
Foods and supplements to consider:
coconut oil, avocados, coconuts, wild caught fish, nuts, vit. D3 supplement (or preferably getting it from the sun exposure if possible), collagen, 80% of vegetables and fruits in your daily diet
Foods to limit:
any packaged food, breads, pastas