According to recent estimates by the Bank of Korea, by the 2040s, South Korea is expected to have 2-4 million people requiring long-term care. With 24-hour nursing care costing around $4,200 per month, covering these expenses would require approximately $14 million in cash flow. This means even if you achieve FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) with $15 million, it becomes meaningless if you spend 15 years bedridden.
These stark numbers really drive home the importance of aging management. Research shows that simple lifestyle improvements can cut dementia rates in half and slow aging by 75% – findings that deserve serious attention.
Why We Need to Break the Vicious Cycle of Aging
People experiencing accelerated aging face increased risks for all diseases. Their limbs become thinner, their belly protrudes, and their chances of developing dementia increase. What's more serious is that these changes interconnect to create a vicious cycle.
Let's start with sleep deprivation. When you don't get enough sleep, stress hormones are released, which further deteriorates sleep quality. These stress hormones cause three major changes:
The prefrontal cortex function declines, making it harder to resist cravings
The hippocampus shrinks, reducing memory capacity
The amygdala becomes overactive, increasing anger and desires
In this state, when you're overworked or stressed, you'll find yourself endlessly scrolling on your phone the next day, craving sweets, and reaching for unhealthy foods like instant ramen. This leads to accelerated aging through poor dietary choices.
Accelerated aging diets make your limbs thinner and belly bigger while promoting metabolic aging. This leads to chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and fat accumulation, creating another vicious cycle that further accelerates aging.
Core Strategies for Creating a Positive Cycle
Fortunately, this vicious cycle can be transformed into a positive one. Think about when you've slept well – stress hormones decrease and appetite dysregulation disappears. You don't mindlessly scroll through your smartphone, allowing your dopamine system to normalize and starting a positive cycle.
Using Buddhist terminology, three elements are needed:
1. Discipline: Clean living methods, or anti-aging lifestyle habits
2. Mindfulness: Practical ways to reduce stress
3. Understanding Human Nature: Recognizing that trying to fill your day with dopamine hits will inevitably lead to disease
Invest in Exercise: More Important Than Supplements
"Instead of spending money on supplements, invest in exercise." This is the core message. You should spend money on exercise, but learn it comprehensively.
Age-Based Exercise Strategies:
-From mid-30s: Start flexibility exercises (Pilates, yoga, stretching)
-From 50s: Strength training becomes life-or-death important (especially for women preparing for muscle loss during menopause)
-From 60s: Significantly increase the proportion of strength training
-70s and beyond: Focus on gentle exercises like qigong for fall prevention and cognitive improvement
Korean exercise participation rates are seriously concerning. Seoul residents walk only about 4,000 steps per day on average, and strength training participation is just 20%. The bigger problem is that people don't exercise when young, then start intense workouts only after their 60s health checkups show red flags.
The Importance of Core Exercise
I often see patients in their 30s with the bodies of 70-year-olds. These are mainly young women who sit at work all day, skip meals, don't get proper protein, and substitute cake or smoothies for rice to restrict calories.
These individuals have body fat percentages over 30% while lacking core muscles. Their diaphragm, abdominal muscles, pelvic floor muscles, and respiratory muscles are all weak, leading to problems like:
Panic disorders, breathing difficulties, severe anxiety
Difficulty sitting upright, posture collapse, neck and shoulder pain
Constipation, indigestion, acid reflux
Aging in this condition leads to a protruding belly and increased likelihood of degenerative knee arthritis. Therefore, even if you hate other exercises, core exercises are absolutely essential.
Mind Diet: Avoiding Accelerated Aging Foods
The key to avoiding accelerated aging foods is steering clear of simple sugars and refined grains. Simple sugars like sugar, fructose, and high-fructose corn syrup, along with refined grains like bread, rice cakes, noodles, potatoes, and white rice, are highly processed foods that primitive humans never experienced.
These foods cause rapid blood sugar spikes, promoting insulin secretion and increasing abdominal and visceral fat. This produces inflammatory substances, and when blood sugar drops, stress hormones are released, stimulating appetite.
Having an accelerated aging lunch makes you sleepy an hour later, then hungry again the next hour, making you search for more food. This is the vicious cycle of accelerated aging.
Mind Diet Essentials:
- Whole, unprocessed grains and legumes (like lentils)
- Nuts as primary sources of calories and protein
- Plenty of vegetables and fruits (eat fruit whole, not juiced)
- Use olive oil
- Fish and poultry are allowed; cheese and red meat should be limited as they worsen inflammation
- Avoid simple sugars and refined grains
Traditional Korean Diet is the Answer
Interestingly, Korean home cooking from the 1960s-70s was exactly an anti-aging diet. Because people were poor, rice wasn't properly milled and mixed grains were eaten, with lots of vegetable side dishes. Jeju Island and other longevity villages were similar – being island regions with harsh conditions naturally led to this type of eating.
Mixed grain rice with vegetable side dishes and some seafood – this simple composition is the model for an anti-aging diet.
Skin Aging Management: Sunscreen is Essential
Did you know that "80% of skin aging is photoaging"? The reason people in the past looked older was because there was no sunscreen, and they were exposed to sunlight from childhood.
Skin aging is characterized by thinning, reduced collagen and elastin, becoming rough and dry, and weakened skin barrier function. More importantly, skin has its own immune system, and skin inflammation from photoaging can trigger systemic chronic inflammation.
Sunscreen Usage:
- SPF 30 or higher, preferably 50+
- Broad spectrum products
- High PA rating products
Don't worry about vitamin D synthesis. Just a little time outside in sunlight provides sufficient vitamin D. If you have vitamin D deficiency or osteopenia, then consider supplements.
The Right Approach to Health Management
The most important thing in health management is "don't be like Andrew Huberman." The mechanical approach of waking up at the exact same time, drinking the exact same amount of warm water, eating the exact same food, and doing the exact same exercise actually increases stress.
Like the Blue Zone principles, it's important to maintain variability – having a drink when enjoying time with people, occasionally eating delicious food. As long as your overall life direction points toward health within that variability, that's what matters.
Common Ground Between Investment and Health
Investment and health management are remarkably similar. Just like creating a portfolio of long-term value investments, health requires balanced management of various elements while maintaining minimum standards.
This can be called a "health wealth system." You become wealthy in health, reduce money outflows, and increase money inflows. The effects compound when started early, with improvement margins growing larger over time.
Health Management from a Social Perspective
By the 2040s, the entire world will face situations similar to ours, with South Korea expected to be in the worst position. People in their 60s will have more diseases, the parent generation will be in their 80s needing care, and the grandparent generation might still be alive.
When all generations simultaneously need medical care and support, it becomes a scale that a country simply cannot sustain. Therefore, we need some degree of self-reliance while everyone works together to change the average health level of Koreans.
In conclusion, aging management has become more than a personal issue – it's a social challenge. The fact that simple lifestyle improvements can slow aging by 75% and save over $15 million isn't just health information – it's a survival strategy. A systematic approach centered on three core elements – sleep, exercise, and stress management – is necessary, and the earlier you start, the more you can benefit from compound effects. In an era where healthy aging has become not a choice but a necessity, now is the time to begin.
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