If you are approaching your early sixties, you are faced with a big decision: when you should start taking your social security benefits. You’ve paid into the social security system throughout your life, and you soon will be able to take benefits that are due to you. But the decision gets complicated: you can take benefits early at a reduced level, wait for your Full Retirement Age (FRA) and get normal benefits, or delay up to age 70 to get bonus benefits. Be careful: your choice is for life: however long you live after taking benefits, you stay at the same level of payout.
If you are in poor health and doubtful how many years you will have left, you may opt for early benefits. You need them now and the lowered amount is not a big concern. But as you approach your FRA and have not started benefits, do you assume that you will live long enough to benefit from delayed but higher benefits? For most people, taking maximum benefits compared with FRA benefits pays off around ages 80 to 84 — a few years above the average American lifespan. After that break-even age you win the game, because you continue getting the higher benefits so long as you live. And since they are indexed to inflation, your break-even age should be unaffected by whatever the economy does.
Also, your spouse can potentially get up to half your benefits at the level you choose, so this may make the decision even more difficult. Are you both in good health? Do you want to go for the higher lifetime benefits for both of you? Maybe your spouse should take early benefits, while you take late benefits and switch your spouse over to half your benefits later because that is a higher amount. It’s not such an easy decision!
Going for the bigger payout requires one thing — living at least beyond the break-even age. You need to take an honest assessment of your longevity. If you don’t have a serious health condition now, what else can you do to make sure you live long enough? Eat well, hydrate, get sufficient sleep, exercise — you know the basics. These are concrete things you can do to improve your chances. But you know of people around you who do these things and still don’t make it to their mid-80’s. What else can you do?
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Can you will yourself into longer life? That sounds preposterous — we can’t control what happens to us, right? Well, maybe it’s not so far fetched. Hopefully you’ve decided to improve your diet, hydration, exercise, and sleep — these are physical, non-controversial aids to good health. What are they doing? Basically, they improve the internal environment in your body so the cells of your body are healthier. When they are healthy, you are healthy. Yes, the cells are aging, but they will always do better in a good environment. That’s because your cells contain flexible programming which will respond to environment. Regardless of your genetic composition, your cells will act in a healthy manner if you give them a good environment.
There is another factor that changes your cells’ environment — that is the mental component. Clearly stress reduction is vital. We see study after study showing how chronic mental stress translates into chronic poor health. The stress is being broadcast from your brain to all of your body, signaling your cells to try to change and deal with the stress. To them, the stress is telling them that there is an emergency that just keeps happening, and they must change their reaction to it. That’s what they will do, because they contain many, many genetic programs to deal with extremes. Trouble is, some of those emergency maneuvers may help those cells in the short term, but harm you in the long run. The top of that list is cancer, where cells find programming that lets them grow and handle the worst of environments right around them, but they aren’t thinking about the whole body — just themselves. They win; you lose. Getting rid of long-term stress is vital.
Attitude is everything
Easier said than done, right? You didn’t ask to be stressed, and you’d love to shed the stress. While much of it is subconscious, there are things you can do consciously. Your attitude drives the direction of your thinking. If you are grateful for your life, for what you’ve been given in life, and have a heart overflowing with love, it is very hard to remain stressed for long. When trouble strikes, you aren’t consumed by it and you don’t dwell on it. So you are less chronically stressed. Maybe you are even joyful!
Something else about stress — if it is chronic, you are dwelling on it. It stays around because you carry it around. The stressful event likely isn’t happening now. If you are worried about finances, your job, or a health condition, what would happen if you had selective amnesia and forget that those things were bothering you? Without that baggage, the current moment might be just fine — you are feeling OK, you have your needs met, and you can go and enjoy the day. This is “living in the moment.” And research is showing that it is the healthiest way to live. Why? Because it provides your cells with an “all is well” broadcast from your brain since that is where your mind is focusing. Things that were not well in the past or you think won’t be in the future — if they are OK in the present, why should they cast a shadow over your enjoyment of right now?
Research is showing this. For years we’ve seen statistical studies that show stress damages health, and that good attitude promotes good physical health, but how can this happen? With the tremendous advances in computer and diagnostic technology, especially in genetics, we can look at the “how.” The extreme technology is needed because genes are working as a team in their genetic expressions to cause results. Looking at the change in transcription of a specific gene, the methylation changes that cause the specific DNA codes to activate is nothing like looking at the impacts of many simultaneous gene expressions. Published in Molecular Psychiatry, researchers from the University of Granada studied the direct interaction of over 100 genes, along with the indirect interaction of another 4000 genes in reaction to three different personality types exhibiting different levels of self-awareness thought. The most unhelpful type was “unregulated”, with wild swings in emotions and a generally rebellious attitude. The second was termed “organized”, where they tended to have good self-control, self-sufficiency, and goals. The third type was termed “creative”, where participants in this group would adjust their reactions to live harmoniously with their situation and surroundings. This third group would “go with the flow” more than the others because they focused on what was good and helpful in the moment.
“There is a growing body of evidence that genes do not operate in isolation, but rather form vast and complex information-processing networks of interacting genes, proteins, and small molecules. In humans, these networks are self-organized as specialized functional modules that interact collaboratively by turning one another on and off to adapt to changing external and internal conditions.” This was the opening statement of the study. As the study proceeded to show, ongoing thought is very much part of the “internal conditions” that affect how these epigenetic networks adapt. The researchers determined that the “creative” group, those living in the moment and adjusting to what life throws at them with minimal friction, were showing epigenetic changes leading to the greatest health and longevity. The “organized”, self-controlled group did less well, but still better than the “unregulated” group which led to health-damaging epigenetic responses. Breaking it down further, they identified two sub-networks. The first regulated emotional reactivity, such as anxiety and fear, while the second regulated what a person deems as meaningful. So the personality that fared best was emotionally stable, not constantly worrying or fearful, and seeing meaning and purpose in life.
Researchers from the University of Barcelona, Spain, publishing findings in Psychoneuroendocrinology, conducted a study of the effects of in-the-moment meditation upon specific gene expression. They tested a group already proficient at such meditation against a control group, reviewing the expression of circadian (internal biological clock rhythms), chromatin modulatory (regulation of the chromatin gene transcription), and inflammatory genes over an eight hour period. They noted, “… after the brief intervention (in-the-moment meditation) we detected reduced expression of histone deacetylase genes (HDAC2, 3 and 9), alterations in global modification of histones (H4ac; H3K4me3) and decreased expression of pro-inflammatory genes (RIPK2 and COX2) in meditators compared with controls.” Yes, that quickly the researchers could see changes in the genetic expression, and particularly those dealing with inflammation, which we know precedes disease.
So you can affect your lifespan through thought, but not by a direct path. Willpower, as the first study showed, does have some value, but the main thought patterns that improve longevity are in-the-moment, relaxed, going with the flow, and especially not fretting over the past or worrying about the future. Either of those will eat away at your health and promote chronic stress, with chronic disease likely to follow. The path to a longer and better future is to not worry about the future. Planning, setting goals, working on the physical processes that improve longevity are all valuable, but will fall short unless you savor the moment and kick worry, fear, anger, envy, and dissatisfaction to the curb.
If this is the way you live and think, and you are approaching the decision point on social security, you have to decide what is best for you. But you’ve got better odds that you will live past the break-even point, because you aren’t tearing down your health. That’s the big reason the break-even point is where it is. But don’t tell the government — if too many people learn this secret to longevity, it will have to pay out more benefits.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Let’s go a little deeper with the Molecular Psychiatry article.
There are three types of personalities studied
- Creative
- Organized
- Unregulated
Not only does the creative personality go with the flow and live more fully in the moment, which gives it the greatest advantage over the other two and insures the greatest longevity epigenetically, affecting thousands of genetic pathways — this personality has another advantage. It is visionary, it sees pictures — that’s part of its creative nature. This personality is constantly imagining re-creating, looking at life in a way that it could be done better.
What is imagination, seeing a vision?
This is extremely beneficial to your mental, emotional and physical health. When you imagine, your brain doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality. Just by imagining you’re creating a whole new reality and your epigenetic and genetic environment lines up to that imagination. If you’re constantly creating new pictures, a new and better future, then your health, your life, and your genes will be constantly supporting your future, your health and your life.
Pessimistic Imagination
Quite the opposite is the person who imagines the worst possible outcome in every circumstance and situation. This is a very pessimistic mindset, and this reverses all the advantages of health that the creative imagination positively influences, with pessimistic vision: you are in the worst possible stress mode — not only now, but you are seeing it in your future. Once you turn on all the genes for present and future stress, that is definitely going to turn on genetic pathways that promote inflammation and growth. Inflammation is the root of all disease and growth is the root of cancer formation in the body.
What about the organized personality?
We all know this personality wants everything in its place. It feels that life flows better when everything is organized. That is true, but if that was best, it would’ve scored higher than the creative personality and it did not. So what are the downfalls of the organized? First, we live in a very disorganized, chaotic world, so it constantly takes energy from us to maintain organization all the time — it constantly takes thought. Next, adversities happen in life that we don’t plan for that are overwhelming. These usually become even more stressful to an organized personality because their world has been thrown into chaos — not by their choosing, but it still has to be dealt with. So in general chaos and disorganization stresses an organized person the most out of the three personality types, adding more fuel to the fire of epigenetic regulation.
The unregulated type of personality
This personality is the least healthy epigenetically and genetically because those with this personality type live in chaos all the time — they do not have the solid foundation of creativity or imagination or vision or even organization to keep them from sinking in the quicksand of the chaotic world we live in.
There was one other discovery made by the researchers, and that was this: “What’s most remarkable is the fact that the networks for emotion and meaning are coordinated by a control center made up of six genes,”
So what we can see from this research is that although they analyzed over 4000 genes (and so do we Revolution New Medicine with our nutritional genetic metabolic testing) they found that certain genes had a much higher authority and position in controlling outcome, health and longevity.
The emotions and the meaning or purpose in life — these two areas are mostly controlled by six genes. Just six!
What do you think hurts your health and longevity the most epigenetically and genetically?
Your emotions, because they are usually based on false perceptions, false belief systems.
What do you think helps your health and longevity the most epigenetically and genetically?
Your meaning in life, your purpose in life, your true identity, who you truly are and where you truly come from.
To summarize the researchers comments: “The functional interaction network is capable of orchestrating changes in gene expression in order to adapt to varying internal and external conditions. The modules turned on and off in a flexible manner, facilitating adaptation to the everyday challenges we all face.”
The researchers close the article by stating: “Treatments that promote living fully in the moment have also been shown to contribute to improvements in all aspects of health, including physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being.”
Reviewing the Psychoneuroendocrinology article, the message is this: when you live fully in the moment, you positively affect circadian rhythm genes, which are your biological clock genes, and also gene transcription. You also inhibit inflammatory genes, and this is all done within eight hours so it happens very quickly — and very permanently, if you stay in the moment and live your life one moment at a time
At Revolution New Medicine we do extensive nutritional genetic and metabolic testing on every patient. We analyze over 4000 genes and we know the priority, we know which genes are the main players and we make sure we epigenetically affect those the most.
What is your lifespan going to be? How long will you live? These questions are not as important as this one: How fully are you going to live your life in this moment and this moment alone?
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Revolution New Medicine but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Revolution New Medicine along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
