By Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D.

ANTI-AGING SECRETS
Below, a simple eating plan to stay young:
# Limit fat and sugar.
# Focus on minimally processed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nonfat milk and lean meat, especially fish.
# Take a moderate-dose multiple vitamin-and-mineral supplement.
# Take extra antioxidants, such as 100 IU of vitamin E and up to 1,000 mg of vitamin C, according to the Alliance for Aging Research.

(WebMD) — Feeling and looking young is more within your control than you think. Much of what we’ve assumed are the inevitable consequences of aging — wrinkles, memory loss, an escalating risk for heart disease, osteoporosis and cancer — results more from the lifestyle choices we make than from the natural aging process. And our dietary choices are just as important as using sunscreen, getting exercise and other preventive tactics. Here, your anti-aging nutritional arsenal, in a nutshell.

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Fearful that the signs of aging or lack of sleep will ruin their good looks, thousands upon thousands of people seek out natural remedies to erase the dark circles that have a knack for appearing under the eyes. This rather common beauty blemish is believed to attack nine out of 10 people at one point or another in their lifetime. Since a handful of factors can contribute to this occurrence, it’s a good idea to become familiar with the causes, as well as gentle, non-invasive methods for treating the problem.

What are Black Circles Under the Eyes?

Dark circles (or eye circles) tarnish the skin located about the eyes and are simply referred to as “bags under the eyes” [1]. Since the skin under the eyes is very thin, it is quite easy for it to show a bit of wear and tear. To make matters worse, sun exposure causes skin damage that thins and wrinkles the skin even more. The veins situated beneath the skin become inflamed or enlarged. Pigmentation may also develop.

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Yes. Smoking can accelerate the normal aging process of your skin, contributing to wrinkles. These skin changes may occur after only 10 years of smoking and are irreversible.

How does smoking lead to wrinkles? Smoking causes narrowing of the blood vessels in the outermost layers of your skin. This impairs blood flow to your skin, depleting it of oxygen and important nutrients, such as vitamin A. Smoking also damages collagen and elastin — fibers that give your skin its strength and elasticity. As a result, skin begins to sag and wrinkle prematurely.

Smoking doesn’t only cause wrinkles on your face. A 2007 study found that smoking is associated with increased wrinkling and skin damage on other parts of the body, including the inner arms.

In addition, repeated exposure to the heat from burning cigarettes and the facial expressions you make when smoking — such as pursing your lips when inhaling and squinting your eyes to keep out smoke — may contribute to wrinkles.

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I noticed a mortality study that illustrates some of the common wisdom regarding the common diseases of aging:

The remaining lifetime risk of cancer at age 40 was 45.1% and at age 90 was 9.6%. The remaining lifetime risk of major cardiovascular disease at age 40 was 34.8% and at age 90 was 16.7%.

...

The remaining lifetime risk of both diseases approached a plateau in the 10th decade. This may be due to decreased detection of disease and reporting of symptoms and increased resistance to disease in those who survive to old age.

The older a person becomes - or rather, the more capable a person is of achieving longevity - the less likely he or she is to suffer from the major diseases of aging. As the authors point out, however, it's a challenge to build reliable data:

The measurement and interpretation of the incidence of disease in advanced age is complex. Lower incidence in late life may reflect decreased screening and medical surveillance rather than decreased risk. ... This cohort of health conscious doctors has several advantages for studying the incidence of disease in men of advanced age, as it has a large proportion of participants surviving to age 90 and beyond, as well as a higher level of screening for disease and diagnosis than in a general population.

This and other collections of data on mortality risk consistantly show that incidence of cancer and cardiovascular disease is lower for those who live longer. Other research shows that living longer within the present state of medical science is a matter of making consistently sensible choices in life for most of us - not a matter of good genes to any great degree. Join the dots: all that exercise and good diet really does make a difference in the long term.

Now if you have a good few decades left before getting to the point at which you have to start worrying in earnest about your heart and runaway cells killing you from the inside, it's probably the case that the future trajectory of your life will be far more determined by progress in medical science than living well. Absent progress, your life will look much like that of your parents. With exceptional progress, the sky is the limit - aging itself might be defeated before you reach the point at which it will kill you. So while you're on the execise machine, or pondering a good diet, spare some thought for how you can support the future of medical research as well. There is where the real difference lies.

We can never know absolutely and for sure whether doing the "right things" for our health will make a significant difference to our own healthy longevity. You have to wait and see, one chance to get it right, no going back to fix things up. We do, however, have a wealth of evidence that actions long commonly regarded as the "right things" for good health will indeed be good for our future healthy longevity. This evidence is quite separate from the comparatively recent investigations of medical science into the biochemical roots of good health and longevity.

What is this evidence? That wealthier, higher IQ people tend to live longer and suffer less age-related illness. For example:

Lower scores on measures of IQ at two time points were associated with [cardiovascular disease] and, particularly, total mortality, at a level of magnitude greater than several other established risk factors.

I don't think that it's ever been a grand mystery that regular exercise, a good physician relationship, and eating sanely are going to be good for you; the common wisdom for good health long predated the scientific studies showing that it was the case. The grand mystery is why so few people keep up with those efforts in their own lives, and suffer because of that negligence. I've been inclined to interpret results like the research above to mean that more intelligent people tend to get wealthier but also tend to do more of the right things for their health - you can be as rich as you like, but if you weren't exercising all that time you were making money, you're still going be at a higher risk for suffering cardiovascular disease at the end of the day.

Smarter people have a greater tendency to keep up with common sense health practices and gain a benefit by doing so. That's my thesis. As to why that is the case - well, that gets back to what IQ actually measures, whether time preference is very different between individuals, and so forth.