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Life, like a good story, is not valued for its length but for its contents.
We do not receive a short life, but rather we shorten it. We are not stingy but liberal with it.
 
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.—65 A.D.)

One of the first axioms we learn in school is that all living things are born, grow, reproduce, and die. While it is true that many beings do not end up reproducing, all invariably are born, grow, and die. If we accept this axiom as true, then we have to accept that aging and death are natural, inevitable, and irreversible phenomena.

Despite being aware of this incontrovertible reality, from time immemorial human beings have wanted to trick nature, seeking the fountain of eternal youth to halt aging. From the philosopher?s stone of the medieval alchemists, to the shark fin of the Chinese, to growth hormone and antioxidants in our times, humans have always wanted the easy answer: the magical element that grants us eternal youth without exerting any effort.

Unfortunately, modern science does not endorse these opium dreams: there is still no medicine, supplement, vitamin, or hormone that can delay the inexorable passage of time; so we are condemned to age without remedy.

Once we accept this crude reality, the trick, dear reader, is to then learn two things: how to age gracefully and what to do to arrive at old age as young as possible.

To do this, we have to learn to delay or avoid the principal causes of death in the United States: heart disease (which includes high blood pressure or hypertension), strokes, cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes.

The remarkable thing about all these conditions is that they are often preventable; that is to say, they can be avoided. Sometimes they can be detected on time, found so early that they can be easily cured.

But just as remarkable as the fact that these conditions are preventable or detectable is that many of them have common causes, so if we learn to handle the common causes, we will be controlling more than one disease.

For example, knowing that tobacco explains 440,000 deaths a year in the United States, by quitting smoking we could avoid thousands of deaths due to heart attack, stroke, cancer, and chronic respiratory disease.

On the other hand, knowing that being overweight and obesity are related to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, we would have to conclude that attaining and maintaining a healthy weight could decrease our chances of dying prematurely.

Lastly, let me expound a little on a basic action that everyone over 50 should take: get an annual physical exam to ensure that there is no tricky disease hidden within our apparently healthy organism. It is very important to know that heart disease and cancer and diabetes may have no symptoms when they are beginning. The symptoms (which many people wait for before they go to the doctor) may show up late in the course of the disease.

In conclusion, attain and maintain a healthy weight by eating healthily and doing daily physical activity, do not smoke or allow people to smoke around you, and visit your doctor once a year for a complete physical exam.

In the coming months, we will have practical tips for you to help attain and maintain a healthy lifestyle?one which allows us, as we said at the beginning, to grow old gracefully. The final objective of our columns is to help you to attain and maintain your quality of life and help you reach old age being as young as possible.

Until next time.

Dr. Huerta, who has 20 years of patient care and education experience is nationally and internationally known for his efforts in educating the Latino community through the media. He is currently the founder and director of the Cancer Preventorium, Washington Cancer Institute, Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C.