If we look over the earlier material in this book we will see that there are two broad avenues of aging, both speeding us along to our final destination in the earth. We might regard them as the two fast tracks to the grave.

The first fast track has to do with the general decline in hormone levels as we approach middle age.
The second fast track involves the accumulated damage inflicted on cells and tissues over the years by free radicals.

Of course, there are other factors involved as well, factors over which we have no control. We do not, at the present time, have an effective way of curtailing the shortening of the telomeres that takes place when our cells undergo cell division. (More on that shortly.) There is also the matter of our individual genetic inheritance: we have no control over a genetic predisposition to accumulating fat rather than remaining slim, or being at higher risk for this or that disease; but in the future we might well be able to modify it. More on this shortly as well.

But two major factors taking us to age and decrepitude - hormone depletion and free radical damage - we can change. We can change and we must change - if we wish to get off the fast track to the grave.

But the time to embark on a wellness and longevity program is not when we are approaching the deathbed.
It is too late then.

The time to embark on a program of wellness is now, while we are still in reasonably good health. Because then it is simply a matter of regaining a bit of lost ground, and thereafter maintaining these gains, of maintaining our good health, and enjoying the extra couple decades we can gain by turning back the clock.