Chicago’s Refine Medical Spa’s Anti-ageing Recommendations
You’ve probably arrived at Refine Medical Spa’s website because you are looking for aesthetic procedures to refresh and improve your appearance. We’re thrilled to have you here, but today we want to talk about the ageing process and what you can do to make the second half of your life even better than the first.
Stress and Ageing
We’ve all heard that stress kills by weakening our physical systems and organs over time. The sad fact is, we have lifestyles that are deleterious to our health. Competition for status and resources play a part of our development from our earliest days and continue into school and the job market. Keeping up and maintaining our position, our possessions, our retirement funds, our children’s schools, and worrying about their place in the world takes a toll on our health. We have so much materially but we have little enjoyment in our lives. Statistically, Americans take fewer vacations and enjoy life less than their first world counterparts.
Few of us can afford to pick up and change our lifestyles, becoming a fitness expert on Bali or artisanal cheese maker in Vermont. If we choose to remain locked within the system, we will never experience significant reductions in stress. So what can we change? We can begin with our thought processes and our response to stress. How we chose to think about events has been ingrained in us from earliest childhood. But there are ways to reprogram our unconscious and our subconscious mind to respond as if we were living in the slow lane, even though we are not.
Meditation
Meditation is the single most effective method of calming both mind and body and stepping out of the ego centered mind. You don’t need a fancy technique, classes, or a teacher to begin. You just need a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted for ten to twenty minutes each day. Yes, you do have time for it-just substitute it for your binge watching or social media time suck.
You can begin by sitting in a quiet space and bringing in the light –whether you want to call it God, the Universe, your higher Self, or nothing at all-through the top of your head. Then simply breathe and follow your outbreath with a mantra. Om is simple enough or God, Love, Forgive, Secure-whatever turns you on at the moment will work. Keep sitting. Your thoughts will jump all over the place but eventually they will clear, though it may take a few sessions. You will then discover a whole other world beyond your daily concerns –somewhere where your true self intersects with larger cosmic truths.
Yoga
Unfortunately, the way yoga is taught in the United States is more akin to calisthenics than anything else. True yoga is a discipline, which affects your entire life and your entire system: body, mind, spirit, and soul. We’ve had a hundred years of quantum mechanics and yet the paradigm that our medical system is built on is still mechanistic. It has not yet incorporated the notion that we are pure energy, or that there could be more to a methodology of integrative medicine than incorporating a few acupuncture sessions on top of the existing system, which treats disparate symptoms with pharmaceuticals or aggressive therapies.
While there are a variety of yoga styles to choose from, they should always be practiced mindfully, and at your own speed to the best of your ability.
Hypnosis
In the hands of a qualified practitioner, hypnosis can be used to circumvent years of talk therapy, which makes one aware of one’s issues but rarely can resolve habitual thought patterns by reprogramming the parts of the mind that we so often can’t access by conventional means.
The point is to change the way we habitually process information and react to that information.
Other Calming Therapies
Forest Bathing
Sure, the Japanese term has gained currency in recent years but regular nature walks really work to drain your organism and mind of tension. Even in cities, walking by waterfronts or through parks is adequate for decompressing. In the West, we like to think we have mastered nature but really we’re just part of the whole and we need the outdoors to restore our well being.
Earthing can be considered a subset of our time in nature. Take off your shoes, walk through the grass or sand, put your bare feet in the water, and connect to Earth’s energy field. There have been scientific studies done on Earthing, so give it a Google and see if it doesn’t make you feel better.
Massage and Body Work
Massage feels fantastic though the effects are temporary. Body work will release habitual blocks and body armor and work through the emotions that we have not released and that are stuck in our bodies. Remember mind, body, and spirit are not separate but are an integrated whole. Working on one will affect the others.
Facial Exercises
We’ve all accepted the way to keep our bodies healthy and in shape is to give them a combination of strength and aerobic training. Facial exercises can relax habitual tension and fixed expressions and keep the underlying facial muscles from atrophying. There are a number of very good videos on Youtube you can learn from. The actor Cary Grant did them daily and swore by them.
Nutrition
It’s the elephant in the room but unless our diets are whole and organic, we can’t expect to be in prime shape or to look particularly youthful. There is no right diet for anyone within those parameters. Allergy testing should be part of our physicals, because we can be eating the healthiest foods on the planet but they could be causing our bodies damage. Raw, cooked, vegan, vegetarian, paleo, pescetarian or gluten, oxalate, dairy, and nightshade free-don’t follow even the best intentioned advice from so -called experts. You will have to do an elimination diet to see what works for you. However, you can begin by eating whole foods and eliminating processed foods altogether. Experiment with alcohol as well. We love it, but it does raise blood sugar and it is harmful to your liver.
Rest and Sleep
Good sleep is critically important to good health. New studies reveal what ancient systems have long known and implemented, sleeping and rising with Earth’s rhythms are healthiest. The hours between 11 pm and 2 am are most critical to regenerating the body. Do what you need to do to be in bed with eyes shut by 10.30 pm. There are excellent sleep enhancing videos on YouTube you can play to stop your thoughts from racing and relax the mind. Experiment and see what works best for you: music, nature sounds, or a soothing human voice.
Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy and Telomeres
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes. Telomere length is considered a key marker in measuring a person’s biological age as opposed to their chronological age. Shortened telomeres have been associated with cellular aging and dysfunction.
We feature TA-65® , a patented, all natural, plant-based supplement that can help maintain or rebuild telomeres that diminish as people get older. By activating an enzyme called telomerase, the TA-65® compound can help slow down and possibly reverse age and lifestyle-related telomere shortening. Telomere length is considered a key marker in measuring a person’s biological age as opposed to their chronological age. Shortened telomeres have been associated with cellular aging and dysfunction. By activating an enzyme called telomerase, the TA-65® compound can help slow down and possibly reverse age and lifestyle-related telomere shortening.
Hormones control many bodily functions. They serve as an internal communication system between cells and coordinate growth, digestion, appetite, immune function, mood, and libido. Even mildly out of balance hormones can have a big impact on your health and well-being. Bio-identical hormones are man made hormones derived from plants that are chemically identical to those the human body produces. Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are among those most commonly replicated and used in treatment.
BHRT is a treatment used to augment the body’s natural hormone levels. BHRT can be used to treat men and women when their hormone levels drop or become unbalanced. Used most often to combat the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, it can be used to improve symptoms of cancer treatment or to treat conditions such as adrenal and thyroid disorders, insulin resistance, osteoporosis, and fibrillation.
Dr. Bonnie Vulich is a doctor of osteopathic medicine, meaning she had the same training as an MD, with one exception. She examines your entire body as a whole, not just as symptoms arising from disparate and unrelated parts. As she completed a fellowship in anti-ageing medicine, she is qualified to recommend a whole body approach to healing from the inside out with the right blend of therapies, nutrition, and supplements that are unique to you and your needs, and to help you to remain youthful from the inside out.