The side effects of aging begin a lot sooner than many people expect. While most think that they don’t have to start thinking about an anti-aging plan until they’re in their 40s, the time is actually earlier than that if you want to prevent diseases and their complications as you age.

In Your 30s and Younger

It’s at this stage of your life that you’re laying the foundation for how well your body is going to handle aging. It’s at this time that you need to take stock of how you live your life and make changes that need to be made.

The things that you do right now, the habits that you have can contribute to aging later in life, and some of them can actually speed up the aging process. Many of these habits have also been medically linked to certain diseases.

What you need to do is to take an honest look at your life and the things that you do that you know aren’t healthy. For some people, this will be bad habits such as not getting the right amount of sleep that they need to function.

For others, this might be eating too many foods that contribute to weight gain and ignoring the signs when the numbers on the scale go up. Still, some people have bad habits that cause even worse problems such as excessive drinking or smoking.

Of all the habits that you can have, there is one that will speed up aging in both your appearance and in your body. This one habit is smoking. One of the first ways that cigarette smoking speeds up aging is found in how it can damage your skin.

Cigarette smoking causes wrinkles. You might think that since the smoke is closer to your face, that it’s the only area of the body that would be affected by the smoking. But that’s not the case.

Studies have shown that having a smoking habit not only prematurely ages the skin on your face and causes wrinkles, it’s also the culprit behind wrinkles showing up on other areas of your body as well.

The reason that cigarettes can cause these wrinkles to appear is found in the ingredients all cigarettes have and that’s nicotine. Nicotine is a toxic stimulant that’s known to cause the blood vessels to become narrow.

When your blood vessels become narrower, they can’t carry the right amount of blood to your skin. Smoking causes your skin to suffer from failure to get what it needs to be healthy and vibrant which is oxygen and vitamins that it normally gets from an unrestricted blood vessel flow.

Unfortunately, your skin becoming damaged by smoking isn’t the only drawback you’ll deal with if you have this habit. By smoking, you open the door to future diseases that can rob you of your health and take years off your life.

When you have a smoking habit, you can significantly increase your risk of dying from heart disease because of the way the nicotine affects the heart’s blood vessels. Just like smoking impacts the blood vessels that supply oxygen to the skin, it also affects the ones that supply oxygen to the heart.

Because nicotine is an addictive substance, some people find it hard to break the habit of smoking, especially if it’s one they’ve had for ten or more years. But the struggle is worth it in the rewards of how you’ll look and feel.

Even if you’ve smoked for years, you can make changes in your health right now that can prevent you from developing diseases. Letting go of your cigarette habit is one of the best anti-aging decisions you can make.

So right now, while you’re still young in your 30s, you need to stop smoking and reverse the damage that has been done to your health. While it can be difficult to break the habit, it’s not impossible and many people have successfully broken the habit by following a few simple tips.

Decide when you’re going to quit and choose a time and place when it’ll be easier for you to stick with the decision. For example, if you know that you’re about to face a really stressful meeting or have to deal with a family situation that ties you up in knots, the stress from these can cause you to give up before you really even try.

So don’t attempt to quit when you’re going to deal with a situation that would normally make you want to reach for a cigarette to calm down. Sometimes making your environment supportive can help bolster the ability to stick to it.

For example, if you normally smoke when you go out with your friends to watch a game at a sports bar, then change the venue. Watch the game somewhere else. Even a small break in routine like that can help give you the fortitude to stick to the choice you’ve made.

Find a friend who also wants to quit smoking. But make it someone who’s serious and not someone who quits every month. You need someone who can offer you the support that you need to keep you going during the times when you want to give up.

Plan ahead for the problems that you’re going to encounter when you do decide to give up smoking. The scent of cigarette smoke can trigger a craving for one. Know ahead of time what you’ll do when that craving hits.

Buy some stop smoking products or get a script for one if you need to help you deal with any nicotine withdrawal symptoms you’ll encounter.

In Your 40s

By the time you hit your 40s, you might think that the stage is already set and there’s nothing much you can do about aging. At this point in life, many people settle into a middle age lifestyle of relaxing their vigil against weight gain.

This is how the term “middle age spread” first came into use. The term is used to describe people who reach their 40s and either cut way back on taking care of themselves physically or they don’t do it all.

The reason for this slack is found in the mindset that once a person hits the 40s, there’s no use in trying to stay fit or to eat healthy. People will sometimes think they should kick back and enjoy life by eating whatever they want and doing whatever they want.

Unfortunately, that mindset can be the forerunner for developing age related diseases. Just because you’re in your 40s doesn’t mean you should give up on your health. In fact, many people find their stride at this age and are actually healthier, stronger and more fit now than they were in their 20s.

You can be too. The number one disease prevention plan at this age is exercise. It’s the protective guard against diseases that occur as you age. When you take part in a regular exercise program, you can prevent heart disease.

You can keep yourself from having a heart attack or stroke. You can keep hardening of the arteries from happening. You can keep your blood pressure from skyrocketing and being a trigger that can lead to heart problems.

Another disease that often occurs because of aging is Alzheimer’s Disease. Yet, studies have shown that exercising regularly can reduce your risk of developing this disease. The reason behind this is because exercise benefits the brain and can protect cognitive function from declining as you age.

When you have an exercise routine that you engage in regularly, you can also stave off certain cancers that are associated with aging. One of these cancers is colon cancer. By exercising regularly, you significantly reduce your risk of developing this type of cancer as you age.

You can also cut your odds of getting other types of cancer such as breast cancer. The types of exercise that you should do does matter. You need to take part in regular cardio exercises as well as a weight training program.

Not only can you prevent age related diseases with an exercise action plan, but you can also roll back the clock on your appearance too. Exercise is great for the skin.

In Your 50s

The year that you begin your fifties can be a wonderful adventure in life. By now, most people have been well established in a life they thoroughly enjoy. They’re settled in a career that they love.

The children are grown and off living their own lives. There’s more financial freedom. More ability to travel. More freedom from the things you once worried about in your 20s and 30s.

But this time of life can also bring more stress than any other time in your life. It’s at this stage that most people start to experience an upswing in stress. This can usually trigger what’s known as a midlife crisis.

This is what happens when someone suddenly realizes that they’re getting older and they take stock of where they are in life. Sometimes people, feel a strong urge to make changes. These changes might be small but other times, they’re big changes.

A midlife crisis is simply stress. The stress happens because at this age, people start to worry more about their health. They worry about growing older. They feel the pressure of dealing with parents getting older and may end up having to either care for elderly parents or make the hard decision to place their loved one in a nursing home.

At this age, you might deal with the sudden loss of a job and then feel stressed wondering how you’re going to find another job in your 50s. Stress can hit for any number of reasons but it’s dangerous if you don’t deal with it because stress can usher in the development of age-related diseases.

It can weigh on not only your physical health but your mental health as well. When you experience stress, you’re at a higher risk of having a stroke or heart attack. Stress has been linked to inflammation, to worsening diseases such as diabetes and more.

In addition to being linked to disease, stress, living under stress can also make your body’s aging process speed up. This is why it’s so important that you recognize the signs of stress in your life such as anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, headaches, forgetfulness, neck or back pain, increased hunger and more.

You can deal with stress and prevent age related diseases by reducing or removing the stress that you can cut out of your life. If you can’t rid of all the stress, you can learn ways to minimize its impact on your health.

You can learn meditation which will help you learn how to relax. It reduces the anxiety that comes along with stress. During meditation, you’ll learn deep breathing exercises that will help to alleviate the symptoms associated with stress.

In Your Senior Years

The best way to stay healthy when you’re in your senior years is through early detection. By knowing your body and what’s going on with it, you can increase your odds of preventing diseases and boosting your lifespan.

Most senior citizens know some of the more common tests to have to ensure good health. However, as you age, there are certain recommended tests you’ll want to have to prevent disease.

If you feel fine and aren’t having any health issues, you can stick with the recommended tests for your age level. However, if you’ve been experiencing some problems, even if they're minor, get them checked out so that they don’t become major ones.

At this age, you need to have regular blood pressure screenings. If you have normal blood pressure, as you age, the levels can suddenly change. You can develop high blood pressure or you can develop low blood pressure.

Some of this has to do with how well your body is able to pull the blood flow from your lower extremities back up to your heart. Get tested for colon cancer. The recommended age to do this is every 10 years starting when you’re 50 unless you have a family history of the disease.

If this is the case, then you need to be tested every 5 years. Once you reach a certain age, if you’re a woman, you might think that you don’t need any more pap smears or a pelvic exam, but that’s not true.

Cervical and ovarian cancer can develop at any age and with regular checkups, you can prevent these cancers. Plus, in their early stages, both are highly treatable. You should also make sure you practice self-exams and get a breast exam along with a mammogram every year in your senior years.

This is one cancer that age raises the risk of developing the disease. If you’re a man, then you need to get regular screenings for prostate cancer since your risk of this disease also rises as you grow older.

You’ll want to get regular cholesterol screenings and bone screenings. In addition, you should get hearing and eye screenings too. With screenings, you can be alerted to potential problems that can rob you of your hearing or vision.

Hearing loss can be prevented and so can certain types of vision loss if you stay proactive. Stay up on your vaccinations to protect yourself against infectious diseases. As you enter your senior years, the flu and pneumonia can have deadly consequences. It’s important to protect yourself against both.