Time Bomb.(aging)

Time Bomb

Optimists associate aging with wisdom. The rest of us associate it with wrinkles. Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, and five other leading experts offer their wisdom on erasing lines, staying sexy, and looking your best at every age.

Women are either praised for staying young and healthy through the years, or we're ridiculed for being superficial and vain. As the debate continues, the facts remain that in 2004 women spent $402 million on anti-aging skin-care products, according to research by Mintel, and over 2.5 million Botox treatments were administered. On some level, who wouldn't like to beat the clock? We asked top skin, health, and life experts for their savviest strategies for doing exactly that. And their recommendations might surprise you.

body clock

In a potentially pleasing turn of fuzzy math, the year you were born may not reflect your chronological age, according to Michael Roizen, chair of the division of anesthesiology and critical-care medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and author of The RealAge Makeover. Roizen, after consulting thousands of scientific studies, developed a formula to determine the wear on your body based on your health behaviors. Here, his insider advice on turning back time.

What's the most surprising cause of aging? The little stressors of everyday life cause your brain to overrelease stress hormones, like cortisol, which increase blood pressure, age your arteries, and weaken your immune system. In fact, these kinds of small, nagging, recurrent problems can be even more damaging to you than a major trauma like losing your job or getting divorced.

Why is that? While a one-time stressful event may cause damage, your body is able to repair itself after a couple of years. But chronic stress wears you out continuously over time, causing long-term injury to your body's cells. Fortunately, you can buffer some of the effects with regular stress reducers such as exercise, meditation, or just calling friends. Starting a strength-training program can make your real age 1.7 years younger, and calling a friend daily reduces the aging stress causes by eight years.