What's Your "Real Age"?

How would you go about traveling to a place where you have never been before? Use a map...or now a days a GPS? Let's assume we are still stuck in the dark ages and will have to use an old fashioned map. A key piece of information we need in order to successfully travel to our destination is knowing the point from which we are starting out.

With our own health many of us can point toward the destination we would like to reach, we can tell you what that destination looks like even though we may have never been there before (15% body fat, normal cholesterol, blood pressure below 120/80, endless amounts of energy, run marathons, etc...). However, too many times we are afraid to truly open our eyes and look at the point from where we are starting. If this is the case then in most instances the destination you can see so vividly in your head will remain just that...a vision, not a reality!

So, if we are going to truly explore how we can take steps to improve our health we need to know where we are starting from. An annual physical is a good place to start- ideally you should be able to recite your blood pressure, resting heart rate, cholesterol (Total, HDL, LDL), blood glucose numbers, among others, as easily as you can the Pledge of Allegiance.

With this information in hand check out http://www.realage.com/. This website has a quiz, which based on your answers, will give you an estimate of your "real age" along with some suggestions for actions you can take to make some simple improvements.

Here are some of my results: I am 29.1 years old and after answering the questions it estimated my real age to be 19.4. I thought that was pretty good, but it also gave me some food for thought, areas where I could make improvement. The suggestions included: increase strength training, take a multi-vitamin, floss more often, slow down behind the wheel and to work on increasing my HDL (high density lipoprotein- the good stuff)! So I have some work to do.

I'll let you know how I do, but in the meantime check out the site and see what your "real age" is. And when you do, stop back and respond to my poll about how close your "real age" was or wasn't.