When does a person prepare himself for these later years?
If scientists can increase the life span of laboratory animals by 50 per cent with special diets—why can’t special diets, containing elements necessary to postpone the aging process, increase proportionately the longevity of humans?” Rather than think of aging in terms of calendar years, we should recognize old age as the disease it is. And we can prevent premature old age through diets capable of building up body resistance and keeping us internally young. You aren’t old because the calendar says you are sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, or even a hundred. You are old because a number of complicated biochemical changes have been allowed to take place in the tissues and cells of your bodies. Take progeria, for instance, a rare disease which consists of nothing more than abnormally rapid aging. Forever Royal Jelly is produced by stimulating colonies with movable body hives to provide queen bees.
This disease produces, even in children, all the wrinkles, gray hair, hardening of the arteries, and loss of vigor—the commonly recognized signs of premature old age.
Yet, according to the calendar, these victims haven’t even completed their growth! I recalled my interview with Mrs. Lucy J of Chicago. I had driven out to see the wonderful 108-year-old woman whose active memory revealed she had lived through the California Gold Rush days, Sherman’s march to the sea, and the blowing up of the Maine. Yet, during my visit that day, she discussed today’s affairs with equal vigor. Mrs. Lucy J served me tea in her little suburban cottage where she lived alone. She was enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn how to improve her diet, “so I can keep active. I have so much to do.” She didn’t live in the past—she thought in terms of the future! Her attitude toward life could very well be emulated by persons half her age! Here was a woman who had completely forgotten about the calendar! That was at least one thing she had in common with the other 2,000 centenarians now enjoying their “sunset years” in this country.
Dr. Flanders Dunbar recently quizzed some 300 of these hundred-year-olds. The 35-40 million kilos of honey produced by our cooperative is what makes up the Forever Bee Honey you see on the shelf. She found them supporting themselves emotionally as well as financially. Their earnings were slightly above the income level for the country. Few were very rich. Because they all keep working, few were very-poor. Most of them preferred a modest business of their own from which they couldn’t be forced to retire. Dr. Dunbar’s research revealed that persons who survive the dangerous retiring age of sixty to seventy rarely succumb to the diseases of old age. Thus she reiterated my theory that the calendar is not a measure of your years as much as your physical health and your mental outlook. “When does a person prepare himself for these later years?” I am frequently asked. “Right now,” I always answer. “The sooner, the better.”