A dear friend of mine recently decided that he was going to get a colonoscopy. After all, he was 52 years old and had never even considered it until he heard a news story covering the risks that passing on a colonoscopy might have. Mind you, 20 years ago, this man was a world-class athlete and today, he looks much younger than his years. He and his family constantly focus on a healthy lifestyle, living a great part of their lives outdoors, eating organic foods and exercising on a regular basis. I was pleased to hear how comforted Wes felt when the physician doing the procedure told him, “you have the colon of a very healthy individual.” That got me thinking!

In the Western world, we judge beauty on outward appearances. Pick up any magazine today and you’ll not see one disease-free colon featured within the pages. That’s because the Western world doesn’t emphasize internal beauty or even to a great extent, good health. Rather, external beauty is promoted at any cost. Nose jobs, breast implants, tummy tucks and Botox are commonplace today, proving that our attention is fully focused on eye-popping, external beauty. When Nathan Pritikin died many years ago, I recall hearing from the pathologist who performed the autopsy that he had the circulatory system (arteries, veins and capillaries) of a child! “Clean as a whistle” was how he referred to them, as I remember. Pritikin was one of the brightest men I ever met and he absolutely practiced the lifestyle that he preached. His clean arteries were undoubtedly due to his lifestyle discoveries. As we age, external beauty becomes less important to many of us and internal beauty becomes our lifeline to quality longevity. I can’t tell you how many people have commented on my “inner beauty” in the past few decades. I think that’s a nice way of telling me that I’ve really gotten old, but my brain still works. Such a statement leads me to believe that “inner beauty” and “wrinkles” might be synonymous. If I were 24 years old, a person expounding upon my “inner beauty” would have been an anathema to me! Whereas clean arteries or colons sound pretty good to old duffers like Wes and me, a 24-year-old would simply refer to such data as either “too much information” or “gross!” It seems that feeling vincible is part of the aging process also.

External beauty, complete with “ripped abs and buns of steel,” is what any 24-year-old yearns for and having been there (the age, not the buns), I don’t blame them. Internal beauty is achievable if you dedicate yourself to the task. What most people, Wes included, find is that dedicating your life to internal beauty at an early age may have you enjoying both internal and external beauty as you age. We have never discovered the fountain of youth or the magic pill. What we have discovered, however, is far more important. Those who commit to healthy lifestyles retard the physiologic aging process significantly more than those who exclusively allow physicians to nip, tuck and inject, and then grab a beer and a hamburger afterwards.

Visit Doug Kaufmann, host of Know the Cause! at www.knowthecause.com.

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