Anti-Aging Information

Quickly relaxing while at your desk or at the wheel of your car in a traffic gridlock may help prevent elevations of those hormones that can attack your coronaries.

Incorporate relaxation into your stretching.

Learn techniques of relaxation as a means of coping with a stressful world.

Thomas Jefferson simply suggested counting to 10 or, if extremely agitated, to 100.

Coordinate Jefferson's with your own mantra breathing rhythm and you have pure Zen.

Even though there are many techniques for dealing with stress, the bottom line is that you must deal with the stressors themselves, not just the symptoms. In all probability, your wife hasn't changed (at least no more than you have), and rush hour traffic will always be there, whether you're driving a Ferrari or a Yugo. Gold chains may or may not be flattering to you, but they hardly make you look younger, despite how much the chain costs.

Too often, those of us in midlife may engage in odd behavior because of fears or dissatisfactions about our lives, how we are aging, or what we may perceive lies ahead. Such angst is the subject of a plethora of cruel midlife jokes, as well as the cause of many divorces, and a boon to the U.S. government, thanks to import duties collected on impractical foreign cars.

Yet dealing with human behavior is never really simple. When the kids are graduated and gone, the time might seem perfect to end a relationship that has never been class A. Or a lot of families may have been broken up simply because a midlife man wanted to see how it felt again to sleep with a young woman, to preserve his perception of youth, to bathe, as it were, in the blood of virgins.

Whatever you do, make sure you know your motivations.

Buying fast cars, though it sounds silly, is probably one of the more harmless forms of midlife escapism. It's kind of like plastic surgeryif you can afford it and it makes you feel better about yourself, then what the hell?

On the other hand, why not deal with the source of the problem? If you feel good about yourself and accept your place in the world, then what does it matter what kind of car you drive or how old the woman is on your arm?

Remember what Polonius might have said: "To thine own self be true; which can certainly be cheaper and may also prevent a lot of litigation."