People averaging less than six hours of sleep during the work week over a period of years were shown to have almost five times the chance of developing type 2 Diabetes compared to those averaging six to eight   hours of sleep, according to research presented March 11, 2009 at the American Heart Association Conference in Florida.

While there's no stopping time, there's plenty you can do to foil the aging process.  How well you age depends largely on your lifestyle. Your chronological age doesn't necessarily correlate with how old your body thinks it is.  According to Michael Roizen, coauthor of YOU: Staying Young, "there are about 191 things that go into calculating your real age and 149 of those things are within your control to change."  You can, for example, quit smoking, cultivate strong social support, receive regular chiropractic care to insure a healthy immune system, get regular exercise and eat right.

Regardless of your lifestyle up until this point, making healthful changes today can turn back the clock—or at least slow it down. 

When healthy eating and proper exercise are added to a healthy lifestyle, research shows that you may wind up lowering excess blood sugar levels, even if you're not diabetic.  This, in turn, could help you maintain your memory.

Fighting the current trend of an unconscious lifestyle and the expectation that modern medicine will someday find an answer is difficult and certainly requires a significant degree of commitment.  But, as Roizen says, “the promise of enjoying a 25-year-old's energy well into your 60s is pretty strong motivation” to adopt a healthy lifestyle now.