Part 1 (1/2)

Foods That COMBAT AGING.

by DEBORAH MITCh.e.l.l.

INTRODUCTION.

Getting older sure beats the alternative, so the saying goes, but must we have such a gloomy, defeatist att.i.tude about aging? Absolutely not! In fact, there are many things you can do right now, every day right now, every day, to help minimize the effects of aging while you grow older.

There's no denying it: growing older is a natural part of the life cycle. From the moment you were conceived, you began to age. The years keep pa.s.sing, and there's no turning back. The secret is in how you make the journey, and a big part of the trip involves food. You can make nutrition and lifestyle choices that promote health, longevity, and vitality, or those that make you feel, look, and act old. The choice is up to you.

Some older men and women proudly proclaim that they are having the best times of their lives, that they can finally do things when, how, where, if, and with whom they want. For them, and indeed for the majority of people, the older years can mean a chance to travel, explore new hobbies, go back to school, volunteer for a favorite cause, even start a new career.

Yet our negative and fearful att.i.tudes about getting older are grounded in some real concerns, and one of the main ones is this: Will we be physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of enjoying the decades of life ahead of us? This is a legitimate question, and one that you as an adult, regardless of your age regardless of your age, should think about and address now to help make the most of your older years.

Foods That Combat Aging can help you make positive food and nutrition choices that combat aging every day and help you maintain health, vitality, and a positive att.i.tude that helps you enjoy life. The great thing about making food choices that help fight aging is that you get several chances every day to make a positive impact on your health and your fight against aging. And if you make a not-so-great selection or two once in a while, you know that you can go right back to making great choices at your next meal! can help you make positive food and nutrition choices that combat aging every day and help you maintain health, vitality, and a positive att.i.tude that helps you enjoy life. The great thing about making food choices that help fight aging is that you get several chances every day to make a positive impact on your health and your fight against aging. And if you make a not-so-great selection or two once in a while, you know that you can go right back to making great choices at your next meal!

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF AGING.

Hair turns gray, energy flags, fine wrinkles appear, and house keys get misplaced a little more often-these are just a few indications of growing older. Everyone ages differently; the number of signs and symptoms, their severity, when they appear, how they respond to our attempts to reduce or eliminate them-all of these factors and more should be considered when you talk about aging and how to combat it. The list of changes a.s.sociated with aging is a long one, but here is a representative look.

- General decrease in energy level and a tendency to tire easily - Decreased memory - Decreased s.e.x drive - Abdominal obesity and an inability to lose weight - Some hearing loss, especially for higher frequencies - Development of arthritis: affects about one-third of men and one-half of women - Loss of lean muscle tissue - Development of insulin resistance - Changes in bowel function - Changes in hair color and volume - Tendency to sleep more lightly and to experience less rapid eye movement (REM) sleep - Reduction in muscle strength - Reduction in bone density - Reduction in reaction time - Reduction in levels of antibodies (and thus ability to fight off infections) - Reduction in levels of most hormones There is much you can do to reduce, compensate for, or slow the progression of many of these and other physical and metabolic changes that occur with aging. One of the most important things you can do is harness the power of anti-aging nutrition, which we do in two ways in this book. One is through the convenient anti-aging nutrition counter offered in the second part of this book. The other is through a discussion of the dietary steps and other actions that complement any nutritional efforts you take in your fight against aging. Let's look at some of these other approaches, along with a discussion of how wise food and supplement choices can help you fight aging now! fight aging now!

CHAPTER 1.

FIGHT AGING NOW.

You are fortunate to live in a time when the field of anti-aging medicine has become a vital and increasingly well-researched area of medicine. Health-care pract.i.tioners who are involved in anti-aging medicine are excited by the forward-thinking nature of this new approach, which involves helping people take the steps necessary to maximize quality of life in their later years. Basically, anti-aging medicine is concerned with three concepts.

- Prevention: taking steps to prevent the development of diseases and ailments a.s.sociated with growing older. Proper nutrition is a key element of prevention.

- Integration: combining the best of both worlds- conventional and alternative/complementary medicine-to achieve anti-aging goals.

- Holism: recognizing and treating people as whole beings composed of many integrated parts that work together. Thus an anti-aging approach to arthritis of the hip addresses all the factors that have an impact on arthritis, including diet, exercise level, social needs, stress management, emotional health, supplementation, and pharmaceuticals.

EAT FOR LONGEVITY.

Three or more times a day, you have a chance to fight aging with food! Your food choices are one of the most important ways you impact your health, and so it's vitally important that you understand the basics behind what makes certain foods good partners in the fight against aging. We say ”partners” because although healthy food choices are key purely on a nutritional level, they also work hand-in-hand with other factors in the effort to ward off aging, namely, exercise, stress management, supplementation, and hormone balancing. In this book we focus on nutrition, but in this chapter we also explain the relations.h.i.+p between wise food choices and these other factors that impact aging.

BE SUGAR SMART.

This section could be called ”Be Carb Smart,” but we want to impress upon you that when we talk about carbohydrates, we're really talking about sugars. That's because all carbohydrates are broken down (metabolized) into simple sugars all carbohydrates are broken down (metabolized) into simple sugars. Therefore, because sugars are the bottom line when it comes to carbohydrates and their metabolism, we think it's important to begin there. Once you see the connection between carbs and aging, you'll never look at carbs quite the same way again. Here's the story.

Carbs come in two forms: simple or refined, and complex. Simple sugars include table sugar and natural sugars found in fruits, honey, and milk. Refined carbs are in white flour, white rice, baked goods, and refined pasta. Simple/refined sugars not only get stored as fat if you eat too much of them, but they also cause blood glucose levels to rise. Elevated blood glucose levels, especially chronically, can lead to insulin resistance (when the body cannot produce enough insulin or cannot adequately use the insulin it does produce) and eventually result in diabetes and its many complications, including heart disease, kidney disease, nerve disorders, and blindness.

But the link between carbs and aging is this: high blood glucose (sugar) levels accelerate aging through a process called glycation. Glycation is a natural occurrence in which glucose molecules and certain fat molecules interact with and attach to protein molecules, forming AGEs-advanced glycation end-products-and damage the protein. Wrinkling of skin is one example of what glycation can do, as collagen and other proteins in skin are damaged by glucose. Although glycation occurs in everyone, it speeds up when there's a lot of glucose present. The rest of the bad news is that glycation is not reversible, so the goal is to prevent it as much as possible. How do you do that?

What You Can Do Now You can be sugar smart and keep your blood glucose levels in a healthy range (ideally, a fasting glucose level that is less than 100 mg/dL). Since carbohydrates are a key energy source, you need to provide your body with the best fuel in the form of smart carbs-complex carbs rather than simple ones. Complex carbs are more complicated in structure and generally higher in nutritional value than simple carbs. A diet that includes a moderate amount of carbs (about 50% of total caloric intake), mostly the complex type, can help keep blood glucose levels in check, as complex carbs generally cause a moderate increase in blood glucose levels while simple ones cause a sharp, rapid (and unhealthy) rise.

Another factor to consider is the glycemic index, which is a gauge of how quickly foods convert into glucose. Foods with a low value (generally 50 or lower) convert into glucose slower, which keeps blood glucose levels more balanced throughout the day and thus helps fight aging. Here are some smart carb tips, followed by a sample glycemic index.

- Choose brown or wild rice instead of white rice.

- Subst.i.tute whole-wheat or other whole-grain breads, rolls, and bagels for their white flour cousins.

- Include one to two servings ( cup per serving) of beans daily: lima, b.u.t.ter, white, pinto, black, soy, kidney, or garbanzo.

- Choose yams or sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes.

- Include one serving of oatmeal or all-bran cereal daily.

- Choose whole fresh fruits for dessert.

- Choose a whole-grain pasta (wheat, spelt, buckwheat, rye) instead of white pasta.

- Significantly reduce or eliminate white sugar and white sugar products from your diet.

- If you use fruit juices or fruit products, choose unsweetened varieties: unsweetened apple sauce, juices and nectars, canned or jarred fruits (in natural juices only).

GOOD FAT/BAD FAT.

It's become common practice to cla.s.sify fat into two categories-”good” and ”bad”-to make it easier to identify which ones you should include more of in your diet and which ones to reduce or avoid. Certainly when we talk about fighting aging, we want to optimize the benefits of good fats and minimize the damage from the bad ones.

First you should understand that ”fat” comes in four main types: saturated, polyunsaturated (which includes omega-3 and omega-6), monounsaturated, and trans fats. Fat is essential for life: most of the body's organs-especially the brain-could not function without it. But ”essential” does not mean you need large amounts of it. Although the Dietary Guidelines recommend Americans consume 20 to 35 percent of their calories from fat, the lower end of that range is much healthier and realistic given that the majority of people in the United States are overweight or obese and that diseases a.s.sociated with high-fat intake (e.g., heart disease, stroke, some cancers) are responsible for the majority of disease-related deaths.

”Good fats” include monounsaturated fats and omega3 fatty acids, a type of polyunsaturated fat. These fats typically are not listed on nutrition labels and so information about their values in foods is usually not readily available. You can calculate the amount of good fat in a product by subtracting the sum of bad fats from the total fat value. The resulting number is a fairly accurate idea of the amount of good fat in the product, although the figure may also represent some of the polyunsaturated fat called omega-6, which is sometimes good, sometimes bad. In the nutrition counter in this book, we provide values for total fat, bad fats, and good fats.

Although fats can have many negative effects on your health and contribute to aging, they also have many anti-aging benefits if you eat the right ones. That's why it's important to eat a balanced amount of good and bad fats. What does that mean? Your intake of bad fats should be less than 10 percent of your total caloric intake, and your intake of good fats should be at least 15 percent to 20 percent of your total caloric intake. Based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet, less than 200 calories should come from bad fats, and 300 to 400 should come from good fats. You should remember that all fats provide 9 calories per gram, which is more than twice as much as the calories supplied by carbohydrates and protein (4 per gram). So if you order a fast-food fish sandwich that has 15 grams of saturated fat and 2 grams of trans fat, you've nearly reached your daily limit for bad fats with one food item alone (9x17 = 153 g).

So what are some of the benefits of eating a balanced amount of good and bad fats?

- They help the body absorb the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K). This ability declines with aging.

- They make you feel fuller, which helps you resist the temptation to eat between meals and before bed.

- They help keep the brain healthy. The brain is composed of 60 percent fat, and if you deprive your body of a sufficient amount of good dietary fats, symptoms a.s.sociated with aging, such as poor concentration, faulty memory, and reduced acuity, are likely to occur and with greater severity.

- They help keep the immune system operating optimally so it can fight off infection, promote wound healing, and reduce the risk of cancer.

- Age-related changes to skin, hair, and nails can be reduced.

- Fats help the gastrointestinal system avoid constipation, bloating, and other digestive problems that are common as we age.

- A small amount of saturated fat is needed by the liver to manufacture cholesterol, which the body uses to produce hormones. Restoration of declining hormone levels, which occurs with age, is an important factor in the fight against aging (see ”Balancing Hormones”).

- Fats help maintain a healthy nervous system.