Effectively slow aging without food restriction….

Today's post: Thursday, 10-23-2008

For quite some time it has been in the scientific and health literature that calorie restriction tends to slow aging.

And, there are now people who have decided to eat this way on purpose to slow their own aging. They are virtually all quite thin. And, they may avoid some diseases; but they do not have a strong and robust look to them. Their enjoyment of life may be a bit low too.

Some kinds of calorie restriction, such as minimizing sugar intake, eating a lot of nonstarchy vegetables and NOT consuming soft drinks, junky foods like packaged snacks & desserts, anything containing high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils (transfats) and refined grain foods tend to help you avoid being fat and are quite health protective.

But deliberate calorie restriction beyond that has a mixed review healthwise & is simply no fun to do.

So, it would be really nice to have a way to slow aging that does NOT require calorie restriction. It would indeed be very nice to not have to starve yourself to live longer.

It turns out there ARE several ways to do that!

1. As many of you already know, one of the several reasons that the supplement and phytonutrinent resveratrol is likely worthwhile to take is that it has been shown to turn on the same molecular switch that food restriction does that researchers believe calorie restriction does. And, resveratrol has been shown to have protective and antiaging effects in tests, particularly on the heart.

2. A recent study of runners found that abundant and very regular exercise allowed the runners, many of whom substituted other kinds of exercise for running as they got older, to dramatically outlive and be much more physically able and healthy than a group of nonexercisers who were matched in age and socioeconomic status.

This likely is part because exercise releases growth hormones of at least three kinds.

But earlier this week, I read that it may also be because regular exercise has an effect similar to the effect of calorie restriction as well.

Here’s the article I read in my Early to Rise email I recently. Then I include a second article from Early to Rise on the anti-aging effects of exercise.

(Plus I’ll add some other antiaging methods after the articles.)

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

2 Fountains of Youth

By Craig Ballantyne

Life extension is one of the most popular research topics in the world right now. You might have heard what scientists have learned about calorie restriction, for example. Many studies have found that if you cut calories from an animal's diet, they can live longer. This works with mice, monkeys, and even household pets.

But does it work for humans?

Researchers at the University of Florida's Institute on Aging recently investigated the possibility that calorie restriction could help extend the human lifespan. In this study, human subjects either decreased their dietary intake by 20 percent less than needed to maintain their weight, or they increased their energy expenditure by 20 percent through exercise. (The subjects needed a lot of discipline, because this went on for more than a year.)

The researchers found that both diet and exercise helped reduce oxidative damage to the subjects' DNA. And they expected that this would have a positive effect on lifespan.

What does this mean for you? It means that you might not have to starve yourself to live longer. Both diet and exercise appear to have the same beneficial effect on the aging process.

Of course, the best thing to do - for both life extension and weight control - is to combine diet and exercise for a double-whammy. Not only will you lose pounds, you could also add years.

[Ed. Note: Combine eating right and exercising to get the best health results. For ideas about which foods you should be eating and which foods to avoid - and recipes for delicious, healthy meals - sign up for ETR's natural health newsletter.

And for a short workout you can do to build muscle and burn fat at the same time, all while getting in and out of the gym in under three hours a week, check out fitness expert Craig Ballantyne's Turbulence Training program.]”

(The ETR “natural health newsletter” is available at www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com .)

Here’s the second article:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

The Anti-Aging Effects of Exercise

By Craig Ballantyne

Growth hormone is known as a "fountain of youth" in the anti-aging community because it helps build muscle and burn body fat. But research has shown that people who are overweight tend to have lower growth hormone levels.

Exercise is a proven way to boost those levels. However, most overweight individuals can't do the 30 minutes of continuous exercise that it takes. So researchers from the University of Virginia wanted to see what would happen if they split their subjects' workouts into shorter sessions.

The researchers had their subjects do either 30 minutes of continuous exercise or three 10-minute sessions, at the same intensity, spread out over the course of the day. Both groups achieved similar growth hormone levels, which led the researchers to conclude that the "split workout" would work just as well as continuous exercise.

These results aren't just good news for obese folks who can't handle 30 minutes of exercise at a time. They also offer relief to busy men and women who have a better chance of finding time for three short exercise sessions instead of one long one.

For maximum body-transformation results, I recommend one 10-minute session each of strength training, interval training, and bodyweight exercises. This will help you build muscle, burn fat, and improve your mobility.

[Ed. Note: Building muscle and burning fat doesn't have to take hours of work. Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne has put together a Turbulence Training program that can help you get fit in three 45-minute workouts a week….]”

X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

By the way, one of the growth hormones released by exercise is testosterone. And, because of that and the increase in fitness, blood flow, and strength you get from regular exercise, regular exercise has been shown to reliably improve the sex lives of BOTH men and women.

3. The third major way to slow aging, protect your health, and keep a good quality of life is to complete avoid tobacco smoke.

Even teenagers who smoke have lungs that test out as having the diminished lung capacity of much older people. (And those norms were set for a population many of whom did not exercise.)

In addition to that, smoking increases blood levels of homocysteine which speeds up all aging processes.

And, both directly and through this effect on homocysteine smoking tends to damage your DNA over time. This speeds aging and is one of the ways smoking causes cancer.

Since the tobacco smoke produces these effects if you breathe it, it’s also important to avoid second hand smoke completely.

Smokers die younger, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty years younger. And, among those who have heart attacks, smokers have them about 10 to 15 years younger than nonsmokers do. Smokers are also more likely to HAVE heart attacks.

Bottom line, smokers tend to get old and sick in their fifties and sometimes die at that age while people who don’t smoke not only live much longer, they tend to stay healthy most of that time.

So, if you want to slow aging and be in good health, avoid harmful foods and drinks and include a lot of nonstarchy vegetables; take 100 mg of the trans form of resveratrol daily; get abundant regular exercise each week; & avoid tobacco smoke totally.

You can still enjoy your food and not have to starve yourself to be long lived and healthy!