7 different ways to slow aging....

Today's Post: Friday, 12-4-2009

1. Keep the caps on your telomeres from unraveling or slow the process down.

Last Tuesday, 12-1, we posted on research that found vigorous exercise prevents the shortening of telomeres, the part of your DNA that protects the ends of your chromosomes from damage, similar to the caps on the ends of shoelaces.

This is now thought to be the main cause of aging; and when the telomeres become too short, the cell they are in dies.

We added some ideas on ways to get such exercise.

One of the ways this may work is that excessive and prolonged stress tends to unravel the telomeres.

And, recently it has been posted that people who are stressed AND get regular vigorous exercise tend NOT to feel severely stressed while sedentary people under the same level of stress DO feel severely stressed. So, it looks as if exercise may have its protective effect on telomeres in part by protecting you from some to much of the underlying processes by which excessive stress harms your body.

This also suggests that being lucky enough AND prudent and careful enough to avoid some kinds of severe stresses helps you escape the stress and avoid the aging that results. People who do things like always wearing their seat belts and always brushing their teeth and doing other prudent and preventive things, often escape severe stresses (& their increase of the rate of aging) that less prudent people do NOT escape.

Getting some kind of stress relief through massage, meditation, or Tai Chi – or watching a funny movie may also help.

Getting better at solving the problems that stress you &/or getting people to help you solve them will reduce the impact of stress on your telomeres and health. This can lift or remove the CAUSE of the stress.

Another method I’ve read about that was found to help keep your telomeres from unraveling was to take extra vitamin C. Based on its other health effects, taking 1500 mg a day or more of vitamin C may work best to do this.

I also once read that drinking green tea may have similar effects.

The other 5 ways I found in a recent Total Health Breakthroughs email in an article by their editor Jon Herring.

I list the cause of aging he did for each one & then list ways to combat them. (In this post, they are steps 2 through 6. Each of them is a state that increases aging and can be minimized or prevented.)

2. Inflammation.

People with high levels of chronic inflammation we now know are at greatly increased risk for heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases AND for getting virtually all cancers.

Our ancestors ate some plant foods with omega 6 oils; & they ate about that much omega 3 oils in the naturally fed game and wild caught fish and seafood they ate.

Unfortunately, today the majority of people still eat refined grain; use high omega 6 cooking oils such as soy oil, saffola oil, and corn oil -- & to some extent canola oil; & they tend to eat meat from animals fed grains that make their meat high in omega 6 oils and have very little if any omega 3 oils. (Farmed fish are often fed grain also with similar results. And, that’s in addition to the pollutants in farmed fish.)

The result of this massive overeating of omega 6 oils and so little intake of omega 3 oils reliably produces high levels of inflammation.

The solution is to only eat meat from animals fed only grass even if that means you eat far less of it; totally stop ingesting the oils on the list above; and use extra virgin olive oil that is almost all a neutral omega 9 oil instead; eat wild caught fish, and take purified fish oil supplements high in omega 3 oil.

The average American eats 22 teaspoons of sugar a day much of that from soft drinks and commercially baked snacks and desserts and other packaged foods. And, they get virtually no exercise or very little to help burn it off. They also eat very high glycemic refined grains and foods made from them.

This produces obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases AND increase inflammation.

Simply NOT eating that stuff and eating organic vegetables, organic whole fruit, raw or dry roasted nuts, and some whole grains instead will sharply decrease inflammation and produces good health in multiple other ways.

And, no surprise, moderate exercise and short sessions of vigorous exercise that are not done to the point of overall exhaustion or injury also lower inflammation.

Lastly, taking a turmeric supplement daily and often using curry (which contains turmeric) and ginger as spices tends to lower inflammation.

(So does taking statin drugs. But if you do the other things on this list, you won’t need them to do the job.)

3. Glycation. This is related to oxidation but with the addition of tangling sugar molecules into the proteins that make up your body. It tends to make the walls of your cells too stiff and impervious to their environment to work properly and may also shorten the telomeres in those cells.

Repeat from above, “The average American eats 22 teaspoons of sugar a day much of that from soft drinks and commercially baked snacks and desserts and other packaged foods. And, they get virtually no exercise or very little to help burn it off. They also eat very high glycemic refined grains and foods made from them.

This produces obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases AND increase inflammation.” AND it increases glycation.

“Simply NOT eating that stuff and eating organic vegetables, organic whole fruit, raw or dry roasted nuts, and some whole grains instead will sharply decrease” glycation as well as inflammation since it dramatically lowers the excessive sugars that eating as the average American does tends to have in their blood stream.

You can also take the inexpensive supplement DMAE which tends to prevent glycation AND increases your heart protective HDL.

You can also take the expensive supplement, carnosine that tends to prevent glycation and increases the growth and repair of your muscles when you exercise them.

Lastly, lightly browning foods you cook or eating foods raw or boiled instead of heavily browning them, burning them, or overcooking them sharply decreases the glycated proteins you ingest. That also reduces the glycation of your cells.

4. Toxification. Simply put, if you poison your cells, they will die or weaken and the more this happens the more aging you experience. Fewer of your cells will work right and support your life and health.

Avoid using herbicides and pesticides in your yard. Use little or no pesticide in your house. Do NOT use air fresheners of any kind that use chemicals – which is about 99.5% of all of them.

Don’t smoke or be around second hand smoke.

As much as you can, buy organic vegetables and fruit. That not only cuts your exposure to herbicides and pesticides a bit, it just about doubles the nutrition you get.

Even more importantly, either stop eating meat from grain fed animals or only eat the leanest most fat-trimmed meat from such animals -- & eat less of that. The pesticides and herbicides used on the grain get bioconcentrated in the fat of grain fed animals. (Doing this also helps you avoid excessive omega 6 oils and saturated fat.)

Eat cilantro often as a spice because I’ve read it helps rid your body of mercury.

Take an NAC, n-acetyl cysteine, supplement daily as I’ve read it or the glutathione it causes your body to release, tend to help your body remove pollutants.

Your kidneys remove many toxins from your body. So if you protect them from cardiovascular disease and high levels of sugar and avoid sky high blood pressure and get enough water (NOT soft drinks) to drink, they’ll work better and protect you better and remove toxins better.

Your liver does even more to detoxify you. Avoid drinking more than 2 drinks a day if you are a man and more than one drink a day if you are a woman. Also consider taking a milk thistle supplement and a lecithin supplement each day. Each of these things help to protect the health of your liver.

5. & 6. Oxidation and Depletion.

If your body has its cells damaged by excessive oxidation or starved for the nutrients it uses as building blocks, your cells will be damaged or unable to work well or both.

The solution is to get abundant antioxidants and key nutrients in your food and by taking supplements.

Buy and eat several servings of a variety of organic vegetables and some fresh and organic fruit each day. Be sure to eat foods high in carotenes and natural vitamin C.

Take a multivitamin & mineral supplement daily.

Also take 500 to 1500 mg a day of extra vitamin C; take 200 iu a day of natural vitamin E with mixed tocopherols (Solgar sells exactly that supplement); if you can find it and afford it, take mixed, natural tocotrienols (related compound to the tocopherols and vitamin E); take 200 mcg a day of selenium.

And, consider taking 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid. This not only is an antioxidant directly, it apparently helps vitamin C & vitamin E have greater antioxidant effects.

Take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. Most people in the United States and in many other countries are badly deficient in this nutrient. And we no know that it is essential to almost every health supporting process in your body. It couldn’t be simpler. People who get less than that are almost all deficient. And, people who are deficient in vitamin D, get more cancers, more bacterial and viral illnesses, and more heart disease than people who are not AND they get more autoimmune disease. So it’s no surprise they tend to die younger than people who get enough vitamin D.

7. Take CoQ10 or even better take the ubiquinol directly that CoQ10 changes into in your body. CoQ10 is BOTH an antioxidant and keeps the mitochondria that are the power and energy source in your cells operating well.

Dr. Al Sears reports research in mice that found that since taking the ubiquinol directly keeps it at such high and lastingly high levels in your blood that both effects are so much better than taking nothing or even taking CoQ10 it almost stopped the aging in the mice entirely.