Slow or reverse aging 3 ways and new information....

Today's Post: Friday, 4-1-2011

1. People are like cars and other machinery. If you fail to maintain their basic systems, they wear out or stop working long before they should or could have.

We know two ways to do that and new research on the method already known to work suggests strongly that the second one works also despite it having been less tested.

2. The processes in your cells work best when the cellular components are not clumped up and tangled. A recent study found a chemical that increased the longevity of a fast living worm by 50%. We have no clue if this will work or is safe to take in humans. BUT, we do have a safe alternative that has been proven to work in humans.

3. Telomeres are like shoe lace caps on the ends of your DNA. When they are relatively long, your cells can make perfect copies when you grow new cells. But the telomeres tend do get shorter and when they get too short, your body makes imperfect copies or none at all. We now know several ways to keep them from getting shorter as fast. And, Dr Al Sears has tested a way to actually make them longer. His tests show that it works.

Here are the details.

1. People are like cars and other machinery. If you fail to maintain their basic systems they wear out or stop working long before they should or could have.

We know two ways to do that and new research on the method already known to work suggests strongly that the second one works also despite it having been less tested.

Regular physical activity such as walking, gardening, and tai chi plus regular and vigorous exercises such as strength training and interval cardio each have multiple health benefits.

It’s been proven that people who do vigorous exercise and stay active every week live longer and live longer parts of their years in good health than people who are completely sedentary.

Their lungs are stronger, their hearts are stronger, their blood vessels are less blocked and they experience extra blood circulation many times each week. Their bodies are triggered to make growth hormone and a special kind, BDNF, of growth hormone that grows new brain and nerve cells.

But a recent and rather spectacular experiment in mice found something even beyond those things.

The mice who were run on a treadmill for 45 minutes, three times each week looked and acted young and active at ages where their littermates who did not do this moved less, looked far more aged, and began to have systems failures of various kinds.

The researchers also found that exercise allowed the mitochondria in each cell of the mice to stay as healthy and capable as they were when the mice were younger. Since the mitochondria are the power centers of each cell and provide the energy for cellular repair and movement, that’s quite significant.

But, there was a similar experiment done that Dr Al Sears reports on. The compound CoQ10 is specifically known to keep mitochondria healthy and to even restore them to good health to some degree. When the form of CoQ10, ubiquinol, was developed in a way people could take as a supplement, the researchers who knew that the far less effective version CoQ10 had some age slowing effects and some mitochondria strengthening effects, they decided to test with mice if ubiquinol would slow aging better than C0Q10.

Their results were very similar to those of the researchers who tested exercise. The mice that were given neither CoQ10 nor ubiquinol aged as they normally do. The mice given CoQ10 aged more slowly and moved better but were clearly slowing down. The mice given ubiquinol showed virtually no signs of aging at all in the same time period!

Since your body provides you with this substance while you are younger but begins not to do so when you pass age 40 and to almost stop once you pass about 65, taking ubiquinol clearly makes sense at least once you are over 40.

Based on what I’ve read in Dr Sears emails, it sounds like taking 50 mg of ubiquinol at breakfast once a day once you pass 40; 50 mg at breakfast and at lunch after age 50; & 100 mg at breakfast and 50 mg at lunch once you pass age 60 is about right.

(Taking ubiquinol in this way also lowers high blood pressure about as much as one of the more effective blood pressure drugs but with no side effects. And, it tends to prevent heart failure; and larger doses have even tended to reverse heart failure or its symptoms.)

2. The processes in your cells work best when the cellular components and proteins are not clumped up and tangled. A recent study found a chemical that increased the longevity of a fast living worm by 50%. We have no clue if this will work or is safe to take in humans. BUT, we do have a safe alternative that has been proven to work in humans.

The researchers were able to show that this effect was due to this chemical preventing cellular components and proteins from getting clumped up and tangled.

But the write up I saw of that research said that, in people, there was evidence that those who ate turmeric as a spice or took turmeric or its main ingredient curcumin as a supplement tended to age more slowly and that this anti clumping effect provided both that benefit and the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease that turmeric is better known for!

Since eating turmeric as a spice or taking turmeric or its main ingredient curcumin as a supplement also helps prevent chronic inflammation, heart disease, and cancer, that makes these practices a very useful way to slow aging and stay in good health during your longer lifespan!

Eating sugar tends to cause glycation in your cells which is a kind of breakdown that results in such tangles and clumps. So eating sugar a few times a week and usually in relatively small amounts is far safer for your health and ability to live a long time than eating a lot of it several times a day as a majority of Americans now do.

There are three ways to minimize this effect of the sugar you do eat. Get the exercise in the first method and/or take 200 or 400 mcg a day of chromium polynicotinate since these two things help your body process the sugar and minimize glycation.

I’ve also read that the supplements DMAE and carnosine tend prevent glycation. Since DMAE is inexpensive and carnosine is quite pricey and DMAE also helps make the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and boost your HDL, I take DMAE.

3. Telomeres are like shoe lace caps on the ends of your DNA. When they are relatively long, your cells can make perfect copies when you grow new cells. But the telomeres tend do get shorter and when they get too short, your body makes imperfect copies or none at all. We now know several ways to keep them from getting shorter as fast. And, Dr Al Sears has tested a way to actually make them longer. His tests show that it works.

Virtually every way you effectively keep yourself healthy keeps your telomeres from shortening or shortening as fast.

So, work every way you can to stay healthy.

But in addition to that these have been found extra effective:

a) Take antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C, natural vitamin E complex, selenium, vitamin A, and alpha lipoic acid.

And eat foods and drink drinks high in these or other antioxidants. Blueberries, coffee, tea, green tea, dark chocolate, and most spices are quite effective antioxidants. Nuts and avocados are high in all parts of the vitamin E complex. Vegetables with carotenes or high levels of vitamin C and fruits with lots of vitamin C all have effective antioxidants and other health protective chemicals. And virtually all fruits and vegetables have some of these antioxidants.

These practices keep your telomeres long.

b) Avoid or escape severe stress when you can and get effective rest breaks when you can from more moderate but chronic stress.

Be prudent enough and careful enough to not get into avoidable severe stress when you can and escape it as soon as possible if you get into severely stressful situations.

Use exercise or tai chi or meditation or a drink or two of red wine at the end of the day to give yourself a stress break when you need it. Most people need this several days a week.

c) Be reasonable, kind, forgiving most of the time, and easy to live with, and nice to people. Develop good social skills such as saying things that make people feel noticed and appreciated; asking good questions; and negotiating fairly with people. Keep a sane sense of humor and laugh with people when you can. (People you treat this way will relieve your stress; people you treat the reverse way will CAUSE you stress.)

These practices help avoid the shortening effects of excessive stress on your telomeres.

Your body has an enzyme that protects your telomeres or even makes them longer called telomerase. When I last checked, the substance that Dr Sears has been testing and now sells, TA65, that causes your body to increase telomerase enough for antiaging effects, runs $4,000 a year.

That’s out of my price range. I do most of the other things in this post.

But, if you might want to try it, Dr Sears’ website is www.alsearsmd.com .

Have a purpose in life to live longer….

Today's Post: Tuesday, 6-16-2009

Today’s HealthDay News that I found online under Yahoo health news reports a study that found that if you have a purpose in life –
whether it’s an ambitious mission in life, doing volunteer work that you feel makes a small positive difference, gradually getting your yard in shape, or reading all the 23 books your favorite author ever wrote, you'll live longer.

If you are working towards a goal that you care about reaching, it literally can be ambitious or quite modest.

But if you do you’ll live longer.

How powerful is this?

Even in people who were disabled or who had pre-existing medical problems, having this kind of purpose cut the death rate of the people who had one in half -- compared with people who had none!

When I saw this, I remembered seeing separate research showing that people who had a strong purpose in life had better heath & were dramatically more resilient in dealing with stress than people who didn’t.

But the neat thing that this study found is that even much more modest goals improved your health about as much.

The article noted that it might be that people who have goals had some kind of separate advantage that caused them to both have goals and to have better health.

I think that’s both true and false.

If you had parents or a mentor or teacher as a role model who was good at achieving goals or they taught you how to achieve goals successfully, you are more likely to have goals.

If you are proactive and have found you can achieve goals that you set on your own, you are more likely to usually have a goal or two in your life.

Or if you have read something that inspired you, you may have a goal as a result.

But the nature of working towards a goal and the way it engages your efforts and give a focus to some of your life are such that it turns on your brain to use more of its abilities. I believe that improves your health directly.

In addition to that, when you make choices that might harm you or improve your health, if you are working towards a goal, you are much more likely to make choices that avoid likely harm and that protect your health. THAT makes a very definite positive difference to your health.

Lastly, the process of achieving goals is such that doing so tends to teach you to be prudently optimistic. You look for solutions or causes and try again if something goes wrong. And, when you make progress successfully it tends to make you feel as if you can do the things you care about even if it looks hard to others.

Separate studies have found that people who think that way have better health in almost every category.

So, even if you didn’t have earlier experiences with achieving goals and you don’t have one now, I’m firmly convinced if you find one you care about and begin working towards it, you’ll get this effect.

And, health related goals can be twice as effective.

Say you don’t get any exercise now and cannot walk more than a few minutes without getting too tired. One way to have a goal is to decide to do a daily walk until you can not only walk for 20 minutes each day, you can walk briskly for sections of it without feeling it was too hard. Let’s say that walking for more than four minutes makes you feel really blasted. Start with daily two minute walks at an easy pace.
Then after a week do a 3 minute walk each day. By the week after that, you’ll find that you can easily do a 4 minute walk each day without feeling tired. Then just keep going; do a five minute walk the week after that; then go to six and so on until you walk for 20 minutes a day. Then once you are used to that, walk briskly for one or two short parts of it and keep adding more parts until you walk briskly for most of your walk.

Or you once you can walk for 5 minutes a day easily, do two walks each day. Walk for 5 minutes, then rest for 10 minutes and walk for five more. Then do two 6 minute walks but just rest for 8 minutes in between until you do two 9 minute walks with just 2 minutes in between. Then try just doing a 20 minute walk. Then once you are used to that, walk briskly for one or two short parts of it and keep adding more parts until you walk briskly for most of your walk.

That will help you live longer two ways. Not only you had a goal while you were doing it, you also beginning to do the exercise that also has been shown to slow aging and increase longevity.

Another way to live longer two ways is by volunteering. You can set goals for your volunteer efforts which helps you live longer. But in addition to that, every time you volunteer, no matter what for, you wind up meeting and talking to new people more or meeting and talking to people you already know more often. Then you have goals AND you have more social interaction too. And they both increase longevity.

Slow aging with exercise & more....

Today's Post, Tuesday, 6-2-2009

Yesterday’s post on fat loss had this on the best kind of exercise to help you lose fat.:

“2. The most effective kinds of exercise to lose bodyfat, lose internal fat, and turn off insulin resistance have a key similarity. They may not last huge amounts of time. But they are vigorous and can be safe once you build up to it gradually and keep the high intensity per time brief.

What exercises do that?

Interval cardio, progressive strength training, playing competitive sports, jumping rope, using a mini-trampoline, quite brisk execution of martial arts moves or routines such as Tae Bo or Karate or Kung Fu all work.

And, many of these are in fact on record as being effective at losing fat and belly fat.”

Now, here’s the surprise. These kinds of exercise also help dramatically slow aging.

These exercises cause your body to release growth hormone. That triggers repairs all throughout your body. And that works best for creating these repairs, muscle growth and fat loss when you also eat enough protein.

Meanwhile, guess what happens to people who don’t do these kinds of exercises every week? The repairs don’t happen or happen as much and those people begin to age faster due to undone maintenance repairs that gradually build up.

Then there’s the new brain cells and nerves that kind of exercise causes you to grow. That keeps you mentally sharp and mentally younger. In addition, this means that you maintain better control over your muscles and maintain your muscle speed better. Athletes talk about “losing a step” as they get older. But if you do these kinds of exercises, that happens much, much less.

And this also creates increased longevity. A recent study of runners found that they outlived non-exercisers by as much as 15 or 20 years.

In addition, today I read that exercise virtually halts or reverses one part of aging in today’s email issue of TotalHealthBreakthroughs.

Here’s the actual article so you can see for yourself.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com ."


"The Fountain of Youth? Hit the Weight Room!

By Missy Hawthorne, RN, CSCS

Are you a proud member of the “baby boom” generation? Well if so, congratulations! You and 78.2 million of your closest friends make up the bulk of this country's population, and the oldest of you turned 60 just a few short years ago! Turning 50, 60 or 70 for that matter is a wonderful milestone for which you should be proud. But as proud as you may be, aging brings some physical changes we may not be quite ready for, or ready to accept.

Have you noticed fine lines around the eyes, or your pants fitting a little tighter? Do your joints ache as you climb stairs, or do you find yourself bracing your back as you stoop to pick up the morning paper? And where did your strength go? Have your muscles vanished?

These realities and many more begin to haunt us at about age 40 and can continue to worsen with aging. Is there any way to slow things down? Ah, the fountain of youth! If only we could simply take a drink!

Studies and surveys I have come across of baby boomers' attitudes indicate that most of them are trying to be very proactive and slow their physical aging process as much as possible. One of the areas in which that's really important is muscle preservation.

As we age, we lose muscle mass and muscular strength leading to impairment in some activities of daily living. This natural age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and muscle function is called sarcopenia. The level of sarcopenia will greatly affect a person's ability to live and function independently as they grow older.

Research suggests the causes of sarcopenia are related not just to inactivity, but to oxidative stress (a condition in which antioxidant levels are lower than normal), inflammation, alterations in protein turnover, and dysfunction of mitochondria (the ATP energy factory in cells).1 And believe it or not, resistance training has been shown to not only reduce some of that oxidative stress, it reverses aging of the muscles on a genetic level.

One study compared 25 active older subjects (average age 68) to 26 younger subjects (average age 24). After a thorough medical evaluation including a graded exercise test, all subjects performed a supervised resistance training program on two non-consecutive days per week for 26 weeks.

All major muscle groups were included in the workout, beginning with single-set training which started out at more moderate levels and worked up to more intense levels. At the end of 26 weeks, the subjects underwent a muscle biopsy and RNA was extracted for analysis.

The biopsies revealed that resistance training not only slowed the process of aging, but actually reversed aging in something called the transcription RNA profile of the genes. The transcription profile looked like the RNA of a much younger person after the six months of resistance training, and the mitochondrial function of the cells was much improved. These changes translated into improved muscle strength. In fact, muscular strength in the older subjects improved by 50% in 26 weeks.2

For years personal trainers and fitness professionals have touted the benefits of resistance training. Now trainers can share with their clients that it may not be as easy as sipping from a fountain, but there is one sure way to reverse the aging process-- get into the weight room!

References

1. Kravitz, Len .2009. IDEA Fitness Journal. 21-23.
2. Melov, S. 2007. Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging In Human Skeletal Muscle. Plos ONE, 2 journal.pone.com .

[Ed. Note: Melissa Hawthorne, RN, BSN, CSCS is the owner of Priority Fitness Personal Training and Wellness. She is a Master Trainer for the Resist-a-ball Company, ISCA Personal Training, Kick-boxing, and Beamfit. Melissa serves as a fitness consultant for the LaValle Metabolic Institute. ....]"

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You can also help your body with antioxidants from supplements and food.

Fruit and vegetables – particularly organic and brightly colored ones such as sweet potatoes dark green, nonstarchy vegetables, and berries -- and vitamins A, C, E, the mineral selenium, and the supplement alpha lipoic acid all give you additional antioxidant protection. So does coffee, tea, cocoa, dark chocolate, and plant based spices such as basil and many other spices.
I’ve also read that vitamin C helps prevent aging directly by keeping your “telomeres” from unraveling & it helps prevent high inflammation and the diseases that causes, about which see our next post this Thursday.

In addition, you can improve the function of your mitochondria by taking CoQ10 100 mg twice a day in addition to the improvement you get from exercising.

And, though it may work best for your heart according to studies I’ve read of instead of all of you as once thought, you can also slow aging by taking resveratrol.

Optimism & other keys to good health....

Today's post: Tuesday, 4-21-2009

Prudent optimism, a strong sense of purpose, an outgoing and friendly nature including liking most people and wishing them well, and laughter all tend to create good health and resilience.

Their opposites tend to cause disease and early death too.

Perhaps even more important today with all the bad news lately is that this is true in both good times and bad times.

1. Martin Seligman, PhD in his book Learned Optimism shows that:

Optimists have faith that they can make good things happen and that many good things are permanent and always available. They can even do this beyond what looks like or really is the case.

Optimists tend to take action because they believe their efforts will work even if the odds say they won’t and when the initial tries don’t work. And even then, they tend to have faith they can find something that will work. They tend to believe that good things are permanent and to notice them when they show up. They try to make good things happen; they set goals because they expect to reach them; and they are very hard to defeat & tend to persist. In fact, initial failure often causes them to try to improve how they do things and to make a much stronger effort.

They tend to overestimate their chances of success beyond what the odds and other people’s experience show is likely. But this is less irrational than it looks because they take action to solve problems and often solve them when others cannot.

Prudent optimists do even better.

Optimists who are young and inexperienced or who forget to avoid avoidable risks get burned and can stop being optimistic or even get killed. Successful and prudent optimists tend to get extra training, skilled help, and avoid situations where failure is severely damaging or fatal.

They look for heads I win but tails I avoid losing situations. So if the downside is disastrous they look for a safer method or decline to take the risk. One such entrepreneur had a motto, “Where there is little to lose if you fail and a great deal to gain if you succeed, by all means try.” That sums it up very well.

Similarly they believe what they do is effective. But they focus more on achieving good results than taking credit for them. And when they succeed as members of a team, they always make sure to give their team members full credit first or only give their team members credit. They do give themselves credit internally; but publicly they give their team the credit. That makes them more effective because they then have more effective teams than people who don’t.

Despite the fact that they often see how others mess things up better than most people, they are more interested in making things better and taking responsibility to do so than in laying blame or punishing people for their mistakes. Their approach is let’s fix it now and set things up so it won’t happen next time.

And, for bad events, optimists instead of being irrationally confident and less seemingly realistic than most people, optimists are dramatically more sophisticated, analytical, scientific and accurate than most people. They are almost surgically realistic in fact.

They tend to see bad things as temporary and as limited in their scope. They realize that bad things have specific causes and if those causes are changed the bad effects will no longer occur.

If they fail at an attempt, they do NOT say that proves I can’t do this. They say that attempt failed, let’s find out why; and look for how the next attempt can be more successful.

So when dealing with bad events they are much saner and more realistic than most people.

And, this is particularly important when they deal with people. They tend to see people as grouchy or in a bad mood where non-optimists may see such people as mean people or having a sour disposition. The optimist knows that they may be sick or had someone else recently be mean to them or lack the training they need to deal well with the public. They know that the same people on another day or in different circumstances may actually be quite nice.

So, they tend to be hard to alienate and be able to deal with people better even when they are difficult. Since each and every part of such thinking is usually much more accurate and the good will and help of other people is so important, this means that optimists have more friends and fewer enemies. And they can meet people well and recover from it when things go badly with others. To put it mildly their accurate strategic thinking where people are concerned makes it very much more likely that they will have good social skills.

Research has found that such prudent optimists are more likely to eat right, exercise, and otherwise take action to keep their health. They succeed too. They have fewer diseases and live longer than other people.

They also tend to make more money and to recover better and faster if they lose money. They also are dramatically more resilient when things go wrong.

2. Having a strong sense of purpose has also been found to predict good health and longevity.

The simple way to think about this is that if you are doing something that is or will be very worthwhile and valuable to other people by your own best standards and values, you’ll think of yourself as worthwhile and your continued ability to make a contribution to achieving your purpose as important. So, you’ll tend to be prudent, to take care of your health, and you’ll be much harder to discourage than other people.

The Revered Robert Schuler even found a bible statement that applies to this that is extraordinarily comforting even if to people who have only a tiny belief in God. “God, who has begun a good work in you, will complete it.”

3. “An outgoing and friendly nature including liking most people and wishing them well” is a sign of optimism which we have already talked about.

But it also has an interesting track record that I read about earlier today. They studied people who lived to be 100 years old and looked for things that made them different. In both the men and women they studied, people who lived to be 100 tended to be more extraverted and friendly than those who did not.

Given that having a strong social network has also been found to help longevity, that makes sense.

4. Laughter helps. There is a quote from the bible that sums it up well.: “A merry heart doeth good like medicine.”

And the laughter itself is important because it dramatically releases stress and boosts feel good hormones. It even gives you some deep breathing and physical exercise.

A recent study found that people who found videos they found funny who then watched one of them for half an hour a day got better results on many of their heart risk indicators than they would have by taking the most effective drugs or supplements. If their blood pressure was too high, it went down. Their LDL cholesterol went down; and their HDL went up.

On this point, it seems the bible statement has turned out to be quite true.

More on calorie restriction and other ways to live longer....

Today's post: Monday, 10-27-2008

Two news stories that appeared today in the online health news had some exciting findings on just this topic.

1. The one that was in several sources was about the effects of a purple tomato that researchers had bioengineered to have anthocyanins that provide the purple color in blackberries, blueberries, bilberries, and other kinds of fruit.

Those researchers tested it on mice bred to develop cancers. The mice who were fed this tomato lived so much longer it would be as if humans fed this kind of purple tomato lived an average of 20 years longer.

They also found that two measures of inflammation and LDL cholesterol were significantly lower in these mice. Those effects tend to prevent cancer and protect against heart and cardiovascular disease

Since in today’s world we encounter so many kinds of chemical pollution our bodies already contain so many we might just as well be genetically bred to develop cancers because of the cumulative possible effects of these chemicals. To me that suggests that getting an abundant supply of anthocyanins from fruit and supplements is quite likely to do as much for us. And there is beginning to be some research that suggests this is so. Eating blueberries has been shown to help prevent or even reverse age related mental decline for example. I personally take bilberry extract and grape seed extract and eat blueberries 3 times a week.

My Tuesday, 10-14-2008 post on 14 ways to live longer that included, “eat purple food” looks to be accurate and the method effective based on this new study.

2. The second story appeared in yesterdays, Sunday, 10-26-2008 HealthDay online news.

In this study, the researchers fed rats tart cherry powder and the results suggest that calorie restriction and the effects of the anthocyanins in tart or sour cherries may overlap the results of calorie restriction. In fact, the study suggests that eating tart or sour cherries (with no sugar added anyway) and/or taking tart cherry extracts such as the tart cherry powder the researchers used may be a significant help to people trying to lose fat and to lose it from their waist or belly or abdominal area.

The rats the researchers fed the tart cherry powder to lost 14 % of their bodyweight mostly by losing fat in their belly or abdominal areas.

Most of us have ancestors who successfully survived famines, many of them more than once. So these fat loss effects are likely much more than people would experience. The amount of tart cherry powder per pound of bodyweight may also have been higher in these rats than people would be likely to consume.

However, it still looks as if sour cherries and any kind of tart or sour cherry extract is likely to give you some of the effects of calorie restriction. And, if you are eating right to lose fat or are using calorie restriction, eating sour cherries &/or taking any kind of tart or sour cherry extract might well improve your results and help you lose fat from your belly or tummy region.

Given the negative effects of excess abdominal fat on your health and appearance, that’s very good news indeed.

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….]”

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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!

High fructose corn syrup also speeds aging....

Today's post: Friday, 10-17-2008

We’ve already posted that drinking regular soft regular soft drinks makes you fat in part because it not only adds calories without making you less hungry—it also increases your craving for sweet foods and makes you extra hungry when your body recovers from the sugar rush you get. I’ve read that each of these effects are worse with today’s soft drinks because they are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. (These effects existed back when soft drinks contained sugar though they were not quite as bad. But back then, soft drinks were smaller and people drank many fewer bottles of them. They also got a lot more exercise and watched less TV. So, soft drinks looked safe to drink. That is no longer true.)

We posted an article that contains information suggesting that ingesting high fructose corn syrup is as bad for your heart and blood vessels as eating transfats. It seems ingesting high fructose corn syrup lowers HDL a bit and increases triglycerides. (The ratio between them reveals how much of the small particle LDL cholesterol that creates heart and cardiovascular disease is in your blood.) This means that if your HDL cholesterol is lowered and total LDL cholesterol and triglycerides are increased, you have more of the damaging small particle LDL cholesterol in your blood. Transfats or foods that contain them have been tested as doing this. That’s why they are gradually being banned. For this reason alone, high fructose corn syrup may be next on the banned food additives list.

These effects of high fructose corn syrup also tend to cause type II diabetes.

Surely the case is proved by these first three effects that high fructose corn syrup should not be consumed and FOR SURE should not be consumed several times a day. (Between soft drinks, jam, and the other foods now sold in most grocery stores many of which contain high fructose corn syrup, you really have to be careful and determined to avoid consuming high fructose corn syrup several times a day.)

It’s hard to imagine that there might be more reasons to avoid high fructose corn syrup.

But there is one. It’s a crusher too. Ouch!

I found this in my Early to Rise email yesterday.

Here’s that 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.”


“Are You Drinking Wrinkle Fertilizer?

By Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison

Sugar isn't always what you think it is. These days, most of it has been replaced with an impostor.

Known as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), this synthetic sweetener masquerades as being natural and healthy. But a chemical reaction discovered in 1914 by the French chemist Louis Camille Maillard proves otherwise. Every time you consume the corn syrup, it acts as wrinkle fertilizer, courtesy of "glycation" - the process by which sugars like HFCS bind to amino acids in the bloodstream and become Advanced Glycation End (AGE) products. This class of toxins has been linked to inflammation, insulin resistance, diabetes, vascular and kidney disease, and Alzheimer's.

Hardly natural, HFCS is made in a lab. Corn syrup is chemically altered in such a way that it becomes "high-fructose" corn syrup." This leads to a much higher rate of AGE production than occurs with plain old sugar. As sure as night follows day, AGE products bind to collagen, causing it to get twisted and tangled. This shows up as age spots, wrinkles, and everything else that makes skin look old and crumbly.

So steer clear of HFCS. Instead, opt for stevia or erythritol.

[Ed. Note: With tricky substances like HFCS lurking everywhere you turn, it can be hard to stay healthy. But if you take a few simple measures, you can protect your health and live a longer, more satisfying life.

Health expert Shane Ellison simplifies complex health issues while revealing the supplements and lifestyle habits that can help you beat today's pandemic
killers. ….]”

Shane Ellison writes often for Early to Rise. Early to Rise also publishes Total Health Breakthroughs which I also often find a good source for worthwhile health information.

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Here are my two comments.:

1. So, high fructose corn syrup is neither natural, despite using corn that is natural as a starting point, nor should anyone who wants to keep good health ever consume it.

2. Since even the natural sweeteners Shane Ellison speaks of may cause your body to crave more sweetened food, just like the several kinds of artificial sweeteners do, it may be better to use real sugar but just consume foods or drinks that contain sugar much less often than most people do now.

I also happen to really dislike the taste of stevia. To me it tastes something like marshmallow flavoring that something is slightly wrong with. And, it’s overpowering if added to a food.

I’ve not tried erythritol. But erythritol is a natural food and is said to have no added taste. One way to use it might be to use a bit less sweetening over all, 75 to 90 % as much; and then have the sweetening be half erythritol and half sugar. Perhaps that might allow you a sweet treat without causing you to crave extra sweets later. And the food would have less than half as much sugar.

14 ways to longevity....

Today's post: Tuesday, 10-14-2008

Short on time today, so this will be brief. These ways to longevity are in an article in the November, 2008 Prevention Magazine. I bought and read a copy recently.

1. Drink black or green tea daily. They left out to not drink it with milk or have milk at the same time. But both kinds of tea give a gentler energy boost than coffee so it’s harder to overdose on them. And, though green tea has more health benefits, both kinds provide strong health benefits.

2. Skip both regular and diet soft drinks. The average person drinks nearly 12 a week. And, since many people know enough to drink none, the people who drink them drink more than 12. As a result, compared with people who drink none, they are far fatter and more likely to develop a whole list of diseases such as type II diabetes which can result in early death.

3. Walk or exercise about half an hour a day. As our regular readers already know, this has a huge list of health benefits if you do it; and a huge list health penalties if you do less than half this much.

4. Have strong legs. This keeps you mobile and give you better balance as you get older. That increases longevity. Tai Chi, the wall, chairless, sitting exercise they describe in the article, and careful strength training of your thighs can give you this.

5. Eat and/or drink purple food. Blueberries, concord grapes and its juice, and bilberry extract all are high in polyphenols and anthocyanins. They help keep your blood vessels, heart, and brain healthy. And, they can make a BIG difference in how long you live & how well you think.

6. Avoid or minimize eating red meat. We’ll add to avoid red meat from grain fed animals if you can. Grass fed beef is far less harmful to eat. And, both avoid cooking red meat at high temperatures and eat it with spices, such as rosemary and garlic and onions. That reduces its chances of boosting your bad LDL and giving you cancer.

7. Keep learning new things. You can’t go back in time to be a college freshman though Prevention lists that as a longevity sign if you ever were a college freshman. But you have control over whether you learn new things every week.

8. Educated people also tend to live longer because far fewer of them smoke. Avoid cigarette smoke. Quit if you smoke. And avoid second hand smoke. Cigarette smoke does kill with lung and other cancers; but it kills more with heart disease and strokes. It also speeds up aging.
You’ll live far longer if you avoid cigarette smoke totally.

9. Like your friends. I’ll add to keep in touch with them regularly and treat them well. Your health will be far better; you’ll feel less stress, and you’ll enjoy life more. You even get brain boosting effects from talking to your friends!

10 Have healthy friends. People tend to adopt the health habits of their friends. So have some healthy ones. And spend a bit less time with any who have bad health habits. This can be a good reason to go to the gym as you meet health oriented people there.

11. Do some or all of your own housework. Studies show that even among people where that’s the only exercise they get, people who do this live longer and in better health than people who do not. It also helps keep your legs strong and burns enough calories to help you keep excess fat off.

12. Have a positive outlook on life and on the communities you are in. This one is surprisingly powerful. You not only will live a lot longer, you’ll enjoy it more.

13. Avoid getting too fat or having your blood sugar levels go to high. Totally avoid soft drinks and get regular exercise. Eat non-starchy and green vegetables every day and minimize your sugar intake. Do strength training, And make an extra effort to eat right and exercise more if you start to gain fat weight. Also be sure to get your fasting glucose and HBA1C tested every 6 months to year. You cannot fix it if you don’t know it’s broken, And with your blood sugar levels, to know, you have to get tested.

14. Do your best to find ways to overcome the challenges in your life. And do promising things and things you know are effective to overcome them.

Assume you can find a way to overcome your challenges and keep working on them.

People who are too pessimistic take no action, get bad results because they did not take action, and have poorer health.

People who are optimistic and hopeful take action. Eventually they take actions that work. And they have better health because they also take positive actions to stay health.

Running protected health extremely well….

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-12-2008

A long term study comparing members of an over 50 runners group to a control group of people who didn’t exercise that was done by researchers at Stanford was published yesterday, Monday, 8-11-2008 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

It made the online health news in Reuters and elsewhere.

Here are some key quotes from the Reuters article.:

“Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, researchers at Stanford University in California found.

"At 19 years, 15 percent of runners had died compared with 34 percent of controls," Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Any type of vigorous exercise will likely do the trick, said Stanford's Dr. James Fries, who worked on the study.

"Both common sense and background science support the idea that there is nothing magical about running per se," Fries said in a telephone interview. "It is the regular physical vigorous activity that is important."

The study supports Dr Fries. As they got older fewer of the runners ran for exercise but they kept doing some form of regular vigorous exercise every week if they did so.

This quote is also significant.:

“Most of the volunteers did some exercise, but runners exercised as much as 200 minutes a week, compared to 20 minutes for the non-runners.”

If the volunteers in the control group averaged walking a mile a week, that’s about 100 calories of exercise. And, if the runners ran 8 minute miles, 200 minutes means they burned at least 2500 calories.

I’ve not seen the actual study. But it seems that the control group got well under 500 calories a week of exercise while the runners got over 1,000 calories a week, maybe as much as an average of over 1500 calories a week.

Separate studies of such levels of regular exercise have found similar results.

In addition, two other factors likely helped cause the better health and longevity of the runners, particularly their lower rate of cancer.

Fewer of the runners smoked than did the members of the somewhat similar control group.

And, since running is an outdoor activity, the runners got considerably more sun exposure & therefore much more vitamin D than the control group.

This is also significant since studies reported in the recent online news showed people with high levels of vitamin D also had fewer cancers, had better health, and lower death rates than people who were low in vitamin D.

The good news on vitamin D is that you can take 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 quite inexpensively from supplements to get these effects. The sun exposure may have other health benefits; but it looks as if the vitamin D does the most to protect your health.

In addition, the runners, or as they tended become over time, regular exercisers, had better quality of life than the people in the control group.

Here’s a quote that shows this.:

"Members of the running groups had significantly lower mean disability levels at all time points," they added.

If you haven’t been taking vitamin D, would it still give you health benefits to start now? The evidence I’ve seen suggests the answer is a definite yes.

In this study the researchers decided to check if this was true for people who were already older who hadn’t been exercising and who started running or getting other vigorous, regular exercise.

Here’s a quote on that from the Reuters article.:

The team also set out to answer whether taking up running late in life would benefit, and whether people who stopped exercising began to pay a price as they aged.

Most of the runners have stopped running as they reached their 70s, Fries said. But it was difficult to find people who totally stopped exercising. "Almost all of them did something else. They continued their vigorous exercise," he said.

People who took up exercise when they were older also improved their health, he said.”

In this study, the people in the running group actually had fewer injuries than the people in the control group.

But, people who run for exercise after age 40 instead of doing other kinds of exercise tend to get injured often from overuse injuries.

As I see it, there are two explanations for this paradox.

1. The members of the running group were people who were over 50 years old who were those who had few enough injuries or learned to run injury free well enough to continue running at age 50. People who had more running related injuries or who switched to other kinds of exercise after getting running related injuries were not in the group of runners studied.

2. The injuries the control group had were likely those caused by being older and having weaker bones, weaker muscles, and less agility than the people in the runners group. Any group of people who get enough regular exercise will get fewer such injuries.

Strength training probably prevents these kinds of injuries even better than running does.

To me, the take home message from this is to have a long life free from unnecessary diseases and disability, there are three things it will pay you huge dividends to do.

1. Get at least 1,000 calories a week of some kind of vigorous exercise every week.
(The people in this runners group did.)

2. Take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.
(The people in this runners group likely averaged a good bit more than that from sun exposure.)

3. Don’t smoke and avoid second hand smoke.
(The people in this runners group were more likely to do this than the control group.)

STRENGTH produces longevity....

Today's post: Friday, 8-8-2008

I once read that people who test as high in grip strength tended to live longer. And, since then my at home upper body strength training workout has always had a set or two of grip and forearm exercises.

Now, it seems that ALL of the strength training I do will help me to live longer.

I got this news last Tuesday in the Total Health Breakthroughs email I get.

Here’s that article. After it I give reasons that explain why I think this effect occurs.

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,

visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

“The Fountain of Youth is Made of Iron

By Joseph McCaffrey, MD, FACS

Aerobic exercise (walking, jogging, bike riding and such) has long been the darling of the wellness folks. For years, these people wouldn't consider lifting weights. They somehow thought they'd morph into a bodybuilding freak if they so much as touched a dumbbell.

As if…

They also didn't think that muscle mass and strength had much to do with health. More and more evidence shows the error in that way of thinking. A recent long-term study reported in the British Medical Journal adds to this body of evidence.1

In this study, researchers followed 8,762 men between the ages of 20 and 82 years of age for an average of 18.9 years (as I said, this was a long-term study).

When the men signed up for the study, their comprehensive evaluation included measuring upper and lower body strength as well as their performance on a treadmill.

Adjusting for age, the risk of death during the course of the study was highest in the weakest men and lowest in the strongest. This difference persisted even when other factors such as lifestyle, family history, and other medical conditions were allowed for.

The difference persisted even allowing for cardiovascular fitness. That is, the men who were both aerobically fit and strong did better than men who were equally fit aerobically but not as strong.

As I said, this ties in with a lot of other evidence supporting the importance of strength training.

It used to be taught that losing muscle mass and strength was an inevitable part of aging. We now know this isn't the case at all.

Training with weights minimizes the strength loss that would otherwise occur. Studies show resistance training benefits even nursing home residents.

The image of an ideal exercise program has shifted dramatically in the last decade. Gone are the long hours of repetitive aerobic exercise sessions at 60-80% of maximal heart rate.

The new model rests on shorter, more intense, and highly varied exercise periods. It definitely includes resistance training.

Body weight exercises such as squats and pushups are a great beginning. And you'll find many good fitness programs recommended here on the pages of Total Health Breakthroughs. The main thing is to begin. The "use it or lose it" maxim definitely applies to muscle mass and strength.

Reference

BMJ. 2008; 337:a349.

[Ed. Note: Joseph F. McCaffrey, MD, FACS is a board-certified surgeon with extensive experience in alternative medicine, including certification as a HeartMath Trainer. His areas of expertise include mind-body interaction and cognitive restructuring. Dr. McCaffrey strives to help people attain their optimum level of vitality through attention to all aspects of wellness…..] “

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Wow !!

This research pretty well nails it down that being strong will help you live longer.

It’s possible of course that one of the causes of this is that proactive, healthy, and determined people are more likely to exert extra muscular effort when they need to than people who are the reverse. And, being in good health, being proactive, and determined are all factors that tend to help people live longer. It’s also clear such people will be stronger as a result.

So, learning to be proactive, optimistic, and effective at solving problems and achieving your goals will both make you likely to be stronger and likely to live longer.

However, just doing strength training has been proven to make you stronger even at advanced ages, even well over 80 years old as the article refers to. And, doing strength training has several life extending and health protective effects that are known.

In older people being at least moderately strong allows for more ability to go places and do things for oneself. That in turn makes life more interesting, increases self esteem, avoids dependence, and makes you more likely to survive in some kinds of emergencies.

But the longevity producing effects of strength training go beyond that. Although interval cardio has some of the same effects, you can become aerobically fit from the less intense longer sessions that were originally popularized -- which is less effective at producing these effects than strength training. Doing progressive strength training by its nature always produces these effects.

Doing progressive strength training releases growth hormones. This likely increases the growth of new nerves in your brain as we’ve posted about recently. And, it increases your body’s efforts to rebuild and repair itself. Those two effects clearly promote longevity.

And, the combination of this increased growth hormone and physical stress on your bones tends to make them get stronger instead of weaker. Because one cause of death and becoming an invalid for older people is hip and leg fractures, doing progressive strength training, particularly leg exercises or standing when doing upper body exercises, clearly helps prevent this from happening. That also increases longevity.

We’ve often posted here that doing progressive strength training increases your HDL levels. That helps prevent cardiovascular disease or helps to prevent it from getting worse if you already have it.

We also posted once that doing progressive strength training lowers your homocysteine levels. This also helps prevent cardiovascular disease or helps to prevent it from getting worse if you already have it because homocysteine tends to rise to levels too high for good health as you get older otherwise.

It may even be that the combination of increased growth hormone and lowered homocysteine helps prevent your telomeres from fraying at the ends. If that’s true, it literally slows aging by ensuring your cells make the perfect copies that keep you healthy and alive.

No matter how you explain it, it seems crystal clear that strength training will tend to make you live longer.

10th way to health & longevity....

Get your blood biomarkers tested regularly & know how to correct bad readings and do it if bad readings do turn up.

Today's post: Monday, 7-14-2008

One of the nice things about being willing to take charge of your health is the long list of things that have been proven to work that you can do or do more of.

We posted on 9 of the promised 10 ways last Friday, 7-11, in our most recent post.

That post also listed yet two more posts we have done on this general topic, lists of ways to stay healthy & live a long and healthy life.

One of those two, the one from Friday, 3-14-2008, had this:

“Get key health biomarkers, particularly those testable by blood tests, checked regularly. And, learn & use foods, supplements, & other lifestyle upgrades such as exercise that optimize any that are even somewhat too high or too low. Many of these other 20 methods have worked for thousand of years. This one is relatively new. But it’s extremely powerful. We’ve done many posts on it. Blood glucose, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, & homocysteine levels that are too high will age you rapidly; cause cardiovascular disease, tend to make you senile, & /or kill you. So will having too low a level of HDL. If you know these measures, know what levels you should shoot for, & optimize them, you WILL live longer & be healthier every year you live.”

This is the 10th way to health & longevity.

In our view, it is most effective and safer by far to improve these measures with eating right, exercise, & the appropriate supplements than it is to use drugs.

And, if you do use drugs to regulate them, which may be necessary if they are at the truly dangerous & extreme levels, you’ll only get the health protection you need if you ALSO improve these measures with eating right, exercise, & the appropriate supplements that can be used safely with the drugs in question.

In addition, you can avoid drugs & getting to dangerous levels, if you improve any of these measures with eating right, exercise, & the appropriate supplements if it goes above the desirable or at least the almost OK level.

Our many posts on these measures contain many of the foods, exercises, & supplements that will improve them.

And, we are about to release an eBook on reducing high blood pressure without drugs that will cover many of them in detail.

In order to reduce high blood pressure without drugs best, you need to move many of these measures into the desirable or at least OK levels. And, if you have high blood pressure, many of them are very likely in the not really OK to the dangerous levels. The effects of the bad readings may well be causing the high blood pressure & often are.

It would help you to read our other posts & other sources to become fully informed on this subject as it is so very large.

But we summarize some of the most important information in this post.

And, you CAN get the most important measures done in virtually one pass if your doctor or HMO will work with you. (I’ve had good luck with Kaiser myself.) And, as the power of these becomes better known & how fast they can get worse or better becomes better known, I think getting them done at least once a year will become more common, available, & supported.

Here are some of the measures and the desirable & not OK numbers.

There are others; but these are some of the most important.

1. Homocysteine should be 8.9 or less. Higher levels tend to produce mental decline & cardiovascular disease. Most people over 40 & virtually all smokers tend to be well above 10.0 & many are above 12.0.

Staying away from cigarette smoke as close to 100 % as possible helps keep homocysteine levels down. Taking optimum amounts of vitamin B-Complex, & in particular, folic acid, B6, & B12 will lower homocysteine one or more points. Many people will also need to take the supplements NAC & TMG to get to or even close to desirable levels.

2. HDL should be 45 or more. And, more than 60 is even better. Levels above 60 tend to be found in people who are unusually long lived.

1,000 calories a week of exercise each week, some of which is strength training or interval cardio that is quite vigorous is one of the best & most health producing ways to increase HDL. The main supplements that increase HDL include niacin, chromium, B-Complex vitamins, choline, & supplements like grape seed extract & bilberry extract. Drinking moderately several times a week, preferably of red wine, raises HDL. Foods that contain these ingredients raise HDL, particularly foods containing choline such as egg yolks & wheat germ. And, recent studies found that eating blueberries, blackberries, etc also raises HDL.

3. Triglycerides should be 100 or less. And a measure of LESS than your HDL is ideal. It turns out that triglycerides are a more important measure than LDL since the amount of the dangerous small particle LDL that you actually need to keep really low, is found by the ratio of HDL to triglycerides.

If you have 200 or higher triglycerides & your HDL is 40 or less, you have LOTS of the dangerous small particles of LDL. And, you don’t even need a direct measure of LDL to know this. If you do have such readings as many people do, you have or are developing cardiovascular disease. So, if you do, it’s critical to your health to both increase your HDL and to lower your triglycerides.

1,000 calories a week of exercise each week, some of which is strength training or interval cardio that is quite vigorous is one of the best & most health producing ways to lower your triglycerides & to reduce the dangerous small particles of LDL in your blood. Note that it improves BOTH your HDL & your triglyceride level at the same time.

The other thing that reduces triglycerides is to eat very few if any junk foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, to eat very little if any refined grain foods, to be moderate to sparing in the number of times a week you eat regular sugar, & to eat a lot of nonstarchy vegetables.

The third way to lower triglyceride levels is to eat wild caught fish or beef fed only grass that are high in omega 3 oils & or take DHA and omega 3 supplements from algae or purified fish oil.

The good thing about these 3 things is that they all have other health benefits. Exercise also grows new brain cells & improves your circulation directly; helps keep excess fat off of you; keeps your blood glucose levels down to desirable levels; & improves your sex life.

And, eating very few of the listed bad carbs & eating a lot of nonstarchy vegetables helps keep excess fat off of you & keeps your blood glucose levels down to desirable levels.

Note that the previous 9 ways we posted about on Friday contain this kind of eating right & exercise.

But measuring HDL & triglyceride levels may show you need to do a better job on eating right & exercise &/or add the appropriate supplements to move these two indicators into the safe or desirable levels.

4. LDL should be 129 or less for sure. And, LDL of 100 or a bit less may be even more desirable.

If your HDL level is greater than your triglyceride level and you eat a lot of fruits & vegetables, which contain antioxidants & take antioxidant vitamins & supplements, getting below 100 LDL total is not as important as it is for people with the opposite situation, It’s the oxidized and small particle LDL that harms you. So if you do a great job of minimizing THAT measure, total LDL is less critical.

That said, if your LDL is 130 or more, particularly, 160 or more, it’s good idea to bring it down.

Doing so will also help lower the oxidized and small particle LDL in your body. However, doing this by eating right, taking niacin, & taking sterol supplements will do the job for most people & is dramatically safer than taking statin drugs and has virtually no side effects compared to taking statin drugs.

5. Blood glucose measures are critically important. Your fasting glucose reading should be 99 or less & your HBA1C reading should be 5.8 or less. 89 or less on the fasting glucose reading & 5.7 or less on your HBA1C reading is ideal.

Readings on the HBA1C test of 6.0 or greater are now diagnosed as type II diabetes. 7.1 or higher HBA1C are dangerous & will tend to cause your doctor to prescribe drugs because of this.

Such readings dramatically increase your risk of heart attack & harm your blood circulation all over your body a lack which has reliably caused people to get mental decline, ruined kidneys, go blind, & have their feet amputated from lack of circulation.

And, fasting glucose readings of 100 or more, particularly over 110 or triglyceride levels of 150 or more are warning signs your HBA1C will likely go over 5.9 unless you take action to lower your blood sugar levels to the desirable range

Three things bring down blood sugar readings that are too high.:

a) Exercise does it best. And since most of us have sedentary jobs & commuting methods, it is critical to do regular exercise each week. And, no surprise, 1,000 calories a week of exercise each week, some of which is strength training or interval cardio that is quite vigorous is THE best & most effective way to do this.

If you measure your blood glucose before such exercise & ten or so minutes after, you can see dramatic drops in blood glucose. Even better, if you do such exercise regularly, your body will process the sugars you do eat enough better, the pre-exercise readings will be lower also.

b) Almost as important is to eat very few if any junk foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, to eat very little if any refined grain foods, to be moderate to sparing in the number of times a week you eat regular sugar, & to eat a lot of nonstarchy vegetables.

c) The supplements alpha lipoic acid & chromium help keep blood sugar readings where they should be also.



As you can see, getting these 5 blood biomarkers tested may well show you if you have been eating right & exercising well enough to protect your health. They begin to show WHY eating right and exercise have the health protective effects they do.

But they also may well show you that you need to take much stronger action than you had realized. And, they may well also show you that in your particular case, there are certain supplements you need to begin to take right away if you want to stay healthy.

I include this 10th way to stay healthy because it enables you to see – and correct -- problems with your health well before they start to do your health serious harm if you do these tests every six months or so

And, in most cases, you’ll be able to correct them before they do you serious harm or put you at levels where your doctor will be sure to write you a prescription for drugs which all too often have harmful or quality of life ruining side effects.

NOT getting them is like driving your car on the freeway without being able to see where you are going.

I can attest from personal experience that this is true even if you are practicing most of the other 9 ways to stay healthy.

I didn’t know that a fasting glucose reading of 115 was dangerous. When my blood test showed that reading, my doctor knew to tell me I needed to reduce it. I was already eating right mostly, exercising, & taking many of the supplements to protect my heart, including chromium polynicotinate.

But, I’d allowed myself to use more brown sugar on my oatmeal than was good for me & to eat my daily applesauce serving using applesauce with sugar added.

I immediately renewed buying & eating ONLY applesauce with no sugar added. I cut my modest intake of brown sugar in half, I began taking 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid, & I added a good bit of cinnamon with the brown sugar I still used. (Cinnamon buffers & reduces the blood sugar boosting effects of eating sugar.)

My subsequent readings have been below 100 & often below 90.

But had I not had the test to know & taken these corrective actions, I might have developed low level type II diabetes before I knew I had a problem.

In addition, when my LDL tested as 130, I added a bit more niacin each day & began taking 3 tablets a day of the sterol beta sitosterol each day. Then when I’ve been tested since, I’ve seen readings like 96 or at or just above 100.

So, getting re-tested, I knew my corrective actions got the job done.

Here again, without the tests, I’d not have know I needed to take action. And without the rests, I would have had no way of knowing I’d succeeded.

These tests didn’t used to exist. But now that they do, they give us an incredibly powerful way to take control over our health & to protect it BEFORE it’s harmed.

10 ways to health & longevity....

Today's post: Friday, 7-11-2008

One of the nice things about being willing to take charge of your health is the long list of things that have been proven to work that you can do or do more of.

Here are two posts we’ve already done with some of those lists.:

Proven long life strategies….Friday, 5-23-2008
(Strategies from the new Blue Zones book.)

& Fri, 3-14-2008, 21 ways to live to be 100)

It can be enjoyable & enlightening to read these lists. It’s fun & encouraging to note the ones you already do & do well.

And, it can help you to see things you do but need to do more or better & things you maybe never have heard of before you can do & even enjoy. (Our many posts on dark chocolate are a good example of that last category.)

Our post today has 10 ways to be healthier or live longer or both.

Nine are from an article in the email that I got earlier today from Total Health Breakthroughs.

I’ll quote the article here & add my comments plus a tenth one I think very powerful.

I like his article because he includes some things NOT on lists from other sources AND because he does an unusually good job on some of the short parts he writes on each habit..

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

“Friday, July 11, 2008

The Nine Habits of Highly Healthy People

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

For years, business and motivational gurus have known that there are basic habits that seem to predict professional success and excellence. Books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by motivational speaker and business guru Stephen Covey, which has sold over 15 million copies alone, shows that people are hungry for the secrets of success.

We don't yet have the perfect formula for long life, happiness, and physical health, but a little careful distillation of the massive amount of research on health and longevity reveals that cultivating nine basic habits will significantly increase the odds of your living long, well, and happily -- in a robust, healthy, weight-appropriate body.

1. Eat your vegetables. No kidding --and I'm talking at least 9 servings a day. Unless you're following the most stringent first stage of the Atkins Diet, you should be able to consume 60-120 grams of carbs a day (depending on your weight and exercise level), and you'd have to eat a stockyard full of spinach to get to that amount. Every major study of long-lived, healthy people shows that they eat a ton of plant foods. Nothing delivers antioxidants, fiber, flavonoids, indoles, and the entire pharmacopeia of disease fighting phytochemicals like stuff that grows in rich soil.


2. Eat fish and/or take fish oil. The omega-3's found in cold-water fish like salmon deserve the title of "wellness molecule of the century." They lower the risk of heart disease, they lower blood pressure, they improve mood, and they're good for the brain. And if you're pregnant, they may make your kid smarter!


3. Connect. And I'm not talking about the internet. In virtually every study of people who are healthy and happy into their 9th and 10th decades, social connections are one of the "prime movers" in their life. Whether church, family, volunteer work, or community, finding something you care about that's bigger than you, that you can connect with and that involves other people (or animals) -- will extend your life, increase your energy, and make you happier -- always.


4. Get some sun. At least 10-15 minutes three times a week. Interestingly, a recent study showed that the four healthiest places on earth where the people were longest-lived, were in sunny climates.1 Sun improves your mood and boosts levels of cancer-fighting, performance-enhancing, bone-strengthening vitamin D -- a vitamin most people don't get nearly enough of.


5. Sleep well. If you're low in energy, gaining weight, grumpy, and looking haggard, guess what? Chances are you're not sleeping long enough or well enough. By sleeping "well," I mean uninterrupted sleep, in the dark -- without the television on, in a relaxing environment. Nothing nourishes, replenishes, and restarts the system like 7-9 hours sleep. Hint: start by going to bed an hour early. And if you've got a computer in the bedroom, banish it!


6. Exercise every day. Forget this 20 minutes three times a week stuff. Long-lived people are doing things like farm chores at 4:30 in the morning! Our Paleolithic ancestors traveled an average of 20 miles per day. Our bodies were designed to move on a regular basis. New studies show that merely 30 minutes a day of walking not only reduces the risk of most serious diseases, but can even grow new brain cells!2


7. Practice gratitude. By making a list of things you're grateful for, you focus the brain on positive energy. Gratitude is incompatible with anger and stress. Practice using your under-utilized "right brain" and spread some love. Focusing on what you're grateful for -- even for five minutes a day -- has the added benefit of being one of the best stress-reduction techniques on the planet.


8. Drink red wine or eat grapes. The resveratrol in dark grapes is being studied for its effect on extending life, which it seems to do for almost every species studied. (So does eating about one third less food, by the way.) If you've got a problem with alcohol, you can get resveratrol from grapes, peanuts, or supplements. (And if you're a woman, and you choose the alcohol option, make sure you're getting folic acid every day.)


9. Get the sugar out. The number one enemy of vitality, health, and longevity is not fat, it's sugar. Sugar's effect on hormones, mood, immunity, weight, and possibly even cancer cells is enormous -- and it's all negative. To the extent that you can remove it from your diet, you will be adding years to your life and life to your years.
This list may not be perfect and it may not be complete, but it's a start. As my dear grandmother used to say, "Couldn't hurt." Not one of these "habits" will hurt you, all will benefit you, and some may make the difference between life and death.

And it's never too late to start cultivating them.

Enjoy the journey!

References

1. Buettner, D, The Blue Zones, National Geographic Books, 2008; ISBN 1426202741.
2. http://biomed.gerontologyjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/61/11/1166.

[Ed. note: Dr. Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health. He's a board certified nutrition specialist with a Master's degree in psychology and the author of five books including The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. His latest book is The Most Effective Cures on Earth…..]”

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1. Vegetables.

As we posted about recently, eating a lot of the green, nonstarchy vegetables like salad greens, broccoli, green peas, green beans, & the green, nonstarchy vegetables that are other colors like fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic, & cauliflower is on of the little known and most effective ways to get & stay trim and free from excess body fat.

All the cruciferous vegetables from radishes to kale, to broccoli help prevent cancer. And, raw broccoli & cauliflower also help prevent not just cancer but the most dangerous forms of it as well.

You can try having seaweed soup with shrimp & mushrooms with oriental spice or kimchi with poached egg for breakfast or scrambled eggs with broccoli sprouts or an omelet with chopped onion & green pepper & chopped mild chilis for breakfast.

You can take a variety of raw vegetables with you to eat at lunch.

You can make many kinds of good tasting salads with some extra virgin olive oil or nuts or avocado or shrimp, feta cheese, or canned wild salmon.

And, steamed vegetables have more flavor than you might guess if you haven’t tried them & have more of their nutrition intact than boiled vegetables.

Lastly, research recently reported found that organically grown vegetables have even more of the nutrients he talks about than those grown with pesticides & herbicides.

2. Eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils is surprisingly high in them, including the DHA he highlights. And article later in the today’s issue has a recipe for cooking wild caught salmon that lists each 6 ounce serving as having 1,000 mg of DHA & notes a Tufts University study that 180 mg a day of DHA apparently cuts your chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease by 47 %.

DHA is available in supplements that take it from the algae that fish eat to have so much of it.

And, Nordic Naturals & many other companies sell purified fish oil capsules with DHA, EPA, other omega 3 oils. Nordic Naturals’ supplement & those some other providers also include a natural orange or lemon flavor that over-rides any fishy aftertaste.

Lastly, it is now pretty well established that women who take DHA while pregnant & then while breast feeding, or use formula that has DHA added, wind up with measurably smarter kids.

Since people with adequate DHA are also noticeably less irritable & are easier to get along with than people who get way too little, they likely have easier to take, friendlier kids besides.

3. Talking with friends, colleagues, & family members often turns out to be extremely valuable for health.

People who are optimistic enough to see much of the difficulties with people as temporary & see reasons to like people & who notice and value the strengths in others do this better with even better results every way.

And, even better, recent research has shown just talking with people give your brain a workout as good as solving chess problems or doing crossword puzzle. Since it feels easier & is even fun sometimes, this effect is both surprising & very good news.

4. Get some sun. Most people today do not. There is some danger in too much. And, many people live in places where it is too hot, cold, or dangerous to do.

That said, doing so causes your body to make & release a surprising amount of vitamin D3.

And, getting at least some – even if it is in overcast looking winter weather at lunchtime for 10 or 15 minutes has been shown to prevent SAD, sunlight caused depression.

The wonderful news is that taking 1,000 mg of D3 as a supplement twice a day is cheap and has an astonishingly long list of health benefits that have only recently become known including preventing all kinds of cancers & immune diseases. To a large degree taking that much vitamin D will protect your health when you can’t get much sun.

Lastly, another very powerful reason for the good track record of getting sun exposure is that it often goes with walking, gardening, outside work, or playing some kind of sport. Since all or most of these kinds of exercise can be done inside, that also helps people who can’t get outside to get the benefits anyway.

5. Sleep well. I really like his approach. He notes that not only is enough sleep important but gives some great tips on how to set it up so you get refreshing & effective sleep during the time you have to sleep.

Three other points are worth adding. You sleep a LOT better if you exercise the day before. I find that a lot of exercise or activity or doing a vigorous strength training work out that day, are unusually effective in doing this. Second, it also helps enormously if you go to bed & get out of bed at the same time each day, or at least each weekday. Lastly, NOT watching the news on TV after about 9 PM unless something truly remarkable or important has happened will help you sleep much better. And you may get more sleep by not staying up to watch the news besides.

6. Exercise every day. Exercise is incredibly important for good health. It also improves your sex life. Surprisingly few people really know how incredibly important it is. As long as you don’t take too much time from working or parenting to do it or injure yourself, MORE & every day IS better than 20 minutes three times a week.

But a very important point he misses is that if each of those 20 minute sessions is 10 minutes of vigorous & progressive strength training & 10 minutes of vigorous interval cardio and a person does these sessions every week, they get close to half of the benefits of all the exercise he recommends.

And, you may HAVE 20 minutes three times a week but not have more time than that in your schedule now. Even better, if you do the 20 minutes three times a week each week, you will be easily up to doing a lot more exercise when you have the time. And, if you don’t do that much you very probably will not be.

7. Practice gratitude. I really like that he includes this one. Research has found that if you make even two minutes every day to remember something good that you already have or that happened to you that day, your mood and your perceived quality of life increase dramatically.

And, when you feel better, research shows, you are much more likely to exercise & make the extra effort to eat right and do these other things for your health. Your connections with the other people in your life will go better, for example.

It BELONGS on this list; & I’ve rarely seen it on other such lists.

8. Drinking red wine in moderation, eating red or purple grapes, & eating cherries & berries all have multiple & powerful health benefits BESIDES resveratrol that he does NOT mention.

To get the full anti-aging benefit of resveratrol, I think you need to drink red wine in moderation, if you can do so safely, and eat red or purple grapes or drink purple grape juice, & eat cherries & berries when you can – AND take resveratrol supplements daily.

But the evidence is that if you do that, you’ll live longer in better health & be notably less likely to get heart disease, cancer, or to begin to have no energy for life.

THAT is a powerful set of benefits.

9. Slash the amount of sugar you eat & drink.

Two points he left out are that:

a) learning how to NEVER eat or drink high fructose corn syrup and then doing just that & virtually eliminating refined grain foods from your diet are the most important part of cutting sugar & super high glycemic foods from your food supply.

&

b) the more exercise you do each week, particularly interval cardio & strength training, the better your body will safely handle the sugar that you do wind up ingesting.

Also, since many of us enjoy some foods that have sugar occasionally, I find it more doable to eat them much less often than to give them up entirely.

What clearly will harm you is if you eat tons of sugar or even worse, high fructose corn syrup, every day & never exercise.

I’m out of time today, so the 10th way to give yourself better health & longevity will be in our next post.

It’s more complex & high tech than many of these other 9 ways. But it is as powerful or even more powerful than they are.

Proven long life strategies...

Today's post: Friday, 5-23-2008

A few days ago, I read that there is a new book out in which the author lists the factors he found in common in four parts of the world where a large number of the people live into their 90’s & to be over 100 AND where they tend to stay in good health in their later years.

So, when Early to Rise did a review yesterday including some of the strategies he found, I decided to post it here & add some of my own comments.

(As some of you know, we did a post on Friday, 3-14-2008 called 21 ways to live to be 100. And, as you’ll see many of those overlap this article & suggest similar strategies.)

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

“Anti-Aging Strategies From the Longest-Lived People in the World

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

Recently, I interviewed Dan Buettner, whose latest book, The Blue Zones, is a veritable treasure trove of tips for living longer. Buettner is an explorer whose work for National Geographic led to the book. He investigated four parts of the world where there are more healthy centenarians than anywhere else - Sardinia, Italy; Loma Linda, CA; Okinawa, Japan; and Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula. Here's what we can learn from the folks who've done "anti-aging" better than anyone else on the planet.

1. Move. Longevity all-stars engage in regular, low-intensity physical activity, whether it be hiking, shepherding, gardening, walking, yoga, or something else. The data suggest that moderate, even easy, activity done on a daily basis will extend your life.

2. "Hara hachi bu." This Okinawan saying means "Stop eating when your stomach is 80 percent full." Clear enough? Cutting calories by a mere 20 percent will extend your life.

3. Go heavy on the plants. While readers of ETR know that higher-protein diets can be really healthy, that doesn't rule out a diet that's also loaded with vegetables. All of the long-lived peoples investigated by Buettner ate a plant-based diet with almost no processed foods.
4. Drink some alcohol. In Sardinia, it's wine. In Okinawa, it's sake. Whatever you prefer, alcohol in moderation seems to reduce both stress and inflammation. But remember that women who drink need to be getting plenty of folic acid in their diets. (Even moderate drinking raises the risk of breast cancer - but only for women who are folic acid deficient.)

5. See the big picture. Okinawans call it ikigai. Nicoyans call it plan de vida. In both cultures, the phrase translates to "why I wake up in the morning." Develop a strong sense of purpose, connection to others, and community. It's the best anti-aging "medicine" you can find.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden, a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health, is the author of the new book The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com.....]”

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1. We’ve done many posts on how regular exercise improves your health & slows aging. It seems it is even more critical to slow the aging of your brain than even our posts on the subject suggested. Our next post will be about that.

2. I haven’t read the book for the complete story on the other 3 cultures on purposely stopping eating a bit before you are completely full. Significant calorie restriction does seem to prolong life but can take some of the fun out it.
Fortunately, getting a lot of exercise, eating a lot of vegetables, & NOT eating processed or junk foods also help prevent you from being too fat. And, it looks like you can get the anti-aging effect of significant calorie restriction by taking Resveratrol.

And, it can be a LOT easier to eat moderately like this when you both are not under heavy stress & you have a good social support system. And, these four groups tended to have that going for them.

3. There are quite a good number of ways to eat that support & protect good health. The one thing they ALL have in common is stressing to eat a lot of vegetables both in amount & in variety. These groups seem to have that in common also.

In his recent book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan summarized his research in a way that summarizes the #2 & the #3 strategies this way: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”

(Most packaged food & snacks and some ice creams, bread & other foods that contain harmful or nonfood additions, do NOT make his list as food. He calls those food-like nonfoods.)

Another related point is that for people who are not allergic, eating nuts regularly boosts longevity by almost as much as NOT smoking – 5 to 10 years or more. And, while many of the Seventh Day Adventists do NOT drink alcohol, they do often eat nuts regularly as they are vegetarians. And they were one of the four groups he studied.

4. Drinking moderately, particularly if it’s combined with meals & socializing does seem to be protective.

The good social support & regular exercise the people he studied had does help avoid the excessive stress that drives drinking enough to overshoot moderate level of alcohol consumption.

5. Having religious faith or a personal guiding philosophy that live is worth living combined with strong family & community ties and social support not only sharply increases longevity, it makes it worth doing.

From the reviews I’ve read, this seems to be the most important take away from Dan Buettner’s book, The Blue Zones.

There are other sources for information the value of eating right and getting regular exercise. And, many people like the idea that moderate drinking has some health value. But this fifth point is significant & not stressed as often by so many different sources.