New ways to prevent or slow aging AND prevent diseases....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 10-4-2011

You are made out of self-renewing cells. When the DNA in the new cells is identical to the originals, you stay well and age little or not at all.

Recently it was found that each strand of DNA has shoe lace cap like sections at the ends that help keep the critical DNA in the middle able to make perfect copies. These are called telomeres.

When they are long enough, you stay well and hardly age at all. When they get shorter you get more diseases and age faster. That’s because you begin to be made out of partially defective cells!)

So, to prevent many diseases and slow aging, it clearly is worth it to find out what makes your telomeres shorter or longer.

Keeping your telomeres long helps avoid heart disease, cognitive decline, depression, cataracts, and type 2 diabetes.

1. Perhaps the best stress reliever known is doing Tai Chi daily. It also acts as a mild whole body exercise and burns as many calories while you do it as walking. Of the actions you can take, this one is extremely valuable. One study I read of said doing this increases the length of your telomeres by 43%.

Thanks to the email I get from Dr Al Sears, here is a list of other things you can do. Many of them take less time to do than Tai Chi and all of them are relatively easy to do.

(Dr Al Sears also sells an expensive supplement that causes your body to release telomerase which directly lengthens telomeres.

But if you aren’t unusually well to do, you can still do all these other things which are almost that effective if you do all of them.)

Here are the other things he recommends. (I’ve added a bit to his info as well.)

2. Prevent gum disease. Gum disease shortens your telomeres and directly causes heart disease.

This takes just a few minutes each day and part of it your dental hygienist can show you how to do if you haven’t yet learned it.

At least once every single day, floss in between your teeth and along their edges on both sides of the gap in between your teeth.

Then at least once every single day, brush your teeth in a way that mostly brushes your gums where your teeth come out of them and then brush your gums directly.

Then if you possibly can, get your teeth cleaned every 6 months.

(This also helps minimize bad breath. And it will help you keep your teeth and avoid the cost of having them pulled or replaced with false teeth as well.)

3. Get vigorous exercise most days of every week.

Based on the results from multiple studies, this directly lengthens your telomeres. You age much more slowly and get far fewer diseases!

4. Avoid or reverse obesity.

The exercise just mentioned helps enormously to do just that.

But the second part is to minimize sweet treats and even more important to virtually eliminate fattening foods and drinks including all soft drinks, virtually all foods made of refined grains or high fructose corn syrup, or artificial sweeteners, or which have hydrogenated oils or oils high in omega 6 added to them.

This includes French fries, potato chips, any bread not made of 100 % whole grains, all packaged desserts, virtually all commercially baked goods, and all packaged snacks.

Eat a diet high in real foods such as health OK protein foods and extra virgin olive oil and lots of nonstarchy vegetables, particularly the cruciferous ones, and some fresh fruit.

Watching far less TV than most people helps with both parts. You then have time to exercise. And you avoid watching the ads for the things that will make you fat that run on TV.

Eating processed meats that include nitrites and eating meats from animals fed grain, particularly their fat, shortens telomeres.

Eat plant protein foods like raw nuts if you aren’t allergic, and beans and lentils and animal protein foods from naturally fed animals such as 100 % grass fed beef, pasture fed poultry, and wild caught fish to avoid this.

5. Do things that increase your HDL cholesterol. People with high HDL have longer telomeres. They also are known to have less heart disease and live longer!

Take some niacin daily. Even taking 250 to 300 mg once a day after a meal will help. Taking twice that is more effective by doing it after two meals a day. Research has found people live longer who do this; and it is strongly heart protective. Your HDL goes up and your more harmful LDL & triglycerides go down. (Taking more than 1,000 mg a day of niacin is possible but can cause liver problems. So if you want to do that, you need to work with your doctor.)

I’ve found that doing all these HDL boosting things and taking about 1,000 mg a day of niacin keeps my HDL in the very high 89 to 96 range.

Get extra choline in food once a day. The yolk in whole eggs is high in choline. And, if you can eat wheat, wheat germ is quite high in choline.

Eating garlic or taking deodorized garlic may not lower total cholesterol but doing this and/or eating onions does boost HDL.

Get vigorous exercise most days of every week. The longer you have done this, the better the effect is on boosting your HDL because every year you exercise this way the higher your HDL gets!

Drink moderately. Red wine has other heart benefits. But the key thing is to avoid heavy drinking which can cause other problems and even severe problems. This too will increase HDL. And the moderate stress relief you get may help keep your telomeres long directly also.

6. Totally avoid tobacco smoke. It not only produces cardiovascular disease in everyone exposed to it, it causes 30% of all cancers. But that’s not all. Tobacco smoke also speeds aging and shortens your telomeres!

7. As I write this the FDA has proposed making most supplements unavailable.

If that happens, you may be deprived of doing this next step.

But for now and later if the FDA is talked out of doing that or prevented from doing that, you can do two more things.

Take 500 mg of vitamin C a few times each day. This has been shown to keep your telomeres long.

How high your homocysteine reading is varies with how long or short your telomeres are. Since tobacco smoke speeds aging and shortens your telomeres, it’s no surprise that it causes your homocysteine reading to go up.

For existing and severe heart disease, taking the supplements that lower homocysteine has failed to reverse it. But the jury is still out on preventing heart disease before the damage is done. And there are studies that show taking these supplements to lower homocysteine before the damage is done, do make cognitive decline less likely.

Taking 500 to 1,000 mcg a day of vitamin B12 sublingually so your absorption of it is direct is the best way since it works even if you take reflux drugs or don’t digest your food well.

This helps prevent mental decline directly in addition to lowering your homocysteine.

The other supplements that lower homocysteine include, 800 mcg a day of folic acid, 25 to 75 mg a day total of vitamin B6 (but NOT 100 mg a day or more), and a two to 25 mg a day of vitamin B2, riboflavin.

500 to 1,000 mg a day of N-acetyl cysteine, NAC and 500 to 750 mg a day of tri-methyl glycine, TMG also lower homocysteine. And the NAC has been shown to be directly protective to your brain besides.

Ideas on boosting immune systems in older people....

Today's Post: Friday, 9-11-2009

Last Wednesday, HealthDay news had a brief article noting that as people get older their immune systems begin to be less effective.

It took its info from the U.S. National Library of Medicine listing problems that tend to happen more often as people get older.:

Their immune system becomes less able to prevent diseases such as bacterial infections or viral diseases.

Cancer risk increases as the immune system “sees” it later or not at all or doesn’t get rid of it as well.

Wounds and injuries take longer to heal due to lower levels of growth hormone &/or cells not copying themselves accurately.

And, since in some people the drop off in their immune system includes its ability to NOT attack things it should leave alone, the risk of getting an autoimmune disease increases.

There are two overall strategies to combat this.

Slow aging; & boost the health of your immune system.

A. Here are six proven ways to slow aging.:

1) Regular exercise each week including some safely done vigorous exercise several times each week slows aging due to increases in growth hormone release, relative improvement in heart function and circulation, and the release of BDNF, a growth hormone that grows new nerve and brain cells. (Strength training, interval cardio, and other vigorous exercise tend to be most effective at growth hormone release.)

2) Don’t smoke at all; and to the extent you can avoid second hand smoke. Smoking is quite effective in ruining circulation, causing heart disease, and directly speeds the aging process.

3) Taking 1,000 mg a day of vitamin C, eating lots of vegetables and some fruit daily; avoiding severe stress when you can; getting regular stress relief; getting decent sleep; taking a daily multivitamin plus mineral tablet; having a good social network, good social skills, and socializing often – each help prevent your telomeres from shortening as fast as they otherwise would which directly slows aging & to some extent prevents it.

4) Keep your homocysteine below 9.0 to the extent you can. Not smoking; eating right; and getting regular exercise all help to do that. So does taking robust amounts of B12 & folic acid & taking 50 to perhaps 100 mg a day of B6. (More B6 than that can be harmful.) Periodically getting your homocysteine tested and adding 500 mg each of TMG and NAC if your reading is still over 9.0 can also help.

5) Taking 100 mg a day of ubiquinol, 50 mg first thing in the morning and 50 mg at mid-day every day may considerably slow aging according to an experiment on mice reported by Dr Al Sears.

Taking 100 mg a day of trans resveratrol may slow aging overall and HAS been shown to slow the aging of your heart.

6) Eating lots of nonstarchy vegetables each day; going easy on good fats such as avocados, walnuts, other nuts, extra virgin olive oil and fish oil & NOT ingesting other oils, including NEVER ingesting hydrogenated oils; getting abundant regular exercise; eating very little sugar & only on occasion; eating no refined grains; AND cutting back some days of the week on your total food intake if you start gaining weight will tend to lower your overall intake of calories without harm. And, eating fewer calories tends to slow aging while eating too many increases it.

B) Boost your immune system effectively.

Here are some ways to do that that may help.:

1) Get immunized for seasonal flu each year; & get immunized for things like tetanus and bacterial pneumonia at the recommended intervals. This helps ensure you get less of these things; that you are less damaged if you do get them; and it provides your immune system with regular exercise.

Some health writers suggest not getting immunized citing the occasional side effects. The stats I’ve seen suggest this is like preventing one unit of risk in exchange for leaving a 100 units of risk alone. I strongly disagree.

(Such writers may be correct for some new vaccines. They may well be correct that vaccines with adjuvants, boosters for your immune system, that contain mercury or aluminum, all of which may over-rev your immune system may be a lot less safe than sticking to vaccines without them. They are definitely correct that boosting your immune system in other ways is a good idea.)

2) Take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 and 600 mg of turmeric or its active ingredient curcumin. Both boost the capacity of your macrophages to get rid of amyloid plaque in your brain; both may help prevent cancer for the same reason. AND, vitamin D3 apparently makes your immune system better at recognizing things it should get rid of & things it should leave alone thereby preventing autoimmune diseases!

3) Taking 1,000 mg a day of vitamin C, eating lots of vegetables and some fruit daily; avoiding severe stress when you can; getting regular stress relief; getting decent sleep; taking a daily multivitamin plus mineral tablet; having a good social network, good social skills, and socializing often – each directly help keep your immune system strong.

4. Taking 30 to 45 mg a day of zinc ( & 2 or 3 mg a day of copper to balance it); but not taking more than that tends to boost your immune system. 60 to 90 mg of zinc may help for a day or two if you get sick; but more than that or taking that much for a longer time seems to reverse the good effect.

5. 100 mg a day of panax ginseng may help; but more can cause undesirable increases in blood pressure; and panax ginseng can interfere with many kinds of drugs.

6. Drink LOTS of water when you get sick. It boosts your immune system and avoids the weakness, confusion, disability, and the complications you can get if you don’t and get dehydrated which you otherwise might easily due to the unperceived effects of fever or mouth breathing due to a stopped up nose.

7. Take 500 mg a day or more of l-arginine if you aren’t taking an antibiotic.

And STOP taking l-arginine & take 500 mg a day or more of l-lysine instead if you ARE taking an antibiotic.

L-arginine causes your body to release nitric oxide and your immune system uses nitric oxide to kill some kinds of disease organisms. So usually it’s a good idea to take l-arginine which also keeps your blood vessels health and relaxed & releases growth hormone.

But I just read that bacteria resistant to antibiotics have developed a way to use nitric oxide to prevent the antibiotics from killing them. Since you want to have the antibiotics kill the disease bacteria instead, when taking the antibiotics, STOP the arginine and add the l-lysine. (Like zinc and copper arginine and lysine interact, so to get less effect from the arginine in your body or in foods you eat, take l-lysine instead.)

Two proven ways to save money on healthcare….

Today's Post: Monday, 6-8-2009

Last Friday we did a post on how to keep up to 95 to 98 % of all cancers from happening to you.

One of those methods has recently been moved from a likely way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease to one that is close to proven and may even help treat it in its earlier stages. (See tomorrow’s post.)

The same lifestyle that prevents cancer and along with using some diagnostic tests and supplements can prevent up to 95 to 98 % of heart attacks. And, these methods can help reverse existing heart disease if it’s not too severe.

The same lifestyle along with fasting glucose and HBA1C testing and some different supplements can prevent most cases of type 2 diabetes and can virtually reverse it for perhaps as many as 90% of the people who get it according to one doctor who has had successful experience at doing so.

These facts illustrate the two ways to save money on healthcare.

1. If you prevent a disease, you save the money it would have cost to treat it.

2. If you reverse or counteract the causes of a disease, you can almost always treat it more completely and for far less cost than trying to reverse symptoms over and over again for a disease that you never cured or repair damage of the disease you never got rid of in the first place.

So, since many of the things that prevent a disease work by eliminating its causes, those preventive measures can often, though not always, help cure the disease after you get it.

And, if you do those two things well, as our current version of medical care all too often has not, you save a LOT of money on healthcare. Why? After the fact emergency treatments are EXPENSIVE. Things like heart bypass surgery, kidney dialysis, chemotherapy radiation treatment for cancers, powered wheel chairs, and more and the skilled and highly educated people who provide them cost a lot of money. If you only need them 10% as often, you can spend twice as much on them to get the best quality when they are used and still save 80% of what you would otherwise have had to spend.

It’s imperative that we begin spending less money for better results in our healthcare.

But I’m very concerned that the current reform efforts seem to have overlooked these two ways to do that.

There IS some good news though.

What if there was a way to make full use of the newer and more revealing tests of the causes of diseases that would enable you to remove those causes with precision and very high effectiveness?

It’s not yet used much, which is most unfortunate since it causes unnecessary costs and suffering. But the good news is that exactly this IS now being done.

The doctor who is its best advocate is not perfect. But he is articulate and makes good sense. Quite often his patients get well when other doctors could not make that happen.

He does a good job of speaking for himself. So, I’ve decided to quote him directly here.

He is doctor Mark Hyman.:

“Obama's Health Plan: What Matters the Most is Missing

Want to know the real truth about healthcare in this country?

Even if President Obama and Congress get everything else right in healthcare reform, it won’t matter ... that is, unless we address the underlying causes of illness that drive both skyrocketing healthcare costs and the proliferation of chronic disease.

But we can’t get there with our current model of medicine, and that’s what nobody is currently talking about, not even President Obama.

But there is a solution ...

Thankfully, an innovative approach currently exists that can not only prevent but also more effectively TREAT chronic disease ... more about that in a moment.

To effectively reform healthcare in the U.S., we must change not only the WAY we practice medicine, but also the TYPE of medicine we practice.

We must improve financing and delivery of healthcare, as well as our fundamental scientific approach to chronic disease -- an epidemic that now affects 133 million Americans and accounts for 78 percent of healthcare costs.

Healthcare costs are now approaching 20 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product -- approximately $2.5 trillion, or $8,160 per person annually. This is more than what the federal government spends on national defense, homeland security, education, and welfare combined!

Unless real change is made we are facing an impending collapse of our economy as more of our resources are put toward caring for the chronically ill.

This is a national security issue that threatens our standing in the world. As President Obama has stated, "Healthcare reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative."

Fortunately, there is a new model of medicine that offers the real change we need. This new medicine is personalized, preventive, predictive, participatory, and patient-centered.

It is proactive rather than reactive. And it addresses the causes of disease and optimizes biologic function in the body’s core physiologic systems, rather than just treating symptoms.

This model exists TODAY – it is based on systems biology and is called functional medicine.

Why We Need to Change Healthcare Now

Our current model of medicine is unsustainable because it cannot stem the rising tide of chronic disease.

Relying only on reforms in coverage or access, financing, electronic records, malpractice, medical errors, coordination of care, and research on new drug therapies -- while retaining the conventional acute-care model -- will be untenable in the long run.

To be sure, such reforms are necessary, but not sufficient to avoid the collapse of our healthcare system, which may soon dwarf our current financial crisis if the Medicare trust fund runs out in 2016 as projected. According to the "Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs" annual trustees report just published, the program is actually bankrupt right now. It's taken in less money than it has paid out two years running.(1)

This is not being alarmist; this is simply facing reality.

Here's the problem: These reforms do not alter the fundamental approach to prevention and treatment.

If we focus on improving the way we practice the medicine of the past, we will still have the medicine of the past. If we improve the wrong type of care, then we will simply be doing the wrong things better.

Conventional acute-care medicine is disease-, drug-, and procedure-based and is designed for acute illness, trauma, and end-stage disease for which it is the best form of treatment in the world.

As a result, our current medical education focuses on sickness rather than health; journals publish about disease management not what causes disease.

However, disease-based, acute-care medicine is the WRONG model to address chronic illness, because it doesn’t address WHY people are sick or the underlying mechanisms and biologic causes of their illness.

This is why we spend more money than any other industrialized nation on healthcare yet are near the bottom of the list for all major health outcomes. This is why we are witnessing a decline in life expectancy for the first time in history.

The Right Solution for the Problem of Chronic Disease

Functional medicine, on the other hand, is a system of personalized care that directly addresses how our environment and lifestyle influence our genes to create imbalances in our core biologic systems that, over time, manifest as disease. It is this kind of medicine that is needed to create real success in 21st century medicine.

Functional medicine is not a new treatment, test, or procedure -- it is a new "operating system" or method for problem solving and processing complex clinical information.

It is a fundamentally different way of thinking about the origins and mechanisms of illness. It encompasses all the TOOLS of healing and medicine, both conventional and integrative. And it provides a common language, a map or GPS system for navigating through the puzzle of chronic illness.

Simply put, functional medicine identifies why our underlying biology is imbalanced and corrects those imbalances. Then our body's natural healing intelligence takes over and automatically fixes what's ailing us.

This is the future of medicine and it's available right now.

A growing coalition of practitioners, educators, and scientists is dedicated to advancing this model. I am part of that coalition.

We at The Institute for Functional Medicine have introduced 20,000 physicians and healthcare providers to functional medicine since 1991, and we wrote the Textbook of Functional Medicine in 2005 to describe both the underlying science and the practical clinical strategies and tools that comprise this new model.

This is not just an elegant theory –- it works in practice ... something that I am very familiar with since I have been practicing functional medicine for over 10 years.

Let me illustrate how this works with real patients I have treated in my practice.

A Woman with Multiple Chronic Diseases

Deborah, a 46-year-old woman, having seen a dozen doctors over a dozen years, came to me with 29 different diagnoses, including depression, hypertension, obesity, polycystic ovarian syndrome, migraines, heavy menstrual bleeding, asthma, sinusitis, irritable bowel syndrome, reflux, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and psoriasis.

Each disease was treated with the best available conventional treatment. But she was still sick, despite 9 medications.

Of course, she didn't have 29 separate diseases. She had imbalances in a few of her core underlying biologic systems -- digestive, immunologic, and hormonal -- that gave rise to all her symptoms.

The underlying cause of all her "diseases" was an autoimmune response to gluten, leading to autoimmune thyroid disease and severe vitamin D deficiency because of low absorption of nutrients from the foods she consumed.

Six weeks after eliminating gluten from her diet (wheat, barley, rye, etc.), improving her diet, and replacing thyroid hormone and vitamin D, her 29 diseases were completely gone -- along with 21 pounds ... not a bad side effect!

A Boy with Attention Deficit Disorder and Asthma and Allergies

Clayton was a 12-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and behavior problems and had poor school performance who was on Ritalin for years. He also had illegible handwriting, or dysgraphia.

He also had apparently "unrelated" problems of asthma, allergies, hives, stomachaches, headaches, insomnia, muscle cramps, and anxiety and a history frequent infections and antibiotic use.

He had seen 5 specialists (lung, gastroenterologist, allergist, psychiatrist, and neurologist) and was on 7 medications for allergies, asthma, pain, and ADHD. No one asked how everything was connected, or how his diet of junk food and sugar made him sick.

His immune system was activated, his digestion not working, and he was nutritionally deficient in zinc, omega-3 fats, magnesium, and vitamin B6.

We simply normalized his biologic function by removing impediments to health (junk food diet, food sensitivities, overgrowth of yeast, and lead) and providing the ingredients necessary for optimal biologic function -- a whole-foods diet, additional nutrients including vitamin B6, magnesium, zinc, omega-3 fats, and probiotics.

In two months he returned without any physical or psychiatric symptoms and was off all his medication. His mother brought a sample of his handwriting, which had gone from illegible to normal, simply by getting his brain working again by getting his body in balance.

A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity for Real Reform ...

This model of care is the basis for the type of medicine that must be at the center of healthcare reform. I live in the trenches as a practicing doctor, treating real people who are suffering from real problems.

These problems have real solutions, which are being overlooked -- solutions that hold the key to saving our healthcare system from self-destruction.

Functional or systems medicine needs to be the "Intel inside" that drives the type of medicine that is practiced as we create a new healthcare system.

Real healthcare reform is now possible in a perfect storm where the alignment of economic, scientific, and moral imperatives provides an opportunity for us as a nation to do well by doing good through fundamentally changing the type of medicine we practice.

It will require the collective imagination, intention, focus, and action by healthcare providers, consumers, industry, and policy makers. But we can do it, and we must do it now.

In the words of the ancient sage, Rabbi Hillel, "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?" “

Five critically important health habits….

Today's Post, Thursday, 5-28-2009

These 5 critically important health habits work with the three basic strategies.

1. Avoid things that harm your health.

2. Do things that support and protect your health.

3. Do enough of each of the first two things to be effective.

That’s why some recent news on the 5 critically important health habits is scary.

You might be very well advised to do better than most people now are doing by making a special point to be one of the few people who manage to do all 5. Doing all 5 tends to prevent cancer, type 2 diabetes, and all kinds of cardiovascular disease -- & increases your life span by up to 25 years. That means that you not only live 20 to 25 years longer, your healthy years go up even more. The amount of a quality life you get to live goes up sharply

Yesterday, LiveScience.com & other news services reported on an article published in the June 2009 issue of The American Journal of Medicine based on a survey they reported of Americans from 40 to 79 in age at two different time periods.

LiveScience.com slightly mistitled it as “American Diets Getting Worse.”

The real story is that fewer people in the United States did most of the five key health habits they surveyed and fewer did all five of them. In fact the percent of the people who managed to do all five dropped from 15 % to 9 % between the survey of 1988-1994 & the one done 2001-2006.

The five habits were:

1. Get regular exercise or comparable physical activity each week—at least 12 times a month.

2. Eat a total of 5 or more servings of vegetables and fruit or more on the average.

3. Moderate alcohol consumption (14 drinks a week or less with more than two a day infrequent for men and 7 drinks a week or less with more than one a day infrequent for women.)

4. Maintain a healthy weight (staying at a weight unlikely to mean more than 10 or 20 pounds of excess fat) – normally a BMI of 26.0 or less -- & for sure less than 30.

5. Not smoking.

And, three of the five saw declines.

1. Get regular exercise or comparable physical activity each week, at least 12 times a month –
went from 53 percent to 43 percent.

2. Eat a total of 5 or more servings of vegetables and fruit or more on the average–
went from 42 percent to 26 percent.

3. Moderate alcohol consumption–
went from 40 percent to 51 percent.

4. Maintaining a healthy weight– adults aged 40-74 years with a body mass index less than 30 went from 72 percent to 64 percent. (The article doesn’t say so; but the percentage of people at 26.0 or less also dropped as we know from other reports that show more people are now in the 25.0 to 29.9 category and fewer are below that.)

5. Not smoking–
went from 26.9 percent to 26.1 percent.

Even though these findings may partly reflect the aging of the baby boomers, the trends are so bad, clearly there are other causes.

Incredibly, the study also found that people with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, or risk factors for those conditions, were no more likely to do these 5 things than people without such risk factors.
These people literally were not taking action even when they began suffering because they had not done so.

(Part of that is due to the fact that their doctors simply have not been trained to ask them to, show them how, or help them do so or don’t even see that as their job or don’t find it doable given what they know and have time for.)

There are really only three things here.

Don’t smoke or stay where there is second hand smoke.

Follow the lifestyle that keeps you healthy, fit, and free of excessive body fat.

Follow the lifestyle that keeps you healthy, fit, and free of excessive body fat well enough that the scale and tape measure show you are doing it well enough to do the job.

A. Since Sunday, 5-31 is World No Tobacco Day 2009, tomorrow’s post will be on why to avoid tobacco smoke, second hand smoke, and tobacco with some tips on doing so. Of the habits it comes close to being the most important one to keep good health.

B. Here’s a few ways to follow the lifestyle that keeps you healthy, fit, and free of excessive body fat so that the scale and tape measure show you are doing it well enough to do the job.

1. Try to get in some walking each week; do at least two sessions of strength training each week even if you just do 20 minutes each with light weights; do at least 3 interval cardio workouts each week. And do the exercises with some extra effort and intensity once you get used to doing them.

2. Drink no soft drinks of any kind; discontinue ingesting any hydrogenated oils or high fructose corn syrup; stop eating virtually all refined grain foods; eat sugar or foods containing it a few times a week or less rather than several servings every day; follow the guidelines on moderate drinking or drink a bit less.

3. Eat at least 3 servings of green or nonstarchy vegetables each day and more than 5 if you can manage it; eat at least one serving of fruit each day; and drink a glass of real fruit or vegetable juice each day but not more than 2 glasses of fruit juice. And eat organic produce to the best of your ability instead of pesticide and herbicide treated produce.

4. Eat healthy fat and oils only, avocados, raw or dry roasted nuts, extra virgin olive oil, and omega 3 oils from purified supplements or wild caught fish.

5. Eat healthy protein foods only, beef fed only grass, pasture raised only poultry, whey protein supplements, wild caught fish and seafood from unpolluted waters of kinds that do NOT over-accumulate mercury AND only eat nonfat or extremely lean meats and poultry or dairy products to the extent you can.

6. If you find you are too fat or too heavy or both, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol, and ingest less sugar, or be more strict about eating only health OK things if needed, and increase the amount of exercise you get until you lose some of it. And keep track at least once a month to be sure you catch it if you start adding fat weight.

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.....]”

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

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.

21 ways to live to be 100....

Today's post: Friday, 3-14-2008

(The first 8 were in the Sunday, 3-9-2008 Parade Magazine supplement in my Sunday newspaper. The first 8 things to do are theirs. The commentary on each is mine.)

1. Eat a heart healthy diet. They say that the Mediterranean diet is the best according to research. That contains a wide variety of vegetables, raw & cooked garlic, tomato sauces, extra virgin olive oil, wild caught fish, & some nuts, fresh & whole fruit, whole grains, & wine – mostly moderate intake of red wine.

Note that it does NOT contain ANY soft drinks or packaged snack foods. And the amounts of sugar & refined grains are very low if any. It has virtually no hamburger from grain fed cattle. And, although it has some poultry in some regions, it tends to be quite low in fatty cuts of meat & dairy fat.

2. Read the newspaper. Be actively interested in current events & read about them in print – in newspapers; online; & in books & magazines. Staying connected & mentally active ( & educated ) tends to predict longevity.

3. “Go forth & multiply.” Women who have children outlive those who do not (with the proviso that they survive childbirth.)

And, studies show that men who have children in their twenties are unusually long lived. (That could be because saner & richer men are more likely to do this than men who are poor & mentally unstable. Or it could be that enduring the extra work of little kids is better for you when you are young enough to have extra energy reserves than it is when you are older.)

4. Drink up! People who drink things that tend to promote good health live longer.

Tea, green tea, moderate consumption of coffee, & moderate alcohol intake “(up to 5 ounces a day for women, up to 10 ounces a day for men)” -- of wine. Beer can be a bit more & stronger drinks less. It works out to a bit less than one drink a day for women & two for men—with a few days with one or none each week.

Tea, green tea, & red wine drinkers get less cardiovascular disease, particularly heart disease. And that level of alcohol intake increases your HDL.

Coffee may help prevent Parkinson’s disease & liver cirrhosis.

And, the people who get 100 to 400 mg a day from tea or coffee tend to be more alert & think better than people who don’t.

5. Watch Your Waist. Being fat in the waist area is more health dangerous & more indicative of health risks than fat elsewhere. And, people who have fat tummies are much less sexually desirable than people who don’t – for BOTH men & women,

And, having a fat waist is indicative of eating fattening, unhealthy foods, not exercising, & excessive stress.

6. Get married. “Singles don’t live as long as married people.” It’s pretty simple, failure & loneliness harm your health. And, teams that work even marginally well together can succeed better than individuals. They’ve even found that married couples who don’t get along well are happier than single people. You can improve your own ability in ways that improve your marriage. And, happy married people tend to live a long time.

7. Have Faith. Clergymen & nuns & people who regularly attend religious meetings & have some kind, any kind, of religious belief do tend to live longer than people who don’t have any religion at all.

(Some of this is a positive outlook on life, a giving orientation, & regular social interaction. And, studies show that “open-minded” believers AND nonbelievers are mentally & often physically healthier than more closed minded people. As a result, people who are Unitarian-Universalists, Quakers, Reform Jews, & open-minded members other beliefs -- & who get regular social contact tend to live longest.)

8. Buy the farm. “Studies show living out in the country extends life compared with city dwelling.”

Some of the research this reflects is because people who are 100 & up in recent years were more likely to live on farms as young people than young people are today. But it may also reflect getting more exercise, & in those days being less exposed to pollution, & being less exposed to dangerous communicable disease – or to being outdoors more often than city dwellers & thus getting more sunshine & vitamin D.

Here are the rest of the 21 # 9 to 21.:

9. Eat raw cruciferous vegetables – every day-- such as broccoli, cabbage, horseradish, kale, & watercress. This has been found to prevent cancer, prevent the more dangerous forms of cancer, & prevent damage to your DNA, thereby SLOWING aging. It also has been proven to help you keep off excess body fat—including fat on your waist.

10. Eliminate or come very close to eliminating ANY amount of ingesting by eating or drinking any refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, transfats, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, & both regular or diet soft drinks. And eliminate eating any foods or snack foods that contain them. This junk makes you fat & sick. Why spend money on it or harm yourself with it. You will live longer & there ARE other enjoyable foods, drinks, & good things in life without these horrible side-effects.

11. Develop personal interests. And keep learning new things that relate to them or are of interest to you or are useful. This is related to point #2 & others. People who enjoy life & are active mentally think better, keep their brains younger & their memories working much better than people who don’t. As a result they also live longer.

12 Spend time with your family. And do your best to be good to them, particularly in ways they like. Support them when they need it. People who manage to do this with all or part of their families are happier, have more social contact, & get more personal support than people who don’t. And they live longer usually.

13. Drink hot cocoa made from only from unsweetened cocoa -- & with no sugar or milk. This will help keep your blood vessels flexible, prevent or lower high blood pressure, increase blood flow & give you abundant antioxidants.
Eating dark chocolate with some sugar is almost as good if you only do it once or twice a week. But unsweetened cocoa works better & is far less likely to make you fat.

Adding milk tends to prevent most of these health effects.

14. Get regular exercise each week, including strength training. And be somewhat physically active at times each week also. This has been shown to both give you massive health benefits & help prevent many illnesses nonexercisers tend to reliably get. Doing this slows aging & even has been shown to grow new brain cells. And, if you do it safely, you WILL live longer AND be healthier each year you live.

15. Eat lots of vegetables each day – NOT including potatoes or French fries. Eating a variety of nonstarchy, cooked & raw vegetables from safe sources has multiple health benefits & is a secret to keeping off excess body fat. Eating vegetables such as sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, tomato sauces, broccoli, carrots, & many kinds of greens give you mixed carotenoids that tend to prevent cancer & have many other health benefits.

16. 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.

17. Socialize. Phone friends & spend time with your friends & family. Meet new people. Network in your work & areas of interest. Research shows this will make you happier & more long lived. In fact, recent research shows it also is a remarkably effective way to exercise your brain.

18. Find some kind of mental puzzles you like & spend some time on them most weeks.

Some people combine this with socializing by playing cards. Some like crossword puzzles. I happen to like solving the chess problems in the newspaper. Regardless of which one you like, doing it has been shown to extend longevity & help prevent senility and memory loss.

19. Avoid poisons. This one sounds like a no-brainer. And, to some extent it is. But some things many people think are safe expose them to poisons. And, doing this can be a good bit harder to do than it should be. (See yesterday’s post on safe water to drink for example.)

This specifically includes NOT smoking or staying around second hand smoke.

And, it also means eating mostly organic produce & avoiding excess animal fat from grain fed meat animals, poultry, & from farmed fish. (Most of the pesticide & herbicide exposure for most people comes from such fat where it is bioconcentrated – NOT from produce.)

It also means keeping away from pesticides, herbicides, & “household products” like air fresheners.

20. Take key supplements. Virtually everyone should take a good multivitamin/mineral supplement, a good B complex supplement, some extra vitamin C, & 200 iu of natural vitamin E each day. Many people need the supplements that optimize their health biomarkers. And, supplements such as CoQ10, Ubiquinol, Resveratrol, & DHEA slow aging -- &/or partially reverse it in older people.

21. Be prudent, proactive, & optimistic and build a worthwhile life. This set of things has been proven to help you be happier, less depressed, have more friends, think better, have more money, achieve more – AND be healthier & live a longer life.

Simple ways to live 14 years longer…..

Today's post: Monday, 1-14-2008

The hidden & super extra benefit is that you also cut the number of years you are in bad health.

That means that the people who follow these simple health practices gain even more than 14 years of healthy, enjoyable life. So your actual gain may be more like 20 or 25 years of good life. Not bad.

This news below was in the online news on Tuesday last week. The Reuters title was:

“Four health changes can prolong life 14 years”

Their summary quote & lead paragraph said this: ” People who drink moderately, exercise, quit smoking and eat five servings of fruit and vegetables each day live on average 14 years longer than people who adopt none of these behaviors, researchers said on Tuesday.“

(You can find the Reuters health news at www.yahoo.com or www.news.yahoo.com .)

Here are two of the four practices. Another study was reported this week that said that just drinking moderately & getting regular exercise increased longevity. (Both of these practices boost your protective HDL levels & tend to prevent heart disease & strokes. They also help relive stress.)

Not smoking is the third one & may give you the most leverage in protecting your health according to the article. Yesterday, we posted the information on why it’s so incredibly important to not smoke or quit smoking as well.

The fourth one is also important & improves your health now.: Eating five or more servings of fruit & vegetables each day also has multiple benefits.

Eating vegetables tends to prevent people from getting or staying overfat & does it without making people hungry, so it’s a sustainable practice.

Eating raw cruciferous vegetables like broccoli & cauliflower each day both protects against all cancers & slashes the risk of the really dangerous & invasive cancers.

And, vegetables not only contain potassium, which helps keep your blood pressure in the healthy range & many vitamins, they contain a truly amazing amount of other micronutrients that protect your health in a multitude of other ways.

There are maybe 12 or 14 other things you can do to protect your health that also work extremely well that we’ve posted about here.

But this list is great because it’s only four things and just doing these four things is extremely protective.

1. Get regular exercise.

Even a small bit of regular walking a few times a week has 40 percent of the benefits of an ideal program the research has found. (Adding even two days of strength training & two or three days of vigorous aerobic exercise even for a few minutes each time gets you to about 80 percent.)

An extra incentive that’s less well known is that both men & women who exercise have better sex lives than people who don’t.

2. Don’t smoke or stay in an area that has second hand smoke in it.

(See yesterday’s post, if you need any convincing to quit if you smoke now.)

3. Eat more than five servings of vegetables & fruit each day. (Five servings or more of vegetables with at least one of them being a raw cruciferous vegetable is even better. Fruit is also valuable; but even one or two servings a day is protective.)

4. The fourth one is a good bit more fun. Drink a drink or two most days.

Red wine & dark beer do have extra micronutrients & health benefits; but the alcohol in other drinks also works. So, if you prefer tequila, scotch, or martinis go ahead & enjoy them.

(Warning, do avoid drinking more than two drinks a day; & don’t drive after drinking more than one or two drinks. People who do sometimes live much shorter lives. This is an avoidable effect in the wrong direction.)