Deborah Mitchell - Foods That Combat Aging: The Nutritional Way to Stay Healthy Longer

Foods That

COMBAT
AGING

The Nutritional
Way to Stay Healthy
Longer

DEBORAH MITCHELL

A Lynn Sonberg Book

This book contains advice and information relating to health care. It is not intended to replace medical advice and should be used to supplement rather than replace regular care by your doctor. It is recommended that you seek your physicians advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. The publisher and the author disclaim liability for any adverse effects that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• General decrease in energy level and a tendency to tire easily

• Decreased memory

• Decreased sex drive

• Abdominal obesity and an inability to lose weight

• Some hearing loss, especially for higher frequencies

• Development of arthritis: affects about one-third of men and one-half of women

• Loss of lean muscle tissue

• Development of insulin resistance

• Changes in bowel function

• Changes in hair color and volume

• Tendency to sleep more lightly and to experience less rapid eye movement (REM) sleep

• Reduction in muscle strength

• Reduction in bone density

• Reduction in reaction time

• Reduction in levels of antibodies (and thus ability to fight off infections)

• Reduction in levels of most hormones

There is much you can do to reduce, compensate for, or slow the progression of many of these and other physical and metabolic changes that occur with aging. One of the most important things you can do is harness the power of anti-aging nutrition, which we do in two ways in this book. One is through the convenient anti-aging nutrition counter offered in the second part of this book. The other is through a discussion of the dietary steps and other actions that complement any nutritional efforts you take in your fight against aging. Lets look at some of these other approaches, along with a discussion of how wise food and supplement choices can help you fight aging now!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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