Need more emphasis on diet
I was disappointed to read through the current age reversal protocol promoted here, and it seems to be focused on expensive "magic pills". There was some mention of calorie restriction, but no other talk of diet, which should be by far the primary emphasis. My wife I have been eating whole food plant-based (Fuhrman, McDougall, Greger, Esselstyn, ...) for fifteen years with excellent results for our general health.
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Some say secret to success: Aim High, Start Small, and Keep Going......Wright brothers are good examples...I guess
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General health is great. It's not age reversal.
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Bruce, I tend to agree with you.
You likely know this all but just pop into this review (it is from 2016 though) you migh like.
Dato S, Bellizzi D, Rose G, Passarino G. The impact of nutrients on the aging rate: A complex interaction of demographic, environmental and genetic factors. Mech Ageing Dev. 2016;154:49-61.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047637416300082
I also try to keep a thread on the Longecity Forum where you might find something interesting:
https://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/78705-personalized-nutrition/
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Your approach sounds exactly like what we do in my household. Fuhrman diet primarily (whole food plant based) - no animal products, but occasional extras like a bit of sourdough bread. Yes the approach here is pill focused, which I view as an extension to WFPBD (whole foods plant based diet) to be used starting around 45 years. Bill F is certainly a proponent of this diet, calorie restriction/fasting etc, but the fact is most people won't do it so I think because of that he doesn't promote it.
I should mention, a major fault of Fuhrman/Goldhammer/McDougal is that they come from the Pritikan school of thought. They are firmly anti <anything but plant food>. I've spent some time with these folks, caught them making cognitive bias mistakes, and heard the proselytizing about "it's just the FOOD". Which I agree, until you get older, when you need stronger interventions.
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Dan Sourdough bread? Anything with bread in the diet is not a good idea. https://www.drperlmutter.com/about/grain-brain-by-david-perlmutter/
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Paul Tozour No the 'Gluten is Bad' idea is another food fad. The issue is that too much is eaten. Whole grains are a necessity, try eating a whole foods vegan diet without them, unless you are a small person it's difficult or impossible to get enough calories.
Another issue is that almost no commercial flour is truly whole grain. What they call whole wheat is simply fractionated grain which they add in a bit of bran. I have a high capacity grinder and make my own bread Desem style, which isn't quite a sourdough but in the category. It's a low temp/low action fermentation that takes a couple days to complete.
Putting it together people eat too much refined bread - that doesn't mean that bread itself (which is simply ground up cereal grains) is at fault. Another example is soy beans which in reasonable quantities are good for you. Too much is a poor choice, mainly because it crowds out other foods.
Now to be fair bread can be problematic in that it's a relatively high calorie food with a degree of refinement from the grinding, so it's really easy to over consume. For our ancestors living in marginal climates in a low calorie world (e.g. anywhere outside of the equator) it was a necessity. In today's world we are swimming in calories, so bread consumption should be restricted. Again this is simply because of the high caloric content, not because grain is problematic.
Here's the formula to make a health best seller. The goal is to take pot shots at plant foods which people don't want to eat anyhow. Pick one, focus on it in some narrow way, over emphasize some tidbit of scientific data out of context, then write a book about it. People love it, because fundamentally they love animal foods and don't want to hear that plant foods are optimal. Examples of this are Grain Brain, Plant Paradox, and the Atkins diet. -
Dan Please read Dr Perlmutter's book. It's about far more than gluten. Grains are not a necessary part of any diet. The evidence is overwhelming that in the long run, they are bad for your brain.
> Whole grains are a necessity, try
> eating a whole foods vegan diet without them
I would never eat a vegan diet in the first place. -
Dan "The goal is to take pot shots at plant foods "
This statement is really bizarre, and hyperbolic in the extreme. Literally no one I know is recommending avoiding plant foods in their entirety. I don't know why you'd say something like that about Dr Perlmutter's book. This statement itself feels like much more of a pot shot.
My health has improved immeasurably since I removed bread and grains from my diet and replaced them with broccoli and kale. There's just no reason to eat low-quality carbs when there are plenty of high-quality carbs to eat instead. -
Dan Here's a podcast with Dr Perlmutter (author of "Grain Brain") on the Bulletproof podcast, titled "Why You Desperately Need Carbs":
https://blog.bulletproof.com/david-perlmutter-553/
Direct quote from the transcript:
"By and large though, I would indicate that the more plant-based is your diet the better off you will be."... So, clearly this is not someone "taking pot shots at plant foods."
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agreed , the quality of the food and its energy it transfers to our cells are paramount to our good health. this is all about turning on our energy cells and turning off the inherited bad cells from ancestor's from 100 s of generations within us.
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I think more can be accomplished with diet than people think. I think optimizing diet gets you closer to the current max lifespan which suits me fine while I wait for reversal to come along, I am 57. I know zero older people who have what I think is a good diet or do any meaningful amount of exercise. IMO they are leaving 15 good years on the table.
I was strictly whole foods plant based, low fat (Gregor/Esselstyn) for the last few years and exercise recovery and immune function were poor. I recently added some cooked oysters and scallops for the zinc, b12, selenium and taurine, plus a little cheese for the calcium and probiotics and it has made a world of difference.
Don't the Loma Linda pescatarians live the longest?
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I cofounded the CR Society a quarter of a century ago because I believed diet was the most powerful intervention we currently have. I still believe that (Bill Faloon does as well). The problem is that even that power is pretty limited compared to what might be within our reach soon if we keep supporting research. I think that's why so many people talk about things other than diet: we want these other treatments to be perfected (and new ones discovered).
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I completely agree with Brian - I experimented with every approach I could find (diet, exercise, supplements etc) to deal with poor bloodwork numbers in my 20's and found that diet had a profound effect while everything else was relatively minor.
I'd put a caveat on that though that as we age evidence seems (to me at least) to show that diet becomes less and less effective to combat the effects of getting older. I view it as diet will get you to 50, and after that you need additional power of supplements and pharmaceuticals. For example, when I was younger supplements had little effect, but at 50 they had a much greater effect. Which is simple to understand, taking CoQ10 when younger is probably ineffectual since you make so much of it, but replacing it when older can have a much greater effect due to diminished production. In particular restorative supplements that fix underlying processes have a great effect (e.g. ALA/ALC) probably because they underly other processes, where replacement supplements/medications (phosphitydlcholine, hormones, ...) have the effect of just making you feel normal again.
So for me diet is the foundation of my health (along with sleep), exercise is the handmaiden, and suppls/medications are the upper stories, if you like.
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Has anyone else here used the PhenoAge spreadsheet by JGC to measure the results of their dietary/lifestyle/supplement choices?
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Lee said:
Has anyone else here used the PhenoAge spreadsheet by JGC to measure the results of their dietary/lifestyle/supplement choices?
I used both the Phenotypic Age and the Aging.ai tools. While results seems encouraging, pointing to a positive effect of lifestyle and supplementation interventions, and also coherent with each other to some extent, I am far to understand it all. You might refer to two threads here ( here and here) and one on longecity.org ( here).
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I'm in the camp of diet is a powerful anti-aging device. However....I note this quote "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" and qualify my support of diet by saying that from birth most humans have been living in a way for which the eons of evolution did not design them. That includes food, toxins, stressors, etc that have accelerated the rate of aging and done progressive damage. We tend to notice at some point mid life and try to rectify it. Just stopping chronic inflammation which lies at the root of much if not all of aging is a biggie. Some can heal but perhaps big guns and magic pills are best viewed in light of 'when self-healing can't to it all." Me I am big on CRP level at the bottom of the scale, and think that's my best chance. The kind of diet is something of a can of worms--the controversies abound...I tend toward looking to evolution on that as well but allow all a lot of variety for tastes and flexibility. If CRP is elevated, pretty good guess is that your diet needs work. Fish eaters the world over tend to fare well.
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Ellie FWIW I think evolution can’t be used as argument either way. For example, just because we are living in different conditions than we evolved under does not imply they are bad for longevity. Certainly we know from lifespan data that modern life is actually better for longevity, stress and diet notwithstanding.
Others like claim evolution as proof of all sorts of nutty diets but there’s no basis for that argument.
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By FAR, I found the book and methods of Dr Stephen Gundry the most impactful. His book, The Plant Paradox, is an outstanding read. He teaches everything about the human systems and how the are all tied together and managed by what you eat. It changed many of my misperceptions about what was good for me, and in only a few days on his startup diet, I saw positive changes. Definitely worth the time to read.
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Losing weight is tough sometimes, especially when you have no idea how to do it right. What steps have you already taken? I think, first of all, it's really important to eat clean and then combine it with the proper amount of exercise. You can also find some useful tips in this blog https://fine-health.com/category/losing-weight/.
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Savannah Luis I've come to the conclusion that something called the "expensive tissue hypothesis" is the best model for how to eat. Nutrient dense food, like meat, is best. Refined grains, seed oils and sugars are the worst.
Intermittent fasting is also critical to the model.
Best way to see how food affect you is to get a continuous glucose monitor like a Libre Freestyle and see how your blood sugar responds to various foods. Get one here or your doctor https://orders.agelessrx.com
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A plant-based diet emphasizes foods like fruits, vegetables - https://womanlylive.com/healthy-diet-secrets-straight-out-of-ancient-china/. Plant-based diets have been linked to a number of health benefits. That's why you and your wife have excellent results for your general health.
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Alba Castano
Absolutely and in the Covid-19 era more than ever, toward reinforcing the host and innate immune system response: https://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/108038-protecting-from-coronavirus-supplements-therapies/?view=findpost&p=899976
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