Nutrition - the Raw Material for Senior Health and Lifetime Fitness (Part 1)

Food, what we eat daily, provides the basic materials that build and sustain our bodies. In our prime we can seemingly eat anything and digest it, absorb it, assimilate it and utilize it. But as we age, stomach acid and enzyme production decrease, digestion worsens, absorption and assimilation of nutrients becomes less effective. Mechanisms for getting nutrients into our cells, and waste products out, become less effective. The basic starting point for any anti-aging effort is to eat so as to obtain all necessary nutrients and enhance the mechanisms for digestion, absorption and assimilation.

We tend to think of our body as a self-contained object like a chair or maybe a car; to think of oneself as the same today as we were yesterday. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are constantly tearing down and rebuilding every organ, cell and DNA molecule we possess. Even our bones are constantly replacing themselves. The material for all this renovation is food. Any deficiency in the needed materials, even short term, and our body will cleverly sacrifice one part to repair another; like scavenging muscle for protein to repair sunburned skin. But if a deficiency persists, some aspect of our physiology will degrade and we become “diseased”.

Our body is an amazingly complex system; its nutritional requirements are equally complex and yet humanity has been thriving on a wide range of regional diets for a long time. In most cases, primitive regional diets make the best of what is foods are available at the time under the physical conditions that prevail, and for perhaps millions of years, have allowed us to reach reproductive age and live long enough to rear children to replace us. The current purpose, however, is to eat so well that we get all the nutrients we need to maximize our health and life span, and to avoid functional decline (and pain) as long as possible.

Strategies: Here are the basic principles for obtaining, digesting, absorbing and assimilating all the right nutrients:

Eat real, whole, unprocessed foods! Eat mostly that which is plucked from the ground, off a tree or bush, or was walking, swimming or flying recently. Eat almost nothing that comes in a bag, can or a box. Our entire evolutionary history was spent eating foods described above. It makes immense sense to me that we evolved to prosper on such foods. We humans have recently rediscovered that the red and blue fruits are loaded with anti-oxidants, that the cabbage family vegetables are rich in cancer-fighting sulforaphanes. Do you know that grass-fed beef is high in omega-3 fats, and actually reduces inflammation like fish and fish oils? Make baked goods (cakes, cookies, chips, crackers, desserts and white breads) a rare part of your diet . These processed foods that typically come in a bag or a box, are generally loaded with refined grains, sugar and unhealthy hydrogenated fats. The exceptions to the bag/box rule are nuts and dried fruits. The bulk of our diets should come from colored vegetables, lightly cooked to retain the most nutrients. The most nutritious vegetables are organically raised using pre-industrial farming methods. Balance that with naturally-fed livestock, poultry and seafood for protein and fat intake.

Eat adequate amounts of the right fats! Fat is absolutely necessary for survival, but there are Fats that Heal and Fats that Kill - that is the title of an amazing book by Udo Erasmus - a 'must read' for anyone interested in optimum health. If you don’t eat enough of the right fats, virtually every cell in every organ of your body will be compromised. Grab Udo’s book here Fats, however, require bile, produced by the liver and metered by the gallbladder, for digestion in the small intestines. Poor bile flow or an obstructed gallbladder will make digesting fats an uncomfortable task. The liver manufactures approximately one quart of bile every day, which serves as a carrier for toxic substances to be effectively eliminated from the body. In addition, the bile emulsifies fats and fat-soluble vitamins in the intestine, improving their absorption. When the excretion of bile is inhibited (cholestasis), toxins stay in the liver longer with damaging effects. Many seniors have slow bile production, and need to be taking supplements (such as Milk Thistle and SAM-E and CoQ10) to enhance bile production. We get one liver, and it has a huge number of critically important tasks to perform for the duration of our lives. Its biggest enemies are High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), refined seed oils, eating too frequently and too abundantly, acetaminophen (as in Tylenol) and statin drugs. Grass-fed livestock, free range poultry and wild caught fish have the proper balance of omega-3 to omega-6 fats and are health-building foods; grain-finished livestock, caged/commercially-fed poultry and farm-raised seafood do not, and are a big part of our health issues in this age. Real dietary fats are not the enemy; fake, processed/manufactured fats are!

Avoid all refined oils; use extra-virgin olive oil, extra-virgin coconut oil or butter for food and cooking . Eat or drink nothing with the words 'partially hydrogenated' on the label. Please read my article on hydrogenation to understand the gravity of what these fats do in our body, then get Erasmus’ book and fully understand the physiology of fats and their importance to our health. If we don’t eat enough fat, we are unable to reduce body-fat levels; our body will conserve stored fat if it gets too little in our diet . We can’t be lean and muscular unless we eat enough of the right fats. Two of the most important fats are DHA and EPA and are found in fish and fish oils. The best natural source is Cod Liver Oil. If you don’t like the taste, take fish oil capsules, but strive to get more than a gram of DHA daily. This fat suppresses inflammation everywhere in the body, and is critical for proper cellular and brain function. Be aware of the common sources of hydrogenated oils and trans-fats; margarine, shortening, Cool Whip, non-dairy creamers, nearly all cocoa mixes, and the most popular of all - French fries and potato chips. Refined oils – such as corn, safflower, soybean, etc - are rich in omega-6 fats, which are pro-inflammatory, as well as trans-fats, which cripple cellular function – don’t use them

When we eat is every bit as important as what we eat. This is the most important factor in avoiding ever-growing belly fat, metabolic syndrome and maintaining healthy liver function. The rules for proper liver function are these: Eat three meals 5-6 hours apart to let insulin reach baseline levels between meals. Low insulin is required for the body to burn fats as fuel. Snacking at 3-4 hours completely shuts off the burning of fat. The last three hours between meals the liver will supply blood sugar by breaking down fat deposits and converting the triglycerides to glucose and ketones. Similarly, eat nothing after dinner to get an 11-12 hour fast. This is the most important period for the liver to burn fats and detoxify the body. Eating before bed greatly hampers this process. When hunger comes between meals and after dinner, convince your brain that it is thirst arising and drink a big glass of water - the hunger will slack. This issue revolves around the hormone Leptin, which is the primary regulator of metabolism. Frequent meals raises leptin levels in the bloodstream, chronically elevated leptin leads to leptin resistance, leptin resistance makes your brain think you are starving and drained of energy. You want to eat all the time and you want to eat lots of carbohydrates for fuel - this makes you pack on fat with abandon, and one day you are suddenly a type-II diabetic.

Heed this advice and you should see positive changes in body shape and health in short order; more to come on nutrition in the next article.

Good Living - Frank