How To Reverse Aging Using Nutrition | Biohacking
Video Transcript:
How To Reverse Aging Using Nutrition
Biohacking has been a really popular term over the past few years.
And I even had someone tell me that they want to live forever. I mean, I don't think I want to live here forever, but I do want to live healthfully.
And so there is a new research study that was published last year in the journal of aging. The first randomized control trial that showed this nutrition regimen with lifestyle regimen was able to decrease the biological age of the participants.
And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk through everything they did on the nutrition side of things. But to do that, we have to rewind a little bit, and I want to explain the difference between chronological age and biological age.
Chronological Age vs. Biological Age
Chronological age is probably what you think of when you think of age. It's how many years you have, it has been since you were born here. And so it's like how many birthdays have you had?
Biological age is how old you appear, and as per the research, this is a better predictor of all-cause mortality.
And so getting that lower is ideal for living a healthy life long-term, and how biological age is tested in the research is by DNA analysis of methylation using saliva samples.
I will share the study if you want to dig in and learn more about the research methods.
So I'm Ashley Oswald, a functional medicine dietitian, and owner of Oswald Digestive Clinic, where we help people improve and eliminate bothersome gut issues like gas, bloat, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain, and more. We accept insurance now, which is very exciting. And if you want to work with our clinic, you can schedule your initial appointment.
So without further ado, let's dive on in and talk about this study.
This was a study www.aging-us.com on 43 adult males, aged, 50 to 72, and yes, in the future a bigger study's going to be great and more diverse, but this is a good start. And as mentioned, it's the first-its-kind RCT, randomized control trial, which is the gold standard in research. And so after eight weeks of the program, I'm going to describe it to you.
Researchers found that the treatment group had a 3.23 reduction in years in their biological age. So 3.23 years of that biological, how somebody seems the age that you appear. And this is the one tied to all-cause mortality. And add, some lab markers were checked.
So a 25% reduction in triglycerides was seen and a decrease in LDL cholesterol, which is known as the bad cholesterol, we, of course, would want a dig deeper and see what the particle size is, but that's a different topic.
All right. So in this study, what they did, we have the nutrition side of things, and then we have the lifestyle side of things. I'm going to give you a big picture overview, and then I'm going to pull up all the details and we'll walk through exactly "What does that mean?"
The lifestyle side of things
So the lifestyle side of things, they were exercising for at least 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week at 60 to 80% perceived exertion doing some breathing exercises twice a day, and then getting at least seven hours of sleep.
The nutrition side of things
Now from the nutrition side of things, they're eating a mostly plant-based diet with some nutrient-dense meats in the form of liver and eggs. They were lower carbohydrate, had some mild intermittent fasting, and were on a couple of supplements. One is a fruits and greens powder and then one is a probiotic.
So I'm going to pull out now all the nutrition details courtesy of aging-us.com and let's walk through it together.
So as you can see, the guidance per week was three servings of the liver.
One serving, three ounces, preferably organic five to 10 eggs per week, ideally free range, organic, omega three enriched. Guidance per day was two cups of dark leafy greens and two cups of cruciferous vegetables.
And all these foods are kind of strategies to help improve the methylation status and help to reverse DNA damage.
And so three additional cups of colorful veggies of your choosing. One to two medium beets, beets are great at helping with high blood pressure. So if you're struggling with that you might want to look into that.
Beet kvass is an easy and fun way to get in some beets with some probiotics too.
Four tablespoons, or a quarter of a cup, pumpkin seeds, four tablespoons of sunflower seeds, one serving of methylation adaptogens, which you can choose from berries, rosemary, turmeric, garlic, green tea, Oolong tea, six ounces of animal protein, a grass-fed pasteurized organic hormone, antibiotic-free, two servings of low glycemic fruit, and some general guidance they provided was organic preferred over conventional, stay hydrated.
And if you've seen our other topics, hydration means light yellow urine, clear and you're over hydrating, dark yellow, you're under-hydrated. Don't eat between 7:00 PM and 7:00 AM. Include healthy oils. So we have some other topics on what healthy oils are.
The guidance that they give is to balance types of fat example, coconut, olive, flax seed, and pumpkin seed oil. Avoid added sugar, candy, dairy, grains, legumes, and beans, and minimize plastic food containers.
And so I hope this is interesting to use some foundational right nutrition recommendations. And again, after just eight weeks, they found a 3.2, three-year reduction in their biological age. So very significant.
And of course, my brain starts spinning because in functional medicine, we know how powerful food is and we've seen people reverse things that they were told they would just have for the rest of their life.
One very easy example of that is type two diabetes. I've seen people's arthritis get significantly improved.
A more superficial example, I suppose, would be collagen used to decrease wrinkles.
Then on the non-superficial side of that, it can significantly improve osteoarthritis and who wants arthritis when they're older, right? That negatively impacts mobility. At the clinic I was working in California in functional medicine, the doctors were checking the carotid arteries with ultrasounds and seeing how much plaque and buildup there was.
And we were seeing a reversal in that plaque buildup, using food as medicine, basically, in these, these functional medicine approaches targeted supplements. So if you're interested in exploring this, if you want some labs ran on you to see what might be going on, I just ran a bunch of labs on myself considering scheduling an appointment with our clinic.
We take insurance now, and many of our clients have full coverage for unlimited appointments, which is amazing.
I hope you all are having a great day and I hope to see you on the next topic.
Reverse Aging Using Nutrition
If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic. We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.
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