Do you bruise easily? yes / no
Have you ever suffered from any of the conditions listed on this page? yes / no
Have your parents collectively suffered from two or more of these conditions? yes / no
Do you easily get exhausted after physical exertion? yes / no
Does your skin take a long time to heal? yes / no
Do you suffer from acne, dry skin, or excessive wrinkles for your age? yes / no
Are you overweight? yes / no
Your Score
LIFESTYLE ANALYSIS
Have you smoked for more than five years of your life, less than five years ago? yes / no
Do you smoke now? yes / no
Do you smoke more than ten cigarettes a day? yes / no
Do you spend time most days in a smoky atmosphere? yes / no
Do you have an alcoholic drink each day? yes / no
Do you Live in a polluted city or by a busy road? yes / no
Do you spend more than two hours in traffic each day? yes / no
Are you quite often exposed to strong sunlight? yes / no
Do you consider yourself unfit? yes / no
Do you exercise excessively and get easily burned-out? yes / no
Your Score
DIET ANALYSIS
Do you eat fried food most days? yes / no
Do you eat less than a serving of fresh fruit and raw vegetables each day? yes / no
Do you eat fewer than two pieces of fresh fruit a day? yes / no
Do you rarely eat nuts, seeds, or whole grains each day? yes / no
Do you eat smoked or barbecued food or grill cheese on your food? yes / no
Do you supplement less than 500 mg of vitamin C each day? yes / no
Do you supplement less than 100 IU of vitamin E each day? yes / no
Do you supplement less than 10,000 IU of vitamin A or beta-carotene each day? yes / no
Your Score
YOUR TOTAL SCORE:
0–10. This is an ideal score, indicating that your health, diet, and lifestyle are consistent with a high level of antioxidant protection. Keep up the good work.
11–15. This is a reasonable score, although you can increase your power of prevention by converting yes answers into no.
16–20. This is a poor score, indicating plenty of room for improvement. See a nutritionist to upgrade your diet and look at how you can alter your lifestyle for increased antioxidant protection.
21+. This is a bad score, putting you in the high-risk group for rapid aging. See a nutritionist and ask for an antioxidant profile blood test. You will need to make changes to your diet and lifestyle, plus supplementing antioxidants, to reverse or slow down the aging process.
The main essential antioxidant vitamins are A, C, and E and the precursor of vitamin A, beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is found in red/orange/yellow vegetables and fruits. Vitamin C is also abundant in vegetables and fruit eaten raw, but heat rapidly destroys it. Vitamin E is found in “seed” foods, including nuts, seeds and their oils, and vegetables like peas, fava beans, corn, and whole grains—all of which are classified as seed foods. The best all-round foods are shown in the table on the next page. Eating sweet potatoes, carrots, watercress, peas, and broccoli frequently is a great way to increase your antioxidant potential—provided, of course, that you do not fry them.
Thanks to groundbreaking research at Tufts University in Boston, there’s a new way to rate a food’s overall antioxidant power. Each food can now be assigned a certain number of ORAC units (short for “oxygen radical absorbance capacity”). Foods that score high in these units are especially helpful in countering oxidant, or free radical, damage in your body.
Top-scoring foods include prunes, raisins, blueberries, and blackberries. Other top-scoring foods include kale, spinach, strawberries, raspberries, plums, broccoli, and alfalfa spouts. These and other fresh fruits and vegetables are the kinds of foods you need to eat every day to keep young and energetic. (See the chart below for the ORAC ratings for several foods. You can find a more comprehensive listing of ORAC ratings in part 9)
We should all obtain 3,500 ORAC units a day, although 5,000 to 6,000 will give you even more protection against aging. You’ll also be better protected against many diseases, including cancer and heart disease. What this means in practice is eating a cup of blueberries (3,240 ORAC units), a quarter of a cup of raisins, and three prunes; or a half-pint of strawberries and two servings of kale, Broccolini, or broccoli. Alternatively, you could eat five servings of fresh fruit and vegetables every day.
FRUITS AND VEGETABLES WITH ANTIOXIDANT POWER
The best fruits are berries. Another great antioxidant fruit is watermelon. The flesh is high in beta-carotene and vitamin C, while the seeds are high in vitamin E and in the antioxidant minerals zinc and selenium. You can make a great antioxidant cocktail by blending the flesh and seeds into a great-tasting drink. Seeds and seafood are the best all-round dietary sources of selenium and zinc.
Including vegetables such as Broccolini, broccoli, spinach, and avocado in your diet on a regular basis is another great way to up your antioxidant intake. The amino acids cysteine and glutathione also act as antioxidants. They help make one of the body’s key antioxidant enzymes, glutathione peroxidase, which is itself dependent on selenium. This enzyme helps detoxify the body, protecting us against car exhaust fumes, carcinogens, infections, too much alcohol, and toxic metals. Cysteine and glutathione are particularly high in white meat, tuna, lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, onions, and garlic, and have been shown to boost the immune system as well as to increase antioxidant power.
Supplementary benefit
Given the unquestionable value of increasing your antioxidant status, it is wise to make sure that your daily supplement program contains significant quantities of antioxidants, especially if you are middle-aged or older, live in a polluted city, or suffer any other unavoidable exposure to free radicals. The easiest way to do this is to take a comprehensive antioxidant supplement. Most reputable supplement companies produce formulas containing a combination of the following nutrients: vitamin A, beta-carotene, vitamin E, vitamin C, zinc, selenium, glutathione, and cysteine, plus plant-based antioxidants like bilberry or pyenogenol. Also important are lipoic acid and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10).
Lipoic acid is a sulfur-containing, vitamin-like substance that has very effective antioxidant properties. As an antioxidant, it is particularly useful because it is one of the few that is both water- and fat-soluble, which means that it can protect a wider range of molecules than, say, just vitamin C or vitamin E. Foods said to be high in lipoic acid are liver and brewer’s yeast. CoQ10 is a vital antioxidant helping protect cells from carcinogens and also helping recycle vitamin E. CoQ10’s magical properties lie in its ability to improve the cell’s use of oxygen. CoQ10 works by controlling the flow of oxygen, making the production of energy most efficient and preventing damage caused by these oxidants. CoQ10 is found in meat, fish, nuts, and seeds.
The kind of total supplementary intake (which may come in part from a multivitamin and extra vitamin C) to aim for is shown below:
Vitamin A (retinol/beta-carotene) 7500 IU to 20,000 IU
Glutathione (reduced) 25 mg to 75 mg
Vitamin E 100 IU to 500 IU
Vitamin C 1,000 mg to 3,000 mg
CoQ10 10 mg to 50 mg
Lipoic acid 10 mg to 50 mg
Anthocyanidin 50 mg to 250 mg
Selenium 30 mcg to 100 mcg
Zinc 10 mg to 20 mg
Simple tips for improving your antioxidant potential and boosting your power of prevention
Eat lots of fresh fruit, especially berries.
Eat lots of vegetables, especially Broccolini, spinach, avocado, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, watercress, and broccoli.
Take a multivitamin and/or a good antioxidant supplement daily containing all the above nutrients.
Do your best to avoid pollution, smoky places, direct exposure to strong sunlight, and fried foods
.
Don’t overexercise or exercise beyond your aerobic potential.
16
Homocysteine—Your Most Important Health Statistic
Forget your blood pressure, your cholesterol, even your weight. There is one factor that can determine better than any other whether you will live long and healthy or die young. It’s called homocysteine.
Homocysteine is a type of protein, produced by the body and found in the blood, which ideally should be present in very low quantities. However, if you are not optimally nourished, homocysteine can accumulate in the blood, increasing the risk for over fifty diseases, including heart attacks, strokes, certain cancers, diabetes, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease. Between 5 percent and 10 percent of the general population and maybe as high as 30 percent to 40 percent of the elderly in the U.S. has a high homocysteine level. The good news is that this new and important risk factor can be reversed in weeks.
What is homocysteine?
Homocysteine is produced from the amino acid methionine, which is found in normal dietary protein. Homocysteine in itself isn’t bad news—your body naturally turns it into one of two beneficial substances. These are called glutathione (the body’s most important antioxidant) and a methyl donor called SAMe (S-adenosylmethionine; a very important type of “intelligent” nutrient for both brain and body).
The trouble is, if you don’t have optimal amounts of B vitamins in your diet, the enzymes that turn homocysteine into these beneficial substances don’t work well enough. Your homocysteine can’t be converted, so your level of it rises dangerously (see figure on the next page).
To make matters more complex, it has been discovered that one in ten people has an inherited genetic mutation that makes them more prone to a higher homocysteine level than other people. This means that the enzyme that converts homocysteine into SAMe (it’s called the MTHFR enzyme) doesn’t work so well. Luckily, studies show that larger daily intakes of B12 and folic acid can help make the deficient enzyme work better.
While the importance of antioxidants is now well established, the new buzzword in medicine is “methylation.” The ability of the body to maintain chemical balance hinges upon its ability to add or subtract molecules called methyl groups. This is how the body turns one thing into another. To make this real, let’s say all this talk of “premature death” is stressing you out. Your body responds by adding a methyl group to noradrenaline to produce adrenaline. On hearing that homocysteine is rapidly reversible you relax. The body responds by removing a methyl group from adrenaline, turning it into noradrenaline. This kind of chemical reaction occurs a billion times every second, keeping everything in balance.
The homocysteine pathway. We all make homocysteine from eating protein. Normally, it is quickly turned into SAMe or glutathione, two very essential and health-promoting substances in the body. But if you lack enough of certain nutrients such as B2, B6, B12, folate, zinc, or TMG (trimethyl glycine), you end up accumulating toxic homocysteine.
If there were one measure of your antioxidant “IQ,” it would be the level of glutathione inside your cells. All those antoxidants you eat and supplement every day have the greatest effect if they ultimately raise this level of intracellular glutathione. Similarly, if there were one measure of your methyl “IQ,” it would be the level of SAMe inside your cells. This is because SAMe can easily donate a methyl group or accept one back, keeping the body’s biochemistry flexible. Normally, both SAMe and glutathione are made from the amino acid methionine in our diet, via homocysteine. However, if the conversion of homocysteine is blocked in any way, the homocysteine level goes up and SAMe and glutathione levels go down.
This is only half the bad news. The other half is the discovery that homocysteine damages your arteries, brain, and DNA itself. That’s why your homocysteine level is theoretically the most important indicator of the health and adaptability of your body’s total biochemistry and your risk of degenerative diseases. But where’s the hard proof?
Reduce your risk of heart attacks and strokes by 75 percent
The largest review of ninety-two studies, by David Wald and colleagues from the Department of Cardiology at Southampton General Hospital (England), recently published in the British Medical Journal, examined the association between homocysteine and risk for cardiovascular disease in twenty thousand people.
They found that, with every 5-unit (millimole/liter) increase in homocysteine measured in the blood, the risk for heart disease went up by 42 percent in those with the MTHFR gene mutation and by 32 percent in those without it. The risk for strokes went up by 65 percent in those with the genetic mutation and by 59 percent in those without it. The researchers concluded that these “highly significant results indicate strong evidence that the association between homocysteine and cardiovascular disease is causal.”56
This means that having a high homocysteine level isn’t just associated with higher risk, it actually causes heart disease—a conclusion that is also being reached by other research groups.57 If, therefore, you can lower your homocysteine level (your H score), you remove the cause, and hence the risk.
While the average homocysteine level is around 10 units, an ideal level is below 6 units. Those with a history of cardiovascular disease often have a level above 15 units. According to this study, lowering a high homocysteine from 16 to 6 units, a 10-unit (mmol/l) drop, might cut risk by 75 percent! This is not only a much more substantial reduction than can be made for cholesterol, but it’s also more achievable. How? With nutrients, not drugs.
Cancer—cut your risk by a third
Cancer is about 85 percent preventable. Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine describing a study involving forty-five thousand pairs of twins found that cancer is more likely to be caused by diet and lifestyle choices than by genes. The results of the study showed that identical twins, who are genetically the same, have no more than a 15 percent chance of developing the same cancer. This suggests that the cause of most cancers is about 85 percent environmental—that is, down to factors such as diet, lifestyle, and exposure to toxic chemicals. The study found that choices about diet, smoking, and exercise accounted for 58 to 82 percent of cancers studied.58
Where does homocysteine come into all this? Cancer is triggered by damage to DNA—and having a high homocysteine level makes your DNA more vulnerable to damage and not easily properly repaired once damaged. At the other end of the scale, high homocysteine has been found to be a very good indicator of whether cancer therapies are working. The homocysteine level rises when tumors grow and falls when they shrink. Forms of cancer already clearly linked to high homocysteine include cancers of the breast and colon, and leukemia, among others. Low homocysteine is likely to reduce your risk of these by a third. By lowering your homocysteine level, along with making other dietary and supplement changes, you should be able to cut your cancer risk by substantially more than half.
Diabetes—lower your risk substantially
Type 2 or adult-onset diabetes is highly preventable, yet more and more young people are developing it. The obesity “epidemic” in the West has helped fuel this rise. If you are obese, the risk of developing diabetes goes up seventy-seven times! Diabetics are at risk of having high homocysteine because we now know that the abnormally raised insulin seen in most diabetics stops the body from lowering and maintaining a healthier homocysteine level. By following a homocysteine-lowering diet and taking supplements, you will be able to help reduce your risk of diabetes or, if you are diabetic, you’ll be able to help keep the condition under better control and reduce complications.
Alzheimer’s disease—halve your risk
The evidence indicates that if you can lower your H score, you will significantly lower your risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. Homocysteine is strongly linked to damage in the brain. Dr. Matsu Toshifumi and colleagues at Tohoku University, Japan, conducted brain scans on 153 elderly people and checked them against each individual’s homocysteine level. The evidence was
crystal clear—the higher the homocysteine, the greater the damage to the brain.59
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine charted the health of 1,092 elderly people without dementia, measuring their homocysteine levels. Within the next eight years, 111 were diagnosed with dementia. Eighty-three of this group were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Those with a high blood homocysteine level (in this study, above 14 units) had nearly double the risk of Alzheimer’s. All this strongly suggests that following a homocysteine-lowering regime should, at the very least, halve your risk of developing Alzheimer’s in later years.60
Halve your risk of death from all causes
One of the best ways to extend your healthy life span is by reducing your homocysteine level. This is because, with every 5-unit (mmol/l) increase in your H score, you gain:
A 49 percent increased risk of death from all causes
A 50 percent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease
A 26 percent increased risk of death from cancer
A 104 percent increased risk of death from causes other than cancer or heart disease
These are the extraordinary findings of a comprehensive research study at the University of Bergen in Norway, published in 2001 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.61 The researchers measured the homocysteine levels of 4,766 men and women aged sixty-five to sixty-seven back in 1992 and then recorded any deaths over the next five years, during which 162 men and 97 women died. They then looked at the risk of death in relation to the individuals’ homocysteine levels. Remarkably, they not only reconfirmed the relationship between heart attacks, strokes, and high homocysteine, but also found that “a strong relation was found between homocysteine and all causes of mortality.” In other words, homocysteine is an accurate predictor of how long you are going to live, whatever the eventual cause of death may be!
The New Optimum Nutrition Bible Page 15