Preventing premature death
The vast majority of people die from preventable diseases. The U.S. Surgeon General states that “of the 2.2 million Americans who die each year 1.8 [million] die from diet-related diseases.” Three-quarters of all deaths are caused by cancer, heart disease, bronchial infections, Alzheimer’s, or accidents. Eradicate these and you instantly extend your probable healthy life span by ten to twenty-five years, the key words being “healthy life span.” By preventing these diseases, and all the degenerative changes that lead up to them, through optimum nutrition, you effectively turn back the clock and slow down the aging process.
However, the challenge that has occupied gerontologists is not how to prevent the diseases responsible for premature aging and death, but to discover what determines the maximum possible life span. Why, for example, can an elephant live a hundred years or more, while most insects have a life span of days? The big question, of course, is how we can extend the maximum possible life span.
Extending your maximum life span
While the likely maximum life span of a human being is in the region of 110 to 120 years or more, you may be surprised to know that a proven method already exists for extending this length of time. It is, at least, proven in all animal species so far tested, and it is achieved by restricting calorie intake while providing optimum nutrition.
Pioneered by Dr. Roy Walford, calorie restriction has been shown to promote health, reduce disease, and extend life span by 10 to 300 percent. Studies with fish have achieved a remarkable 300 percent extension, while with rats the maximum increase has been 60 percent.22 Although this effect has been proved in many species by U.S. government-backed research groups, it is too soon to complete human trials, but there is little doubt that the same approach will produce results. The unknown factor is, How much calorie restriction, and at what level, is required to produce a result? Even a 10 percent extension means increasing maximum life span to over 130 years—a concept now accepted by many gerontologists, although considered fantasy twenty years ago.
Ongoing research is aimed at discovering why optimum nutrition with calorie restriction is so effective, and the answer to this question, once found, will probably shed light on the process of aging. Current theories focus on the energy factories within cells, called mitochondria. The mitochondria are responsible for the rate of metabolism or energy production. The harder they work, the more oxidizing free radicals are produced (see chapter 15), which in turn age the mitochondria and have the potential to damage the cell’s DNA, the blueprint for new cells.
Ron Hart from the National Institutes of Health has demonstrated that the aging of species is also linked to the ability to repair DNA. According to Professor Denham Harman, from the University of Nebraska Medical School, the “chances are 99 percent that free radicals are the basis for aging.” There is growing consensus that the process of aging hinges on declining ability to repair the damage caused by free radicals.
This also means that the key to longevity lies in reducing our exposure to free radicals and increasing the body’s protection against them by increasing our intake of antioxidants. When animals are given very high-quality, low-calorie diets, this is exactly what is achieved. They receive exactly what they need in the way of fuel, so there is no wasted “burning” by the body—this process is the major generator of free radicals, the toxic by-product of energy metabolism. By being provided with optimum nutrition, especially a high intake of antioxidant nutrients, the animals have both maximum protection from free radicals and all the cofactor nutrients necessary to make sure that energy metabolism takes place as efficiently as possible.
While the roles of antioxidant vitamins A, C, and E are well known, there are other important antioxidant nutrients. Two of these are lipoic acid and carnitine. Studies involving the feeding of these to old rats have shown amazing reversals of aging.23 Professor Bruce Ames, a molecular biologist at the University of California, who led this research, said of the animals who had been on supplements of lipoic acid plus acetyl-L-carnitine, “The brain looks better, they are full of energy—everything we looked at looks like a younger animal. It’s the equivalent of making a seventy-five- to eighty-year-old person act middle-aged.”
But can we apply all this to humans? To date, the circumstantial evidence is remarkably consistent across a wide variety of species and there is no reason to believe that humanity will be any different. Longevity, or the risk of mortality, correlates very well with blood levels or dietary intakes of vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin A, and beta-carotene.
For example, in a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which followed 11,178 people between the ages of 67 and 105 over ten years, the overall risk of death was reduced by 42 percent for those who took supplements of both vitamin C and vitamin E.24 This is a remarkable finding that confirms earlier studies. What is not known, however, is how much of the reduction is due to the prevention of premature death from disease and how much to the extension of the maximum life span.
In practical terms, there is only one way to maximize your life span, having reduced the risk of dying prematurely from disease. Restrict calories and nourish yourself optimally, especially where antioxidants are concerned.
Eat less, live longer
It is more than likely that the leaner you are the longer you will live. Calorie restriction, however, is not the same as malnutrition. It is about giving the body exactly what it needs and no more. Many foods in today’s diet provide “empty” calories—sugar or saturated fat, but none of the micronutrients needed to process them. These foods are out if you want to extend your life span. Nutrient-dense foods such as organic carrots, apples, nuts, and seeds provide as many nutrients as calories plus, in the case of fresh fruit and vegetables, plenty of essential and calorie-free water.
One way to restrict calories is simply to eat less. Another is to fast or have a modified fast one day a week. This may mean, for example, just eating fruit. I keep my overall calorie intake low by eating a substantial breakfast and dinner but a small lunch (sometimes no lunch at all) and snacking on fruit throughout the day. Life insurance companies are well aware of the correlation between weight and longevity. Weight charts give an ideal weight range for your height; generally, the ideal weight for increased life expectancy is at the low end of this range. What really counts is keeping down the percentage of your body weight that consists of fat.
Lower your homocysteine
Aging isn’t determined just by oxidation, which damages cells. It’s also determined by methylation. This fundamental process, explained in chapter 16, is vital for repairing DNA in your cells and picking up the right information in the first place. How good you are at methylation, which is best reflected by measuring your homocysteine level, determines how long you’ll live.
In chapter 16, I told you about the extraordinary findings of a comprehensive research study at the University of Bergen in Norway, published in 2001.25 The researchers measured the homocysteine levels of 4,766 men and women, aged sixty-five to sixty-seven 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 their homocysteine levels. They discovered that “a strong relation was found between homocysteine and all causes of mortality.” In other words, homocysteine is an accurate predictor of death, whatever the cause.
What they found was that the chances of a person of sixty-five to sixty-seven years dying from any cause increased by almost 50 percent for every 5-unit increase in homocysteine! This strongly reflects how central homocysteine and methylation are to the underlying causes of the common diseases that kill most of us prematurely in the twenty-first century. Turn this equation around and what it suggests is that if, for example, your homocysteine level was 15, and you drop it to 6 units or less and maintain it there, you can probably add around ten years to your life! And it will be a lively decade because, as you will see, if you lower your ho
mocysteine level below 6 units with the proper balance of diet and supplementation, and alleviate your methylation problems, your cells will age more slowly, you’ll have increased vitality, and you’ll feel younger than your years. In practical terms, this means eating more greens and beans and supplementing B vitamins. See chapter 16 for the full strategy for keeping your hymocysteine score low.
Exercise keeps you young
Regular exercise can add seven years to your life span, conclude Dr. Rose and Dr. Cohen of the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Boston. But the exercise must be continued late into life and must be aerobic—that is, your heart rate must reach 80 percent of its maximum for at least twenty minutes. Cycling, swimming, and running are good; weight lifting and strengthening exercises, on the other hand, do little to extend your life. Aerobic exercise reduces blood cholesterol levels, pulse rate, and blood pressure, promoting better cardiovascular health as well as increasing mental function. It also helps you maintain proper blood sugar control and is therefore especially helpful for diabetics.
Keeping cool
One method of extending life span in animals has yet to prove practical or popular: it involves lowering the body temperature. Certain drugs have the ability to do this, but have undesirable side effects.
Keeping cool in terms of avoiding stress, however, may prove to be an important life-extension factor. Prolonged stress causes depletion of the adrenal hormone DHEA. Low DHEA levels are associated with an increased risk of many killers, including Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease, and of aging in general. DHEA also helps the body burn fat and stay lean. DHEA levels, if low, can be restored by supplementation. Nutrition consultants can determine your DHEA status through analysis of saliva samples. Although freely available in the United States, DHEA is not available over the counter in the UK, where it is classified as a medicine.
To maximize your healthy life span
Follow all the advice in this book for preventing killer diseases.
Ensure optimum nutrition through diet plus supplements.
Stay away from avoidable sources of free radicals—fried or browned food, exhaust fumes, smoke, strong sunlight, and so on.
Eat plenty of antioxidant-rich fruit and vegetables.
Take extra antioxidant nutrients—including vitamins A, C, and E, selenium and zinc, plus lipoic acid and acetyl-L-carnitine.
Eat plenty of greens and beans.
Supplement B vitamins.
Reduce your calorie intake to exactly what you need to stay fit and healthy.
Keep fit with a moderate (not excessive) amount of aerobic exercise.
Avoid stress.
Have your DHEA levels checked if you are over fifty.
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Conquering Cancer
Cancer is the second-greatest cause of death in the Western world. In the U.S. one in three people is diagnosed with cancer during their life and one in four currently dies from it. Cancer occurs when cells start to behave differently, growing, multiplying, and spreading. It is like a revolution in the body, where a group of cells stop working for the good of the whole and run riot. The odd revolutionary cell is a common occurrence and the body’s immune system isolates and destroys such offenders. However, in cancer, the immune system is overcome and the damage spreads.
Yet it may surprise you to know that cancer is, for the large part, a twentieth-century invention. The top five cancers—lung, breast, stomach, colorectal, and prostate—were basically unheard of before the beginning of the twentieth century. The growth in the incidence of cancer parallels the industrialization and chemicalization of our world. The more developed a country, the more prevalent is cancer. The higher the income per capita, the higher the incidence of cancer.26
Conventional treatments see cancer very much as the enemy and cut it out, burn it out through radiation, or drug it out with chemotherapy. All these treatments weaken the body. Advances in them only concern less damaging ways of applying them and cannot be considered breakthroughs. Although “five-year survival rates” have slightly improved, this is due to more advanced methods of detection rather than to successful treatment.
What causes cancer?
Most cancers are primarily the result of changes that humans have made to the total chemical environment—what we eat, drink, and breathe. According to one of Britain’s top medical scientists, Sir Richard Doll, 90 percent of all cancers are caused by such environmental factors. At least 75 percent of cancers are associated with environmental and lifestyle factors, say even the most conservative cancer experts.
What causes cancer?
In the space of two generations, we have invented ten million new chemicals and unwittingly released thousands of them into the environment. What’s more, our diet and lifestyle have exposed us to many more, from oxidants in cigarettes to the tumor-promoter IGF-1 in cow’s milk. Many are known as carcinogens, that is, they are capable of causing cancer; others are cancer promoters, that is, they may not cause cancer but they accelerate its growth. We take in these substances in our food, air, and water. Many are easily avoidable—but some are not.
We have, it seems, been unwittingly digging our own graves with a knife and fork. Today’s diet, laced with chemicals and devoid of nutrients as a result of food refining, is now thought to be the greatest single contributor to cancer risk. Conversely, by eating the right diet you can cut your risk of cancer by up to 40 percent, says the World Cancer Research Fund, having reviewed some five thousand studies linking diet and cancer.27 The European Commission has estimated that a quarter of a million lives could be saved each year across the original twelve member states through dietary changes alone. According to the British Cancer Research Campaign, “At least three out of four of all cancers are potentially preventable, but will only be avoided if the messages get through at a young age.” Meanwhile, in the United States, according to a statement issued by sixty-nine highly respected and prominent medical and scientific experts, “Over the last decade some five million Americans died of cancer and there is growing evidence that a substantial proportion of these deaths were avoidable.”28
An area where considerable advances have been made, however, is in understanding the underlying causes and risks for many types of cancer. At least 85 percent of cancers are associated with lifestyle factors including diet, smoking, and drinking alcohol. This figure has been arrived at from both ends, so to speak—firstly by looking at the link between cancer and causative agents, and secondly by looking at identical twins to see whether they get the same cancers. The twin research has shown clearly that no more than 15 percent of cancers are considered to be inherited, some part of which is our genetic inheritance. This is not to say, however, that 15 percent of cancer cases are genetic. Even people with “cancer genes,” such as the BCRA1 gene for breast cancer, won’t develop cancer without the environmental insults that tip the scales from healthy into abnormal cell growth. Other risk factors include hormonal imbalance, often induced by exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals such as HRT, exposure to radiation or ultraviolet light, pollution, food additives, drugs, and infections.
However, of all risk factors diet is the greatest, a fact that is backed up by the great progress being made in both the treatment and the prevention of cancer with nutritional therapy. This is because an underlying cause in many types of cancer seems to be one of three things:
Free radical damage to the DNA of cells, triggering their altered behavior or exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals. Risk factors such as smoking and radiation encourage free radical activity, while a good intake of antioxidant nutrients from fruit, vegetables, and also antioxidant supplements provides a measure of protection.
Overexposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals in food and water. Eating a diet low in hormone-disrupting chemicals and high in phytestrogens is another important protection factor, especially for hormonal cancers such as breast and prostate.
Poor methylation, resulting in high homocysteine and increased da
mage to DNA. The solution to this is more B vitamins.
Let’s explore these three underlying causes.
Antioxidant protection
While there was already substantial evidence a decade ago of the protective effect of antioxidant nutrients vitamins A, C, and E, beta-carotene, and selenium against certain types of cancer in animals, as every year unfolds we are seeing data from long-term human trials that support the role of nutritional therapy We have also learned how nutrients work in synergy to disarm oxidants (see chapter 15) and hence protect against cancer.
High levels of vitamin A (retinol) in the blood have long been associated with reduced risk. Recent research has shown that two metabolites of retinol, 13-cis-retinoic acid and trans-retinoic acid, are powerful anticancer agents. A study by Dr. Huang found that trans-retinoic acid puts acute myeloid leukemia into complete remission.29 Another study, by Dr. Wann Ki Hong and Dr. Scott M. Lippman, found that 13-cis-retinoic acid suppressed carcinomas of the neck and head.30 They gave forty-nine patients 13-cis-retinoic acid, and after a year only 4 percent had developed another tumor, compared with 24 percent of fifty-one patients on a placebo.
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