The diet that keeps you young

Age’s just a number, goes the saying, years since birth don’t accurately predict ability, health or how much time’s left. 

Lifestyle often does. Eating well and being active are linked with lower incidence and later-in-life occurrence of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke, and with greater likelihood of survival into old age.

How does food increase longevity? There are many mechanisms in which your diet can affect disease, as certain foods affect lipid profiles, sugar metabolism and inflammation, for instance, and all these play a role in disease onset and progression. 

Genetic makeup also predicts disease and lifespan.

Can food change our genes? Diet of course doesn’t change our coded DNA sequence, but diet can modify genes’ expression: which genes are more active and which are suppressed. This fascinating field of study is called epigenetics. Gene expression can be controlled through chemical changes such as methylation, the addition of a methyl group to the DNA chain in an area that doesn’t code for the gene itself. Methylation can occur in many places, and thousands of these sites are known to be correlated with aging, acting like “clocks”, which predict biological age, chronic diseases and mortality. People whose epigenetic age is older than their chronological age are thought to be biologically older and at greater risk of disease, while those with young epigenetic ages are at lower risk.

Diet and lifespan

A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looks at the diet and at the methylation patterns of almost 2700 women. Diet quality was assessed in reference to four recommended healthy diet indexes, such as the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) and the Alternative Mediterranean Diet.

And the results: Higher diet quality was strongly inversely linked with two widely recognized epigenetic clocks that predict mortality – better diets predicting long lives and younger biological age. The authors conclude: “In summary, we found that healthy eating patterns are associated with some methylation-based measures of biological age. The benefits of healthy eating appear to accrue particularly in women reporting lower levels of physical activity. These findings support the hypothesis that a higher diet quality may slow aging and lower disease and mortality risks.”

Another recent study, including 2000 people, also looked at the overall diet quality using a DASH score, and at methylation profiles using 3 different verified epigenetic aging measures. The DASH score evaluates the intake of dietary components giving high scores for consuming more vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, whole grains and low-fat dairy, and for consuming less red and processed meat, sugary drinks, sweets and salt. The study demonstrated that higher diet quality was associated with slower aging according to the methylation epigenetic scores. What’s more, during the 10-year follow up in this study 297 participants died, and both a lower DASH score and the three epigenetic age acceleration measures were significantly associated with all-cause mortality. 

Several other studies look at how certain foods change methylation patterns, suggesting that high intake of plant-based foods slows the clock, that high intake of poultry predicts an accelerated aging, as does red meat. A study of 120 people aged 65-79 year showed slower epigenetic aging when people ate a Mediterranean-style diet for a year.

Anti-aging from within

Anti-aging skin care routines promise young looking skin (the most proven anti aging skin treatment however is ultraviolet radiation avoidance and blocking) and longevity supplements promise death defying miracles – without much evidential support.

But we actually know that certain habits are linked with delayed aging, disease and death. Chief among them are eating well, exercising, avoiding smoking and nurturing social ties. It’s not as  easy as taking a pill or a potion, and you need to stick to it long term.

What does eating well mean? There are very many ways to eat healthfully, and all of them center on emphasizing whole plant-based foods (vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, whole grains) and minimizing highly processed foods (fast-food, processed meats, sugary drinks). 

Dr. Ayala