10 years younger

This was an excellent lecture.  Dr. Steven Masley has done research into what makes us age, and tested certain parameters of physiological aging with changing diet, exercise and stress reduction. He is a Family Physician as myself, but he is also a nutritionist and he also went to chef school, so in his book you will find tasty recipes as well.  

What he found were causes of accelerated aging is excessive oxidative stress (where anti-oxidants are helpful), low carb diets, the metabolic syndrome (which is borderline blood pressure, overweight, borderline sugars, low hdl or high cholesterol/ triglycerides and larger waist), physical inactivity, unmanaged chronic stress, toxins, inflammation.

I am sure many of you are thinking why low carb diets are bad.  he feels low carb diets limit anti aging nutrients which are more in the healthy carbs. better carbs is probably better (pardon the pun) then low carbs.

Part of the parameters he was watching is cognitive performance or mental speed, reaction time, brain flexibility .

He found that by eating what he calls his sweet sixteen vitality foods- (greens, lean not mean protein, seafood, beans, soy, whole grains, crucifers, berries, nuts, flax for horomone symptoms, fresh garlic, herbs, green tea, nonfat yogurts, red wine (1-2 servings or none), chocolate and cocoa (dark chocolate not milk chocolate).  These can be found in more depth on his web site or in his book which I bought for myself. his website is www.tenyearsyounger.net .  He also recommended adding those good foods so not pressured into feeling like your deprived.

His ten simple principles are 

1.eat more than 30gm of fiber a day

2. eat 4-5 cups of colorful produce a day.

3. reduce saturated fat and avoid trans fat.

4. eat omega 3 fats (such as fish).

5. choose whole grains.

6. seek calcium and magnesium.

7. drink lots of water.

8. save room for a planned healthy dessert.

9. watch portion sizes.

10 . select healthy snacks.

Exercise for about 30minutes per day for preferably 5 or 6 days a wk.  This is different than just cardiovascular health, to help improve mental speed etc 5 or 6 days will work better.

The last piece of the puzzle is to manage stress.  He didn't go into this much , however discuss it with me and we can go over stress management techniques.  This is probably the most critical aspect of health that I see that we generally ignore.  I usually challenge my medical students to find me adults in the office who are not stressed and they have not found more than 2 in a month.