A growing body of evidence indicates that what we eat affects us both now and in the future. But have you ever wondered how what we eat affects our health and longevity? According to a recent to study Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health published in the journal MBC Biology, the answer to this concise question is inevitably quite complex.
Most previous analyzes have been more concerned with the effects of a single nutrient on a single outcome, which is the conventional approach to understanding the effects of diet on health and aging. But this one-dimensional approach doesn’t paint the whole picture because healthy diets should be viewed in terms of balancing a collection of nutrients rather than optimizing nutrients one at a time. Little is known about how normal variation in eating habits affects the aging process. This study aimed to find how best to answer this relatively concise but complex question.
“Our ability to understand the problem has been complicated by the fact that nutrition and the physiology of aging are very complex and multidimensional, involving a high number of functional interactions,” said Alan Cohen, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental health. science at Columbia Mailman School. “This study, therefore, lends further support to the importance of looking beyond just one nutrient at a time, as the single answer to the age-old question of how to live a long and healthy life.”
Cohen also points out that these findings are also consistent with numerous studies suggesting the need for increased protein intake in older adults, particularly to offset sarcopenia and decreased physical performance associated with aging. Multidimensional modeling techniques have been used to examine the effects of nutrient intake on physiological dysregulation in the elderly, leading to the identification of specific nutrient patterns associated with minimal biological aging. “Our approach presents a roadmap for future studies to explore the full complexity of the nutritional aging landscape,” observed Cohen, who is also affiliated with the Butler Columbia Aging Center.
For this study, data was analyzed from 1560 men and women aged 67 to 84 who were randomly selected from regions of Quebec, Canada, who provided data on their lifestyle, health and their diet to an ongoing investigation. to study. Participants were re-examined annually for 3 years and followed for over four years to assess on a large scale how nutrient intake is associated with the aging process.
Aging and age-related loss of homeostasis were quantified via the integration of blood markers, and the effects of diet used the macronutrient apple nutrition geometric framework and 19 micronutrient subclasses. A series of 8 models explored different nutritional predictors, and the researchers adjusted for factors such as gender, smoking status, age, physical activity levels, income, education level, and some number of comorbidities.
According to the researchers, 4 major trends were observed: 1. The optimal level of nutrient intake depended on the use of the aging metric. Increasing protein intake improved some parameters of aging while increasing carbohydrate intake improved others. 2. Intermediate levels of nutrients worked well for many results. 3. A broad tolerance to nutrient intake was observed that does not deviate too much from homeostatic plateaus. 4. The optimal level of one nutrient often depends on the levels of another, and researchers suggest that a simpler analytical approach would not be able to capture such associations.
“These results are not experimental and will need to be validated in other contexts. Specific findings, such as the importance of the combination of vitamin E and vitamin C, may not be replicated in other studies. But the qualitative finding that there are no simple answers to optimal nutrition is likely to hold: it was evident in almost all of our analyses, from a wide variety of approaches, and is consistent with evolutionary principles and a lot of previous work,” Cohen said.
Additionally, the researchers also developed a interactive tool which allows users to explore how different combinations of 19 micronutrient variables affect different aspects of aging such as dysregulation of oxygen transport, dysregulation of liver/kidney function, dysregulation of the immune system, dysregulation of lipids, global physiological dysregulation, micronutrient dysregulation, phenotypic age and Klemera -Biological double age. The focus is on the effects of the three-way interaction between micronutrients, and the results visualized are composite health measures based on common biomarkers.
As with anything you read on the internet, this article should not be construed as medical advice. please talk to your doctor or primary care provider before changing your wellness routine. This article is not intended to provide medical diagnosis, advice, treatment, or endorsement.
