Inevitable. Inexorable. Unavoidable. As sure as leaves fall from the trees in autumn, each of us will, in our season, grow old and eventually die. We all age.
But then again, we’re not exactly like the trees because for each of us that season comes in its own time. Surely you’ve noticed that for some people the aging clock ticks more slowly than it does for others.
Instead of succumbing to the ills and indignities of age when their peers do, some individuals endure. They become distinguished rather than decrepit, wise rather than wizened, sterling silver rather than grayed-out. They live longer. They have more energy to draw on and for a longer amount of time. They feel better. They enjoy life. And they even look better. How do they do it?
It helps to be dealt a hand of good genes at birth, of course. That’s like holding four aces while the rest of the folks at the poker table struggle with bad hands. But—lots of people have made this observation before—life is like poker in a lot of ways. Just as in poker, you can take a winning hand and blow it by taking the wrong actions. And you can take a so-so hand and win big if you know how to play the game.
Getting the right nutrients in the right quantities throughout your life is a huge part of playing the aging game. We’ll get to what medical science knows about the right nutrients momentarily. But first we need to look at some of what medical science knows about aging.
Medical science does not, by any means, have the last word on aging. If it did, all those scientists out there would be looking and feeling younger than the rest of us. But they do know a lot and are learning more every day in laboratories and institutes around the world. In fact, says Bruce Ames, PhD, we’ll be witnessing a longevity revolution in the not too distant future.
At 80, Dr. Ames is one of the world’s most enduring researchers on nutrition and aging. For a number of years, he was a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He came into a good deal of money, he says, when he invested in a successful start-up company created by one of his students. So at “retirement,” Dr. Ames was able to create his own anti-aging research laboratory at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California, where he is senior scientist and still going strong.
How important is diet to holding back the aging process?
Very, says Dr. Ames. “Half the country is shortening their lives by eating unbalanced diets,” he says. “It’s hard to find anyone eating the perfect diet.”
You need about 40 micronutrients for your body to do all the necessary biochemistry to keep you alive and functioning, Dr. Ames explains. These include some 15 vitamins, 15 minerals, 8 or so essential amino acids, and 2 essential fatty acids, he says.
You simply can’t do your internal biochemistry without every one of these, he says. “Are you getting enough of all of them? The answer, I think, is ‘no.’”
To understand why getting enough of each individual nutrient is so essential—and it is essential—in holding back the aging process, one needs to look at several things that take place as we age, explains Dr. Ames.
One major factor to be aware of is mitochondrial damage. Mitochondria are tiny powerhouses inside the body’s cells, explains Dr. Ames. In fact, each cell has about 500 of them. Each of the mitochondria works like a little rechargeable battery producing and taking apart the ATP molecule. This process, which happens millions of times a second, releases energy for the body to use.
As you age, you have fewer and fewer mitochondria. And as you age, nutritional deficiencies damage the mitochondria. In fact, scientists think that mitochondrial damage is a major component of aging, says Dr. Ames.
Another component of aging is DNA damage. Free radicals, which are naturally produced as your body metabolizes food, are highly reactive molecules that damage tissues and DNA, the structure within each cell that carries the genetic code. Exposure to pollutants, including cigarette smoke and things like car exhaust, increases the amount of free radicals in your body and thus the amount of damage that they do. (Just to be clear, the amount of damage from things like car exhaust is relatively minor compared to that from cigarette smoke.)
As we age, the bits of DNA damage accumulate, making it harder and harder for your body to replicate its youthful self. The damage that free radicals do inside the body’s cells is known as oxidative damage. Another type of oxidative damage that you’re familiar with is the process that turns iron to rust. So the increasing amount of free radical damage that our bodies endure as we age has often been compared to rusting.
Dr. Ames likes to compare it to oils going rancid. “We’re all going rancid, our fat, our protein, our DNA,” he says. “Whatever tissue you look at, we’re going rancid.” Fortunately, he says, “we have lots of defenses against this.” Those defenses, no surprise, are nutritional.
We have one more possible component of aging to look at before we discuss individual nutrients, and that’s a relatively new theory that Dr. Ames has developed. He calls it triage.
According to his triage theory, explains Dr. Ames, the body has evolved mechanisms to deal with temporary shortages of important micronutrients. “The central premise of the triage theory,” he says, “is that, as a result of natural selection, when a micronutrient is limited, a rebalancing occurs by which metabolic functions required for short-term survival are favored over metabolic functions with only long-term consequences. Micronutrient shortages are likely to have been very common during evolution, as they are today.”
Later on, in times of greater nutritional plenty, the body would go back and repair whatever systems could be repaired. If DNA was damaged, however, that could not be repaired. And that would likely cause serious problems later on. Dr. Ames goes into detail about the science behind his theory in a 2006 article that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “If this hypothesis is correct,” he notes in this article, “micronutrient deficiencies that trigger the triage response would starve metabolism for long-term health and accelerate cancer, aging, and neural decay but would leave critical metabolic functions useful for survival, such as ATP production, intact.”
What does that have to do with you?
These days you might not have to worry about tigers and bears lurking around the next corner, but, according to Dr. Ames’s theory, your triage system is still very much intact. That means that if you have nutrient deficiencies now, you may feel just fine, for now. But your body, in order to meet your immediate energy needs, could be borrowing the nutrients that you need to prevent future cancer from showing up, to keep your brain functioning well in future years, and to stay youthful for a longer period of time.
You need to get all of your essential nutrients in adequate amounts in order to live. All of them. Every single one of them. The bottom line: “Bad diet accelerates the degenerative diseases of aging,” says Dr. Ames. “When you’re short on a vitamin or mineral, it’s all long-term damage, not short-term damage.”
Most nutritional experts these days are concentrating on diet as a means to getting all the nutrients that you need. Generally, they advise eating five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day along with whole grains, fish, and other lean sources of protein. And that’s all well and good, says Dr. Ames. But, he asks, how many of us actually do that? Even those of us who know what we’re supposed to be eating don’t do it every day. How many of us really eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day?
Get real, he says in so many words, and take a daily multivitamin to ensure that you’re getting all the nutrients that your body needs. Do continue to pay careful attention to eating your fruits and vegetables, advises Dr. Ames. He certainly does. In fact, he brags that he’s married to an Italian who cooks Mediterranean cuisine, which is particularly healthful. But he takes a multivitamin anyway. And so, he says, should you.
Along with taking a multi, there are several individual nutrients that merit special attention, says Dr. Ames.
In 2005, researchers at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston looked at the impact of B vitamins on aspects of aging in a group of men over a 3-year period. They found that low blood concentrations of B vitamins and high concentrations of homocysteine were predictors for declines in mental function that are associated with aging. (Homocysteine, an inflammatory biochemical, is associated with heart disease.)
B vitamins are found in a wide variety of foods, from meat and poultry, to fortified cereals, to leafy green vegetables. You can also get a full range of B vitamins in a B-complex supplement.
Vitamin B12 is of special concern to elderly people, says Dr. Ames, because even if you’re consuming the right amount, you may not be absorbing enough. You need just 6 micrograms daily.
Recent Dutch research showed that one-quarter of the elderly population who were consuming enough of this vitamin were deficient, says Dr. Ames. You might want to ask your doctor for a blood test to evaluate your vitamin B12 status.
Most people know that if you don’t get enough calcium, it can damage your bones. If you don’t get enough calcium, it can also damage your DNA and ultimately increase your cancer risk, says Dr. Ames.
There are a couple of nutrients that don’t make it into a multi in high-enough amounts to really give you all you need because it would make the pills too bulky, explains Dr. Ames. These include both magnesium and calcium.
The RDI (Reference Daily Intake) for calcium is 1,000 milligrams. Good food sources include yogurt, low-fat cottage cheese, sardines with bones and spinach.
You could also take a supplement, says Dr. Ames. If you eat a lot of calcium-rich foods, factor that in and take a supplement that will bring your total calcium consumption to approximately 1,000 milligrams. This is one nutrient, among many, that you don’t want to go overboard on. Excess amounts of calcium can cause kidney stones.
The mineral iron presents a special case, because while some people aren’t getting enough, others are likely getting too much, says Dr. Ames. And both situations can cause serious health consequences.
“Too much iron is bad for you, and too little iron is a disaster,” he says, adding that both too much and too little of this important mineral cause DNA damage.
“About 16 percent of menstruating women aren’t getting enough iron,” he says. They often need extra iron because regular loss of blood means regular loss of iron. Men who eat too much red meat, on the other hand, are probably getting too much iron, he says.
What to do? If you are a woman who has not yet gone through menopause, says Dr. Ames, make sure that your multivitamin contains iron. The RDI for iron is 18 milligrams. If, on the other hand, you are a woman who has gone through menopause or a man, make sure that your multivitamin does not contain iron. Multivitamin formulas both with and without iron are readily available.
Studies have shown that 56 percent of the population is not getting enough magnesium, an essential mineral, says Dr. Ames. And if you’re not getting enough, there’s a good chance you won’t know it, at least not for a while. “You look perfectly normal,” says Dr. Ames. “The pathology is insidious. You feel okay, but it’s aging you faster.”
When living human cells in culture (in test tubes) don’t get enough magnesium, they age faster, says Dr. Ames. A magnesium shortage results in DNA damage.
In one study, Dr. Ames and colleagues in Oakland cultured human fibroblasts in a magnesium-deficient medium. Fibroblasts are numerous in human connective tissue, where they secrete needed proteins.
The researchers found that the fibroblasts cultured in magnesium-deficient media, when compared to those cultured in full-nutrient media, did not live as long. In their published study, the researchers noted that the accelerated cellular aging caused by a magnesium deficiency could cause or worsen age-related disease.
If you’re short of magnesium, you’re also short of calcium. No matter how much calcium you ingest, you can’t use it if you don’t get enough magnesium. Your body will simply throw away the calcium. As a general rule, you need to get about half as much magnesium as calcium.
That multivitamin you’re taking is not going to give you sufficient magnesium. Remember, this is one of the more bulky nutrients, so manufacturers simply can’t pack enough into a multivitamin to give you all you need. And you do need to get at least 400 milligrams daily of magnesium. That’s the RDI (Daily Reference Intake).
What to do? Eat your spinach! Enjoy those salads. All greens contain magnesium. In fact, so many foods contain magnesium that it’s hard to understand why so many people fall short in this mineral. Other foods that contain magnesium include cereals, nuts, beans, and dairy products.
You can also take a calcium/magnesium supplement or a magnesium supplement, which is one of the cheapest supplements out there, says Dr. Ames.
You need both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, says Dr. Ames. How important are they? Some 30 percent of your brain fat is made of omega-3s. If you’re like most Americans, you already get enough omega-6s but are in serious need of more omega-3s.
That’s because processed foods tend to lose the omega-3s, he says. As just one example, the process used to make white rice tosses out the omega-3s. To get more, he says, eat more deep sea fish like salmon and consider taking fish oil capsules. Simply follow the directions on the bottle, he says.
Many of the experts in this book have recommended taking 1,000 milligrams of fish oil either in capsules or liquid form.
Here’s a special warning for people of African American descent: Pay extra special attention to vitamin D.
A good portion of the American population is not getting enough of this vital nutrient, and black people are at far greater risk, says Bruce Ames, PhD, senior scientist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California. That’s because dark skin evolved in tropical climates, enabling it to withstand much greater sun exposure, he explains. Everybody’s skin naturally makes vitamin D whenever it’s exposed to the sun, but black skin needs about six times as much sun exposure to make the same amount of vitamin D as white skin, he says.
Another common source of vitamin D is fortified milk. Most commercial milk in this country is fortified with vitamin D. However, many African Americans are lactose intolerant and can’t comfortably digest milk, so they tend to avoid it and other fortified dairy products.
As a result of these two things—not drinking milk and needing more sun to make vitamin D—the black population in this country is overwhelmingly at risk of vitamin D deficiency, says Dr. Ames. In fact, Children’s Hospital of Oakland has treated 60 cases of rickets in the past few years in African American children in sunny California. Rickets is a disease of deformed bones caused solely by not getting enough vitamin D.
The bottom line from Dr. Ames: If you are a person of color, make sure that everyone in your family takes a vitamin D supplement.
Vitamin D functions as an important hormone in the brain. “The brain is absolutely full of vitamin D receptors,” says Dr. Ames. If you want to keep your brain active into old age, it’s crucial that you get enough vitamin D, and most people don’t, he says.
In fact, some 900 separate genes are turned on when vitamin D fits into the cells’ vitamin D receptors, Dr. Ames explains. While the risks for many of the diseases of aging are going to go up when you’re short of any micronutrient, this one is particularly important, he says. In fact, without sufficient vitamin D, you have a greater risk of getting osteoporosis and cancer.
Most vitamin D experts are convinced that the current RDI, which is set at just 400 IU, is way too low, and that number is likely to be raised in the near future, says Dr. Ames. He recommends getting 1,500 IU a day. That means you’ll likely have to take a separate supplement in addition to whatever is in your multi to reach this amount.
Take a daily multivitamin to ensure that you are getting any nutrients that may be missing from your diet.
B vitamins |
B-complex supplement, follow package directions |
Calcium |
1,000 milligrams |
Iron* |
18 milligrams |
Magnesium |
400 milligrams |
Omega-3 fatty acids |
1,000 milligrams of fish oil† |
Vitamin B12‡ |
6 micrograms |
Vitamin D |
1,500 IU |
*If you are a woman who has not yet gone through menopause, make sure that your multivitamin contains iron. If you are a woman past menopause or a man, you do not need to get extra iron. Make sure your multi does not contain iron.
† Fish oil has a blood-thinning effect. If you’re taking any kind of blood-thinning drug, talk to your doctor before taking fish oil supplements.
‡ You’ll get 6 micrograms of B12 in most multivitamin formulas. However, if you are elderly, consider asking your doctor to evaluate your vitamin B12 status.