Reprinted with permission from World at Large, an independent news outlet covering conflict, travel, science, conservation, and health and fitness.
Published in April of last year, a study found that older men put on a relatively simple 8-week program were able to reduce their biological age by 3.2 years.
It might be surprising to read, but it wasn’t a magic pill, a miracle cure, or some strange herb from a cave in Peru, that conferred this remarkable benefit on the men aged 50-72, but six small changes to diet and lifestyle aimed at altering their epigenetics.
The 6 changes consisted of recommendations for better sleep and for a duration of at least 7 hours, some phytonutrient powder supplements consisting of polyphenols and curcumin, a 10-minute meditation or breathing practice done twice daily, a 12-hour eating window, such as 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., a probiotic consisting of Lactobacillus plantarum, and 30 minutes of exercise per day 5 days a week at 60-80% of maximum heart rate.
The goal of the study was to affect “epigenetics” which could be described as human adaptation in response to conditions met throughout life. Epigenetics can’t turn us into a different species, but they do allow Sherpas to live in the high altitude of the Himalayas year round, or indigenous Indonesians to stay underwater for long periods without needing to breathe.
It makes babies conceived during periods of famine or food scarcity more susceptible to conserving glucose throughout their life, and much more besides.
There are epigenetic changes that make us age faster, and there are changes that slow or even reverse this process; which is what longevity researchers generally refer to when they make claims such as “reverse aging.”
What aging is today
Over the last few years, life expectancy in some countries like the U.S. is going down for the first time since World War II. With the number one risk factor for disease being ‘aging,’ and ‘disease’ being the second highest risk factor for disease, there’s an enormous incentive to mitigate both.
Doing so has been hypothesized as representing a $7 trillion savings in medical care over 50 years: which is slightly more than the savings predicted for keeping the global temperature from rising 2°C.
The researchers’ goal was to alter epigenetics through methylation, which bears some brief explanation.
“Currently, the best biochemical markers of an individual’s age are all based on patterns of methylation,” the researchers write. Methylation is, as lead author Kara Fitzgerald explained in a recent radio interview, simply the attaching of a methyl group to a cytosine on select areas of the DNA-containing chromosomes.
As life evolved, it found that methyl groups were extremely common and useful, and evolution has created perhaps millions of processes that involve methyl groups, not least of which is gene expression, which is the scientific phrase for the degree to which a gene affects our bodies and health.
“Of 20+ million methylation sites on the human genome, there are a few thousand at which methylation levels are tightly correlated with age,” the authors write, adding that a DNA clock that measures methylation will better predict an individual’s risk for mortality than chronological age.
Diet was not significantly altered from normal, yet personalized recommendations, except as part of a general lowering of carbohydrate intake. It was mostly plant-based, with an emphasis on choosing low-glycemic fruit, and replacing proteins with nutrient-dense options like beef liver and eggs. Eating was prohibited after 7 p.m. and before 7 a.m. the next morning. The entire diet plan can be found here.
The study wanted to see what older people who have no adverse risk of disease and are of generally good health could achieve with the multi-faceted approach.
“It took us a long time to run the study because we did some pretty hefty screening,” Fitzgerald said on Revolution Health Radio, “so we can reverse bio-age in healthy individuals, there’s just no doubt in my mind that using these interventions in individuals with various diseases we should see more significant change”.
Fitzgerald feels one of the most significant elements of the study was the weekly appointment of a nutritionist, who was also in charge of ensuring the exercise and mediation were pursued correctly according to a pre-determined script.
Little else of a general nature changed in the control group, apart from a reduction of 25% in mean triglycerides, and a reduction in total cholesterol.
Undoubtedly the most exciting part about this finding is the relative simplicity with which it was achieved. The probiotic and phytonutrient aspects were simple supplements, while the exercise part doesn’t really ask more than the minimum government recommendations. Indeed some individuals will have difficulty finding 20 minutes a day for meditation, but for reducing biological age by 3.2 years, it’s not so much to ask.
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