Want to Halt Aging? Hold the Fries

You won’t find any junk food in the legendary fountain of youth. New research has linked a diet low in processed foods to a slower aging process. A study of nearly 2,000 individuals published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the more wholesome their diet was, the more slowly they aged.

This article is a repost which originally appeared on Life Extension
Dayna Dye, Certified Medical Assistant - October 4, 2021
Edited for content and readability Images sourced from Pexels

“Our findings demonstrate that better diet quality was associated with decelerated biological aging, providing a promising avenue to explore the beneficial effects of diet on prolonged lifespans,” the authors of the article wrote, adding that “adopting a healthy diet is crucial for maintaining healthy aging.”

DASH diet linked to slower aging process

Top view of fresh ripe banana and green and red apples arranged as smile on pink background

Published in June 2021, the study measured how closely participants adhered to the DASH diet, while also looking at how quickly their biological ages advanced over a 10-year time period. DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, and it is a largely plant-based diet that emphasizes whole foods and discourages the intake of processed foods.

While the goal of DASH is to fend off high blood pressure and other cardiovascular diseases, evidence suggests it also helps protect against kidney and liver diseases, cancer, osteoarthritis, gout, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and other disorders—so these new findings may not be surprising to advocates of DASH.

Measuring the rate of aging

How did researchers determine that study participants who adhered to a DASH diet aged at a slower rate? They looked at how methylation affected the subjects’ DNA.

Our genes are composed of DNA, which is a molecule that provides the instructions needed for our development, survival and reproduction. DNA methylation occurs when a methyl group consisting of carbon and hydrogen is added to certain parts of DNA, which can affect gene function and expression. During aging, some DNA regions become overmethylated while others are undermethylated.

“Diet-associated differential DNA methylation can be linked to metabolic and inflammatory pathways, which indicates the importance of diet-induced epigenetic changes on health outcomes,” the study authors remarked. Epigenetics is the science of the processes that help determine when genes are turned on or off, without altering the genes themselves.

This study isn’t the first time DNA methylation status has been used to predict life span. Other studies have linked it to disease progression and death. Ultimately, this measurement can help you understand your biologic age, which, depending upon how healthy your lifestyle is, might be younger or older than your chronologic age.

Why your chronologic age is less important than your biologic age

Chronologic age refers to the number of years someone has lived, whereas biologic age provides a more accurate estimation of a person’s age based on the measurement of various markers. As an example, someone who smokes, rarely exercises, is overweight and has bad eating habits may be determined to be biologically “older” than their chronologic age and runs the risk of failing to attain the average human life span.

This new study suggests that diet is an especially important factor when it comes to staying biologically youthful, no matter the date of birth on your driver’s license.

What foods should you avoid to stay biologically young?

Adhering to the DASH diet naturally limits your consumption of processed foods, which are, as the name implies, foods that have been processed in ways that change them from their natural state.

While foods that are minimally processed, such as chopped, roasted, canned or frozen foods may still be nutritious, heavily processed foods provide less in the way of beneficial nutrients and more saturated fat, sugar, salt and other unhealthy ingredients.

Partial list of processed foods

  • Most packaged breakfast cereals
  • Cakes
  • Candy
  • Cheese
  • Crackers
  • Donuts and pastries
  • Fast food
  • Deli meat
  • “Fruit drinks”
  • Pizza
  • Potato chips
  • Soft drinks

Keto diet found to boost sperm count and quality in obese men – Insider

The keto weight loss diet could help boost sperm count and quality, according to 2 case reports

Gabby Landsverk
Sep 10, 2020, 6:00 PM

This article is a repost which originally appeared on Insider

Edited for content

  • Two new case reports suggest a keto weight loss diet could benefit sperm count and quality in obese men.
  • Two patients who lost 20 to 60 pounds on the diet saw dramatic improvements in their sperm samples.
  • This is backed by evidence that keto can boost sexual health, but other healthy eating plans like a Mediterranean or DASH diet are also linked to improvements.

There’s new evidence that the high-fat, low carb keto diet might have benefits for reproductive health.

In new case reports, two men with obesity who lost weight on a very low calorie keto diet saw significant improvements in both sperm count and quality, according to research from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, presented at the 2020 European and International Obesity Congress,

In the first case, the patient lost nearly 60 pounds in the three-month dieting period, dropping his body fat percentage from 42% to 34%. Subsequently, his sperm quality improved by nearly 100%, based on the percentage of motile sperm in a test sample. His testosterone levels also more than doubled.

The second case report was of a patient who lost less weight, 20 pounds in three months, dropping from 26% to 21% body fat. His sperm quality also improved, but he saw even more significant benefits to sperm count, with over 100 million more sperm tested in the final sample, an increase of nearly 30%. Interestingly, his testosterone levels decreased slightly.

These results were based on the dieting plan called Pronokal, a highly-studied commercial weight loss method launched in Spain in 2004, which differs from traditional keto in that it’s both low-carb (fewer than 50 grams a day) but also limited to 800 calories a day.

Two patients is hardly a large enough sample size to draw broader conclusions about keto and sperm count. But existing evidence supports the notion that low-carb diets could have benefits for sexual health, as increasing fat consumption appears to support healthy sperm levels.

Previous research has also linked higher levels of dietary fat intake to increased testosterone.

You may not need a strict diet to improve sexual health

One caveat to these findings is that extremely restrictive diets can have side effects, particularly in the long term, and very low calorie diets in particular should only be done with medical supervision.

It’s also not only the keto diet specifically that’s linked to better sperm count, quality, and other measures of fertility. There’s evidence healthy dietary changes of any sort can boost sexual health.

The Mediterranean diet, for instance, has been linked to improvements in erectile dysfunction. In a 2004 study, a healthy diet and exercise program helped improve erectile dysfunction in obese men.

A 2019 study found eating processed foods was linked to poor sperm count, while eating more fish and veggies was linked to better sperm count, which is also related to sex drive and overall sexual function.

The DASH diet, which limits red meat and full-fat dairy in favor of fruits, veggies and whole grains, is also linked to higher sperm count, according to research.

That suggests that the benefits may be less related to any one dietary pattern, such as keto, and more about improvements to overall health that affect every area of the body.