Age-Defying Nutrition & Training: Antioxidants, Telomeres, and Muscle-Building Nutrients

Age-Defying Nutrition & Training: Antioxidants, Telomeres, and Muscle-Building Nutrients

Hi everyone,

As we gear up to the launch of the 100-day Anti-ageing Group on March 6th i wanted to continue the series of newsletters on age-defying tips and advice.

The truth is you can probably put together a mini programme to help health-ageing, just based on the generous information I'm providing for you. The difference around the group is you get the accountability, personal coaching, individualised plans and that all makes it far more effective and likely you'll keep to your new healthy habits.

Please do sign up - i promise this will change your life

Taking as a basis the theories of ageing discussed recently, we can define several areas that may need to be focused on when working with older adults.

1. Maximising antioxidant intake / preventing oxidative damage.

Increasing consumption of antioxidant-rich vegetables and fruits, including all colours and as wide a range as possible, getting up to 8 or 9 servings a day. Berries, fresh herbs and green leafy vegetables should feature.
Healthy animal fats for fat-soluble vitamins should not be neglected: liver, egg yolks and grass-fed butter are among the best sources.
Antioxidant supplements may include turmeric, green tea, Pycnogenol (pine bark extract), bioflavonoids, resveratrol and berry extracts. For long-term use, these may be better taken as a combination of several antioxidants rather than individual supplements.
There’s a really good article on the top antioxidant rich foods which you can scan through here. My favourites include, green tea, artichoke, dark chocolate, cinnamon, all types of spice, pomegranate, coffee, pecans. olives and walnuts. I’m also a massive fan of different teas to increase antioxidant consumption.
Dried herbs all tend to score awesomely on the FRAP scale.
Generally increasing carotenoids is also vital. The best way to do this is to eat loads of plants, you can also top up with astaxanthin as a supplement.

2. Improving or optimising insulin sensitivity and limiting consumption of sugar/high-GI foods

As insulin is key to controlling sugar balance and avoiding insulin resistance helps prevent the onset of diabetes, insulin management is a key component of aging well.

Limiting calories via diet management and fasting protocols is pivotal in the fundamental control mechanisms and enzymes mTOR and AMPK. These will be discussed in detail in their own section.

Let’s now focus on cross-linkage and AGE’s management.

Aiming to limit damage from cross-linking in the body. This is pretty self-explanatory and has been discussed at length in an earlier article. You can also read about metabolic syndrome here.

There’s plenty of tips on controlling insulin in that article.

Note when reducing carbs, it’s vital to still eat tons of greens, otherwise you end up eating protein and fat and not taking enough antioxidants. This is potentially bad for longevity.

A fundamental habit for longevity is to eat 7-10 servings of vegetables each day.

3. Avoiding consumption of advanced glycation end products (AGEs)

As well as limiting sugar intake, we need to pay attention to reducing intake of compounds known as advanced glycation end-products. AGEs can promote oxidative damage, inflammation and cross-linking in the body, so potentially contributing to several of the potential mechanisms of ageing!

Advanced glycation end-products are compounds that are formed in food (and in our own body) when sugars attach to protein or lipid molecules in an uncontrolled way. Some AGEs are already present in food – especially animal foods – but most of the AGEs we consume are formed by cooking, especially with dry heat and at very high temperatures: grilling, roasting, searing or frying, for example. When the food browns or burns, AGEs are formed.

Here are some examples of how advanced glycation end-products in foods increase when we cook them:

The following can help to reduce intake of AGEs:

Increase consumption of raw foods – salads, etc.
Using a slow cooker, steaming, gentle grilling, or covering food when roasting can help to prevent excess browning and burning. Think about using lower-temperature cooking methods and moist heat where possible.
The secrets often in the sauce and the marinade, use plenty of herbal rubs, marinades and spicy herbal sauces like chimchiri and salsa verde.

4. Supporting hormone levels

I’m going to be covering this as a separate features in the next few weeks. If you want a quick testosterone boost just combine Adrenal T Max with Vinitroplus. Females can use Optimum Female with Vinitroplus.

5. Supporting muscle mass / preventing sarcopenia

Train your body to get stronger.

Eat enough protein, not too much. As we age it appears it’s better to stimulate muscle protein synthesis in ‘pulses’ and keep mTor (the enzyme responsible for triggering muscle growth) switched on to allow recovery but in balance with AMPK.

\Typically, this will mean following a 16:8 or 18:6 time restricted eating protocol (TRE) where the majority of calories, antioxidant rich foods and proteins are consumed around resistance based exercise.

Older people may need more protein in one sitting to support optimal muscle synthesis.

In one study, an older group of men with an average age of 71 showed optimal post-prandial muscle protein synthesis (MPS) after ingesting an average of 0.4g of protein per kg body weight in one meal, whereas a group of men with an average age of 22 was found to have optimal MPS after ingesting just 0.24g of protein per kg body weight.

What this means is eat 1-2 larger protein meals each day rather than protein all the time every 2-3 hours. Make sure you fast until you train, take some aminos (like my Metabolic Amino Complex) before you train then eat shortly afterwards. We’ve improved the flavour of this recently too so I’m sure you’ll enjoy it even more when you try the new flavour.

All of the methylation factors are included in the MAC formula.You will probably find as I have that you gain fine on 1.5g/kg protein, maybe a little less each day.
Lowering inflammation is really important at any age but as we get older it can also impair muscle protein synthesis. Taking fish oils, green tea and curcumin helps build muscle by reducing unnecessary inflammation.

Muscle mass and strength may be improved by omega-3 from fish and fish oils. In a randomized controlled trial, 44 subjects aged 60 to 85 (men and women) completed 6 months of either a daily fish oil or corn oil supplement. They were not doing any additional activity. After 6 months, those in the fish oil group showed a mean increase in thigh muscle volume of 3.6%, 1 rep max muscle strength of 4% and isokinetic power of 5.6%.[2] The researchers in both this study and an earlier similar trial [3] concluded that fish oil omega-3s may be valuable for helping to prevent sarcopenia.

Green tea may support gains in muscle strength and mass in the elderly in conjunction with exercise. In a study on Japanese elderly women with sarcopenia, those who drank green tea fortified with catechins and participated in an exercise programme showed greater gains in leg muscle mass and walking speed compared with groups that did either of these things alone or neither of the two.[7]

Intermittent fasting may help to delay ageing.

From an evolutionary perspective, eating three times or more a day is abnormal. It’s thought that intermittent fasting for 16 hours a day may improve health indicators and counteract disease development by stimulating cell responses that prevent and repair molecular damage.[8]

I make very good fish oils – which are ultra pure, along with organic green tea and a specially high absorption curcumin. If you like this information you can help me by buying some from here

A few items from the last article which are worth mentioning again;

One of the best ways to limit sarcopenia is to eat protein and train with weights. The nutrient creatine is also excellent for older (and younger folk) seeking to gain and retain quality lean mass.

6. Supporting glutathione levels (you saw the full glutathione article before – here’s a quick reminder)

This is an extension of point 1 above, as glutathione is an antioxidant. In fact, it’s said that glutathione is the most important defence mechanism of our cells against oxidative stress. With age, glutathione levels may decrease by around 30 to 35%; and reduced glutathione levels may be observed in a number of diseases of ageing, such as cancer and heart disease. [1]Factors to increase glutathione levels include:

Undenatured whey protein – rich in sulphur-containing amino acids including cysteine. It is better to use undenatured whey because heating and pasteurisation can destroy the disulphide bonds.
N-acetyl cysteine (NAC). Glutathione is made up of the three amino acids cysteine, glycine and glutamic acid. Cysteine is the ‘rate-limiting’ amino acid in cellular glutathione biosynthesis as it’s generally found in lower levels in foods. NAC has been found to be a more effective way to increase glutathione than taking cysteine, as it is more resistant to breakdown during the digestive process. [1]
Alpha lipoic acid– has been found to promote the synthesis of glutathione.
Vitamin C
Selenium– needed for making the antioxidant enzyme glutathione peroxidase.
Turmeric + curcumin
Milk thistle.

Finally, the adaptogen which lengthens telomeres is called astragalus. It's in the Adaptacat formula it's also the base for the anti ageing drug TA-65 - which is ultra expensive.

Training/exercise

Moderate exercise may be better than intensive exercise for preventing ageing. A cohort study on 782 men found that those who did moderate levels of exercise had longer telomeres than the low-activity or high-activity groups. As we saw in topic 01, longer telomeres is associated with a longer life. [1]

However, it's probably best to do some 'strong stuff' combined with plenty of general movement and lower-intensity stuff. Main thing is not to over train and never stop moving! It's never too late to start doing weights after all.

High-intensity strength training can still benefit those in their 90s! A study on 10 frail volunteers aged 89 to 91 who did 8 weeks of high-intensity resistance training found that their strength increased by an average of 174%, with an increase in mid-thigh muscle area of 9%. [6]

Diet

Lower-carb diets may help reduce ageing (but only if you keep eating your veggies) In one study designed to assess the effectiveness of a low-carb diet for ageing, 31 patients with a mean age of 57 were put on a low-carbohydrate, adequate-protein, high-fat diet for an average of 3 months. The researchers found that measures of body weight, leptin, insulin, fasting glucose and triglycerides (all factors that relate to the ageing process) decreased significantly over the intervention period.[4]

REFERENCES

1. Savela S et al. Physical activity in midlife and telomere length measured in old age.Exp Gerontol. 2013 Jan;48(1):81-4. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2012.02.003. Epub 2012 Feb 22.

2. Smith GI et al. Fish oil-derived n-3 PUFA therapy increases muscle mass and function in healthy older adults. Am J Clin Nutr. 2015 Jul;102(1):115-22.

3. Smith GI et al. Dietary omega-3 fatty acid supplementation increases the rate of muscle protein synthesis in older adults: a randomized controlled trial.Am J Clin Nutr. 2011 Feb;93(2):402-12.

4. Rosedale R, Westman EC, Konhilas JP. Clinical Experience of a Diet Designed to Reduce Ageing.J Appl Res. 2009 Jan 1;9(4):159-165.

5. Moore DR et al. Protein ingestion to stimulate myofibrillar protein synthesis requires greater relative protein intakes in healthy older versus younger men. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2015 Jan;70(1):57-62.

6. Fiatarone MA et al. High-intensity strength training in nonagenarians. Effects on skeletal muscle. JAMA. 1990 Jun 13;263(22):3029-34.

7. Kim H et al. Effects of exercise and tea catechins on muscle mass, strength and walking ability in community-dwelling elderly Japanese sarcopenic women: a randomized controlled trial. Geriatr Gerontol Int. 2013 Apr;13(2):458-65.

8. Mattson MP et al.Meal frequency and timing in health and disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Nov 25;111(47):16647-53.