Tag Archive for: age

Here’s Your Gift!

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Have you missed hearing my voice? As a little gift for you, I recorded all the Memos related to the Blue Zones docuseries in one audio for your listening pleasure. The advantage is you can download it to your phone or tablet and listen to it over and over again. Instead of looking up the Memos on drchet.com, you can listen on your device.

Do you remember the four lifestyle concepts of most people who live in Blue Zones? It may benefit you to hear them again, especially as we all start thinking about health changes we want to make next year.

Click here to buy the audio for free.

I hope you enjoy this small gift to help you stay on a healthy track for 2024. As always, it comes down to just one question:

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Lifestyle, Activity, and Aging

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Here’s the question: if the subjects with the highest leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) lived longer, why did those subjects age faster based on the tests used in the study? The answer is complicated.

Exercise and Longevity

The researchers analyzed the data several ways. In the first analysis, they adjusted the data for sex, age, and health status; that makes sense because we know those factors impact longevity independent of exercise. Then they adjusted for education, body mass index, smoking, and alcohol use.

The first model was as expected with a continuing decrease in rate of death as physical activity increased. But when the other factors were included in the analysis, the hazard ratio (risk of dying) dropped from 23% to the reported 7%. What does it say in simple terms? If you smoke, drink a lot of alcohol, or are overweight or obese, exercise can only do so much. In short, your lifestyle matters.

Biological Aging

Taken from the paper’s text:

“Biological aging is the gradual and progressive decline in system integrity that occurs with advancing age and results in increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Epigenetic clocks produce estimates for biological aging based on DNA methylation (DNAm) alterations within specific locations in DNA sites and are one of the primary hallmarks of biological aging.”

The blood tests used two biological aging “clocks” based on the subjects’ DNA. They found that those who were the most active had a similar aging pattern in their DNA to those who were sedentary. That’s why the headline said high levels of LTPA increased aging.

What they couldn’t explain was why. They defined high levels of physical activity as ranging from fast walking to competitive running—that’s a pretty wide range. Does high LPTA damage those areas of DNA more? Why would it be similar to being sedentary? It lends itself to examining the measurement used for the test and to future research on other factors that may play a role, such as nutrition.

The Bottom Line

The paper provides insight into the importance of physical activity in our lives. What needs further examination is why high levels of physical activity would result in damage to DNA that mimics someone who is sedentary and raises the question of whether excessive exercise has a negative effect. As unusual as it would be to say someone exercises too much, it’s possible, and it could be more harmful as we get older. But it’s important to note that only 5% of the subjects had biological aging tested, so the sample size is small considering the follow-up was 30 years.

The real message? Physical activity isn’t enough to overcome a poor lifestyle. The damage caused by excess weight, smoking, and alcohol use can’t be overcome by exercise alone, even at high levels of physical activity. It still comes down to what I always say: Eat less. Eat better. Move more. That’s a great place to begin.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.02.23290916

How Exercise Affects Aging

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If a headline says, “exercise could make you age faster,” you know I absolutely must read it. There were a variety of commentaries on an unpublished study by Scandinavian researchers who won the Finnish national sports medicine prize; an advanced copy was published in PUBMED.

Researchers used data collected from an ongoing twins study with close to 23,000 twins who were 18 to 50 years old when the study began in 1975. The variables they used were leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) collected via questionnaires, self-reported height and weight, smoking and alcohol use, as well as education level. The data were collected from one to three times on the subjects; researchers also collected blood samples on 1,153 twins over the years as well. They gathered the samples to determine biological measures of aging using epigenetic clocks, biochemical tests that can be used to measure age. Their primary outcome measure was mortality, both in the short term and long term.

What did they find? As I would have expected, as LPTA levels increased, all-cause mortality decreased. But was it as simple as that? That doesn’t fit the headline. There’s more, and I’ll cover it on Saturday.

Speaking of what I’ll cover, on tomorrow’s Insider conference call the topic will be V.O.M.I.T. as well as answering your questions (including what V.O.M.I.T. is). You don’t want to miss this one, so give yourself a healthy Christmas gift and become an Insider by tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.02.23290916

Anticipate Change

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Adapt. Innovate. Improvise. Overcome. That’s a group of words I put together years ago about how to respond when faced with challenges. The approach works in the present. When it comes to changes in health that are associated with aging, we don’t know exactly what they will be. Therefore, we must anticipate what might happen. I’ll give you some examples to consider.

Things to Consider

What we value the most is our independence. Still, your body will change; you may see changes in strength, balance, vision, joint health, mental acuity, or fitness. That doesn’t count any new conditions or diseases.

Should you continue to drive? That would be about the last thing I’d want to give up, but glaucoma may have a say in it. And reaction time declines with age. Which abilities can you work to improve? What alternatives can you prepare for?

Having a two-story home with a basement is great. Will you always have the capacity to go up and down the stairs to do laundry or to retrieve stored items? Would moving to a ranch home with everything on one level be a better choice?

Going up and down a ladder to clean gutters could become a problem. Heck, getting the extension ladder out of the garage could be an issue. Plan for gutter covers. That’s one change I made when I could do it myself. I could still clean them, but now I don’t need to.

What about cooking? Cleaning? Snow shoveling? Lawn maintenance? Anticipate what you really want to do yourself and what you’re willing to let someone else do.

Am I Just Giving Up?

Understand this. This is not about giving up; this is making a conscious decision to adapt to new circumstances. Your body is different from what it used to be.  Doesn’t matter whether you’re 40 now, or 50 or 60 or over 70—your body doesn’t have the same capabilities, and it will differ even more in 10, 20, or 50 years. You must adapt to it, or you’re going to end up frustrated all the time. Because believe me, you’re not going to be able to do everything that you used to do in the same way.

Anticipate the changes that may occur. If you start preparing for that now while you may not need it, you’ll be ready for it if you do. The choices of what you will and will not be able to do are going to be different for every person, but we can probably all stand to simplify our lives.

Anticipate. Innovate. Improvise. Adapt. And you will overcome.

The Bottom Line

There’s a new year on the horizon, so now is a good time to think about the changes I’ve talked about. Most of us are not good at anticipating what our bodies will do, but I can virtually guarantee one thing: the less body mass you have, the easier it will be to do everything. What you can do starting now is methodically get to a normal body weight for your height, stay active, and work on your strength and stamina. I’ll continue to provide you with research-based actions you can take to age with a vengeance. Nobody ever said you have to go quietly.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Life Is Change

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Do you ever think about your life in five or ten years or even longer? Doesn’t matter how old you are today, whether you’re 30 or 70. What will your life be like? Let me define it more clearly for you with this example.

After Thanksgiving, Paula began setting up the Christmas tree. As she hit a snag with the lights, she stopped and asked herself a question: will I be able to do this in five or ten years? Not just putting ornaments on the tree, but all the other tasks associated with it. We talked and she decided the answer was no; it just wasn’t worth the tears and frustration. I heartily agreed—I can’t stand it when she cries. We bought a smaller tree that’s easier to set up, sold the old one to a younger family who wanted one that large, and moved on.

That’s what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter your age or your health today. Your body is going to change as you get older. What are you going to be willing to change? What are you determined to fight for? It’s not a question of giving up; it’s a question of planning. We’re trying to be smart about choosing our battles.

We’re still going to have a large-ish tree with amazing decorations. Ten years from now, we may downsize again, but in the meantime we have a tree we can manage.

Then there are the things we’ll fight for. Two torn biceps and a fall on the ice last winter has made picking things up over my head challenging. I found that out when Riley asked me to pick him up like I used to even as little as a year ago. Training will only get me so far; the joints and tendons still have the damage of seven decades, but I’ll keep working to build back strength. Paula is working in physical therapy toward another new knee in January, because she has things to do and places to go.

I’ll continue this train of thought in the Saturday Memo with some potential solutions.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

The Bottom Line on the Blue Zones

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The docuseries on Blue Zones demonstrated that it really isn’t complicated to live to 100: find a purpose, a reason to get up every morning, remain physically active, eat reasonably with a focus on plant-based sources for food, and develop a social group that can provide support through the various stages of life.

The docuseries ended with the writer working to create Blue Zones in different cities throughout the USA. That part is complicated because it involves community buy-in from government, health and healthcare officials, as well as professionals from nutrition, exercise, and community planning.

The Most Important Thing

After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important thing that anyone can do to live well to 100 is this: get to a normal body weight and stay there. Not everyone who actually was 100 years and older was thin, but they had already made it to 100.

Getting to a normal weight reduces your risk of just about every degenerative disease and reduces the stress on your joints; Paula adds that it also greatly expands your clothing choices. You may never be able to do the splits like the man in the photo, but you’ll be able to do more than you do right now. Genetics is always there to blindside us, but even with that unknown, we can be in a better position by being a normal body weight and maintaining it.

The Blowback Was Instant

I spent last weekend with several thousand people, and I enjoyed every moment. I was asked many times what is the most important thing to be healthy, and my answer was always the same: find a healthier way to eat that you’re willing to stick to for the rest of your life, get to a normal weight, and stay there.

Some replied that “if I got to that weight, I’d look like a skeleton.” Then they would tell me what weight they think they can get to; I gave no quarter, no permission to say that’s good enough. How long that takes you to do could be one, three, maybe ten years. If you’re 43, that means you’ll be 53 and that’s just when everything begins to decline body-wise. You’ll be better able to handle it.

Here’s a simple way to start that you can begin this minute: cut out sugary and ultra-processed foods as much as you can. Then you can go on to find more vegetables you like, learn to cook with less fat, and so on, but you can say no to that donut or cookie right now.

What should you weigh? Here’s a link to the BMI chart at drchet.com. Note that there are guidelines to determine whether you’re big-boned or small-boned, and that affects your goal weight.

The Bottom Line

I would ask nothing of others that I wouldn’t do myself. Getting to a normal weight within a year is my goal; redistribution of that weight may take another couple of years. So what? I don’t know if I have the genes to live to 100, and I don’t know whether that’s my goal. I just want to be able to live like I want every day I’m alive.

No matter your age today, you can help yourself live well longer, and it starts by getting to that normal weight. I know you can do it.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Blue Zones: Social Groups

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As I said on Saturday, when I began watching the Blue Zones docuseries, I would have wagered that either nutrition or exercise would be the most important factor in living longer. What we eat and how much we move are important, but the key to living well to 100 are the interactions we have with people.

That can take many forms. Your spouse can be the most important person you interact with along with family members who live close by: grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, and cousins, can all be part of your social group. Business groups such as Toastmasters and Chamber of Commerce, fraternal and sororal organizations, volunteer groups, and church groups all add to your social circle. An unstructured group that gets together to have coffee, make cookies, or play cards can also provide social interaction.

It’s more difficult in much of the world today because families often spread out due to school and jobs. Families may see each other during holidays but don’t have the frequent personal interactions that provide a support network. COVID also interfered with our ability to socialize; once regular social interaction was blocked, sometimes it never came back. Research has shown that the isolation was devastating to many. The governments of Japan and the UK were so concerned, they appointed Ministers of Loneliness.

I don’t have answers to how you increase your social interactions other than to seek them out; Facebook and texting are better than nothing, but being together is better. So my challenge to you is to take action to reconnect with friends and family:

  • Join a club or create one of your own, like a neighborhood walking group
  • Make a lunch date with someone you haven’t seen in a while
  • Call a friend in another city or state to catch up
  • Invite the neighbors over for dinner
  • When someone invites you to go to a movie or to meet for a drink after work, find a way to say yes

You may find that a few relationships can’t be rekindled, but you also may find yourself with a more stimulating social life—and that’s good for your health. I do know that if you want to live well to 100, social interaction is the most important lesson from the Blue Zones series. I’ll give you my final thoughts on Saturday.

Tomorrow night is the Insider conference call. There’s some interesting research I’ll share as well as answer Insider questions. Become an Insider by 8 p.m. tomorrow night and you can join in.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Blue Zones: Eat Reasonably

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As I continued to consider the four areas that make up the health habits related to living to 100, I would have thought that nutrition was going to be the key. After much reflection, it’s not. However, it doesn’t mean you should live on a diet of sweets, deep-fried foods, and a lot of ultra-processed foods.

Eat a Selective Plant-Based Diet

Do I mean you have to be a vegan? No. But as North Americans, we just don’t eat very many minimally processed vegetables. By minimally processed I mean you cut them up, season to taste, and cook. It can be stews, soups, side dishes, or whatever.

While the types of plant-based foods vary by culture, there are several foods in common:

  • Beans, lentils, and nuts of all types are an important source of fiber and protein. Soups and salads are perfect delivery systems, but so is chili—as spicy as you like it.
  • Root vegetables are important: potatoes, especially sweet potatoes and yams, carrots, and purple yams called ube.
  • Green, leafy vegetables: lettuces, cabbages, and greens of all types, such as coleslaw or collard greens with bacon. Eat some every day.
  • Lean meats for additional protein.
  • Wine, if you drink it, even though it’s a processed grape.

Make those the foundation of your diet along with healthy oils such as olive oil and some whole grains, and that’s it. Remember, this isn’t a weight loss program; it’s a way to eat for life.

Two More Important Points

Don’t overeat. Eat just enough and no more. The Okinawans eat to feel 80% full and that’s where they stop.

Get to a normal body weight, no matter what it takes or how long it takes, and stay there. It’s easier to move around if you’re leaner, and you’ll have fewer complications of degenerative disease.

The Bottom Line

What you eat is important to live well, whether to 100 or not. It’s not difficult, but it may force you to think about how you can do that until it becomes a habit. The sooner you figure that out, the more time you get to live well. Next week I’ll finish this up with the most important secret of living to 100, Blue Zones or not. It surprised me.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Blue Zones: Keep Moving

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Continuing our look at the lessons from Secrets of the Blue Zones, the next point that stood out to me was that everyone was physically active. I mentioned tai chi, but that’s organized activity. The Blue Zone secret is that the people were physically active throughout their day.

In some zones, they tended to gardens for part of the day. Or they got together in groups to prepare food. They didn’t stop at the grocery to pick up a rotisserie chicken and a bag of salad—they butchered the chicken, plucked the feathers, put it on the spit, turned the spit, and so on. Bread was made from scratch and pasta as well.

One scene struck me: the people who lived in Sardinia were always walking either uphill or downhill to visit friends, to go to the market, to church, or to get an espresso. In general, people who lived to 100 never really stopped physical activity.

In more modern areas such as Loma Linda and Singapore, there were parks and walking paths close by. However, whenever they could, they walked to get where they were going.

Did they also do more conventional workouts, alone or in groups? Absolutely, but the real key is that they moved throughout their day. Conventional exercise is important for a lot of reasons; for example, Paula sent me a quote yesterday that sedentary middle-aged Japanese women found that 16 weeks of regular exercise improved the elasticity and structure of their skin.

If you’re serious about living well regardless of age, find a way to move more every day.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Lessons from the Blue Zones

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Living to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones is a Netflix documentary that examines the lifestyles of people in several regions of the world that have a high proportion of people who live to 100. It’s a review of the observations of Dan Buettner, who has spent the better part of 30 years finding and examining cultures that have a larger than normal number of residents who live to 100. He’s written several books, films, and articles on the topics over those years. In this series, he goes back to look at those cultures again.

In the next several Memos, I’m going to give you my thoughts on each of the four areas he describes in his summary. I came away with a new perspective on a couple of areas including exercise and nutrition. In reality, they might contribute to longevity the least. While I think that each area is important, I’ll start with what I see as the weakness of his approach.

We know a lot about how people in these cultures ate and moved. We also see the social interactions they develop and their outlook on life. But they were already in their 80s, 90s, and 100s; we don’t know anything about people who were in their 70s when he began his observations 30 years ago and where they are today. Could someone adapt these lifestyles in their 50s, 60s, even 70s and live well into their 80s, 90s, or 100s? It sounds reasonable, but unless there are studies ongoing that will be published in the future, we don’t know that for sure. We can only look at the present.

I’ve decided the answer would be yes which is why I’m developing aging with a vengeance. The goal isn’t to live to 100; it’s to live well to 100 years or whatever your goal is. We’ll begin with outlook on life on Saturday. What’s yours? We’ll find out how important that can be.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Living to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zone. Dan Buettner. 2023. Netflix.