Is aging a disease or a normal process?

Defining aging has been a major source of controversy lately. While some experts in the field do believe that not only should aging be treated as a disease, but also that doing so might fast-forward the development of so called “anti-aging” medicines, others remain quite skeptical. In fact, both viewpoints have recently been reviewed in the literature [1-3]. Indeed, classification of biological aging as a disease is not quite straightforward: even though aging is associated with increased probability of disease due to progressive accumulation of molecular and organ damage, aging itself is technically not a disease. The quest to find specific gerontogenes that cause aging has so far not yielded positive results. However, some experts argue that aging is still genetically programmed and is merely a consequence of decreased selection force against genetic mutations that might become deleterious later in life. Another argument for aging to be regarded as a disease is that it inevitably leads to death: senescence cannot be healthy, and the fact that it seems to be universal does not necessarily make it normal. However, not all age-related changes are necessarily pathological: some, if not most of them, might actually be adaptive, such as decrease in sex hormone levels (testosterone in men and estrogen in women).

Aging is often regarded as a disturbance of homeostasis (stability of a given system, in this case – human organism) due to a combination of progressive accumulation of damage. However, other authors (Suresh Rattan) argue that the term “homeostasis” can not be fully applied in our body and propose another term – homeodynamic space, which characterizes the survival capacity of the organism. During aging, shrinkage of the homeodynamic space occurs, making aging merely a condition of increased vulnerability to diseases.

Another argument for classifying aging as a disease is that such an approach will streamline the process of developing drugs that combat certain symptoms of aging and/or age-related diseases or delay aging in general. An opposite view is that aging should be viewed as a normal, natural process. If it is regarded as such, we can rather focus on maintaining health during aging than trying to delay or eliminate the aging process altogether. If aging is inevitable, then no true anti-aging drug can exist: all drugs that have the potential to prolong lifespan merely delay the onset of senescence. Achieving healthy aging is also a more economically sustainable approach since it focuses on maintaining good health rather that treating pre-existing diseases. In addition, many interventions proven to contribute to health maintenance, such as consumption of plant phytochemicals and intermittent challenges, such as fasting or exercise, can potentially have an impact on the aging process. In fact, intermittent fasting has been shown to provide the same benefits as caloric restriction, such as increased lifespan (in animal models), neuroprotection, increased insulin sensitivity and normalization of blood lipid profiles, without the downsides, such as low energy. These interventions seem to converge on a few intracellular pathways that seem to be affected by drugs contributing to lifespan extension in laboratory animals, such as the insulin signaling pathway [4].

Overall, whether aging can be regarded as a pathological process or not, is merely a matter of debate – and aging does not have to come with an array of diseases. In fact, overwhelming evidence is pointing towards the fact that, though inevitable, aging can be healthy – whether it is through pharmacological intervention or intermittent challenges. Now, do you want to wait another 10 years while potential anti-aging drugs are being tested and cope with possible side effects? Or do you want to take your destiny into your own hands and take the difficult, yet proven route to healthy aging by exercising, fasting periodically and eating healthy? The choice is yours.

1. Gems, D., What is an anti-aging treatment? Exp Gerontol, 2014. 58: p. 14-8.
2. Bulterijs, S., et al., It is time to classify biological aging as a disease. Front Genet, 2015. 6: p. 205.
3. Rattan, S.I., Aging is not a disease: implications for intervention. Aging Dis, 2014. 5(3): p. 196-202.
4. de Cabo, R., et al., The search for antiaging interventions: from elixirs to fasting regimens. Cell, 2014. 157(7): p. 1515-26.

How metabolic rate affects our lifespan and development

It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog. Today, my post is going to be dedicated to a rather broad scientific topic rather than addressing nutritional or fitness issues, even though it is often mentioned in popular literature on those topics. I am talking about metabolism.

Over the years, “metabolism” has become somewhat of a curse word in fitness circles. We loathe our slow metabolic rates and are constantly looking for a way to rev them up using exercise, diet or supplements. Somehow having a fast metabolism has become somewhat synonymous to being healthy and fit. In reality, we could not be more wrong. It is our slow metabolism that we have to thank for being one of the most long-lived species on Earth.

Metabolism is a combination of anabolic (synthetic) and catabolic (degradation) processes in the body. However, when we talk about metabolism in layman terms, we usually mean energy expenditure, our ability to burn calories to get energy. If an individual is able to burn a lot of calories without storing them as fat, this phenomenon is often referred to as “good/fast metabolism” and vice versa. What is quite curious, in fact, is that we, humans are supposed to burn about twice as many calories per day based on our body size. This is not specific to us humans – in fact, all primates are expected to burn more calories if compared to other mammals of similar body size, but they don’t. And that’s a good thing! It is our slow metabolic rate that leads to similarly slow processes of development, growth and reproduction cycles and, ultimately, to longer lifespans.

In a recent study [1], scientists compared total energy expenditures (TEE) in various primate species, including humans, with other placental mammals. Surprisingly, TEE of most primates was about half of what was expected of animals of their body mass. Such low TEEs apparently had nothing to do with physical activity (wild and captive primates appeared to have the same levels of energy expenditure) and rather seemed to result from a metabolic adaptation throughout history. That would at least partially explain why even vigorous exercise is not sufficient to drastically change our metabolic rates. Now, why do we have such low metabolic rates and how is this beneficial for us? While one of the theories suggests that low TEEs evolved as a protective strategy against starvation, there is no clear answer to this question. However, it is quite clear that increasing TEE and BMR (basal metabolic rate) can have rather devastating consequences, since their levels appear to be very tightly controlled. TEE is, of course, different from BMR: BMR represents the amount of energy required to fulfill basic requirements of the body to keep us alive. Interestingly, in the above mentioned study [1] they showed that primates’ BMR appeared to be higher, relative to TEE, than in other placental mammals, which was explained to reflect the metabolic cost of primates’ large brains. BMR depends on our age, sex and weight and is not easy to manipulate through various interventions, which is probably a good thing. Increasing BMR more than 2-fold of normal level seems to have devastating consequences on the organismal well-being. One condition known to drastically increase BMR is pregnancy, and it is the increase in BMR that we apparently have to thank for it lasting just 9 months and not longer.

It is a widely known fact that we, humans, are born pretty helpless and remain as such throughout the first months after birth. One of the reasons for such altriciality is the fact that we are born with a brain approximately 3 times smaller than we need for normal functioning (30% of adult brain size). This fact has intrigued scientists for years, and one of the common explanations for small at birth brains in anthropology used to be the so called “obstetrical dilemma”. According to it, we are born with such small brains simply because otherwise we won’t be able to pass through the birth canal, and a larger birth canal seems to be incompatible with bi-pedal locomotion. A recent study [2] substantially challenged this view. Based on their calculations, a wider birth canal is very well compatible with locomotion; therefore, it cannot be the limiting factor to the duration of pregnancy. The authors propose an alternative hypothesis: we are born rather early because our mothers’ BMRs reach values close to maximum sustainable metabolic rate (BMR x 2.1). If the intrauterine development periods were longer, this limit would have been quickly exceeded. Therefore, our metabolism simply cannot be driven into overdrive.

Now, what can we learn from this? We are, in fact, rather helpless when it comes to altering our metabolic rate and for good reasons. Having a fast metabolism is not necessarily a good thing. Hormonal disruptions, such as hypothoroidism, also affect metabolic rate and can lead to what is described as “sluggish metabolism”, but otherwise our metabolic rate seems to be predetermined. Lowering rather than increasing metabolic rate seems to be a promising strategy to achieve maximum longevity.

So what do you say, should we stop chewing on chili peppers and embrace our slow metabolism?

1. Pontzer er al. Primal energy expenditure and life history. PNAS, 2013
2. Dunsworth et al. Metabolic hypothesis for human altriciality. PNAS, 2012

Prevent cancer by changing your lifestyle

pic source: blog.aicr.org (American Institute for Cancer Research)

There is definitely more to gaining excess body fat than just not being able to fit into your favorite jeans – being obese can also increase your cancer risk. While there are people who have been technically overweight their entire life and are perfectly healthy, becoming obese (BMI>30), especially if that body fat is mostly centered around your abdomen, is a medically defined risk factor for getting certain cancers, among those cancers of the digestive system (oesophagus, colorectum, gall bladder, pancreas), as well as breast cancer (in postmenopausal women), ovarian and kidney cancer. According to the “European Code against Cancer, 4^th edition” [1], about 4-38% of these cancer types can be attributed to obesity. Though these figures might sound grave, there is also good news: losing weight dramatically diminishes cancer risk! However, even if you are at normal weight, healthy diet, active lifestyle and moderate-to-low alcohol consumption are highly advisable as means of cancer prevention. That means, it is totally up to you to decrease your cancer risk.

So what is it about excessive body fat that makes it so dangerous? After all, isn’t it just our energy stores? Not exactly. It has been widely recognized lately that body fat is a metabolically active tissue that produces hormones and cytokines (adipokines and pro-inflammatory cytokines). Increased body fat accumulation can also lead to hormonal imbalances, e.g. insulin resistance. Due to disruption in sex hormone production, obesity can also cause infertility in women (that can be cured by losing weight). Insulin and hyperinsulinaemia can also stimulate cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth. Hyperinsulinaemia can indirectly promote cancer by increasing the circulating levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which has been linked to cell proliferation, as well as aging. Leptin, produced by the fat tissue, can also be pro-inflammatory and favor cancer-friendly environment.

So what are the official recommendations of European Code against Cancer? As stated in a recent article (see [1]), they are pretty much common knowledge: don’t smoke, limit your alcohol intake, avoid too much sun exposure, eat a healthy diet, be physically active, try to achieve normal body weight. Last but not least: don’t forget to undergo regular check-ups. Even if you are doing your best to live a healthy life, it does not hurt to pay a visit to the doctor’s office once in a while!

(1) This post is based on the following article:

“European code against cancer 4^th edition: Obesity, body fatness and cancer” by Anderson AS et al in Cancer Epidemiology 2015.

Meal timing: conventional wisdom vs. scientific evidence

picture source: tonictoronto.com

Gone are the times when we, humans, were satisfied with just eating breakfast, lunch and dinner: it’s all about snacking. But we are not only talking unhealthy snacks, such as a doughnut here and there. According to many fitness experts, it is beneficial to eat 5-6 small meals per day vs. 2-3 big meals to “keep your metabolism going”. Thankfully, due to the recent popularity of intermittent fasting (IF), this view is no longer as dominant as it was before, but still it feels like a lot of people didn’t get the memo. Not that everyone should be fasting! But eating 3 meals per day, with at least 4 hours in between, seems to be optimal for keeping your insulin levels from being elevated all the time. At least this is what my intuition is telling me. But is it also true according to science?

There is substantial research on IF and its beneficial effects on health with no caloric restriction. I’ve already mentioned it in one of my previous posts. This makes IF a great tool to add to your toolbox of optimal health, along with a healthy diet, exercise etc.: you don’t have to restrict yourself all the time to reap the benefits of caloric restriction (CR). We are talking, of course, not only about weight loss, but rather anti-neurodegenerative and anti-aging effects of CR. Still, in spite of the fact that substantial scientific evidence suggests that IF has multiple beneficial effects in animal models, proper studies in humans are actually quite few (1). Indeed, it is still a very controversial question whether everyone can benefit from IF or if it can even be dangerous in some cases (e.g., for women). To sum it up, IF has to be enjoyed with caution. What else can you do to keep your insulin levels in check and achieve similar health benefits if you are not exactly ready to fast properly?

Let me introduce you to the scientific concept of time-restricted feeding (TRF).

As I’ve already mentioned, research does not support the concept of eating multiple small meals throughout the day (2). Our ancestors were used to going without food for prolonged periods of time, and so should we. TRF is, in its essence, an inevitable component of any IF regimen, since food is only allowed during a certain time window each day (3). So then, is TRF the same thing as IF under a different name? In a way, yes, however, IF includes protocols that do not allow eating each day, such as alternate day fasting. In contrast, TRF allows ad libitum energy intake during a certain time frame (3), for example, 8-12 h per day, every day. So, in a way, it can be considered a mild IF protocol – you are not allowed to eat during late evening/night and have to keep a certain time window in which no food is allowed.

Both human and animal studies have reported multiple health-boosting effects of TRF.

Animal studies have shown that TRF is associated with body weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, lower cholesterol levels and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory markers, and all of these results are supported by human studies (3). A recent study using a model organism, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, showed that restricting feeding to a 12h/day period improved sleep and prevented weight gain without caloric restriction in these tiny creatures (5). Moreover, it even protected them against age-related decline in cardiac function. In another animal model, which is closer to humans – the house mouse – TRF also had a profound effect on gut microbiota in mice and prevented weight gain on a high-fat diet (4). More importantly, the same study found that it was protective against diabetes and elevation of total cholesterol levels. The same group of scientists showed, in another study, using different feeding protocols (diets high both in fructose and fat and high in fructose but not fat), that TRF also protects mice from weight gain without affecting caloric intake (like in the fruit fly study), but also reduces body fat accumulation, decreases inflammation, reduces insulin resistance and improves nutrient homeostasis (6). Another remarkable feature of the last study: they tested whether alternating TRF days with ad libitum days produces an effect in terms of decreased weight gain, and it did, meaning if the mice were restricted to a certain feeding window on most days of the week and overindulged at the weekend (sound familiar, anyone?), they still gained much less weight that those mice that were free to eat (a diet high in fat and fructose) whenever they wanted!

So it seems it’s not only important to know what to eat, but also when to eat. Most strikingly, it also seems that if you cannot (for some reason) eat healthy, you have to at least not eat all the time! However, this last point, as all knowledge derived primarily from animal studies, has to be taken into consideration with caution.

Going back to the question whether it is beneficial to eat multiple small meals vs. couple of big meals, many studies, some of them mentioned above, underline the importance of regular meals as circadian pacemakers that set the clock of our metabolism. Therefore, meal timing is definitively a powerful mechanism to not only alter your body composition but to provide certain effects on your metabolism. However, that does not automatically mean that eating many small meals throughout the day speeds up your metabolism in any significant way in the long-term. And why would you want that, anyway? High metabolic rate is unfavorable for survival in animals, and proliferation and growth control pathways are involved in the progression of aging in most species, including humans. Research these days points to dietary interventions that have previously been thought to “lower” metabolism (such as going without food for several hours – which is also not true in the long term, btw) as being beneficial not only in terms of weight loss and body weight maintenance, but also in terms of general health and, very importantly, healthy aging.

So ditch that snacking mentality already! Don’t eat late at night. Don’t eat during the night. Enjoy being free from having to constantly consume food 🙂

1. Horne BD, Muhlestein JB, Anderson JL. Health effects of intermittent fasting: hormesis or harm? A systematic review. Am J Clin Nutr 2015
2. Hutchinson AT, Heilbronn LK. Metabolic impacts of altering meal frequency and timing – Does when we eat matter? Biochimie 2015
3. Rothschild J, Hoddy KK, Jambazian P, Varady KA Time-restricted feeding and risk of metabolic disease: a review of human and animal studies. Nurt Rev 2014
4. Zarrinpar A, Chaix A, Yooseph S, Panda S. Diet and Feeding Pattern Affect the Diurnal Dynamics of the Gut Microbiome. Cell Metab 2014
5. Gill S, Hiep LD, Melkani GC, Panda S. Time-restricted feeding attenuates age-related cardiac decline in Drosophila. Science 2015
6. Chaix A, Zarrinpar A, Miu P, Panda S. Time-Restricted Feeding Is a Preventative and Therapeutic Intervention against Diverse Nutritional Challenges. Cell Metabolism 2014

 

If only you could turn back time… Can you?

Hello there, dear readers! Long time, no see… Today’s post is dedicated to the best reason to invest some energy into maintaining a healthy diet and activity regimen.

Overall, there are plenty of good reasons to exercise and eat healthy: weight loss/maintenance, radiant health, avoidance of typical “lifestyle diseases”, such as obesity and type II diabetes, and, of course, feeling great. But what if eating healthy and maintaining an active lifestyle could do more than that? What if they could fight back aging?

Image source: leadershiptraq.com

Anti-aging treatments are all the rage now, but are any of them actually effective? Apart from concealing the appearance of some side effects of aging, such as graying hair or wrinkles (which are basically harmless), there is no treatment for aging, no “anti-aging pill”. And why should there be? Aging is not a disease. Getting old is as natural as going through puberty. There is also no reason you cannot enjoy life after you turn 60, 70 or 80. That is, of course, if you are healthy. Healthy aging does not necessarily come with memory loss, frailty or motor impairments, like some of us have come to believe. But the even more devastating consequence of aging is increased susceptibility to disease. This is partially due to the fact that immune system function decreases with age, but also due to accumulation of mutations and other changes, such as oxidative damage to molecules at the intracellular level. However, there is a way to maintain a healthy immune system with increasing age. Luckily, it is the same trick that may allow one to remain sharp and think clearly until 100 years of age and above – and, as you might have guessed, it’s again eating right and exercising. Apart from that, stress relief, healthy social interactions with peers and family, as well as moderate sun exposure and good sleep are also part of the equation. But what if all those interventions could not only help you fight the symptoms of aging, but reprogram your body so that it actually gets younger with increasing age? Well, seems like this scenario is not such an unlikely possibility.

The reason why appropriate nutrition and meal timing/frequency, as well as certain types of exercise can do your body a lot of good is because they have the capacity to actually alter your gene expression. But wait, our DNA does not change much throughout lifetime – it would not make a lot of sense, since the cell does everything to preserve the initial sequence. However, there is a way our cells can switch genes on and off again without doing any changes to the DNA sequence itself. It can do so by altering (in a reversible way) the proteins that participate in DNA folding and packaging in the nucleus – histones – by attaching certain molecular anchors to them. Such changes are referred to as epigenetic changes and they have huge potential to alter cell physiology for a short or long period of time. There is a bunch of epigenetic changes described so far, and not all of them involve histones. The common thing between them is that they act in a modulatory way and can respond to changes in the environment. But if you think that such changes cannot stick, think again: actually, it has been demonstrated that epigenetic changes can even be transmitted to the next generation! It means if you have accumulated beneficial (or not so beneficial) changes in your cells, they can be passed on to your offspring. Another great reason to keep your lifestyle in check!

There is substantial evidence that exercise and moderate caloric restriction can produce a lot of beneficial changes, but what about reversing or slowing down aging? Well, I have a reason to believe that lifestyle changes can produce such effects. There is a lot of so called (by scientists) anecdotal evidence from people who have converted to a healthier lifestyle that they feel and even look younger. Is it just a subjective perception? Not necessarily. A recent study from Duke University [1] has demonstrated the first attempt to quantify aging in young adults. [NB: The term “young adult” is this case does not refer to teens who love Twilight novels, but rather to people who are well into their 30s – all participants were around 38 y.o.] The results of the study are quite stunning, in my opinion: they have found that, even though all participants were roughly the same age, their actual, biological age followed a normal distribution, ranging from 28 y to 61 y. So it means that while some participants were actually still in their 20s, according to their body, others were almost twice as old as they were supposed to be! Some participants appeared to be getting younger, as the study progressed (the scientists have actually measured aging biomarkers at different time points leading up to the age of 38: at 26 y, 32 y and 38 y). The study does not report any differences in lifestyle among the participants – it was not the focus of the study, since the merely wanted to measure the range and the speed of biological aging (the Pace of Age, as they termed it). However, the biomarkers they used to determine biological age lead me to believe that lifestyle choices have much more to do with the speed of aging than genetics (in fact, so far genetics is thought to have a roughly 20-30% contribution to how we age). So, unless you have certain mutations that cause progeria (premature aging) or extremely lucky to carry one of the very few mutations that naturally predispose you to longevity (such as mutations of the FOXO3a gene), there are ways to alter the speed at which your body ages and may be even reverse or stall it. For instance, one of the participants of the above mentioned study seemed to be getting younger during the 12-year study process! Here are some of the 18 biomarkers they used in the study: HbA_1C (glycated hemoglobin, indicates plasma glucose levels over prolonged periods of time), cardiorespiratory fitness, waist-to-hip ratio, mean arterial pressure, BMI, lipoproteins, triglycerides, gum health, total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. Looking over this list, I don’t see anything that is not manageable by healthy lifestyle choices. Glycated hemoglobin levels and blood lipid profile respond very well to a balanced diet including healthy fats and plenty of fiber and excluding sugar and excessive carbs. Healthy waist-to-hip ratio and BMI can both be maintained on a balanced diet (even though BMI is not the best marker of overall health); at the same time, it is also by far the best intervention to decrease blood pressure. Ditto for gum health – excessive sugar consumption is not only bad for your teeth, but also for your gums. As for the cardiorespiratory fitness – you’ve guessed it – moderate exercise and increasing overall physical activity are the best remedies. And exercise does not necessarily or only mean cardio, as the name would imply: a combination of resistance and cardio exercise is considered to be the gold standard for achieving an optimal state of physical fitness.

And if normalizing your biomarkers isn’t stimulating enough, consider this: study participants of a younger biological age were also perceived as younger-looking by an independent group of observers! So not only may healthy lifestyle pay off by making you, well, healthy, but you’ll save a great deal on those anti-wrinkle creams!

1. Belsky et al. Quantification of biological aging in young adults. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences USA, 2015 (www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1506264112)

Paleo diet from a scientific perspective

Last week Mark Sisson, my favourite author in the Paleo community, published an overview of scientific literature supporting the health-boosting effects of the Paleo diet, and you can find some of the studies that I found particularly worthy of reading in the “References” at the end of this post. His article made me curious about the origins of the whole Paleo concept. Sure, it is explained thoroughly at each and every Paleo-dedicated website, and I have to say, as a scientist, I do find a lot of sense in the recommendations of the Paleo diet. However, being a scientist also means you have to be skeptical, do your research and, if possible, try to dig deeper – therefore, I decided to go back to the roots and do a bit of literature research on where the Paleo diet came from.

Paleo approach originated as early as in the 70s (not “the latest diet fad”, as viewed by some people) with hands-on studies of Dr. Walter L. Voegtlin, gastroenterologist, who treated some of his patients by recommending them to follow a diet plan, which later came to be known as the Paleo diet. He published his nutritional approach in 1975 in a book called Stone Age Diet: Based on In-Depth Studies of Human Ecology and the Diet of Man. It did take some time for this approach to become popular. 10 years later, an excellent article by Stanley Boyd Eaton, MD, and Melvin Konnor, PhD, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled “Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of Its Nature and Current Implication”. It was their collaborator Loren Cordain who brought Paleo to fame with his popular book “The Paleo Diet”. The rationale behind the concept was the so-called evolutionary discordance hypothesis. To put it in simple terms, it states that there is a mismatch between the way we eat and the way our genes “want” us to eat and this mismatch is at the core of most “diseases of civilization”, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and (possibly) even neurodegenerative disorders. The authors of the Paleo diet concept (remember: a doctor, an anthropologist and an exercise physiologist, not some self-proclaimed YouTube stars) claim that, according to archaeological and anthropological studies, until 10,000 years ago our ancestors had certain nutritional preferences that they have formed over millions of years of evolution, namely, they ate meat (mostly wild game), a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits, an occasional nut and some fish, too. Then came the dawn of agriculture and the grain- and dairy-based diet. However, our genes have not adapted to these environmental changes as fast as we would want them to. Therefore, a lot of people still suffer from lactose intolerance (although the fact that a lot of us can stomach dairy is a remarkable example of adaptation that did happen in the last 10,000 years!) and not everyone has adapted to a high-carb diet. Of course, I would not go as far as to blame the ongoing obesity epidemic on grains and dairy. (I would blame it on sugar!) Yet a diet composed of lean meats (wild game eaten by our ancestors had a much lower and different fat content compared to our grain-fed animals these days), vegetables, fruits, nuts, seafood and some healthy fats (coconut oil, anyone?) seems like a good way to go, no matter what claims are made for it to be pre-selected for humans by evolution, doesn’t it?

Apparently, not to everyone.

It may be the fact that the Paleo diet has adapted a kind of a cult following (and some of its proponents might seem to act superior to conventional eaters) or the fact that we people like to cling to our guns and won’t give up our breakfast muffins that easily, but there’s been a lot of critique surrounding the Paleo diet lately.

For instance, the British Dietary Association named the Paleo Diet as one of its “Top 5 Worst Celebrity Diets to Avoid in 2015”. Here is what BDA has to say about Paleo: “Jurassic fad!  A diet with fewer processed foods, less sugar and salt is actually a good idea, but unless for medical reason, there is absolutely no need to cut any food group out of your diet.  In fact, by cutting out dairy completely from the diet, without very careful substitution, you could be in danger of compromising your bone health because of a lack of calcium.  An unbalanced, time consuming, socially isolating diet, which this could easily be, is a sure-fire way to develop nutrient deficiencies, which can compromise health and your relationship with food.” (full text here).

Ahem, no offense, BDA, but those claims are complete and utter nonsense. While I would not necessary recommend everyone to cut out food groups (especially if you are one of the lucky guys who are not lactose-intolerant or can stomach beans nicely), but cutting out dairy completely does not necessarily lead to a calcium deficit! There are plenty of plant foods that have a lot more calcium per calorie than milk (hello, kale!). Also, Paleo is far from any kind of diet or lifestyle that might lead to nutritional deficiencies! In fact, there is anthropological evidence that, before the advent of agriculture, people were taller and had no skeletal manifestations of nutritional deficiencies (as reviewed in Boyd Eaton & Konnor’s article from 1985) – how’s that for a calcium deficit? On the other hand, many grains contain anti-nutrients that can mess with vitamin absorption. It is also a completely false assumption that Paleo means you have to eat meat all the time. Actually, our ancestors derived about 50 to 80% of their food from plant sources! And before humans evolved to develop sufficient hunting skills, they were pretty much only eating plant foods. Therefore, vegetables (especially vegetables!) and fruits are supposed the staple of the modern Paleo diet. Eating a variety of plant foods every day can provide you with most of the necessary vitamins and fiber. Even if you miss out on some of them for a few days or weeks – not a problem! Remember: fruits and vegetables used to be seasonal, and certain kinds were only available during very limited periods – that does not mean that human bodies immediately went into deficiency mode!

 So, to sum it up, following a Paleo-style “diet” (I am not a fan of this word, though) seems to be a good way to go and makes sense, since it provides you with all the necessary nutrients, cuts out processed foods and added sugar, encourages high fiber intake (through vegetables & fruits). Now, whether it is true that we must follow Paleo diet rules to be healthy and it is the best kind of diet just because our ancestors ate this way… I am not so sure. After all, we don’t live in the Stone Age anymore, and it does have a lot of benefits, such as dramatically reduced risk of dying from infectious diseases at a young age. The most important thing, after all, is not trying to mimic the exact lifestyle of hunters and gatherers, but rather think rationally and listen to your body. If you have been eating grains your entire life and choose to continue eating them, even though you know that you can get all the necessary fiber and vitamins from vegetables and fruits, that’s totally fine! After all, eating healthy is not just about nutrients, it’s about the whole experience of good food. Most of us can get away with eating a hearty plate of pasta or a mouth-watering chocolate cake from time to time, so what’s the harm in that? I am pretty sure our ancestors would have loved those as much as we do!

References:

1. Frassetto LA, Schloetter M, Mietus-Synder M, et al. Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet. Eur J Clin Nutr 2009;63(8):947-955.
2. Jönsson T, Granfeldt Y, Ahrén B, et al. Beneficial effects of a Paleolithic diet on cardiovascular risk factors in type 2 diabetes: a randomized cross-over pilot study. Cardiovasc Diabetol 2009;8:35-49
3. Mellberg C, Sandberg S, Ryberg M, et al. Long-term effects of a Palaeolithic-type diet in obese postmenopausal women: a 2-year randomized trial. Eur J Clin Nutr 2014;68(3):350-357
4. Lindeberg S, Jönsson T, Granfeldt Y, et al. A Palaeolithic diet improves glucose tolerance more than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischaemic heart disease. Diabetologia 2007;50(9):1795-1807
5. Whalen KA, McCullough M, Flanders DW et al Paleolithic and Mediterranean Diet Pattern Scores and Risk of Incident, Sporadic Colorectal Adenomas. Am.J.Epidemiol. 2014; 180 (11): 1088-1097.
6. Pastore RL, Brooks JT, Carbone JW Paleolithic nutrition improves plasma lipid concentrations of hypercholesterolemic adults to a greater extent than traditional heart-healthy dietary recommendations. Nutrition Res 2015; 35 (6), 474–479

 

On finally getting to know yourself

I was planning my next post to be on the benefits of intermittent fasting vs. caloric restriction, but, due to a bout of sudden inspiration I had at the gym, I’ve decided to write about something completely different today. And it is going to be very personal.

In one of my all time favourite comedies, Simon Pegg is faced with a harsh reality of publishing business: once you’re in, you’re only in the first room. You’d have to get to the seventh, if you want to be considered a success and achieve greatness. Well, that pretty much is true for whatever you do in life. However, the definition of greatness can vary. What is the Shagri-La of fitness? Who has been more successful in getting to it: a bodybuilder-slash-fitness maniac with a perfect-looking body, counting each calorie or maniacally hooked on Paleo or someone who is healthy, fit, though imperfect, but mentally stable, eating intuitively when needed and exercising mindfully? For a long time, I thought the first option was the only one worth striving for. Now, I’ve come to emrace the latter. How did it happen?

Well, I’ve come a long way to accept and love myself the way I am. I would actually say, I’m still on my way. I’ve been battling an anxiety disorder my whole life, and I’ve come to realize it just recently. My anxiety has shown its ugly head in multiple ways throughout my life, but its fitness-relevant manifestation started when I was 14 years old. It was then when I suddenly saw myself as fat and disgusting as opposed to  a happy and healthy teenager I actually was.

Me in Japan with my parents when I was 14 yrs old.

It was then when diets entered my life and they never quite left. You name any diet in the book – I’ve tried it. Of course, as you might have guessed, t the end of this journey I was left with bitter regret, health problems and several extra pounds that would not leave my body. Thankfully, this diet craze went into remission for a while when I had entered university at 17 and started to have other things to obsess about. Then, at 23 I moved to Germany, gained a couple extra pounds and, finally, at 26, it all started again. This next time around, however, I did come to realize something very important: I needed to change my lifestyle in a consistent way, if I didn’t want to repeat my mistakes from 10 years ago.

It was then when I started exercising consistently. Fitness entered my life in a completely new perspective, but my mind-set was still focused on the goal, not the process. I’ve started trying on lifestyles, not diets this time. I tried clean eating, I tried fasting, I tried vegetarianism, I tried Paleo. I went from eating pasta to low-carb, from swearing off meat to eating meat every day. Again, I got so caught up in dogmas and restrictions that I completely forgot to actually listen to my body. I gained, I lost – the all too familiar merry-go-round. I was still blaming myself for not sticking to meal plans, exercise plans, for eating too much sugar, for skipping the gym from time to time.

It finally stopped at some point, when I entered that glorious seventh room in my own head.

I have come to realize that I do not need any kind of plans to be healthy. I do not like plans – I enjoy being spontaneous. I cannot follow a plan and not become obsessive about it. I cannot follow a diet or count calories for the very same reason. I’ve read a lot on intuitive eating and it actually does appeal to me very much. However, yet again, I’m not going to adat any kind of eating style. I eat what I want, I exercise because I like it. I only do what makes me happy. If what makes me happy also makes me fit and healthy – hey, that’s just great! I don’t know if you would have come to realize this without going through all the diet madness I’ve been through. Maybe I should have realized it long time ago. It took me 15 years to finally be in peace with myself, and something tells me that this journey of finding peace is not quite over. But it is what it is – a journey. A process of finding oneself is the most glorious, exciting thing in life. Celebrate your own journey!

On defining fitness & practicing what you preach

As I’ve mentioned in the intro, this blog is dedicated to all topics around maintaning and/or gaining fitness. Before we start to explore possible ways of doing so, it is important to understand what fitness actually is. Most people usually think of fit, lean, athletic bodies of bodybuilders or sportsmen, when they hear the word „ fitness“. Yes, fitness is generally associated with the ability to perform certain physical activity. But it is so much more than that!

Fitness, as defined by Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged. (1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003) is:

1. the state of being fit
2. biology: the degree of adaptation of an organism to its environment, determined by its genetic constitution; the ability of an organism to produce viable offspring capable of surviving to the next generation

Although the ability to adapt to the environment and produce offspring can fit into the first definition – being fit – these topics are beyond the scope of this blog und my general interests 😉 That leaves us with „the state of being fit“. The generalization of being fit means that it encompasses so many states at the same time. There is physical fitness, which is characterized by the ability to maintain a healthy, strong body. There is mental fitness – the ability to perform complex mental tasks well into advanced age. Train your body – train your mind. Actually, as you will discover, training your body also keeps your mind sharp! But more on that later…

Being fit in a sense equals to being happy and content. To lead a life of excellent fitness, there are certain rules you have to obey. Based on a heap of scientific (and not so) literature on health & fitness I’ve encountered so far, these are the general guidelines you should follow:

1. Keep your nutrition in check
2. Be physically active (basically, any kind of activity will do!)
3. Sleep well and avoid chronic stress
4. Have a satisfying social life
5. Keep your brain sharp (by learning new stuff)

However, the means you should use to achieve your health goals (e.g., eating better) are highly disputed. Should you count calories or carbs? Should you avoid carbs alltogether? What about cholesterol? (A lot of confusing and potentially contradictory data out there on that one!) To make an already bad situation even worse, a lot of nutrition and exercise myths are still circulating around, even in scientific literature. One thing that never seizes to amaze me is how ignorant people are towards the fact that certain „resistant“ food myths are not based on real science or have been disproved by it years ago. Even some of my fellow scientists (myself included!) do not always associate the facts they read about in scientific papers with certain habits they follow in their daily life. Once I had an interesting conversation with a colleague, in which I had to explain to her how our blood cholesterol levels do not have much to do with our dietary fat consumption. She seemed genuinely surprised by that, which I found kind of shocking. On the other had, isn’t that something I had (or hadn’t) thought of before? Wasn’t I the one who was buying low-fat milk for ages? Combining theory with everyday life is hard. I hope that my notes here are going to be helpful to someone out there struggling to get through all the confusing facts we are being constantly bormbarded with in terms of fitness. More importantly, I hope that in the process of making these notes, I’ll be able to take a good, hard look on my own habits and maybe change them for the better or find new opportunities to experiment.

Coming up next: what do intermittent fasting, eating a diet full of fruits and vegetables and exercise all have in common (besides making you fit & healthy)? Stay tuned!

(pic from memegenerator.net)