Factors Involved in Aging & How to Combat Them
We all age, we will all die; those are the unavoidable facts. The only thing we have some control over is whether, by our lifestyle and actions, we slow the process or speed it up. Over the social history of civilization, our great writings and traditions have upheld norms of behavior and action that seem to lead to fuller and longer life, warning us against those things that make life less worth living and shorten it.
We all understand that there are activities that can lead to sudden death or maiming, where great (maybe manageable) risk is traded for intensity of feeling. And, on the other hand there are behaviors that lead to isolation, boredom, and a living death. In between, there are things we can do to maintain our physical and mental capacity to live life to the fullest – and the longest.
There are Six Critical Keys to living longer. These categories deal with endeavors, behaviors and actions that we know to enhance our capacity to live life to the fullest. These are: ANTI-AGING, EXERCISE, NUTRITION, REST/RECOVERY and RELAXATION, SUPPLEMENTS and THINKING/ATTITUDE. Our goal is to keep you up to date on the latest (and the time-tested) information available in these categories.
In this ANTI-AGING category our goal is to detail the actual mechanisms of aging and what science is uncovering that will aid us in slowing its progress. Four major aging mechanisms have come to light in recent years. These are:
OXIDATIVE DAMAGE – damage by ‘free radicals’ at the molecular level,
GLYCATION – bonding of sugars to proteins (or fats) that stiffens tissues and destroys their function,
INFLAMMATION – a repair process that becomes more prominent, damaging and indiscriminate as we age,
SENESCENCE – human cells stop dividing after about 50 divisions due to loss of our chromosome’s telomere length; this shortening with every cell division appears to set our maximum lifespan limit at somewhere near 120 years.
Slowing the aging process is accomplished by doing things that inhibit the damage from these aging mechanisms or slow the rate at which the damage is done. In some cases there is hope that specific types of damage can actually be reversed, and we could, in fact, grow younger in some respects.
Oxidative damage: Oxidation is the primary means of energy generation in most living organisms. It occurs through sequential chains of enzymatic chemical reactions within cells. At intermediate stages in these reactions, electrically charged ions are produced that, if left to wander, can interact with nearby molecules, causing damage to their chemical structure. The body manufactures antioxidants to manage these energetic ions. For the most part, antioxidants function in a sequence of cascaded reactions involving several antioxidants, wherein the energy of a free radical is disbursed harmlessly.
There are two general categories of antioxidants – antioxidants you make internally (endogenous) and those you obtain from diet. Endogenous antioxidant molecules are usually built around certain minerals, and unless you obtain the required minerals through a diet rich in mineral sources, your antioxidant production will be hampered. Selenium is one such mineral, zinc and magnesium are also very important.
The reason vitamin C is so effective at resolving many ills is that we can’t make it. A large dog makes about 10 grams a day, but we and the apes have lost the ability to build it; we have to get it in our diets. It is involved in numerous pathways of free-radical reduction, so for anti-aging purposes we need a plentiful and continuous supply. But taking vitamin C, while necessary, is not sufficient, not the best we can do. We need a bouquet of antioxidants in our diets, and recent discoveries have shown the fruits and vegetables are the primary source for those. The plant world has developed an array of them for protection against sunlight and other elements of the environment, and nature has cleverly set our bodies up to use them to the fullest when we eat them on a regular basis. The value of taking antioxidants, and eating the foods that are rich in them, is that they partially make up for the decline with age of our own antioxidant production.
The bodies master anti-oxidant is glutathione. A molecule composed of 3 non-essential amino acids manufactured in the liver. Glutathione disarms the superoxide radical, a product of metabolism in every cell that is extremely damaging unless arrested shortly after formation. Glutathione cannot be taken by mouth as it is destroyed by stomach acid. The production of glutathione decreases with age, leaving you increasingly susceptible to free-radical damage. The only approach is to convince our bodies to make more of it. The technology now exists to do just that.
Research suggests that consumption of antioxidant-rich foods reduces damage to cells and biochemicals from free radicals. This may slow down, prevent, or even reverse certain diseases that result from cellular damage, and perhaps even slow down the natural aging process. This is the basis for the free-radical theory of aging. Step one, then, to retard aging is to start eating anti-oxidant rich foods and using supplements that foster antioxident production to counter the natural decline that occurs with age. It would be helpful to have started this when you were a child, but today is the best day to start otherwise.
Strategy: Eat a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, preferably organic; take a broad-spectrum antioxidant supplement; take supplements that increase endogenous antioxidant production such as the lifewave glutathione patch.
Glycation/Glycosylation – blood sugar damage: People with diabetes wear out early – type I, type II, or metabolic syndrome – high blood sugar wreaks havoc with all the body’s tissues. The blindness, heart disease, neuropathy, circulation loss in the feet – all those amputations and nightmare complications are caused by proteins getting denatured by bonding with sugar molecules. Actually, the process of sugar molecules bumping into proteins and bonding to them happens in normal metabolism with normal blood sugar levels; it just happens a lot faster when blood sugar is elevated. The harm occurs because whatever function a protein was performing before bonding to a sugar, it can no longer perform that function. These protein-sugar molecules are referred to as ‘Advanced Glycation End-Products or AGEs. AGEs, once formed, are essentially permanent, and stick where they were formed. The cell wall, or whatever part of whatever organ was altered, stays incapacitated for life.There are mechanisms for removing AGEs that the body uses to heal the damage; they just don’t work as well as we would need to get us into our 100s with youthfull vigor under normal living conditions. Two words are used for this process, because glycation is a non-enzymatic reaction (the sugar latches onto a protein on its own power) while glycosylation is enzyme-assisted. Glycosylation is a deliberate process used by the body to form glycoproteins for a multitude of reasons, but sometimes creates a residue that must be eliminated; glycation is a reaction that is always an accident, and a liability of using sugar for fuel. The lifewave product, carnosine, is helpful in reducing glycation by-products from the body.
Very simply, you minimize glycation damage by keeping blood sugar levels low. You can count on the fact that every sugary soda you ever drank has left a mark on you. Every time you pushed your blood sugar above 100 mg/dl, a little bit of extra aging took place. We can keep blood sugar under control by eating smaller meals, by avoiding confections, candy and pastries, by lowering our intake of starchy foods, by eating fiberous vegetables with most meals and by eating whole fruit rather than drinking juices. Watch out for juices labled ‘drink’ or ‘cocktail’ because they contain various forms of sugar rather than just juices. The trick is to get the digestive system to release sugar into the blood stream at a slow rate. Both fiber and fat slow the release of sugar into the blood; that’s why low-fat anything is a usually worse in this regard than the real thing. Low-fat ice cream will spike your blood sugar rapidly, while real ‘iced cream’ will hardly cause a blip even though it has lots of sugar. Make desserts rare treats, and eat them only when your stomach is already working on real foods. Eat small, never eat until uncomfortably full and eat real, whole foods.
Many supplements are available to down-regulate chronic high blood sugar. The mineral chromium, alpha-lipoic acid, cinnimon extract, corosolic acid, grape-seed extract, the herbs Gymnema Sylvestre, Vaccinium myrtillus (Bilberry) and Galega officinalis, which is protective of the pancreas. However, the real trick is diet, and the elimination of those foods that raise blood sugar appreciably. The unseen side of this controversy is insulin level. If you are insulin-resistant, you can have normal blood sugar levels AND have chronically high insulin levels. It has now been shown that insulin itself is inflammation-promoting and contributes to the rapid aging of many tissues. The combination of high blood sugar and high insulin is the fast track to rapid aging. The only proven strategy to life extension to date is caloric restriction; many researchers now believe that much of that result is simply due to blood sugar restriction accompanied by sustained low baseline insulin levels.
Strategy: Eat smaller meals spaced 5-6 hours apart and no snacks between meals (drink water when you feel hunger); eat nothing after dinner, go to bed on an empty stomach; get off grain-based and starchy food “products” which raise blood sugar and insulin; eliminate sugar-based drinks and sodas; forget desserts and sweets most of the time. Read our Nutrition Category for much more information.
Inflammation: Inflammation in all the body’s tissues increases, in general, as we age. Why this is true is not well understood, but inflammation seems to be a common property and possible underlying cause of many of the chronic diseases that afflict the aging. Inflammation is also one of the mechanisms used by the immune system to fight invaders and heal injury, so it is almost as though the aging body increasingly sees its own tissues as an enemy or that there is a chronic state of injury that needs constant attention to promote healing. But inflammatory processes eventually become the source of much of the damage evident in the aging body.
Inflammation is the key initiating factor in major degenerative diseases. In fact, some scientists estimate that inflammation underlies up to 98% of the diseases afflicting humans, including a vast array of seemingly different conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders.
We talked above about elevated insulin as inflammatory, but there are several other known factors that promote inflammation. One prominent factor is nuclear factor-kappa beta or NFkB. NFkB is a protein that acts as a switch to turn inflammation on and off in the body. Scientists describe NFkB as a “smoke sensor” that detects dangerous threats like free radicals and infectious agents. In response to these threats, NFkB “turns on” the genes that produce inflammation. As we age, NFkB expression in the body increases, provoking widespread chronic inflammation and setting the stage for diseases ranging from atherosclerosis and diabetes to Alzheimer’s. Knowing this simple fact should motivate us to find ways to counteract NFkB’s deleterious effects and thus delay or avoid many of the diseases commonly associated with aging. Follow this link to a very informative article on this site that details the effective dietary ways to lower NFkB’s level and impact – a ‘must read’ if you want to understand how to deal with inflammation. Virtually all the measures cited in this article to lower NFkB reduce the other important causes of inflammation.
People suffering from chronic disease often have elevated levels of C- reactive protein (or CRP) in their blood. C-reactive protein indicates an inflammatory process is going on in the body, but does not identify the specific pro-inflammatory cytokine that may be the underlying cause. Some of the important inflammatory cytokines are: Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a), Interleukin-1 beta (IL-1b), Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and Interleukin-8 (IL-8). The lifewave products glutathione, aeon and carnosine in combination are very effective in combating free radicals, glycolation by-products, heavy metals and c-reactive proteins.
If you are elderly, or suffer from any serious disorder, these cytokine tests can enable your doctor to prescribe therapies that specifically target the inflammatory cytokine responsible for your poor state of health.
Strategy: Foremost – block production/expression of NFkB; eat foods that do that, find and take supplements that suppress it; use the lifewave combination of anti-aging products to combat the effects of free radicals, heavy metals and stress related by-products.
Another general cause of inflammation is a class of immune-system by-products referred to as immune complexes or ICs. ICs can be either circulating (in the blood or lymphatic systems) or tissue-bound. These immune complexes, which consist of an antigen bound to an antibody, are a normal part of the immune response. But when immune complexes occur in excess, they are a principal cause of certain kidney diseases, nerve inflammations, and a number of rheumatologic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis. Circulating ICs are associated with rapid local or systemic reactions such as asthma attacks and hives, while tissue-bound ICs promote chronic inflammation responses such as seen in atherosclerosis and arthritis.
Evidence suggests that trypsin, papain, and particularly, broad-spectrum combinations of proteolytic enzymes, can break up existing pathogenic immune complexes and even prevent their formation in the first place, enhancing lymphatic drainage and blood flow. Periodic use of enteric-coated enzyme formulations promotes a regulatory effect on the immune system that lowers inflammation levels throughout the body and reduces or eliminates sources of chronic pain.
Senescence: Most human cells can replicate or divide about 50 times, then they change characteristics and function and stop dividing. Some will self-destruct, a process called apoptosis (ap-o-toe-sis). Others do not divide after maturation, such as neurons. They can be replaced by stem cell activation, but the predominant impact on aging is the shutting down of cell function after appropriate division to replenish lost comrades. A number of factors can initiate cell senescence:
The Loss of chromosome teleomere length,stress conditions and oncogenic environmental elements such aschromosome instability are other factors involved in the aging process. As we understand the mechanisms in time, senescence is the basket term for cells wearing out, and is thought to define the maximum lifespan of the species. It is complicated and not fully understood. For example, mice have longer telomeres than humans, but live far shorter lives. A work in process; more to come.
