The AFib Cure – by Dr. John Day & Dr. Jared Bunch

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The authors—cardiologists and AFib specialists—make the case that if you have atrial fibrillation, you do in fact have more options than “take these pills and suffer”.

To be clear: they’re not anti-medication per se and they also acknowledge that for some people the meds may still have their place (safety first, and all), but they do fall on the side of “it would be nice to not have to, if possible, so let’s see what we can do”.

Rather, they recommend lifestyle adjustments (no surprises there), and certain biomarker optimizations (this is where it gets more in-depth), which have a good record of reducing symptoms to the point of remission and freedom from medications.

The book is first a primer on the topic of AFib, and then a how-to manual of fixing the problems that you now understand, by biomarker monitoring, lifestyle optimization, and if those things don’t work, ablative therapy which they argue is safer, easier, and more successful than you might think.

The style is clear and easy to understand, with frequent scholarly citations throughout. On the downside, the tone can sometimes be a little on the pushy side for this reviewer’s tastes, but if one overlooks that, it doesn’t detract from the useful content.

Bottom line: if you or a loved one have AFib and would like more treatment/management options than have hitherto been presented, this book will give you that.

Click here to check out The AFib Cure, and look after your heart!

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    Fiber’s key for heart and gut health—and β-glucan leads the pack, outperforming other types in reducing weight and improving glucose tolerance.

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  • The Blood Sugar Solution – by Dr. Mark Hyman

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    The main purpose of this book is combating metabolic disease, the amalgam of what’s often prediabetes (sometimes fully-fledged diabetes) and cardiovascular disease (sometimes fully-fledged heart disease).

    To achieve this (after an introductory section explaining what the sociomedical problems are and why the sociomedical problems are happening), he offers a seven-step program; we’ll not keep those steps a mystery; they are:

    1. Boost your nutrition
    2. Regulate your hormones
    3. Reduce inflammation
    4. Improve your digestion
    5. Maximize detoxification
    6. Enhance energy metabolism
    7. Soothe your mind

    Thereafter, it’s all about leading the reader by the hand through the steps; he also offers a six-week action plan, and a six-week meal plan with recipes.

    The style is very sensationalist (too sensationalist for this reviewer’s personal taste) but nevertheless backed up with hard science when it comes to hard claims. So, if you don’t mind wading through (or skipping) some early chapters that are a bit “used car salesman” in feel, there’s actually a lot of good information, especially in the middle of the book, and useful practical guides in the middle and end.

    Bottom line: if you want a good comprehensive science-based practical guide to addressing the risk of metabolic disease, this is that.

    Click here to check out The Blood Sugar Solution, and look after yours!

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  • Amid Wildfire Trauma, L.A. County Dispatches Mental Health Workers to Evacuees

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    PASADENA, Calif. — As Fernando Ramirez drove to work the day after the Eaton Fire erupted, smoke darkened the sky, ash and embers rained onto his windshield, and the air smelled of melting rubber and plastic.

    He pulled to the side of the road and cried at the sight of residents trying to save their homes.

    “I could see people standing on the roof, watering it, trying to protect it from the fire, and they just looked so hopeless,” said Ramirez, a community outreach worker with the Pasadena Public Health Department.

    That evening, the 49-year-old volunteered for a 14-hour shift at the city’s evacuation center, as did colleagues who had also been activated for emergency medical duty. Running on adrenaline and little sleep after finding shelter for homeless people all day, Ramirez spent the night circulating among more than a thousand evacuees, offering wellness checks, companionship, and hope to those who looked distressed.

    Local health departments, such as Ramirez’s, have become a key part of governments’ response to wildfires, floods, and other extreme weather events, which scientists say are becoming more intense and frequent due to climate change. The emotional toll of fleeing and possibly losing a home can help cause or exacerbate mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, and substance use, according to health and climate experts.

    Wildfires have become a recurring experience for many Angelenos, making it difficult for people to feel safe in their home or able to go about daily living, said Lisa Wong, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. However, with each extreme weather event, the county has improved its support for evacuees, she said.

    For instance, Wong said the county deployed a team of mental health workers trained to comfort evacuees without retraumatizing them, including by avoiding asking questions likely to bring up painful memories. The department has also learned to better track people’s health needs and redirect those who may find massive evacuation settings uncomfortable to other shelters or interim housing, Wong said. In those first days, the biggest goal is often to reduce people’s anxiety by providing them with information.

    “We’ve learned that right when a crisis happens, people don’t necessarily want to talk about mental health,” said Wong, who staffed the evacuation site Jan. 8 with nine colleagues.

    Instead, she and her team deliver a message of support: “This is really bad right now, but you’re not going to do this alone. We have a whole system set up for recovery too. Once you get past the initial shock of what happened — initial housing needs, medication needs, all those things — then there’s this whole pathway to recovery that we set up.”

    The convention center in downtown Pasadena, which normally hosts home shows, comic cons, and trade shows, was transformed into an evacuation site with hundreds of cots. It was one of at least 13 shelters opened to serve more than 200,000 residents under evacuation orders.

    The January wildfires have burned an estimated 64 square miles — an area larger than the city of Paris — and destroyed at least 12,300 buildings since they started Jan. 7. AccuWeather estimates the region will likely face more than $250 billion in economic losses from the blazes, surpassing the estimates from the state’s record-breaking 2020 wildfire season.

    Lisa Patel, executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, said she’s most concerned about low-income residents, who are less likely to access mental health support.

    “There was a mental health crisis even before the pandemic,” said Patel, who is also a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine, referring to the covid-19 pandemic. “The pandemic made it worse. Now you lace in all of this climate change and these disasters into a health care system that isn’t set up to care for the people that already have mental health illness.”

    Early research suggests exposure to large amounts of wildfire smoke can damage the brain and increase the risk of developing anxiety, she added.

    At the Pasadena Convention Center, Elaine Santiago sat on a cot in a hallway as volunteers pulled wagons loaded with soup, sandwiches, bottled water, and other necessities.

    Santiago said she drew comfort from being at the Pasadena evacuation center, knowing that she wasn’t alone in the tragedy.

    “It sort of gives me a sense of peace at times,” Santiago said. “Maybe that’s weird. We’re all experiencing this together.”

    She had been celebrating her 78th birthday with family when she fled her home in the small city of Sierra Madre, east of Pasadena. As she watched flames whip around her neighborhood, she, along with children and grandkids, scrambled to secure their dogs in crates and grabbed important documents before they left.

    The widower had leaned on her husband in past emergencies, and now she felt lost.

    “I did feel helpless,” Santiago said. “I figured I’m the head of the household; I should know what to do. But I didn’t know.”

    Donny McCullough, who sat on a neighboring green cot draped in a Red Cross blanket, had fled his Pasadena home with his family early on the morning of Jan. 8. Without power at home, the 68-year-old stayed up listening for updates on a battery-powered radio. His eyes remained red from smoke irritation hours later.

    “I had my wife and two daughters, and I was trying not to show fear, so I quietly, inside, was like, ‘Oh my God,’” said McCullough, a music producer and writer. “I’m driving away, looking at the house, wondering if it’s going to be the last time I’m going to see it.”

    He saved his master recording from a seven-year music project, but he left behind his studio with all his other work from a four-decade career in music.

    Not all evacuees arrived with family. Some came searching for loved ones. That’s one of the hardest parts of his shift, Ramirez said. The community outreach worker helped walk people around the building, cot by cot.

    A week in, at least two dozen people had been killed in the wildfires.

    The work takes a toll on disaster relief workers too. Ramirez said many feared losing their homes in the fires and some already had. He attends therapy weekly, which he said helps him manage his emotions.

    At the evacuation center, Ramirez described being on autopilot.

    “Some of us react differently. I tend to go into fight mode,” Ramirez said. “I react. I run towards the fire. I run towards personal service. Then once that passes, that’s when my trauma catches up with me.”

    Need help? Los Angeles County residents in need of support can call the county’s mental health helpline at 1-800-854-7771. The national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 988, is also available for those who’d like to speak with someone confidentially, free of charge.

    This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. 

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • How light tells you when to sleep, focus and poo

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    This is the next article in our ‘Light and health’ series, where we look at how light affects our physical and mental health in sometimes surprising ways. Read other articles in the series.

    Exposure to light is crucial for our physical and mental health, as this and future articles in the series will show.

    But the timing of that light exposure is also crucial. This tells our body to wake up in the morning, when to poo and the time of day to best focus or be alert. When we’re exposed to light also controls our body temperature, blood pressure and even chemical reactions in our body.

    But how does our body know when it’s time to do all this? And what’s light got to do with it?

    nymphoenix/Shutterstock

    What is the body clock, actually?

    One of the key roles of light is to re-set our body clock, also known as the circadian clock. This works like an internal oscillator, similar to an actual clock, ticking away as you read this article.

    But rather than ticking you can hear, the body clock is a network of genes and proteins that regulate each other. This network sends signals to organs via hormones and the nervous system. These complex loops of interactions and communications have a rhythm of about 24 hours.

    In fact, we don’t have one clock, we have trillions of body clocks throughout the body. The central clock is in the hypothalamus region of the brain, and each cell in every organ has its own. These clocks work in concert to help us adapt to the daily cycle of light and dark, aligning our body’s functions with the time of day.

    However, our body clock is not precise and works to a rhythm of about 24 hours (24 hours 30 minutes on average). So every morning, the central clock needs to be reset, signalling the start of a new day. This is why light is so important.

    The central clock is directly connected to light-sensing cells in our retinas (the back of the eye). This daily re-setting of the body clock with morning light is essential for ensuring our body works well, in sync with our environment.

    In parallel, when we eat food also plays a role in re-setting the body clock, but this time the clock in organs other than the brain, such as the liver, kidneys or the gut.

    So it’s easy to see how our daily routines are closely linked with our body clocks. And in turn, our body clocks shape how our body works at set times of the day.

    What time of day?

    Matt Garrow/The Conversation. Adapted from Delos, CC BY

    Let’s take a closer look at sleep

    The naturally occurring brain hormone melatonin is linked to our central clock and makes us feel sleepy at certain times of day. When it’s light, our body stops making melatonin (its production is inhibited) and we are alert. Closer to bedtime, the hormone is made, then secreted, making us feel drowsy.

    Our sleep is also partly controlled by our genes, which are part of our central clock. These genes influence our chronotype – whether we are a “lark” (early riser), “night owl” (late sleeper) or a “dove” (somewhere in between).

    But exposure to light at night when we are supposed to be sleeping can have harmful effects. Even dim light from light pollution can impair our heart rate and how we metabolise sugar (glucose), may lead to psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, and increases the overall risk of premature death.

    The main reason for these harmful effects is that light “at the wrong time” disturbs the body clock, and these effects are more pronounced for “night owls”.

    This “misaligned” exposure to light is also connected to the detrimental health effects we often see in people who work night shifts, such as an increased risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

    How about the gut?

    Digestion also follows a circadian rhythm. Muscles in the colon that help move waste are more active during the day and slow down at night.

    The most significant increase in colon movement starts at 6.30am. This is one of the reasons why most people feel the urge to poo in the early morning rather than at night.

    The gut’s day-night rhythm is a direct result of the action of the gut’s own clock and the central clock (which synchronises the gut with the rest of the body). It’s also influenced by when we eat.

    6.30 on digital display
    At 6.30am, your gut really begins to get going for the day. Rendra Dria Septia Aji/Shutterstock

    How about focusing?

    Our body clock also helps control our attention and alertness levels by changing how our brain functions at certain times of day. Attention and alertness levels improve in the afternoon and evening but dip during the night and early morning.

    Those fluctuations impact performance and can lead to decreased productivity and an increased risk of errors and accidents during the less-alert hours.

    So it’s important to perform certain tasks that require our attention at certain times of day. That includes driving. In fact, disruption of the circadian clock at the start of daylight savings – when our body hasn’t had a chance to adapt to the clocks changing – increases the risk of a car accident, particularly in the morning.

    What else does our body clock control?

    Our body clock influences many other aspects of our biology, including:

    • physical performance by controlling the activity of our muscles
    • blood pressure by controlling the system of hormones involved in regulating our blood volume and blood vessels
    • body temperature by controlling our metabolism and our level of physical activity
    • how our body handles drugs and toxins by controlling enzymes involved in how the liver and kidneys eliminate these substances from the body.
    Driving at night in wet conditions
    If you can, avoid driving long distances at night, as you’ll be less alert. trendobjects/Shutterstock

    Morning light is important

    But what does this all mean for us? Exposure to light, especially in the morning, is crucial for synchronising our circadian clock and bodily functions.

    As well as setting us up for a good night’s sleep, increased morning light exposure benefits our mental health and reduces the risk of obesity. So boosting our exposure to morning light – for example, by going for a walk, or having breakfast outside – can directly benefit our mental and metabolic health.

    However, there are other aspects about which we have less control, including the genes that control our body clock.

    Frederic Gachon, Associate Professor, Physiology of Circadian Rhythms, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland and Benjamin Weger, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The FDA Just Redefined “Healthy”—But How?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    In the ongoing war of labelling regulations (usually with advertisers on one side and regulators on the other), the FDA has updated what’s required in order to label a food as “healthy”.

    Here’s what they’re now* requiring:

    To bear the “healthy” claim, a food product needs to: 

    • Contain a certain amount of food (food group equivalent) from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruits, vegetables, fat-free and low-fat dairy etc.) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines.  
    • Adhere to specified limits for the following nutrients: saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

    Source: FDA | Press Releases | FDA Finalizes Updated “Healthy” Nutrient Content Claim

    *however, manufacturers have 3 years to conform, which if we’re being cynical about it, looks suspiciously like just short of a US presidential election cycle so that actual enforcement will be someone else’s problem.

    Will it help?

    Maybe! It’s not too dissimilar to the “traffic light system” already in use in Europe, although that currently emphasizes the absence/presence of “bad things” e.g. saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

    It has its faults, because for example…

    • not all saturated fat is bad, and a jar of coconut oil is now definitely going to get labelled as very unhealthy
    • low-sodium salt is, ironically, going to to get flagged as being very high in sodium and therefore unhealthy

    This latter is because on a g/100g basis, a product that’s ⅓ sodium chloride is going to have a lot of sodium, even if it’s approaching ⅔ less sodium than the product it’s (healthily!) replacing.

    However, on a large scale, these kinds of problems are surely going to be small next to (hopefully) manufacturers scrambling to find ways to cut down on the saturated fats, sodium, and added sugars.

    You may be wondering…

    What will they replace them with?

    Sometimes, companies trying to make something healthier will mess up, like when the health risks of smoking hit public consciousness, one cigarette company had the bright idea of putting asbestos in their filter tips, to market them as healthier. So, could something similar happen here?

    • Saturated fat: definitely could; because the health benefits/risks of different kinds of fats and their constituent fatty acids are a lot more nuanced than just “saturated” vs “mono-/polyunsaturated”, it is definitely possible that companies may replace healthier saturated-heavy fats with less healthy unsaturated fats, depending on what is cheaper.
    • Sodium: probably not; likely go-to replacements for sodium chloride will be potassium chloride (healthier than sodium chloride) and MSG (has an unearned bad reputation in the US, but is healthier than sodium chloride).
    • Added sugars: probably—things get very complicated very quickly when it comes to artificial sweeteners, and also the crux will definitely lie in what gets defined as an “added sugar”; watch out for a rise in the use of things that slide by the definition of added sugar while still being chemically (and, which is important, metabolically) the same thing.

    Well that doesn’t sound great

    It doesn’t, but on the flipside, the positive inclusions will probably be mostly good.

    For example, the only way to get a “healthy” labelling in including fiber is to include more fiber, same with vitamins and minerals.

    The low-fat dairy thing could possibly get abused (much like with the general “low-fat” trend of the 80s).

    The “portion of fruit” thing will need to be carefully defined to avoid running straight back into the “this is just added sugar by another name” problem; mostly that it’ll need to still include the same amount of fiber as was in the whole fruit, gram for gram.

    See also: What Matters Most For Your Heart? ← it’s about fiber, not salt or saturated fats!

    Take care!

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  • How To Set Anxiety Aside

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    How To Set Anxiety Aside

    We’ve talked previously about how to use the “release” method to stop your racing mind.

    That’s a powerful technique, but sometimes we need to be calm enough to use it. So first…

    Breathe

    Obviously. But, don’t underestimate the immediate power of focusing on your breath, even just for a moment.

    There are many popular breathing exercises, but here’s one of the simplest and most effective, “4–4 breathing”:

    • Breathe in for a count of four
    • Hold for a count four
    • Breathe out for a count of four
    • Hold for a count of four
    • Repeat

    Depending on your lung capacity and what you’re used to, it may be that you need to count more quickly or slowly to make it feel right. Experiment with what feels comfortable for you, but the general goal should breathing deeply and slowly.

    Identify the thing that’s causing you anxiety

    We’ve also talked previously about how to use the RAIN technique to manage difficult emotions, and that’s good for handling anxiety too.

    Another powerful tool is journaling.

    Read: How To Use Journaling to Challenge Anxious Thoughts

    If you don’t want to use any of those (very effective!) methods, that’s fine too—journaling isn’t for everyone.

    You can leverage some of the same benefits by simply voicing your worries, even to yourself:

    There’s an old folk tradition of “worry dolls”; these are tiny little dolls so small they can be kept in a pocket-size drawstring purse. Last thing at night, the user whispers their worries to the dolls and puts them back in their bag, where they will work on the person’s problem overnight.

    We’re a health and productivity newsletter, not a dealer of magic and spells, but you can see how it works, right? It gets the worries out of one’s head, and brings about a helpful placebo effect too.

    Focus on what you can control

    • Most of what you worry about will not happen.
    • Some of what you worry about may happen.
    • Worrying about it will not help.

    In fact, in some cases it may bring about what you fear, by means of the nocebo effect (like the placebo effect, but bad). Additionally, worrying drains your body and makes you less able to deal with whatever life does throw at you.

    So while “don’t worry; be happy” may seem a flippant attitude, sometimes it can be best. However, don’t forget the other important part, which is actually focusing on what you can control.

    • You can’t control whether your car will need expensive maintenance…
      • …but you can control whether you budget for it.
    • You can’t control whether your social event will go well or ill…
      • …but you can control how you carry yourself.
    • You can’t control whether your loved one’s health will get better or worse…
      • …but you can control how you’re there for them, and you can help them take what sensible precautions they may.

    …and so forth.

    Look after your body as well!

    Your body and mind are deeply reliant on each other. In this case, just as anxiety can drain your body’s resources, keeping your body well-nourished, well-exercised, and well-rested and can help fortify you against anxiety. For example, when it comes to diet, exercise, and sleep:

    Don’t know where to start? How about the scientifically well-researched, evidence-based, 7-minute workout?

    Check Out the Seven Minute Workout App (Android and iOS

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  • Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight

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    Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight

    This is Dr. Michael Greger. We’ve featured him before: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!

    This time, we’re working from his latest book, the excellent “How Not To Age”, which we reviewed all so recently. It is very information-dense, but we’re going to be focussing on one part, his “anti-aging eight”, that is to say, eight interventions he rates the most highly to slow aging in general (other parts of the book pertained to slowing eleven specific pathways of aging, or preserving specific bodily functions against aging, for example).

    Without further ado, his “anti-aging eight” are…

    1. Nuts
    2. Greens
    3. Berries
    4. Xenohormesis & microRNA manipulation
    5. Prebiotics & postbiotics
    6. Caloric restriction / IF
    7. Protein restriction
    8. NAD+

    As you may have noticed, some of these are things might appear already on your grocery shopping list; others don’t seem so “household”. Let’s break them down:

    Nuts, greens, berries

    These are amongst the most nutrient-dense and phytochemical-useful parts of the diet that Dr. Greger advocates for in his already-famous “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”.

    For brevity, we’ll not go into the science of these here, but will advise you: eat a daily portion of nuts, a daily portion of berries, and a couple of daily portions of greens.

    Xenohormesis & microRNA manipulation

    You might, actually, have these on your grocery shopping list too!

    Hormesis, you may recall from previous editions of 10almonds, is about engaging in a small amount of eustress to trigger the body’s self-strengthening response, for example:

    Xenohormesis is about getting similar benefits, second-hand.

    For example, plants that have been grown to “organic” standards (i.e. without artificial pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers) have had to adapt to their relatively harsher environment by upping their levels of protective polyphenols and other phytochemicals that, as it turns out, are as beneficial to us as they are to the plants:

    Hormetic Effects of Phytochemicals on Health and Longevity

    Additionally, the flip side of xenohormesis is that some plant compounds can themselves act as a source of hormetic stress that end up bolstering us. For example:

    Redox-linked effects of green tea on DNA damage and repair, and influence of microsatellite polymorphism in HMOX-1: results of a human intervention trial

    In essence, it’s not just that it has anti-oxidant effect; it also provides a tiny oxidative-stress immunization against serious sources of oxidative stress—and thus, aging.

    MicroRNA manipulation is, alas, too complex to truly summarize an entire chapter in a line or two, but it has to do with genetic information from the food that we eat having a beneficial or deleterious effect to our own health:

    Diet-derived microRNAs: unicorn or silver bullet?

    A couple of quick takeaways (out of very many) from Dr. Greger’s chapter on this is to spring for the better quality olive oil, and skip the cow’s milk:

    Prebiotics & Postbiotics

    We’re short on space, so we’ll link you to a previous article, and tell you that it’s important against aging too:

    Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

    An example of how one of Dr. Greger’s most-recommended postbiotics helps against aging, by the way:

    (Urolithin can be found in many plants, and especially those containing tannins)

    See also: How to Make Urolithin Postbiotics from Tannins

    Caloric restriction / Intermittent fasting

    This is about lowering metabolic load and promoting cellular apoptosis (programmed cell death; sounds bad; is good) and autophagy (self-consumption; again, sounds bad; is good).

    For example, he cites the intermittent fasters’ 46% lower risk of dying in the subsequent years of follow-up in this longitudinal study:

    Association of periodic fasting lifestyles with survival and incident major adverse cardiovascular events in patients undergoing cardiac catheterization

    For brevity we’ll link to our previous IF article, but we’ll revisit caloric restriction in a main feature on of these days:

    Fasting Without Crashing? We sort the science from the hype!

    Dr. Greger favours caloric restriction over intermittent fasting, arguing that it is easier to adhere to and harder to get wrong if one has some confounding factor (e.g. diabetes, or a medication that requires food at certain times, etc). If adhered to healthily, the benefits appear to be comparable for each, though.

    Protein restriction

    In contrast to our recent main feature Protein vs Sarcopenia, in which that week’s featured expert argued for high protein consumption levels, protein restriction can, on the other hand, have anti-aging effects. A reminder that our body is a complex organism, and sometimes what’s good for one thing is bad for another!

    Dr. Greger offers protein restriction as a way to get many of the benefits of caloric restriction, without caloric restriction. He further notes that caloric restriction without protein restriction doesn’t decrease IGF-1 levels (a marker of aging).

    However, for FGF21 levels (these are good and we want them higher to stay younger), what matters more than lowering proteins in general is lowering levels of the amino acid methionine—found mostly in animal products, not plants—so the source of the protein matters:

    Regulation of longevity and oxidative stress by nutritional interventions: role of methionine restriction

    For example, legumes deliver only 5–10% of the methionine that meat does, for the same amount of protein, so that’s a factor to bear in mind.

    NAD+

    This is about nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+ to its friends.

    NAD+ levels decline with age, and that decline is a causal factor in aging, and boosting the levels can slow aging:

    Therapeutic Potential of NAD-Boosting Molecules: The In Vivo Evidence

    Can we get NAD+ from food? We can, but not in useful quantities or with sufficient bioavailability.

    Supplements, then? Dr. Greger finds the evidence for their usefulness lacking, in interventional trials.

    How to boost NAD+, then? Dr. Greger prescribes…

    Exercise! It boosts levels by 127% (i.e., it more than doubles the levels), based on a modest three-week exercise bike regimen:

    Skeletal muscle NAMPT is induced by exercise in humans

    Another study on resistance training found the same 127% boost:

    Resistance training increases muscle NAD+ and NADH concentrations as well as NAMPT protein levels and global sirtuin activity in middle-aged, overweight, untrained individuals

    Take care!

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