In How a Medical Mystery in Guam Led to a New Approach to Alzheimer’s Disease Dr. Sanjay Gupta interviews Dr. Paul Cox about how the amino acid L-serine may help protect against Alzheimer’s disease.
Foods high in L-serine include:
There is no foolproof recipe for making it to 100 years old and beyond but there are strong clues from longevity hot spots such as the Mediterranean regions of France and Italy, parts of Spain, Nicoya, in Costa Rica, and Okinawa, in Japan. These are all places with high numbers of long-lived people, according to Dr Preston Estep, director of gerontology at the Harvard Personal Genome ProjectSo eat mostly vegetables, with plenty of legumes.
They do not always eat the same food but their diets have much in common – a lot of plant food, moderate amounts of fish but not so much meat and added sugar, says Estep, whose book, The Mindspan Diet, looks at the eating habits of people who not only live longer but also have lower rates of dementia. Their fat intake varies, but where diets are high in fat it is usually mono-unsaturated fat – the kind found in olive oil, for example. And when they raise a glass, it is usually with meals and in moderation.
... suggests that a diet heavy in carbohydrates (especially refined grains and sugars) leads to weight gain because of a specific mechanism: Carbs drive up insulin in the body, causing the body to hold on to fat and suppress calorie burn.
So what is it about their physiology that has allowed African runners to dominate distance running so comprehensively in recent years? “Their body types tend to be smaller and naturally leaner,” Jones said. “Their limbs have slightly different proportions, which make them run more efficiently. They have slightly longer shanks; their lower legs tend to be relatively long compared to their thighs, they don’t tend to carry a lot of muscle on their calves and they have quite long achilles, which can be quite advantageous. Their V02 Max [maximum oxygen uptake] may not be much higher than what you’d find in a good class of distance runner in the UK, but they’re much more economical and they’re able to operate at high fractions of their max almost without fatigue.”
Several new studies support its supposed benefits. One study, by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), found that intermittent fasting may help to reverse diabetes in mice by reprogramming "non-insulin-producing cells into insulin-producing cells".
A second study of 71 adults, also out of the USC, found that fasting for five days a month (consuming between 3138 and 4600 kilojoules on those days) reduced cardiovascular risk factors, inflammation levels, waistlines and total body fat, but not muscle mass.
He builds in more NEAT by always walking "if it's less than a mile", always taking the stairs "if it's less than seven flights", and walking up escalators.Mosley is in favour of fermented foods, but advises that most of the commercial ones offer no benefits:
"You can easily burn 300-400 calories by just doing that," Mosley says, "[it's the] equivalent of running a few miles and is more achievable for many people."
He also does a set of resistance exercises each morning, including press-ups and squats.
"There's a lot of rubbish out there at the moment, and all sorts of probiotic drinks being sold," the father-of-four says. "We did an experiment in the series where we compared the yoghurt drinks that claim to promote good bacteria and compared that to having kefir (a fermented milk drink). The yoghurt made no difference whatsoever ... we couldn't detect any difference ... but the kefir did make quite a big difference."He also recommends a Mediterranean diet:
He adds: "There's such a big difference between the ones you buy, like sauerkraut - out of a jar and the homemade stuff. We tested sauerkraut - it didn't taste great - and the supermarket version had nothing living in it at all. Whereas the homemade version was absolutely rife with bacteria. I've been making some at home myself and ... particularly kefir is really easy to make."
"One of the main things is switching to a Mediterranean-style diet," Mosley says. "We realised that low-fat diets are not very effective.
"And understanding what a Med-style diet really is - it's not pasta and it's not pizza. It's the oily fish, nuts, olive oil and stuff like that. The evidence is pretty strong now to say that way of eating is one of the healthiest there is.
"When I wrote the Fast Diet, I wasn't all that interested in the things you ate on the fast days, and I've become much more interested in a more Mediterranean-style diet and looking more carefully at looking how much of the sugary, carby stuff you eat.
"Changing what you eat is one of the most important things you can do to lose weight and improve health."
Overeating isn't making you fat.
Rather, getting fat makes you overeat.
This is the word of Dr David Ludwig, an obesity expert and professor of nutrition at Harvard.
"It may sound radical, but there's literally a century of science to support this point," Ludwig tells New York Times.
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So what, if not overeating, is causing an obesity crisis of epidemic proportions?
There are two things to consider, according to Ludwig, who examines the epidemic and foods that act as "fat fertilisers" in his new book, Always Hungry.
Firstly, what we are eating is a big problem.
"It's the low fat, very high carbohydrate diet that we've been eating for the last 40 years, which raises levels of the hormone insulin and programs fat cells to go into calorie storage overdrive," he explains. "I like to think of insulin as the ultimate fat cell fertiliser."
The calories become so well stored in the fat cells that our bodies cannot access them to burn for energy. This means we always feel hungry, as our bodies cry out for fuel they can use and simply trying to eat less exacerbates the problem without addressing the real issue.
Lack of exercise is twice as likely to lead to an early grave than obesity, research has shown.
A brisk 20-minute walk each day is all it takes to avoid dying prematurely, the findings suggest.
Scientists looked at the effects of obesity and exercise on 334,161 European men and women whose progress was followed for 12 years.
They found that people who engaged in moderate levels of daily exercise - equivalent to taking an energetic 20-minute walk - were 16 per cent to 30 per cent less likely to die than those classified as inactive.
Although the impact of exercise was greatest among normal weight individuals, even those with high Body Mass Index levels saw a benefit.
It's not the first study to show weight loss success on a diet based entirely on plants. Six years ago I interviewed Dr Neal Barnard, Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at George Washington School of Medicine, about his research looking at using a plant food-only diet to control type 2 diabetes. He found that besides controlling blood glucose more effectively than the standard American Diabetes Association diet, the diet also helped reduce weight and cholesterol....
What about the argument that eating a lot of carbohydrates forces the body to produce too much insulin, which in turn encourages the body to store fat more easily?
"If this was the case, we wouldn't have studies consistently showing that vegetarians, who typically eat more carbohydrate, have better insulin sensitivity, a reduced risk of diabetes and heart disease and are less likely to be overweight," she says.
But another advantage of a vegan diet may have something to do with the kind of bacteria that reside in a gut where the only available food comes from plants. New research from the City University of New York has found that the gut microbe population of people on a vegan diet is different to that of omnivores and includes more of the microbes thought to help protect against obesity and diabetes.
This is the personal story of Dr Troy Stapleton, who developed type I diabetes at the age of 41. In the beginning of his disease he followed the standard dietary advice for diabetics to consume up to 250g of carbohydrates per day and then balance this with insulin injections. However, after extensive research he decided to go on a very low carbohydrate diet, which has improved his life quite dramatically.It's an interesting interview. I would recommend people consult their doctor before acting on any of the information in this interview. I'm certainly not qualified to offer medical advice, or to make any recommendations.
