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  #1   ^
Old Sun, Apr-10-16, 07:23
Demi's Avatar
Demi Demi is offline
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Plan: Muscle Centric
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Default How to Stay Young

Quote:
Currently on BBC TV in the UK:


How to Stay Young

Angela Rippon and Dr Chris van Tulleken travel the world to investigate the latest experiments and research that could help put the brakes on the ageing process.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0770cpf





Quote:
From The Telegraph
London, UK

Angela Rippon: What I've learned about the science of staying young

If pressed, I would have to concede that for 71, I’m in pretty good shape. Not without effort, of course: I watch what I eat and exercise regularly in order to stay slim. But still, when I was offered a full body MRI scan (a top-to-toe MOT, if you will) for my new documentary on ageing, I was rather relaxed about the results.

When they came back, Professor Jimmy Bell of Imperial College London told me that my muscles were stronger than expected and my lungs were in good shape; so far, so unsurprising.

But then he pointed to a large, amorphous shape around my liver and another cosying up to my heart - and his expression suddenly changed.

"This is visceral fat," he said. ‘‘You have between six and seven litres; the average is two. It’s very dangerous, and can lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes.’’

As viewers will see in the first episode of How to Stay Young - my definitive guide to how science can help us stay young and healthy for longer, presented with Dr Chris van Tulleken - for once, I was lost for words.

Ameliorating the images somewhat, Prof Bell admitted that he was surprised, too: “You have the body of an athlete with no extraneous external fat at all. But this internal fat makes you a puzzle.’’

Of course, many women store fat around the tummy as they age, possibly due to changing hormone levels. But the salutary lesson this experience taught me will be as true for many others as it was for me - just because we can see how our body is ageing on the outside, doesn’t mean we know what is happening on the inside. And that matters just as much.

Making How to Stay Young has taught me a great deal more about the ageing process and how we can slow it down, or potentially even hold it in abeyance altogether. In the process of filming the two-part series (the first hour concentrates on the body, the second on the brain), Chris and I travelled the world, meeting scientists as well as centenarians trying to establish the latest, proven ways of ageing well.

After all, living longer is not enough if that extra time is spent immobile or in pain. As the English anthropologist Ashley Montagu said: ‘‘The idea is to die young as late as possible.’’

One of the most startling lessons we learnt was how little a role destiny – in the form of genetics – plays. Chris visited a meeting of the Lothian birth-cohort; a group of Lowland Scots who have had their cognitive and physical health measured since they were children in 1921 and 1936. Here, he learnt that only a quarter of the participants’ present health could be attributed to immutable genetic factors. Everything else came down to lifestyle, or what is called epigenetics: those interventions you can take which will override or re-programme your body’s heritable causes of decline.

With epigenetics in mind, we all get to make a choice: are you going to take control of your future through lifestyle changes, or rely on the increasingly sophisticated output of the pharmaceutical industry which offers pills to reduce cholesterol, help us shed weight, and improve blood flow?

Certainly, science can increasingly provide support for those who may not be able to make significant enough nutritional or physical changes to improve their lot. But is that an ideal outcome? Not for me.

I think personal responsibility still has a role to play. So one of the most heartening aspects of my research into ageing was that it is never too late to alter our futures: even if you start at 70 or 80, you can still make improvements.

That might mean choosing to emulate the famously long-living residents of the Japanese island, Okinawa do. The islanders eat vast quantities of locally grown purple sweet potato, but we can munch plenty of blueberries and aubergines, which contain also high levels of a nutrient called anthocyanin linked to better heart health.

Or trying balance exercises, so that our muscle strength improves and we are less likely to fall and get injured.



You can also choose to sharpen the brain, an area I am particularly interested in. My own mother Edna died in her mid-eighties, in 2008, after five years suffering from Alzheimer’s. I’m an Ambassador for Alzheimer’s UK and follow new research initiatives closely. So I was relieved when another MRI scan showed that although a typical 70-year-old could expect their brain to have shrunk by 20 per cent as nerve cells die off naturally, mine has only reduced by about five per cent. Is this due to my still working full time, juggling scripts and research on a wide range of topics? Very possibly.

All the experts we met confirmed that holding back neurodegeneration is possible as long as you keep making brain cells and enabling neural connections. So this means trying new things, and setting challenges.

Of course, learning a language or doing a daily Sudoku have long been touted as ways to keep the brain sharp - but we discovered that we clever humans adapt so quickly to new skills that our brains aren’t exercised by a nightly puzzle unless we mix it up – take up crosswords or jigsaws instead.

Languages are terrific, but learning something totally different, such as Mandarin may exercise the grey matter more than just brushing up rusty French. Life-drawing, I was pleased to learn, is another stimulating alternative requiring thought, concentration and hand-eye coordination.

One of the most interesting experiments explored in the documentary set new groups of solitary walkers versus table tennis players to see who would benefit most over 10 weeks. While the pedestrians improved most in actual cardiovascular fitness and creating new brain cells, the players saw a remarkable growth of cortical thickness; the section of the brain associated with complex thinking.

They scored higher in mood improvement too. The exercise component was effective, but the real benefit came in terms of pure happiness, thanks to the sociable nature of joining a fitness group.

Likewise, when I visited a group in Germany to assess the relative merits of gym work versus dancing, I was delighted (and as a lifelong dancer, not at all surprised) to see that doing the twist was far more beneficial overall than merely lifting weights. Again, the real difference seemed to be the added value of the endorphin boost dancing invoked, plus the novelty of learning new routines, and what you could call the ‘sociability quotient’.

Despite my plea for us all to be more proactive with our own ageing, it’s important to remember that there are health problems beyond our control. Some people will get cancer or heart disease, which wasn’t preventable. My own visceral fat is a reminder of that.

But can we try to improve our odds nonetheless? I hope so. Prof Bell advised me to eat more lentils, and specifically a supplement of inulin, a starchy substance found in pulses and vegetables, which seems to break down this type of fat. Naturally, I’ve taken his advice on board even though I cannot see the effects.

We also looked at the sort of futuristic pharma interventions which could be longevity game-changers – most curiously, a futurustic research project at Stanford University in California where Chris met a team experimenting with injecting young blood into old bodies to regenerate them.

I’m all for holding back the hands of time, but going out dancing with friends sounds a lot more fun as an antidote to ageing than sitting on the couch with a cheeseburger, waiting for a vampiric-sounding elixir of youth.




Five ways to help keep old age at bay

Practise sit-to-rise


As a daily exercise to keep your knees and joints working, sit down cross legged and get up again - ideally, with no hands and no wobbling. Or try walking backwards, an exercise I used with my mother to focus her brain on improving her balance.

Take inulin

This is the soluble dietary fibre found in pulses, recommended by Prof Bell as a natural antidote to visceral fat. As well eating inulin-rich lentils I buy a tub of the nutrient online (try myprotein.com) and sprinkle some across food every day.

Go dancing

Or take up any aerobic exercise like tennis where you can meet friends and have fun while you work out. If it requires you to use your memory (such as learning a routine) even better. The Royal Academy of Dance is organising a new programme called Silver Swans to encourage over 50s to try ballet

Eat purple

Increase your intake of naturally purple foods, rich in flavonoids, carotenoids, vitamin E and lycopene. I now keep blueberries in the fridge and snack on them like sweets

Brain tease

Keep trying new things, to challenge your brain and delay neurodegeneration. I have a plan to start Italian lessons, as soon as I get a break from work

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/he...f-staying-youn/





I've just watched this programme and found it extremely interesting especially with regard to exercise. However, I'm not about to turn vegan any time soon.
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  #2   ^
Old Sun, Apr-10-16, 08:44
bluesinger's Avatar
bluesinger bluesinger is offline
Doing My Best
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Plan: LC/CancerRecovery
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Great post! I'm at that age when this subject interests me greatly. Ha! Understatement.
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  #3   ^
Old Sun, Apr-10-16, 08:54
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Ambulo Ambulo is offline
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Plan: LerC, TRE, IF
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This solitary walker would be very unhappy if forced to join a table tennis club and gets plenty of mental stimulation from having to do her own map reading and navigation. I'm putting my trust in low carb and fasting to protect my little grey cells.
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  #4   ^
Old Sun, Apr-10-16, 13:10
cshepard cshepard is offline
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Plan: Low Carb Paleo
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Inulin as a natural antidote for visceral fat?
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