Achieving healthy longevity has become an obsession for many experts in recent times. Hand in hand with the increase in life expectancy, the challenge is to achieve live more years without diseases.
For that, more and more is known, feeding is a fundamental pillar, along with the practice of physical exercise regular and the stress control.
And if it is about following an anti-aging diet, one of the most prominent longevity experts in the world recommends eliminating from your diet what he calls “the 5 poisonous Ps”.
Thus, for Valter Longoprofessor of gerontology and director of the University of Southern California Longevity Institute and author of The longevity dietan eating style that aims for longevity should be based on Mediterranean diet original.
Longo, who was born and raised in Italy, points out that today “almost no one in Italy follows the Mediterranean diet.” The youth of that country faces – like a large part of the world’s population – obesity due to what Longo calls the “5 poisonous Ps”among which includes:
- Pizza
- Pasta
- Proteins
- Potatoes (or potatoes)
- Bread
The thing is that the Italian lifestyle was for a long time considered the gold standard for longevityand the base is its Mediterranean diet.
In fact, Sardinia, in Italy, is one of the five Blue Zones original, where people live longer, healthier lives.
Longo developed his program after ten years of research, first in mice and then in human clinical analyses, which showed a reduction in cases of diabetes, cancer and heart disease. His daily meal plan is low in protein and sugars and rich in healthy fats and plant-based foods.
The Longevity Diet is clinically proven to help you lose weight and reduce belly fat, prevent age-related muscle loss, and build resistance to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.
In the same line as Longo, the professor David Sinclairan expert geneticist and aging specialist at Harvard Medical School, is another fervent proponent of plant based diet as one of the keys to longevity.
“I rarely eat anything other than plant-based foods and nuts,” Sinclair often says, and although a glass of wine a day is a staple of the Mediterranean diet, the expert also left it out of his routine.
“I stay away from dairy products and also from alcohol. “Very rarely will I eat or drink any of those things, but sometimes, for a celebration or whatever, I’m happy to do that, but that’s what I focus on,” said the 56-year-old expert.
And after highlighting that in a matter of months his diet made a big difference in his blood biomarkers and his epigenetic age, highlighted: “When I switched to this new diet, I also recovered my memory. You couldn’t easily remember phone numbers and key codes, and now it’s simple. So I went back to my 20 year old brain. I thought it was old age, but it wasn’t, it was my lifestyle.”
A plant-based diet is associated with health benefits how to reduce the risk of diabetes, dementia, obesity and high blood pressure. Plant-based foods also help reduce the chances of cardiovascular disease. Similarly, consuming excess sugar, specifically added sugar in highly processed foods, is associated with diabetes, obesity and heart problems, according to the Harvard Health School.
Likewise, a study published in the journal cell found that a diet based on legumes, whole grains and vegetables, as well as nuts and olive oil, allows you to live longer, and do so in a healthier way.
As they pointed out, this diet can “delay aging” and reduce the risk of developing age-related diseases, such as diabetes and cancer. And they determined that fish and chicken intake should be kept “very low,” while red or processed meat should be eliminated completely. What’s more, experts warned that sugar and refined grains, such as white bread, pasta and cereals, should be reduced.
Longo is also a fervent defender of another relatively new concept: false fasting or a diet that imitates fasting. “This refers to limiting food intake, which is supposed to help the body reap the benefits of fasting without completely abstaining from eating,” they explained in a recent profile of the scientist published in the New York Times.
According to Longo’s own website, the protocol includes a low carbohydrate and protein diet and rich in fatty acids. “The patented recipe for the diet that imitates fasting It allows your body to remain in a fasting-like mode, which triggers a set of protectionist measures that the body has developed during natural selection – reads on its site. This allows the body to optimize its performance, rejuvenate your cells and thrive in demanding circumstances.”
Last month, Longo published in the magazine Nature a new study based on clinical trials of hundreds of older people (including in the Calabrian town where his family is from) that, he said, suggests that periodic cycles of his own false fasting method could reduce biological age and prevent diseases associated with aging.
The job A diet that mimics fasting causes changes in liver and blood markers that indicate a reduction in biological age and disease riskpointed out that “the metabolic syndromeaffects approximately 37% of the US population and 49% of those over 60 years of age, and increases the risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.”
And after recognizing that “not only the level of calories consumed and the composition of macronutrients influence health and life expectancy, but also the number of hours during which meals are consumed,” Longo and his colleagues concluded: “Provide A limited time period of food consumption, known as time-restricted eating, is associated with improvements in health and longevity. Similarly, intermittent fasting promotes protection against multiple diseases and induces extension of useful life.”
