The fountain of youth may be elusive, but there’s plenty you can do to give your longevity a boost. For those following the anti-ageing lifestyle, life expectancy is increasing by three months per year. People utilising the anti-ageing tenets for health are seeing a life expectancy of 94, and that rate is growing. Just as some doctors predicted 25 years ago, medicine is now at last finally transforming from the treatment of illness and disease into preventive measures and the extension of the human lifespan. The anti ageing medical scientists say by 2050 humans would live to the age of 125 years. For those not following the anti ageing lifestyle, the situation is much different. The life expectancy is going down. There are deaths in young and middle age due to diseases which are preventable.

Cardio-metabolic disease is the leading cause of death in the modern world and causes heart disease, stroke, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome. One in three children born today will have diabetes and children born after 2000 will have, for the first time in human history a shorter life span than their parents. Medical scientists have been working hard to find out the reason for this and have come up with strong clues and for that they looked back into human history for their dietary habits. Before the advent of agriculture (which was around 7000 years ago in the Nile valley) our human ancestors were tall, slender, strong, fast and powerful. They had aligned teeth with no signs of decay, bone density that we can only marvel at and no signs of diseases that affect the modern man. Study of

Anthropology tells us early man lived surprisingly long-70 years and that too without antibiotics or modern medical technology. We have inherited those same genes, the genes for perfect teeth, dense bones, slenderness and strength, but most of us do not reap the reward of those genes passed on to us from our pre agricultural ancestors because we don’t follow the same diet. So we gave up our birthright of health and beauty for a modern diet bereft of most of the healthful elements common to the diets of our forebearers. Our modern diet with a lot of added junk was never available in the millennia over which our genome was developed. By returning to a more natural diet we can provide the nourishment of our bodies needs to return to the state of health our ancient genes

Some Factors in Aging

have programme for us. Research over the past few decades has shown that sugar and insulin, not cholesterol is the real problem. The link between carbohydrates and chronic disease was obscured over the years because an insufficient distinction was made between carbohydrate loads in their natural state and unnatural refined carbohydrates placing sugar and white flour in the same category as raw vegetables, fruits and whole grains. In fact, refining of carbohydrates represents the most dramatic change in human nutrition since the introduction of agriculture. Many young adults are now dying of heart disease, all this from a food borne epidemic- a result of modern western style diet. Diabetes has doubled in the last two decades. Obesity is now a global problem and a new word ‘Globesity’ has been coined for this. Cardio-metabolic disease causes heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, Alzhiemer’s and many other chronic diseases. Having identified the problem what can or should be done Cardiometabolic disease can be halted and reversed with proper diet and your health and wellbeing can be restored in a short time.

Many doctors now believe sugar and not cholesterol determines how long we live. High sugar and insulin are primarily responsible for the silent inflammation of the lining of more than 50000 miles of blood vessels in human body, this is a start of a process which ends in heart disease and heart attack. If we destroy the lining of blood vessels with the wrong kind of diet we develop disease, if we restore the lining we vanquish our disease. If this is done properly many angioplasties can be prevented. Most of us doctors are compensated for exactly the wrong things, diagnosing and treating disease rather than ward off disease. Anti ageing medicine is a field of medicine that is aimed at prevention, early detection, treatment and reversal of disease. Cardiac stress test is not a very sensitive test, as it takes at least 70% blockage of one of your coronary arteries to fail a stress test, and in a large number of heart attacks the blockage may be less than 70%. A much better test is the calcium score by doing a low dose heart scan, this predicts better the chances of a future heart attack. Fat and protein produce little insulin response. The tremendous increase in carbohydrates consumption especially those with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) produces a large increase in insulin and are the primary cause of cardio-metabolic disease and ageing. Other factors involved in silent inflammation leading to cardio-metabolic disease are:

• Insulin resistance due primarily to intake of high carbs foods on a continuous basis
• Oxidative stress due to free radicals
• Leaky gut syndrome causes inflammation throughout the body
• Glycation. Linking of sugar with protein molecules causing a damaging process in the body. Fructose is many times more likely to cause this than glucose. To prevent this avoidance of high glycemic foods especially high fructose food is advised.

Having identified the problem the question arises how to prevent, treat and reverse the process. The main focus is on DIET, the major cause of the cardio-metabolic disease is the change that has occurred in our supply chain over the past 50 years. Fish, poultry, lean meat, nuts, fruits and vegetables are part of a menu that is in harmony with our genetic makeup which has not changed for millennia. Our ancestors ate primarily from two food groups – meat and fish and vegetables and fruits. Grains appeared only 7000 years ago and dairy products 5000 years ago. The refining of grains and farming practices have resulted in the western diet together with addition of high fructose corn syrup. Some other factors are toxins, lack of exercise, genetic factors and falling hormone levels.