Hormesis
It's an idea with enduring appeal, that the reason we age and die has to do with accumulating toxins. And modern life is toxin city--pesticides, fertilizers, plastics, GMOs, and heavy metals. But, once again, the idea has not panned out. It is based on a faulty foundation, a mistaken concept of aging and where it comes from.
Tiny doses of toxins may, in fact, be good for us. Homeopaths have been telling us this for 200 years, but only in the last decade has hormesis gained acceptance as a medical concept. Confronted with a challenge, the body jumps to respond, and unexpectedly, the body over-reacts. We are stronger and live longer in the face of hardships than if we live a protected life. Dogs exposed to tiny doses of chloroform live longer than dogs that are fed a pure, toxin-free diet. Rats raised in a germ-free environment don't live as long as rats who get an average dose of dirt and disease. And so on"there is a whole literature of hormesis.
Paleo diet
This is an idea based on a completely muddled understanding of aging. But despite this, it happens that it's not a bad diet. The Paleo Diet is one of those ideas that works much better in practice than in theory.
Grains are mostly starch, and avoiding starch offers a substantial benefit. Starch is turned instantly to sugar in the mouth, before it even reaches the stomach. Less starch and sugar means less insulin, which slows the decline into insulin resistant "type II" diabetes, which is one deep cause of aging. Raw foods are a good idea precisely because they are difficult to digest. Raw foods are absorbed slowly and incompletely. For those of us who enjoy eating or who are addicted to food, raw foods may allow us to eat to satiety, because more of the food goes through us, and less is absorbed. Raw foods are also less prone to cause a spike in blood sugar, triggering insulin release.
Just try getting fat on a raw food diet, and you'll see what I mean.
Less starch and more raw foods are the best things about the Paleo Diet. The theory behind the Paleo Diet is something else again. It's based on the idea that our body is evolved to work with the foods that were available while we were evolving, which was, for the most part, before agriculture, in hunter-gatherer societies. You might be suspicious from the get-go when you realize that life expectancy in hunter-gatherer societies is under 40 years, even when the high rates of infant mortality are factored out. If the paleo diet worked so well, we would expect to find some extraordinarily old people among native peoples in parts of South America and Borneo where they still live the lives of our ancestors 20,000 years ago.
What works?
There is a lot you can do here and now to slow aging and improve your odds for continued good health. I've summarized what I know on the page AgingAdvice.org(a non-commercial web page with no advertising). If you adopt all these measures, it should buy you an extra decade of health. Much of it is standard medical advice:
- weight loss
- vigorous exercise
- daily baby aspirin
- a low-carb, anti-inflammatory diet
- regular sleep habits
But there may be more effective and easier remedies available soon. The future of anti-aging medicine is fast upon us.
The good news is that researchers are beginning to realize that aging is an inside job. There are hormones and biochemical signals that tell the body to self-destruct. Jamming a chemical signal is something that pharmaceutical companies know well how to do and it's much, much easier than repairing a body full of random damage. Some of the hormonal signals have been identified just in the last year or three: Pro-aging (inflammatory) signals have names like NFkB and TGF-b eta. Anti-aging signals include GDF11, melatonin, and the "love hormone" oxytocin. Researchers at Stanford are beginning this month to test transfusions of blood plasma containing a hormone mix from young donors as a treatment for Alzheimer's Disease in the elderly.
Telomere regrowth is another area that has the potential to extend life dramatically, and even to roll back the years. There are several companies now selling herbal supplements that can turn on telomerase modestly. Researchers are hot on the heels of powerful telomerase activators that might actually turn back the body's primary aging clock.
Look for tangible progress in anti-aging technologies in the near term.
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