Healthy Anti-Aging Resources

We are constantly being told to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, and if you are doing that, you will be feeling the benefits. Eating healthy food is anti-aging. You will also know that it is important to eat in ‘technicolour” that is eating a wide variety of fruit and vegetables – not just your favourites. And the reason for that is so that our body’s cells can get all the nutrients they need for healthy cell growth. And we need to bathe our cells with good clean water – it helps to keep our skin hydrated and flush out toxins.

One of the problems many women in our age group face is weight gain. You can blame some of that on our hormones. Sometimes though, it is what and how much we put in our mouth. Dr Libby Weaver in her book Accidentally Overweight explains weight gain as pieces of a puzzle and we have to figure out which pieces relate to us. I have found her book both fascinating and helpful.

What we eat also can put us at risk of getting a disease that is on the increase – Diabetes Type 2. However you can modify your diet so that you can be a healthy weight. If this is a concern for you (and it is a continuing battle for me) then here is a daily menu outline.

Breakfast (to be eaten between 6am and 8am) – fresh fruit, plain yoghurt and a small mixture of seeds and nuts.
Lunch (to be eaten between 12 noon and 2pm) – fresh veggies (salads are very good) with a small amount of protein – egg, white cheese, fish, chicken
Evening meal (to be eaten between 5pm and 6.30pm (yes, that is a challenge for some of you) – again fresh veggies, small portion of protein and a healthy grain like quinoa or legumes like chick peas and lentils.

This is a simple eating plan that can be modified to your taste. I also use meal replacement shakes to counter my ‘naughty’ meals – those ones where you are out socialising with friends.

Eating ‘low glycemic (Low GI)’ foods help to maintain weight too. Low GI foods are foods are low in sugar – some high GI foods are white rice, white flour (found in bread, cakes, biscuits, cookies, muffins), white potato, processed cereals and of course, sugar. Read the label carefully on drinks – many drinks – from flavoured milk to coke are high in sugar – they need to be avoided.

To kick start a new way of low-GI eating then I do recommend this weight management plan. Please feel free to contact me if you require further information.

If you need further motivation to manage your weight here is some new research from the Women’s Health Initiative hormone trials. “The message is obesity and a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) are not good for your cognition and your memory,” said lead author Diana Kerwin, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and a physician at Northwestern Medicine.”

Good, clean water is vital for our body’s health. Depending on our weight, we need to drink about 2 litres a day. Water flushes out toxins and if you are a supplement taker, it helps to bathe our cells with nutrients. Water refreshes us and also helps to prevent tiredness.

Healthy eating needs to be part of our healthy aging plan. Keep it simple, and keep it fresh.

For women 40+ who want to live life to the full and stay younger longer

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Vitamin D is under the microscope and a huge amount of information is emerging. Most of you would know that we get this hormone (it’s not really a vitamin) by the sun’s interaction on our skin and from some foods.

The trick is to get the balance between getting too much sunlight (and risking skin damage and skin cancer) and getting enough sunlight for adequate Vitamin D production.

How is Vitamin D3 antiaging? When our bodies are tall and straight we look younger than when we are hunched over.

What does Vitamin D3 do?
• Helps to maintain healthy bones. A study reported in the Annuls of Internal Medicine in their August, 2008 issue showed that those women who had the lowest levels of vitamin D had the highest risk of hip fractures. Nearly 40,000 women were followed and the vitamin D status was measured by looking at their 25-hydroxy vitamin D level. They were divided into four groups depending on their vitamin D level. Those women who had the lowest vitamin D levels had the highest incidence of hip fractures.
• Supports efficient calcium absorption
• Necessary for normal bone mineralization
• Important for the maintenance of muscle strength
• Supports robust and healthy immune function (eg flu prevention)
• Supports a healthy heart. A study reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Conference in Orlando (March 2010)reported a strong association between reduced vitamin D levels and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Brent Muhlstein, MD and his colleagues followed over 27,000 subjects for a little over one year. Those with very low vitamin D levels were 45% more likely to develop heart disease, twice as likely to develop heart failure, 78% more likely to experience a stroke, and 77% more likely to die than those with normal levels. This is just another reason to check your vitamin D status via a 25-hydroxy vitamin D level and make sure it is greater than 60 ng/ml.

It wise to get your levels of Vitamin D tested. Vitamin D deficiency has become a serious nutritional problem throughout the world. In fact, the more we are learning about the health benefits of vitamin D it is becoming apparent that we need to get our vitamin D levels above 60 ng/ml, rather than above the 30 ng/ml most researchers are using as normal. 2,000 IU/Day or More Needed for Optimal Health.

If required, I do recommend that Vitamin D3 is a part of an overall nutritional supplement program that includes a broad-spectrum multivitamin, multimineral, omega-3 and calcium/magnesium.

From Doctor Myron Wentz: “Today medical research is discovering more and more functions of vitamin D in the human body, every one of them critical for optimal health. For example, vitamin D regulates blood levels of essential minerals such as phosphorus and calcium; it regulates the parathyroid gland, which controls the activity of bone tissue; it is essential to our immune system, plays a role in preventing high blood pressure, and protects against a wide range of diseases, from several forms of cancer to diabetes to multiple sclerosis. One authority estimates that lack of sunshine—and the consequent reduced production of vitamin D—leads to nearly one million deaths per year around the world, 600,000 of those deaths from cancer alone. Many, many times more than caused by the H1N1 swine flu”.

Recommended Reading:
* Very informative article from the Linus Pauling Institute about Vitamin D and the health impact of not having enough of this critical vitamin in your body.
* Research news for breast cancer survivors
* Low Vitamin D levels lead to poor physical performance in the elderly
* Dr. Frank Lipman Integrative Physician Vitamin D: What You Need To Know
* Vitamin D for better golden years
From The Sunday Times: Vitamin D better than vaccines at preventing flu, report claims
From the New York Times What Do You Lack? Probably Vitamin D

6 Things Your Doctor Isn’t Telling You About Longevity & Superhealth. In this amazing clip recorded at the Longevity Conference last March Dr. Mercola reveals 6 amazing insights on what doctors AREN’T telling you about anti-aging & super health. This is no ordinary information, Dr. Mercola is on the forefront of nutritional science and his revelations will shock you! Dr Mercola provides further information on the benefits of Vitamin D3 and how vital it is to our well-being.

Find out which advanced quality nutritional products I use and recommend.

Related Post: Osteoporisis – prevention and care

If you would like to find out which nutritional supplements are recommended for healthy aging, please request my free eBook, by completing the form on your top right.

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As I have become older, I have found it harder to control weight gain. Because of this, I began to research what causes this constant battle. Whereas in our teens and early 20′s we have a hunger for carbs however, as we age we do need to be more discerning about the types of carbs we eat. I love the smell of freshly baked bread but that is one of the things I have learned to reduce in my diet and to increase the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables. As you will read here, not only is a low glycemic diet helpful for weight management but it also keeps our skin healthier and less wrinkled too.

The Great Skin Diet

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:33am

• AVOID HIGH GLYCEMIC FOODS ~ Carbs and sugars
Carbs are found in foods like white bread, rice, pasta and potatoes. Not surprisingly, sweet treats, such as cookies, cake and candy, are full of sugar.

• HIGH GLYCEMIC FOODS: Our bodies convert carbs and sugar to blood glucose very quickly. The measure of how long this takes is called the glycemic index. Foods quickly converted to glucose are high-glycemic.

o If we load up on carbs and sugars, our glucose levels go up. When the glucose level is too high, the body increases its production of insulin to get it back down.

o So what happens to skin when our insulin levels are too high? Oil production rises and skin cells die quicker. Oil and dead skin cells block pores, which can lead to acne breakouts. Not surprisingly, studies show a correlation between a high-glycemic diet and acne.

• RISK OF WRINKLES: Sugar binds to skin protein, causing wrinkles, a binding process called glycation.

o After these sugar/skin protein bonds are made, damaging structures called advanced glycation end products — or AGEs, for short — are formed. AGEs destroy collagen (which keeps skin firm), causing wrinkles. Then, free radicals are created, which damage skin cells.

o Particularly in people over age 35, the effects of glycation become stronger. Diabetics are also highly affected by glycation: they “can have up to 50 times the number of AGEs in their skin as those who don’t have diabetes.

o Cut down high glycemic foods if you’ve got: Oily skin, acne or wrinkles. Keep added sugar to no more than 10 percent of total calories you consume in a day. Also, limit other types of sugar, including like corn syrup and dextrose.

o Enjoy clear, wrinkle-free skin by avoiding high glycemic foods ~ you’ll thank me later!

Marie Bertrand
Microbiologist and Skin Scientist
SkinScience Clinic | www.skinscience.md

For women 40+ who want to live life to the full and stay younger longer

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