Living Longer On Chocolate Chip Cookies Alone?

Everyone wants to live younger longer.

About 300,000 articles on aging have been published since 2013, which is as many as were published during the previous century.

About 80 experiments have been conducted with mammals, including humans, that confirm that interventions in the aging process do work. They can prevent, delay, and even avoid age-related diseases - such as cancer.

What drives aging?

This plethora of studies also point to four primary causes of aging:

• genomic instability,

• shortening of telomeres,

• epigenetic alterations, and

• imbalance between protein synthesis and degradation.

Wow. They didn’t even mention a decline in sex steroid hormones.

Why do sex hormones seem to always get short shrift in medical consciousness? Especially when they often give us our fastest anti-aging bang for our aging buck?

What about diet?

Diet is one of the most accessible ways to intervene in human aging, though hormones are even more powerful, fyi. (of course, though, diet is discussed WAY more than hormonal interventions, at least in our country at this moment).

The Mediterranean diet has been shown in different studies to be associated with a lower heart disease risk (stroke, ischemic stroke, dyslipidemia) and a lower risk of cognitive impairment.

Eating nuts (eg, almonds, walnuts) is associated with less dyslipidemia.

A diet rich in fiber is also associated with less colonic digestive pathology, such as constipation (which hardly any docs ask about it seems) and especially colon cancer.

In addition, a diet low in high-fat meats and rich in fruits and vegetables is associated with less prostate, breast, and colon disease.

A diet with adequate protein intake is related to better muscle mass at all ages.

Presently, no study links any type of diet with greater longevity.

It seems that a Mediterranean diet, rich in fruits, vegetables, and vegetables with proteins of animal origin, preferably fish or white meat, avoiding excess red meat and its calcium component in the form of nuts and dairy products may be associated with better disease-free aging.

Telomeres

I had my telomeres measured by Dr. Mark Houston when I turned this next decade. Though these tests are controversial, I was, according to telomere age, 28 years old.

Telomeric wasting (or shortening) is at the origin of prevalent age-associated diseases, such as pulmonary and renal fibrosis.

But…

But no matter what, size matters. Meaning dose. Meaning how much food you eat, no matter what kind of food you eat.

Overeating any foods, even healthy foods, is not good.

Under-eating is getting much more respect these days.

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - The Chocolate Cookie Almost Centenarian

I was getting my vacuum cleaner fixed and happened to strike up a great conversation with the very cool saleslady.

In to the store walks a tall vibrant man. The sales lady, with cool tattoos and a permanent genuine smile, said, “You gotta meet this guy. He is 97 years strong.”

Of course, I had to ask this vibrant almost 100-year-old gent, what he ate.

Here’s a pic of him (at 97 years old) and me.

He answered, “Chocolate Chip Cookies and milk.”

I inquired, “Well, what else do you eat?

He answered laughingly, “No, I only eat one meal a day. Only that.

“If you open my cupboards, there are just boxes and boxes of Chips Ahoy.”

“You eat nothing else?

“At all?”

“Only milk!” he insisted. Giggling and standing straight like a soldier.

I kept at him. I was incredulous. He kept answering the exact same response.

“Ever since my dear wife passed, 20 years ago, that’s all I eat. Cookies and milk.”

He was strong, happy, no glasses, and no cane.

Yet, he lived on cookies.

Never say never.

But, he admitted, he never over-ate.

He ate cookies but had great portion control with those cookies.

Ya gotta laugh.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Offering us a much-needed dose of humility.

Inspiration can be as good as perspiration.

Stay well. Sometimes cookies are okay, too.

Dr. B.

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Reference:

Scientific Advances and Dietary Measures to Slow Down Aging - Medscape - Feb 22, 2023.