How  to  Age-Proof  Your  Body  Naturally

---A  Complete  Introduction  to  the

Reprinted From BOTTOM LINE TOMORROW (June 1999) America's largest subscription- only Newsletter. Bottom Line Tomorrow interviewed Norman D. Ford, writer, fitness enthusiast and anti-aging expert. He is author of many health books including 18 NATURAL WAYS TO LOOK AND FEEL HALF YOUR AGE (KEATS). At age 87, Ford remains a dedicated long-distance cyclist, vegetarian and exercise enthusiast.

Our bodies are designed by nature to age at a very slow pace. It's natural for us to stay strong and healthy well into our 80s and beyond. But 3 aspects of our modern lifestyle cause us to age prematurely:

• Sedentary living

• A low fiber diet full of high-risk fats and overloaded with animal protein

• Focusing on worry, anxiety and stress instead of joy, love, happiness and excitement

When researchers at the Human Nutrition Research Center (HNRC) at Tufts University established a series of "biomarkers" to measure aging, they concluded that declines in every biomarker were caused primarily by a diet packed with harmful fats and too many calories,  plus lack of aerobic and strength-building exercise.

They also found that all of these declines could be easily reversed in a fairly short time, simply by changing diet and lifestyle.

AEROBIC EXERCISE

Most people still think it's "natural" to lose strength and fitness as they get older. But this decline has nothing to do with age. . .it starts the moment we put up our feet and begin to take life easy.

Barely 10% of Americans exercise enough to improve their health. The rest have abandoned all strenuous exercise, and a slow, inexorable decline sets in

Yet this decline is not inevitable. At any age, a program of regular exercise will lower your biological age in just a few months--even if you haven't exercised for years.

Example: The human cardiovascular system can function in top condition for at least 100 years. Studies have shown that a healthy 90-year old heart can pump blood just as efficiently as the heart of a 20-year old. Yet without regular exercise, the average 65-year-old has lost 35% of his/her aerobic capacity.

To begin restoring your heart, lungs and arteries to youthful condition--and maintaining it--I recommend exercising aerobically every other day. This could be walking, swimming, bicycling, or other brisk, rhythmic movement.

Start by doing 20 minutes and gradually increase until you're doing up to 5 miles of walking, or an hour of swimming or cycling. Aim at moving briskly as you exercise but never push yourself to the point of fatigue.

You can begin this age-proofing technique--and start reaping benefits--immediately. A recent Canadian study found that exercise is the most powerful therapy in existance, and in many cases is more effective than prescription drugs.

Literally hundreds of studies have shown that regular aerobic exercise reduces the risk of Type II diabetes, raises your HDL (good) cholesterol while lowering dangerous LDL cholesterol, increases bone density and mental acuity, and helps prevent most forms of cancer. It also leads to tremendous increases in energy, stamina and endurance. And the more out of shape you are, the more rapidly you can win back new health.

After you're thoroughly warmed up, and preferably at the end of your aerobic routine, you can increase the flexibility of your entire body by adding a few key yoga postures (stretches).  A splendid life-enhancing guide to yoga for midlife and older beginners is the book, "The New Yoga for People Over 50" by Suza Francini.

STRENGTH-TRAINING

Until the early 1990s, most longevity experts focused on aerobics as the principal antidote to premature aging. But today it's accepted that strength-training is equally important because strength-training restores youthful muscles in a way aerobics can't.

More than anything else, your muscle-mass is key to youthfulness. After scores of tests and surveys, the HNRC concluded that loss of muscle mass and strength is the underlying cause of almost every sign of aging. Muscle mass is also key to shedding fat since strong muscles burn more calories--24 hours a day, even as you sleep.

A thrice weekly program of strength-training--done on days between your aerobic workouts--should be at the core of your anti-aging program.

You can join a fitness center that has weight machines and instructors who can show you how to use them. Or you could buy free weights and work out at home. But for many years I worked out in my living room without any equipment (doing pushups, crunch-ups and doing calisthenics using furniture as props) all without spending a penny.

Whichever way you go, I recommend doing exercises focused on strengthening these muscle groups: biceps, pectorals, triceps, abdominals, lower back, quadriceps, upper back, shoulders and hamstrings. Every library has excellent books describing how to do it.

For each exercise, find the maximum amount you can lift at one time. Then use 80% of that weight and do up to 8 or 9 repetitions in a row. Once you can do ten reps, it's time to increase the weight. Begin with one exercise per muscle group then gradually add an additional set or two as you gain strength.

Another increasingly-popular Do-It-Yourself exercise system that focuses on building core body strength is Pilates.  A recommended book is Pilates, Body in Motion by Alycea Ungaro which shows how to streamline your body and focus your mind with classic mat exercises you can do at home.  It's published by Dorling Kindersley, costs around $15 and the ISBN # is 0-7894-8400-5.

EAT  THE  RIGHT  FATS -- WITH  LOTS  OF  FRUITS  AND  VEGETABLES

Scientists now recognize that most premature aging is caused by disease, mainly due to free-radicals--electrically charged rogue molecules that work havoc on our cells. Wrinkles, clogged arteries, eye cataracts and weak immune response are all caused by free-radical damage.

The primary cause of free-radical build-up is eating harmful fats. Almost all fats but those in olive, canola and flaxseed oil, pure peanut butter, soy products (not soybean oil), avocadoes, nuts, seeds and oily fish can either clog arteries or produce huge numbers of cancer-causing free-radicals in body cells. Other fats and oils (including fried foods) frequently produce free radicals as they're oxidized. Eating these high-risk fats--which include butter and cheese--can age our arteries prematurely while causing our cells to mutate and become cancerous.

Fortunately, there's a natural antidote. Fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds contain hundreds of compounds called phytochemicals that function as antioxidants to prevent free-radical damage or as anticarcinogens to prevent cancer.

These plant-based foods are also high in fiber, which speeds digestion, helps keep arteries clear, and has numerous anti- cancer benefits.

By contrast, foods of animal origin--beef, eggs, poultry, dairy products, etc.--contain few if any antioxidants, fiber or cancer-preventing nutrients. To age-proof your body against disease, cut down on these foods and increase your intake of foods that grow on plants--and that have not been fried, refined, or processed or had cream, butter, etc., added. And don't forget that the acid from meat you eat can leach calcium from bones and increase risk of osteoporosis (bone loss).

STAY  RELAXED  AND  LEARN  TO  FORGIVE

Eliminating stress and social isolation will also help to slow the aging process. Learning to forgive can add years to your life. And you can learn to stay relaxed through a simple technique called Progressive Muscle Relaxation.

To do it, lie on a rug in a quiet room in semi-darkness with a pillow under your head. Tense each muscle group in turn for about six seconds, then relax. This way, you can relax your entire body in about 90 seconds. Be sure to completely relax your eyes, face and jaw.

Then concentrate on mentally relaxing and warming your hands. With practice, you can increase blood flow to your hands in just a few minutes. This technique, called bio-feedback, can be used to increase relaxation and blood flow to almost any part of the body that is tense and uptight.

Or try this even faster stress-buster  that you can use almost anywhere, anytime.  Begin by sitting comfortably with your back straight.  Then throughout this exercise, keep the tip of your tongue against the inside of your upper front teeth  where they meet the roof of your mouth.  Each count equals one second.

    Step 1.  Close your mouth and inhale to the count of 4.

    Step 2.  Hold your breath to the count of 5.

    Step 3.  Exhale through the mouth to the count of 6.

Then repeat all 3 steps three more times.  By slowing the breath, you slow and calm your mind.  In turn, this calms and relaxes every muscle in your body.  If you find it difficult to breathe this slowly, speed up your breathing to where it feels comfortable.  ( Should you feel light-headed, it's best to avoid this this relaxation technique. )

Unless it is inspiring or makes you laugh, watching TV can be the most passive, useless pastime you can engage in--yet half the U.S. population sits hypnotized by a babbling TV tube for hours at a time--while they munch calorie-laden junk food that makes them bulge out in all the wrong places.

Instead, use your mind actively and creatively. The more you exercise your mind, the healthier and more alert you will be and the lower your risk of senility or Alzheimers. Through mental gymnastics, it's entirely possible to keep your mind as sharp, and to have reflexes as swift as a person half your age.

GOOD  FATS!   BAD  FATS!

Recent studies show that we don't have to stop eating fat to stay healthy. It's the TYPE of fat we eat that counts. Many experts today believe that a diet moderately high in healthy fats is better for us than a very low fat diet.

Olive and canola oil, avocadoes, nuts, seeds and pure peanut butter are rich in healthy mono-unsaturated fats while oily fish like sardines, mackerel, herring or wild salmon abound in equally healthy Omega-3 fatty acids. Both help prevent hypertension, heart attacks and stroke while defending the body against free-radicals and cancer. Also rich in healthy fats are tofu, soy milk, soy yogurt and similar soy products.

Beef, butter, cheese and most other food from animal sources abounds in artery-clogging saturated fat. Most cooking oils, shortening, margarine and fried foods are powerful producers of free-radicals as are the "partially hydrogenated vegetable oils" (aka Trans Fats), nowadays listed on just about all food labels.  But many commercial  baked goods, pies, cakes, donuts etc., (except corn tortillas and healthfood store breads) may still contain harmful Trans Fatty acids.

Whether good or bad for us, however, all fats and oils contain over twice as many calories as other foods and are equally fattening.

GOOD  HEALTH  CAN'T  BE  BOUGHT.  IT  CAN  ONLY  BE WON

Don't look for health in a bottle. Don't expect miracles from supplements,  products, hormones, or anything else that promises health and healing without effort or lifestyle change. You may lose a few pounds on a low-carb, hi-protein diet. But the pounds you lose may come back to haunt you.  For diets high in protein are often powerful promoters of health-wrecking free radicals.

And never forget that most breakfast cereals are candy in disguise. Boost your fiber intake by eating only whole-grain cereals and breads instead of bagels or pasta or  anything else made from white flour or sugar.

Above all, remember that a healthy diet doubles the benefit of exercise while regular exercise doubles the benefit of a healthy plant-based diet. You can wipe out all benefits of a walk, run, swim or bike ride if you stop in at a fast-food eaterie afterwards and load up on foods guaranteed to make you old before your time.

FOODS  THAT  PROMOTE  HEALTH  AND  LONG  LIFE

All the foods listed below are free of bad fats and are good sources of antioxidants plus indoles, isoflavones, protease inhibitors, glutathione, quercetin, flavonoids, boron, carotenoids and similar anticarcinogens that help prevent cancer and other chronic diseases.

Apples, apricots, avocadoes, bananas, beans, beets; berries-- especially blueberries; breads and baked goods made of whole grain flours and free of partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils and all cooking oils or fats except olive or canola oils; broccoli or broccoli sprouts, brussel sprouts, canola oil, cantaloupes, carrots, cauliflower, cherries; citrus--especially tangerines; corn tortillas, dried fruits like prunes and raisins (in limited amounts); fish--oily, cold-water fish like sardines and wild salmon; flaxseed oil; grapes-- red or purple; green leafy vegetables like kale, collard greens, spinach, watercress etc but not iceberg lettuce; kiwi fruits, mangoes; nuts--especially almonds, hazel and walnuts; olive oil, onions, papayas, peaches, peanuts and pure peanut butter; peas; peppers--red and green; persimons; pineapples; plums; soy products such as tofu, tempe, miso and soy protein isolate; strawberries; sweet potatoes; tea--green and black; tomatoes-- ripe and deep red; tomato pasta sauce--cooked with olive oil and garlic; watermelon; wine--red; and winter squash--especially butternut.

Actually, it is the natural pigments that give fruits and vegetables their color that help to prevent cancer and inhibit its growth. So choose fruits and vegetables that are brightly and deeply colored if you can. The bright reds of ripe tomatoes and watermelon are produced by lycopene, a proven inhibitor of prostate cancer. And the rich blues of berries, the reds and purples of grapes, the orange-yellow of carrots, sweet potatoes, papaya and mangoes, and the deep greens of dark leafy green vegetables, all play a major role in keeping us cancer-free.  Try to eat fruits and vegetables of several different colors each day.  Too, whenever possible, eat the fruits and vegetables themselves rather than drink juice squeezed from them.   Whenever you can, eat organic produce rather than produce sprayed with pesticides; and avoid produce that is genetically modified (GM).

Finally, always try to eat twice as many vegetables as fruits.

ROLL  BACK  THE  YEARS  WITH  CALORIE  RESTRICTION

Of all anti-aging methods, Calorie Restriction has been the most tested and proven. Numerous animal studies, as well as human experiments, have all concurred that we clearly and definitely CAN extend our lives by 5-10 active, healthy years or more. And we can remain disease-free until almost our last few days on earth.

Professor Roy L. Walford  M. D., who studied the biology of aging at UCLA School of Medicine, was the world's leading researcher in this field. Professor Walford repeatedly demonstrated that by reducing our daily intake of calories by 10-15% while keeping our intake of essential nutrients constant, most of us can enjoy an additional 5-10 years  or more of active living free of almost all the common ailments and diseases that plague most Americans as they grow older.

Years ago, the "ideal weight" tables were replaced by the Body Mass Index (BMI) scale which assesses the ratio between lean muscle mass and body fat. The BMI scale applies equally to adult men and women of all ages.

To find your personal BMI, click here on  Body Mass Index.

Excepting only people with very large muscles or body frames, your BMI gives a good appraisal of your future outlook for health and freedom from disease. A BMI of 30 or over indicates that a person is seriously overweight. Between 26 and 29 indicates a person is significantly overweight. To stay healthy, you should keep your BMI at 25 or below. For optimal health and longevity, it should be 22 or under.But not under 18.5.

We can control our personal BMI, and we can lower it, by restricting the number of calories we consume in our daily diet and by exercising more. The best and healthiest way to lose weight is by eating a plant-based diet and by exercising vigorously every day.  A "plant-based diet" means eating only foods that grow on plants and that have not been fried, processed or refined or had any undesirable fats, spreads, sauces or dressings added..  Foods that grow on plants are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and dried beans.

 The occasional addition of a serving of oily fish is OK as is a daily multi-vitamin mineral supplement containing B-12 and folate. Adults, and especially women,  not consuming dairy products can benefit from taking 1,000-1,500 mgs of supplemental calcium plus 1,000-2,000 I.U. of Vitamin D-3 each day, the actual amount depending on age.

Not OK are processed plant foods like margarine, shortening and commercial breads and baked goods that contain "partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils"; all cooking oils but olive, canola and flaxseed oils; and white, bleached  or enriched wheat flour; sugar, honey or  fructose (except in fruit); and any breakfast or other cereal that is not completely whole grain.

New Science-Based Breakthroughs Validate the Principles of Our Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan

Attention all Stay Younger-Live Longer buffs! Which Vitamin are Americans most in need of and how may this deficiency be shortening your Life Expectancy?

No, it's not Vitamins C or E. In recent years, the Vitamin D Deficiency Syndrome has reached unprecedented levels, causing an epidemic of osteoporosis and related diseases including several common forms of Cancer. In fact, a forthcoming Harvard School of Public Health study is expected to show that a Vitamin-D deficiency increases our risk of developing Cancer by as much as 30 per cent.

For an update right now on the Vitamin-D deficiency and how it affects our health and life expectancy, click on the website of the Vitamin-D Council at http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
Read the alarming main report, then hit the Cancer button for more mind- blowing news. Lastly, learn how you may easily protect yourself from one of America's most dangerous epidemics.

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Diet & Genes: How to Turn on Your Longevity Genes by Eating Healthfully. While pioneering research on Nutritional Genomics,  Jose Ordovas, director of the Nutrition and Genomic Lab at Tufts University, has already identified how eating certain foods can enhance the action of genes that enhance longevity while other foods may boost genes that curtail our life expectancy.

This a complex field embracing up to 300 gene variants and is still in its infancy.  But one thing is already clear.  Most of the foods that have been identified as boosting longevity genes are the same foods most strongly recommended in our Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan.  Here are a few examples:

BROCCOLI   boosts Gene GST that produces glutathione, a powerful anti-oxidant that helps arteries stay healthy.

GREEN TEA  helps protect the body against Gene HER-2 that releases growth signals in cells that cause breast cancer.

A COMPOUND IN SOYBEANS  and soybean products appears to stimulate activity in Gene p53 that defends the prostate against tumor formation.

TURMERIC  , a yellow herb from India commonly used to flavor steamed rice, is believed to inhibit the Gene Cox-2 which produces inflamation that speeds the onset of Colon Cancer  and Alzheimers.

These ground-breaking discoveries were reported on in detail in a special Health for Life section of Newsweek Magazine, January 17 issue, 2005.  The section also includes 3 other aging-related reports: A Wrinkle in Time; Artful Aging; and Getting Fit with Harry and Chris.  All are packed with mind-blowing discoveries which reveal that the benefits of Do-It-Yourself Gene Therapy may already be available to those who follow our Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan.

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January 2005 saw the new edition of "Dietary Guidelines for Americans"that was last updated five years previously. Compared to the year 2,000 edition, the new guidelines strongly support the principles on which our Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan is based.

Greener, fruitier and with more emphasis on exercise, the new edition reflects growing concern over our nationwide problems of overweight and obesity, which afflict two-thirds of all Americans. Thus the new guidelines almost double the consumption of fruits and vegetables and they also recommend that Americans exercise for at least 30 minutes every day--and for 60-90 minutes if overweight. We also were given a strong warning about the dangers of eating Trans-Fatty Acids.

The same guidelines  were used to shape the new food pyramid, published in mid- 2005. Meanwhile, you can read the new guidelines On-Line by clicking on www.healthierus.gov/dietary guidelines

Mediterranean  Diet  Adds  Years  To  Your  Life

A large European study has concluded that the "Mediterranean Diet" can reduce mortality among the elderly.  A total of 47,000 healthy participants aged 60 or over were assessed by researchers at the University of Athens Medical School.  The participants came from 9 European countries and were taking part in the ongoing European Prospective Investigations into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC Study).  They were assessed for lifestyle, medical history, smoking, physical activity levels, and other relevent factors.  Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet was rated on a ten-point scale.

After an average 89 months of follow-up, 4047 of the participants had died, with most deaths occuring in the Danish, Swedish and U.K. cohorts.  The researchers found that a higher intake of vegetables, legumes, fruits, olive oil and a moderate intake of wine, together with a lower intake of saturated fats, dairy products and meat were linked with longer life expectancy.

Specifically, a two-point increase on the Mediterranean Diet scale was linked to an 8-percent reduction in risk of death, while 4-points was associated with a 14-percent reduction.  In countries with a low intake of olive oil, total unsaturated fat intake was measured instead, which may explain why the links were stronger in Greece and Spain where olive oil use is more common.

The Mediterranean Diet has been the focus of many studies, as many of its components have been linked to improvements in chronic diseases, including heart disease.  The new study adds to the evidence of a health benefit by showing an effect on a large and varied population.

The researchers concluded that adherence to a Mediterranean-type diet may be particularly appropriate for elderly people, who represent a rapidly growing group in Europe.

From Trichopoulou et al.  Modified Mediterranean Diet and Survival EPIC--elderly prospective cohort study.  British Medical Journal, Vol 330, April 2005, pp 799-805. _____________________________________________________________________

The China Study

By. T. Colin Campbell PhD and Tom Campbell

A  Powerful  Excerpt  From  The  Most  Comprehensive  Study  Of  Nutrition  Ever  Conducted  And  Its  Startling  Implications  Regarding  Diet  And  Heart  Disease,  Cancer,  Diabetes  And  Other Common  Diseases  That  Prevent  Millions  Of  Americans  From  Enjoying  A  Long, Healthy Life

Introductionby T. Colin Campbell, PhD

The public’s hunger for nutrition information never ceases to amaze me, even after devoting my entire working life to conducting experimental research into nutrition and health. Diet books are perennial best-sellers. Almost every popular magazine features nutrition advice, newspapers regularly run articles and TV and radio programs constantly discuss diet and health.

Given the barrage of information, are you confident that you know what you should be doing to improve your health?

Should you buy food that is labeled organic to avoid pesticide exposure? Are environmental chemicals a primary cause of cancer? Or is your health “predetermined” by the genes you inherited when you were born? Do carbohydrates really make you fat? Should you be more concerned about the total amount of fat you eat, or just saturated fats and trans-fats? What vitamins, if any, should you be taking? Do you buy foods that are fortified with extra fiber? Should you eat fish, and, if so, how often? Will eating soy foods prevent heart disease?

My guess is that you’re not really sure of the answers to these questions. If this is the case, then you aren’t alone. Even though information and opinions are plentiful, very few people truly know what they should be doing to improve their health. This isn’t because the research hasn’t been done. It has. We know an enormous amount about the links between nutrition and health. But the real science has been buried beneath a clutter of irrelevant or even harmful information—junk science, fad diets and food industry propaganda. I want to change that. I want to give you a new framework for understanding nutrition and health, a framework that eliminates confusion, prevents and treats disease and allows you to live a more fulfilling life.

I have been “in the system” for almost fifty years, at the very highest levels, designing and directing large research projects, deciding which research gets funded and translating massive amounts of scientific research into national expert panel reports. After a long career in research and policy making, I now understand why Americans are so confused. As a taxpayer who foots the bill for research and health policy in America, you deserve to know that many of the common notions you have been told about food, health and disease are wrong:

Synthetic chemicals in the environment and in your food, as problematic as they may be, are not the main cause of cancer.

The genes that you inherit from your parents are not the most important factors in determining whether you fall prey to any of the ten leading causes of death.

The hope that genetic research will eventually lead to drug cures for diseases ignores more powerful solutions that can be employed today.

Obsessively controlling your intake of any one nutrient, such as carbohydrates, fat, cholesterol or omega-3 fats, will not result in long-term health.

Vitamins and nutrient supplements do not give you long-term protection against disease.

Drugs and surgery don’t cure the diseases that kill most Americans.

Your doctor probably does not know what you need to do to be the healthiest you can be.

I propose to do nothing less than redefine what we think of as good nutrition. The provocative results of my four decades of biomedical research, including the findings from a twenty-seven-year laboratory program (funded by the most reputable funding agencies) prove that eating right can save your life.

I will not ask you to believe conclusions based on my personal observations, as some popular authors do. There are over 750 references in this book, and the vast majority of them are primary sources of information, including hundreds of scientific publications from other researchers that point the way to less cancer, less heart disease, fewer strokes, less obesity, less diabetes, less autoimmune disease, less osteoporosis, less Alzheimer’s, less kidney stones and less blindness.

Some of the findings, published in the most reputable scientific journals, show that:

Dietary change can enable diabetic patients to go off their medication.

Heart disease can be reversed with diet alone.

Breast cancer is related to levels of female hormones in the blood, which are determined by the food we eat.

Consuming dairy foods can increase the risk of prostate cancer.

Antioxidants, found in fruits and vegetables, are linked to better mental performance in old age.

Kidney stones can be prevented by a healthy diet.

Type 1 diabetes, one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child, is convincingly linked to infant feeding practices.

These findings demonstrate that a good diet is the most powerful weapon we have against disease and sickness. An understanding of this scientific evidence is not only important for improving health; it also has profound implications for our entire society. We must know why misinformation dominates our society and why we are grossly mistaken in how we investigate diet and disease, how we promote health and how we treat illness.

By any number of measures, America’s health is failing. We spend far more, per capita, on health care than any other society in the world, and yet two thirds of Americans are overweight, and over 15 million Americans have diabetes, a number that has been rising rapidly. We fall prey to heart disease as often as we did thirty years ago, and the War on Cancer, launched in the 1970s, has been a miserable failure. Half of Americans have a health problem that requires taking a prescription drug every week, and over 100 million Americans have high cholesterol.

To make matters worse, we are leading our youth down a path of disease earlier and earlier in their lives. One third of the young people in this country are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. Increasingly, they are falling prey to a form of diabetes that used to be seen only in adults, and these young people now take more prescription drugs than ever before. These issues all come down to three things: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

More than forty years ago, at the beginning of my career, I would have never guessed that food is so closely related to health problems. For years I never gave much thought to which foods were best to eat. I just ate what everyone else did: what I was told was good food. We all eat what is tasty or what is convenient or what our parents taught us to prefer. Most of us live within cultural boundaries that define our food preferences and habits.

So it was with me. I was raised on a dairy farm where milk was central to our existence. We were told in school that cow’s milk made strong, healthy bones and teeth. It was Nature’s most perfect food. On our farm, we produced most of our own food in the garden or in the livestock pastures. I was the first in my family to go to college. I studied pre-veterinary medicine at Penn State and then attended veterinary school at the University of Georgia for a year when Cornell University beckoned with scholarship money for me to do graduate research in “animal nutrition.” I transferred, in part, because they were going to pay me to go to school instead of me paying them. There I did a master’s degree. I was the last graduate student of Professor Clive McCay, a Cornell professor famed for extending the lives of rats by feeding them much less food than they would otherwise eat. My Ph.D. research at Cornell was devoted to finding better ways to make cows and sheep grow faster. I was attempting to improve on our ability to produce animal protein, the cornerstone of what I was told was “good nutrition.”

I was on a trail to promote better health by advocating the consumption of more meat, milk and eggs. It was an obvious sequel to my own life on the farm and I was happy to believe that the American diet was the best in the world. Through these formative years, I encountered a recurring theme: we were supposedly eating the right foods, especially plenty of high-quality animal protein.

Much of my early career was spent working with two of the most toxic chemicals ever discovered, dioxin and aflatoxin. I initially worked at MIT, where I was assigned a chicken feed puzzle. Millions of chicks a year were dying from an unknown toxic chemical in their feed, and I had the responsibility of isolating and determining the structure of this chemical. After two and one-half years, I helped discover dioxin, arguably the most toxic chemical ever found. This chemical has since received widespread attention, especially because it was part of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, or Agent Orange, then being used to defoliate forests in the Vietnam War. After leaving MIT and taking a faculty position at Virginia Tech, I began coordinating technical assistance for a nationwide project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. Part of the project became an investigation of the unusually high prevalence of liver cancer, usually an adult disease, in Filipino children. It was thought that high consumption of aflatoxin, a mold toxin found in peanuts and corn, caused this problem. Aflatoxin has been called one of the most potent carcinogens ever discovered.

For ten years our primary goal in the Philippines was to improve childhood malnutrition among the poor, a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Eventually, we established about 110 nutrition “self-help” education centers around the country. The aim of these efforts in the Philippines was simple: make sure that children were getting as much protein as possible. It was widely thought that much of the childhood malnutrition in the world was caused by a lack of protein, especially from animal-based foods. Universities and governments around the world were working to alleviate a perceived “protein gap” in the developing world.

In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest-protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer! They were the children of the wealthiest families. I then noticed a research report from India that had some very provocative, relevant findings.

Indian researchers had studied two groups of rats. In one group, they administered the cancer-causing aflatoxin, then fed a diet that was composed of 20% protein, a level near what many of us consume in the West. In the other group, they administered the same amount of aflatoxin, but then fed a diet that was only composed of 5% protein. Incredibly, every single animal that consumed the 20% protein diet had evidence of liver cancer, and every single animal that consumed a 5% protein diet avoided liver cancer. It was a 100 to 0 score, leaving no doubt that nutrition trumped chemical carcinogens, even very potent carcinogens, in controlling cancer. This information countered everything I had been taught. It was heretical to say that protein wasn’t healthy, let alone say it promoted cancer. It was a defining moment in my career. Investigating such a provocative question so early in my career was not a very wise choice. Questioning protein and animal-based foods in general ran the risk of my being labeled a heretic, even if it passed the test of “good science.”

But I never was much for following directions just for the sake of following directions. When I first learned to drive a team of horses or herd cattle, to hunt animals, to fish our creek or to work in the fields, I came to accept that independent thinking was part of the deal. It had to be. Encountering problems in the field meant that I had to figure out what to do next. It was a great classroom, as any farm boy can tell you. That sense of independence has stayed with me until today.

So, faced with a difficult decision, I decided to start an in-depth laboratory program that would investigate the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the development of cancer. My colleagues and I were cautious in framing our hypotheses, rigorous in our methodology and conservative in interpreting our findings. I chose to do this research at a very basic science level, studying the biochemical details of cancer formation. It was important to understand not only whether but also how protein might promote cancer. It was the best of all worlds. By carefully following the rules of good science, I was able to study a provocative topic without provoking knee-jerk responses that arise with radical ideas. Eventually, this research became handsomely funded for twenty-seven years by the bestreviewed and most competitive funding sources [mostly the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research]. Then our results were reviewed (a second time) for publication in many of the best scientific journals.

What we found was shocking. Low-protein diets inhibited the initiation of cancer by aflatoxin, regardless of how much of this carcinogen was administered to these animals. After cancer initiation was completed, low-protein diets also dramatically blocked subsequent cancer growth. In other words, the cancer-producing effects of this highly carcinogenic chemical were rendered insignificant by a low-protein diet. In fact, dietary protein proved to be so powerful in its effect that we could turn on and turn off cancer growth simply by changing the level consumed. Furthermore, the amounts of protein being fed were those that we humans routinely consume.

We didn’t use extraordinary levels, as is so often the case in carcinogen studies. But that’s not all. We found that not all proteins had this effect. What protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer? Casein, which makes up 87% of cow’s milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process. What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake? The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy. As this picture came into view, it began to challenge and then to shatter some of my most cherished assumptions.

These experimental animal studies didn’t end there. I went on to direct the most comprehensive study of diet, lifestyle and disease ever done with humans in the history of biomedical research. It was a massive undertaking jointly arranged through Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. The New York Times called it the “Grand Prix of Epidemiology.” This project surveyed a vast range of diseases and diet and lifestyle factors in rural China and, more recently, in Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, this project eventually produced more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease!

What made this project especially remarkable is that, among the many associations that are relevant to diet and disease, so many pointed to the same finding: people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. Even relatively small intakes of animal-based food were associated with adverse effects. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored. From the initial experimental animal studies on animal protein effects to this massive human study on dietary patterns, the findings proved to be consistent. The health implications of consuming either animal or plant-based nutrients were remarkably different.

I could not, and did not, rest on the findings of our animal studies and the massive human study in China, however impressive they may have been. I sought out the findings of other researchers and clinicians. The findings of these individuals have proved to be some of the most exciting findings of the past fifty years.

These findings—the contents of Part II of this book—show that heart disease, diabetes and obesity can be reversed by a healthy diet. Other research shows that various cancers, autoimmune diseases, bone health, kidney health, vision and brain disorders in old age (like cognitive dysfunction and Alzheimer’s) are convincingly influenced by diet. Most importantly, the diet that has time and again been shown to reverse and/or prevent these diseases is the same whole foods, plant-based diet that I had found to promote optimal health in my laboratory research and in the China Study. The findings are consistent.

Yet, despite the power of this information, despite the hope it generates and despite the urgent need for this understanding of nutrition and health, people are still confused. I have friends with heart disease who are resigned and despondent about being at the mercy of what they consider to be an inevitable disease. I’ve talked with women who are so terrified of breast cancer that they wish to have their own breasts, even their daughters’ breasts, surgically removed, as if that’s the only way to minimize risk. So many of the people I have met have been led down a path of illness, despondence and confusion about their health and what they can do to protect it.

Americans are confused, and I will tell you why. The answer, discussed in Part IV, has to do with how health information is generated and communicated and who controls such activities. Because I have been behind the scenes generating health information for so long, I have seen what really goes on—and I’m ready to tell the world what is wrong with the system. The distinctions between government, industry, science and medicine have become blurred. The distinctions between making a profit and promoting health have become blurred. The problems with the system do not come in the form of Hollywood-style corruption. The problems are much more subtle, and yet much more dangerous. The result is massive amounts of misinformation, for which average American consumers pay twice. They provide the tax money to do the research, and then they provide the money for their health care to treat their largely preventable diseases.

This story, starting from my personal background and culminating in a new understanding of nutrition and health, is the subject of this book. Six years ago at Cornell University, I organized and taught a new elective course called Vegetarian Nutrition. It was the first such course on an American university campus and has been far more successful than I could have imagined. The course focuses on the health value of a plant-based diet. After spending my time at MIT and Virginia Tech, then coming back to Cornell thirty years ago, I was charged with the task of integrating the concepts and principles of chemistry, biochemistry, physiology and toxicology in an upper-level course in nutrition.

After four decades of scientific research, education and policy making at the highest levels in our society, I now feel I can adequately integrate these disciplines into a cogent story. That’s what I have done for my most recent course, and many of my students tell me that their lives are changed for the better by the end of the semester. That’s what I intend to do for you; I hope your life will be changed as well.

Here's  Another  Mind-Blowing  Review  Of  Dr. Colin Campbell's  book,  The  China  Study, And  How  It  Is  Challenging  Much  Of  Mainstream  America's  Dietary  Dogma

The science is clear. The results are unmistakable.

Change your diet and dramatically reduce the risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Respected nutrition and health researcher, Dr. T. Colin Campbell reveals the truth behind special interest groups, government entities and scientists that have taken Americans down a deadly path

Even today, as the low-carb craze still persists, two-thirds of adults are still obese or  overweight and children are being diagnosed with Type II diabetes, typically an “adult” disease, at an alarming rate. If we’re eating healthier, why are Americans stricken with heart disease as much as we were 30 years ago?

In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The report also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and opportunistic scientists. The New York Times has recognized the study (China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project) as the “Grand Prix of epidemiology” and the “most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.”

“After a long career in research and policy-making, I have decided to step ‘out of the system.’ I have decided to disclose why Americans are so confused,” said Dr. Campbell. “As a taxpayer who foots the bill for research and health policy in America, you deserve to know that many of the common notions you have been told about food, health and disease are wrong.”

“I propose to do nothing less than redefine what we think of as good nutrition. You need to know the truth about food, and why eating the right way can save your life.”

Early in his career as a researcher with MIT and Virginia Tech, Dr. Campbell worked to promote better health by eating more meat, milk and eggs -- “high-quality animal protein … It was an obvious sequel to my own life on the farm and I was happy to believe that the American diet was the best in the world.”

He later was a researcher on a project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. The project became an investigation for Dr. Campbell, as to why so many Filipino children were being diagnosed with liver cancer, predominately an adult disease. The primary goal of the project was to ensure that the children were getting as much protein as possible.

“In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer...” He began to review other reports from around the world that reflected the findings of his research in the Philippines.

Although it was “heretical to say that protein wasn’t healthy,” he started an in-depth study into the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the cause of cancer.

The research project culminated in a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, a survey of diseases and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, “this project eventually produced more than 8000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease.”

The findings? “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” said Dr. Campbell.

In The China Study, Dr. Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and also its ability to reduce or reverse the risk or effects of these deadly illnesses. The China Study also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and irresponsible scientists.

The China Study is not a diet book. Consumers are bombarded with conflicting messages regarding health and nutrition; the market is flooded with popular titles like The Atkins Diet and The South Beach Diet. Dr. Campbell cuts through the haze of misinformation and delivers an insightful message to anyone living with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and those concerned with the effects of aging. Additionally, he challenges the validity of these low-carb fad diets and issues a startling warning to their followers.

A Must-Read  For  Longevity  Buffs,  Dr.  Campbell's book, The  China  Study (Benbella  Books  2005, ISBN 1-932100-38-3} is available at most book stores or can be ordered On-Line at www.amazon.com.

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From Time Magazine August 30, 2004

How To Live To Be 100

By Richard Corliss and Michael D. Lemonick

One of the best reports ever written on how to live longer, healthier and better

Margaret Dell is 96, but you'd need to check the birth date on her driver's license to believe it. Sporting a baseball cap with a Harley-Davidson logo on it, she is the designated driver for her seventysomething friends who no longer feel comfortable behind the wheel. Last winter a snowfall threatened to keep her from her appointed automotive rounds. She took a shovel and cleared a path to her car. Driving keeps Dell young. That and knitting. She constantly knits. She makes baby booties and caps and blankets for friends and family whenever a baby arrives--the newborn getting an early blessing from the ageless. And every month, she donates several blankets to a charity for unwed mothers. Driving, knitting ... and tennis. She plays two or three times a week. She has a much younger doubles partner who "covers the court. I'm a little afraid to run too much because of the circulation in my legs," she explains.

When she was in her 80s, she played in a doubles tournament that required that the ages of both partners add up to at least 100. Her partner was in his early 20s; they won the tournament.

A lifetime nonsmoker and nondrinker, Dell lives alone in a two-story house in Bethesda, Md., her bedroom on the second floor. "I could stay on the first floor, but I try to make myself walk up those stairs and keep going that way." She buys her own groceries; don't even ask if you can shop for her. At home she likes a chicken or turkey sandwich for lunch. If she eats at the country club after tennis, she usually finishes only half and saves the rest for dinner. (The doggie bag is the senior citizen's medical-supply kit.)

Driving, tennis, knitting ... and eating chocolates. She keeps them in a drawer by her easy chair. "I am very bad about those Hershey Kisses," she confesses. "And I love those little Dove ice cream things. I take one before I go to bed." That's the only medication Dell will take without a fight. She's no fan of doctors. Some years back, she took a fall, and her doctor prescribed an MRI. "I just refused to go," she says. "They were having a party. It was my 90th birthday." And the party girl left his office. Fortunately, nothing was broken. But Dell knew that.

More than what she knows, it's how she glows that impresses people. "She has a light in her eyes that is very alive, alert and interested," says Carole Dell. "It radiates over her whole face. Her face is kind of timeless. It's deeply lined, but she's actually beautiful." Spoken like a proud daughter-in-law with 96 reasons to be proud. Ninety-six and counting.

How does science explain someone like Margaret Dell? How can a woman closing in on the start of her second century be so robustly, almost defiantly, healthy, while men and women decades younger are languishing feebly in nursing homes, plagued with failing bodies and failing minds and wishing they hadn't been so unlucky as to live so long?

For most of human history, a long and healthy life has been shrugged off as a gift from the gods--or maybe the undeserved reward for a lifetime of plain cussedness. But to gerontologists, the vagaries of aging have become the focus of intense scientific research.

Scientists are as obsessed with the question of why the superold survive and thrive as Ponce de Leon was to find the Fountain of Youth. They want to understand why the Japanese islands of Okinawa are home to the world's largest population of centenarians, with almost 600 of its 1.3 million inhabitants living into their second century--many of them active and looking decades younger than their actual years. Like weekend visitors on the summer ferry to Martha's Vineyard, scientists and sociologists clog the boats to Sardinia and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see why those craggy locales harbor outsize clusters of the superold. (Gerontologists are not so beguiled by the Russian Caucasus, where exaggerated longevity claims sparked a series of Dannon yogurt commercials 30 years ago.)

As well as studying these populations intensively to unlock their secrets, scientists have also taken a hard look at the very old in the U.S., most notably in the New England Centenarian Study, led by Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at Boston University, and in a major study under way at the National Institute on Aging. While the very old are happy to offer homespun explanations for their longevity--"I never took a drink"; "I drank a shot of whiskey every day"--experts are trying to unravel and understand the biological factors that allow some people to reach 100 while others drop off in their 70s or 80s. Researchers are particularly interested in determining which factors allow up to 30% of those who reach 100 to do so in sufficient mental and physical health: a whopping 90% of centenarians, according to Perls, remain functionally independent up to age 92. "It's not 'the older you get, the sicker you get,' but 'the older you get, the healthier you've been,'" he says. "The advantage of living to 100 is not so much how you are at 100 but how you got there."

It's pretty obvious even to nonscientists that how you get there depends partly on the genes you are born with and partly on lifestyle--what and how much you eat, where you live and what types of stress and trauma you experience. How much depends on each factor, though, was unknown until Swedish scientists tackled the problem in 1998. They did it by looking at the only set of people who share genes but not lifestyle: identical twins who were separated at birth and reared apart. If genes were most important, you would expect the twins to die at about the same age. In fact, they don't, and the average difference convinced the scientists that only about 20% to 30% of how long we live is genetically determined. The dominant factor is lifestyle.

"You could have Mercedes-Benz genes," says Dr. Bradley Willcox, of the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu, "but if you never change the oil, you are not going to last as long as a Ford Escort that you take good care of. Those who have healthier genes and live healthier lives--those guys really survive for a long time."

Studies of Seventh-Day Adventists in Utah support this finding. Those unusually clean-living Americans are genetically diverse, but they avoid alcohol, caffeine and tobacco--and they tend to live an average of eight years longer than their countrymen. All of this is good news, with a Surgeon General's warning attached: you can't change your genes, but you can change what you eat and how much you exercise. "The lesson is pretty clear from my point of view in terms of what the average person should be doing," says Perls. "I strongly believe that with some changes in health-related behavior, each of us can earn the right to have at least 25 years beyond the age of 60--years of healthy life at good function. The disappointing news is that it requires work and willpower."

At least that's true for many Americans, whose fat-and calorie-packed diets and largely exercise-free lives are a prescription for heart disease and plenty of other ills. For Okinawans, by contrast, the traditional way of life seems tailor-made for living forever--one day at a time.

Each day, Seiryu Toguchi, 103, of Motobu, Okinawa, wakes at 6 a.m., in the house in which he was born, and opens the shutters. "It's a sign to my neighbors," he says, "that I am still alive." He does stretching exercises along with a radio broadcast, then eats breakfast: whole-grain rice and miso soup with vegetables. He puts in two hours of picking weeds in his 1,000-sq.-ft. field, whose crops are goya--a variety of bitter gourd--a reddish-purple sweet potato called imo, and okra. A fellow has to make a living, so Toguchi buys rice and meat with the profits from his produce.

Since his wife Kame's death seven years ago, at 93, he has done all the housework himself. He rejected his children's suggestion to come live with them because, he explains, "I enjoy my freedom." Although his doctors insist Toguchi is in excellent health, the farmer takes no chances. "If he feels that something is wrong," says his daughter Sumiko Sakihara, 74, "even in the middle of the night, he calls a taxi and goes to the hospital." But he doesn't want the other villagers to worry, so, she says, "he writes a note explaining where he is and tapes it to the shutters."

At 12:30 Toguchi eats lunch: goya stir-fry with egg and tofu. He naps for an hour or so, then spends two more hours in his field. After dinner he plays traditional songs--a favorite is Spring When I Was 19--on the three-stringed sanshin and makes an entry in his diary, as he has every night for the past decade. "This way," he says, "I won't forget my Chinese characters. It's fun. It keeps my mind sharp." For a nightcap he may have a sip of the wine he makes from aloe, garlic and tumeric. And as he drifts off, he says, "my head is filled with all the things I want to do tomorrow."

Scientists working for the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Japan's Ministry of Health have been following oldsters like Toguchi since 1976 in the Okinawa Centenarian Study (OCS) and they've learned that he's typical. Elderly Okinawans tend to get plenty of physical and mental exercise. Their diets, moreover, are exemplary: low in fat and salt, and high in fruits and vegetables packed with fiber and antioxidant substances that protect against cancer, heart disease and stroke. They consume more soy than any other population on earth: 60-120 g a day, compared to 30-50 g for the average Japanese, 10 for Chinese and virtually 0 g for the average American. Soy is rich in flavonoids--antioxidants strongly linked to low rates of cancer. This may be one of many reasons why the annual death rate from cancer in Okinawa is far below the U.S. rate.

But it's not just what Okinawans eat; it's how much. They practice a dietary philosophy known as hara hachi bu--literally, eight parts out of 10 full. Translation: they eat only to the point at which they are about 80% sated. That makes for a daily intake of no more than 1,800 calories, compared to the more than 2,500 that the average American man scarfs down. And as scientists have learned from lab animals, the simple act of calorie restriction can have significant effects on longevity (see box).

Aging Okinawans also have a much lower incidence of dementia--Alzheimer's or other forms of senility--than their U.S. and European counterparts do. Part of that may also owe to diet; it's high in vitamin E, which seems to protect the brain. But perhaps just as important is a sense of belonging and purpose that provides a strong foundation for staying mentally alert well into old age. Okinawans maintain a sense of community, ensuring that every member, from youngest to oldest, is paid proper respect and feels equally valued. Elderly women, for example, are considered the sacred keepers of a family's bond with the ancestors, maintaining the family altars and responsible for organizing festivals to honor them. OCS data show that elderly Okinawans express a high level of satisfaction with life, something that is not as true in Western societies, where rates of suicide and depression are high among the elderly.

Need convincing evidence that our modern lifestyle can shorten lives? Look what happens when Okinawans move permanently off the island. They pick up the diet and cultural behaviors of their adopted country--and within a generation, their life-spans decrease and their rates of cancer and heart attack zoom. Even on the island, young males are following the seductive, virulent American style and renouncing imo for hamburgers. "Okinawan male life expectancy used to be No. 1 in Japan," says Dr. Makoto Suzuki, leader of the study of Okinawan elders. "It started to decline 10 years ago and hit 26th out of 47 prefectures in the 2000 census. I expect it to decline even further in the next census."

Oldsters in Sardinia, another wellspring of longevity, have many similarities to their Okinawan counterparts--except that the Sardinian ratio of centenarians is about equal for men and women (in most societies, 100-plus females outnumber males by 3 or 4 to 1). They maintain very active lives and powerful social networks; extended family and friends are available to share troubles and take some of the emotional burden out of life. Says researcher Gianni Pes, part of a team from Sardinia's University of Sassari, which is studying the group: "The 100-year-olds are less depressed than average 60-year-olds."

That makes perfect sense to Leonard Poon, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology Center. Since 1988 he has studied American centenarians--he calls them "expert survivors"--and compared them to people in their 80s ("master survivors") and to relative youngsters in their 60s. Poon found that out of 16 personality traits, the experts exhibited four coping mechanisms. First, he says, "centenarians are more dominant. They want to have their way," and they are not easily pushed around. Many are characterized by "suspiciousness. They do not take information on the superficial level" but will question an issue and think it through. They tend to be practical rather than idealistic. And in their approach to life, they are likely to be more relaxed. In other words, they are strong but not inflexible characters.

Poon also determined that people whose age reaches three figures tend to have a high level of cognition, demonstrating skill in everyday problem solving and learning. That's another reason exercise is important: to keep plenty of blood flowing to the brain as well as to stay in shape. Many of his subjects aren't rich; some of them have homes with mud floors. But they make good out of making do. "Many have their own gardens," he notes. "They can their own vegetables. They're living down to earth."

Like the Okinawans, Sardinians and Nova Scotians, the U.S. centenarians enjoy a strong social-support system. Few Americans live in a village anymore, but having outlived family and friends of the same age, the superold find new helpers and confidants among people younger by a generation or more. It might be someone to help with groceries or car trips or simply a sympathetic voice on the other end of the line. Maintaining a connection with the world, with younger people, keeps their outlook youthful.

With so much evidence that lifestyle is the key to healthy aging, it might be tempting to ignore the role of genes altogether. That would be a mistake. Brothers of centenarians are 17 times as likely to live to 100 as are people without 100-year-olds in the family, while sisters of centenarians are 8.5 times as likely to live into their second century. Given statistics like that, says Winifred Rossi, director of the National Institute on Aging's study on exceptional survival, "we are interested in looking for some kind of genetic component to longevity." Her approach is to look at family members, especially the children, of centenarians. Says Perls, who does similar research: "Kids of centenarians who are in their 70s and early 80s are very much following in the footsteps of their parents, with a 60% reduced risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. They are the model for successful aging and a great group to study."

Indeed, despite what the Swedish and Adventist studies suggest, there's evidence that in some families, at least, genes exert pretty powerful effects on life-span. The centenarians registered in the New England Centenarian Study, for example, showed no consistent patterns in diet, exercise or healthy habits that could explain their extended years. About 20% had smoked at some point in their lives, and some had eating habits that should have made them obese or unhealthy but somehow did not. At least 10% to 15% had a history of heart disease, stroke or diabetes for more than 20 years. Something in that group's genes was protecting them from succumbing to diseases that had felled the average American decades earlier. "These people still get to 100," says Perls. "They seem to have a functional reserve or adaptive capacity that allows them to get disease but not necessarily suffer from it. The key seems to be resilience."

Some of that resilience may be linked to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, a group clustered on chromosome 6 that affects vulnerability to such autoimmune diseases as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Centenarians living in Okinawa, for example, have variants of HLA that tend to protect against those diseases. Perls has found a region on chromosome 4 that centenarians and their siblings and children in the U.S. seem to have in common and that sets them apart from shorter-lived individuals. The finding has not yet been replicated by other groups, but Perls expects to publish a paper in the next month detailing his results.

What exactly that stretch of DNA does remains to be discovered, but it may be a key not just to long life but also to the resilience found among U.S. centenarian-study participants, with their 20% smoking rate and imperfect eating habits. That group may be especially genetically blessed, and researchers are eager to tap its secrets.

We certainly need them. For as medical science adds years to our collective lives, we chip away at them by doing things--stewing at our desk jobs, eating fatty processed foods, blowing a gasket in a freeway traffic jam, exercising no more than our fingers at the computer--that centenarians can't imagine. Most of them were born into an America as remote from today's metaphorically as the craggy villages of Sardinia, Okinawa and Nova Scotia are geographically. In the early 1900s people walked miles to work not by choice but out of necessity; cars were still a luxury. People tilled the fields because their farmer parents needed cheap help. People ate what they grew because it was there. Most labor was manual then, and most nutrients were natural. Preserved food was what Aunt Maud sealed in a jar. Tobacco and alcohol were available, but most of today's centenarians didn't indulge to excess.

They trigger our awe and our nostalgia as representatives of a flinty, hardscrabble culture that hardly exists today. They lived out a parable of man at one with nature. They used their bodies as they were designed and programmed over the millennia: for walking, for working, for being fed from the earth's natural bounty. It makes one wonder whether the next generation of oldsters will last quite as long. They will need not just the luck of the genetic draw but also the strength to renounce the lure of fast-food days and couch-potato nights that add yards of butt lard and shorten life-spans by years.

Will Americans in the supersize age resolve to go medieval on their own bodies? It would help, if they want to live to 100. As Poon says of his research pools, "I don't have any fat centenarians." And if research really does extend life by a vigorous couple of decades, the new millions of centenarians will need a support system that spreads beyond family and friends to include a hugely expensive Social Security and Medicare apparatus. The coming gerontocracy won't come cheap.

But that's for the future. Any child of today who hopes to live into the 22nd century without the aid of medical miracles should look to the past, and consider the lessons today's centenarians took from the 19th century. There's a poetry of common sense in their scheme for immortality. Eat sensibly. Keep walking. Keep knitting. If you can't keep friends, make new ones. Plan so much invigorating work that there's just no time to die. And no regret when you do.

--Reported by Alice Park/New York; Melissa August/Washington; Anne Berryman/Athens, Georgia; Hanna Kite/Okinawa; Chris Lambie/Halifax; Jeff Israely/Sardinia; and Francis X. Rocca/Rome l

Copyright  2007 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted Under The Fair Use Provision Of The U.S. Copyright Act.

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REACHING  100  IS  EASIER  THAN  SUSPECTED

By Lindsey  Tanner, AP Medical Writer
 
 

Living to 100 is easier than you might think. Surprising new research suggests that even people who develop heart disease or diabetes late in life have a decent shot at reaching the century mark.

"It has been generally assumed that living to 100 years of age was limited to those who had not developed chronic illness," said Dr. William Hall of the University of Rochester.

Hall has a theory for how these people could live to that age. In an editorial in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, where the study was published, he writes that it might be thanks to doctors who aggressively treat these older folks' health problems, rather than taking an "ageist" approach that assumes they wouldn't benefit.

For the study, Boston University researchers did phone interviews and health assessments of more than 500 women and 200 men who had reached 100. They found that roughly two-thirds of them had avoided significant age-related ailments.

But the rest, dubbed "survivors," had developed an age-related disease before reaching 85, including high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes. Yet many functioned remarkably well — nearly as well as their disease-free peers.

Overall, the men were functioning better than the women. Nearly three-fourths of the male survivors could bathe and dress themselves, while only about one-third of the women could.

The researchers think that may be because the men had to be in exceptional condition to reach 100. "Women, on the other hand, may be better physically and socially adept at living with chronic and often disabling conditions," wrote lead author Dr. Dellara Terry and her colleagues.

Rosa McGee is one of the healthy women in the study who managed to avoid chronic disease. Now 104, the retired cook and seamstress is also strikingly lucid.

"My living habits are beautiful," McGee said in an interview at her daughter's Chicago apartment. "I don't take any medicines. I don't smoke and I don't drink. Never did anything like that."

Until late 2006, when she fell in her St. Louis home, McGee lived alone and took care of herself. Now in Chicago, she is less mobile but still takes walks a few times weekly down the apartment building hallways, with her daughter's help.

McGee credits her faith in God for her good health. She also gets lots of medical attention — a doctor and nurse make home visits regularly.

Genes surely contributed — McGee's maternal grandparents lived to age 100 and 107.

But while genes are important, scientists don't think they tell the whole story about longevity.

A second, larger study of men in their 70s found that those who avoided smoking, obesity, inactivity, diabetes and high blood pressure greatly improved their chances of living into their 90s. In fact, they had a 54 percent chance of living that long.

Their survival decreased with each risk factor, and those with all five had only a 4 percent chance of living into their 90s, according to Harvard University researchers.

Those who managed to avoid lifestyle-related ailments also increased their chances of functioning well physically and mentally two decades later.

The study followed 2,357 men for about 25 years or until death, starting in their early 70s. About 40 percent survived to at least age 90. Among survivors, 24 percent had none of the five risk factors.

"It's not just luck, it's not just genetics. ... It's lifestyle" that seems to make a big difference, said lead author Dr. Laurel Yates of Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"It's get your shoes on, get out there, and do some exercise," she said. "These are some things you can do" to increase the chances of a long life.

Yates said it's never too late to adopt a healthier lifestyle, though the findings don't address whether waiting until age 70 to stop smoking, lose weight and exercise will increase longevity.

Hall noted that the United States has more than 55,000 centenarians, and that Americans 85 and older are the country's fastest-growing group of older adults.

He said the new research underscores how important it is for doctors to become adept at treating the oldest of the old, who are "becoming the bread and butter of the clinical practice of internal medicine."
 

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted Under the Fair-Use Provision of the U.S. Copyright Act.

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FOUR SIMPLE HABITS ADD
14 YEARS TO YOUR LIFE

By Norman D. Ford, Health  Reporter

Adopting four simple Healthy Habits may add fourteen years
to your Life Expectancy.  That was the conclusion of a study
recently reported in the PLoS Medicine Journal.

Led by Kay-Tee Khaw, M.D., of Britain's University of Cambridge Institute of Public Health, researchers studied a total of 20,245 men and women who were aged 45-79 at enrollment.

The researchers awarded one point for each of the 4 Healthy Habits, producing a score of zero-to- 4.  Participants were followed for 11 years, during which 1,987 died.

Subjects adhering to all four Healthy Habits had roughly one-fourth the risk of dying during the study period than those who had not adopted any of the Healthy Habits.

For those with a score of 4, this was equivalent to having a Life Expectancy 14 years longer than those with a score of zero--the same as saying they were 14 biological years younger than subjects with a zero score!

Best of all, you don't have to exercise vigorously or become a vegan but merely to adopt 4 simple lifestyle habits that almost anyone can do.  The Habits are:-

*Staying physically active, either on-the-job or during leisure hours.

*Not smoking.

*Eating at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily (as measured by serum levels of each person's Vitamin C).

*Drinking alcohol in moderation, defined as 1-2 drinks per day, each consisting of a glass of wine, a half-pint of beer, or one shot of liquor.

After adjusting study results for other risk factors, such as age or being overweight, participants scoring zero had a 400 per cent higher risk of death from all causes (during the study period) than those with a score of 4.  Subjects scoring 2 had double the risk of premature death than those with a score of 4.

The link between the four Healthy Habits and risk of premature death was greatest for deaths from Cancer and Heart Disease.  As in similar studies, the greatest damage to your health and longevity was caused by Smoking, Diabetes, Obesity, Hypertension and a Sedentary Lifestyle.  All were associated with  premature aging and poorer function in the later years.

Leading a Sedentary Lifestyle reduced the probability of living to be 90 by 44 percent, Hypertension by 36 percent, Obesity by 26 percent, and Smoking by 22 percent.  A person with 3 of these adverse lifestyle habits had only a 14 percent chance of living to be 90.

By contrast, regular exercise exerted the most powerful benefits for health and longevity.

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The oldest Americans are also
the happiest, research finds

By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
 

It turns out the golden years really are golden. Eye-opening new research finds the happiest Americans are the oldest, and older adults are more socially active than the stereotype of the lonely senior suggests. The two go hand-in-hand: Being social can help keep away the blues.

"The good news is that with age comes happiness," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. "Life gets better in one's perception as one ages."

A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches and pains and the deaths of loved ones and friends. But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, Yang said.

This is partly because older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, said Duke University aging expert Linda George. An older person may realize "it's fine that I was a schoolteacher and not a Nobel prize winner."

George, who was not involved in the new study, believes the research is important because people tend to think that "late life is far from the best stage of life, and they don't look forward to it."

Yang's findings are based on periodic face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of Americans from 1972 to 2004. About 28,000 people ages 18 to 88 took part.

There were ups and downs in overall happiness levels during the study, generally corresponding with good and bad economic times. But at every stage, older Americans were the happiest.

While younger blacks and poor people tended to be less happy than whites and wealthier people, those differences faded as people aged.

In general, the odds of being happy increased 5 percent with every 10 years of age.

Overall, about 33 percent of Americans reported being very happy at age 88, versus about 24 percent of those age 18 to their early 20s. And throughout the study years, most Americans reported being very happy or pretty happy. Less than 20 percent said they were not too happy.

A separate University of Chicago study found that about 75 percent of people aged 57 to 85 engage in one or more social activities at least every week. Those include socializing with neighbors, attending religious services, volunteering or going to group meetings.

Those in their 80s were twice as likely as those in their 50s to do at least one of these activities.

Both studies appear in April's American Sociological Review.

"People's social circles do tend to shrink a little as they age — that is mainly where that stereotype comes from, but that image of the isolated elderly really falls apart when we broaden our definition of what social connection is," said study co-author Benjamin Cornwell, also a University of Chicago researcher.

The research rings true for 81-year-old George O'Hare, a retired Sears manager in Willowbrook, Ill. He's active with church and AARP and does motivational speaking, too. His wife is still living, and he's close to his three sons and four grandchildren.

"I'm very happy because I've made friends that are still living," O'Hare said. "I like to go out and speak in schools about motivation."

"Happiness is getting out and being with people, and that's why I recommend it," he said.

Ilse Siegler, an 84-year-old retired nurse manager in Chicago, has a slightly different perspective. Her husband died 35 years ago, and she says she still misses him every day.

She has vision problems and has slowed down with age. Yet she still swims, runs a social group in her condo building, volunteers in a retirement home and is active with her temple. These all help "make life more enjoyable," she said.

While Siegler said these aren't the happiest years of her life, she's content.

"Contentment as far as I'm concerned comes with old age ... because you accept things the way they are," she said. "You know that nothing is perfect."

Cornwell's nationally representative study was based on in-home interviews with 3,005 people in 2005 and 2006. While it didn't include nursing home residents, only about 4 percent of Americans aged 75 to 84 are in nursing homes, Cornwell said.

It's all good news for the aging population. However, Yang's study also found that baby boomers were the least happy. They could end up living the unfortunate old-age stereotype if they can't let go of their achievement-driven mind-set, said George, the Duke aging expert.

So far, baby boomers aren't lowering their aspirations at the same rate earlier generations did. "They still seem to believe that they should have it all," George said. "They're still thinking about having a retirement that's going to let them do everything they haven't done yet."

Previous research also has shown that mid-life tends to be the most stressful time, said Cornell University sociologist Elaine Wethington. "Everyone's asking you to do things and you have a lot to do. You're less happy because you feel hassled."

The new studies show "if you can make it through that," there's light at the end of the tunnel, Wethington said.
 

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press and Yahoo Inc.. All rights reserved.  Reproduced here 04/18/08 under the Fair Use Provision of the U.S. Copyright Law

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LONGEVITY IS THE SCORE

THAT REALLY COUNTS

You Can't Take It With You

. . . So Don't Go Before You Have To

No one knows his final score on the biggest and most important test of all.

I call it the Living Test, the unwritten exam that shows how many years we'll manage to squeeze out of our lives.

Though some of the score is in our genes and gender at birth, choices we can make ourselves can significantly increase or decrease how many years we live. They may also determine whether we have the health to enjoy those extra years.

The Living Test is more important than any wealth score. It gives us an idea of how much life we may "leave on the table" by choice or negligence.

We can measure this by looking at the statistics of "life expectancy" in a slightly odd way. One of the most common population number sets for Americans is called a "life table." It shows the long trail of losses from birth to age 100, expressed as the number surviving from year to year. Beginning with a group of 100,000 people, the table shows that 83,789 live to begin their 65th year and 82,607 finish it.

I hope to be among the 82,607 --my 65th birthday is in November.

It also shows that 52,178 of the original 100,000 begin their 81st year, but only 49,173 finish it, making it the median year of life. From there, the attrition continues until only 2,851 of the original 100,000 begin their 100th year and 2095 finish it.

As we all know, no one gets out alive. While life expectancy in America, broadly speaking, was 77.3 years in 2002, the brute fact is that many don't live that long. Many others, however, live much longer.

If you think of it as a kind of ACHIEVEMENT TEST in which we rank lives from the longest to the shortest, here is what the percentile scores would look like.

*The top 2 percent live to be over 100.

*The top 10 percent live to their 94th year or longer.

*The top 25 percent live to their 89th year or longer.

*The top 50 percent live to their 81st year or longer.

*The bottom 25 percent live only to their 71st year.

*The bottom 10 percent live only to their 57th year.

*The bottom 1 percent live only to their 16th year.

From this perspective, a romantic death at an early age--the whole Keats, Beaudelaire, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin trip that many of us fantasized about at age 18--looks like what it is, a disastrous under-achievement!  It also puts a new light on the waste of early death.

So let's ask a tough question. Can we do anything to reach a higher percentile on the life table?

UNEQUIVOCALLY  YES!

The life expectancy tests on the  Web may have different specific results, but every one shows gains in life expectancy if we take steps to improve our health. If you are a smoker and stop smoking, start exercising and make an effort to have a better diet that will help avoid obesity, you can add literal years to your life.

How Many?

It all depends. Using the www.agingresearch.org calculator, for instance, I learned that changes I have made since turning 30--when I quit smoking two packs of Camels a day, added moderate exercise and started paying attention to diet--have increased my life expectancy from 72.8 years to 86.8 years.

That's an increase of 14 years!

Does 14 years of additional life get your attention? It certainly gets mine!

Measuring the improvement on the Life Table shows a move from the bottom 28 percent to the top 33 percent.

And trust me, there's still room for improvement.

In my case, family history pretty much rules out being in the top 1 percent. But getting to the top 25 percent--those who live to be 89 or longer--is only a matter of taking life seriously.

For a priceless gift, that's a small price to pay!

Norman Ford's Comment: Scott Burn's superb article clearly demonstrates that NOT choosing to reach a ripe old age in robust health is life's MOST DISASTROUS UNDER-ACHIEVEMENT; and that by adopting our Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan, you may well add MORE than 14 extra years of disease-free living to your personal life expectancy.

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ADD 20 WONDERFUL YEARS TO YOUR LIFE

Everyone knows that a healthful lifestyle, eating right, exercising, not smoking etc.--is the key to disease-prevention. What people may not realize is that each healthful change can add years to your life. By making several changes, you may be able to add 20 years or more.

Most chronic diseases are almost entirely due to lifestyle factors.  About 71 percent of colon cancer cases are avoidable, as are 82 percent of heart disease cases and 91 percent of diabetes cases.

People don't have to completely turn their lives around to get significant benefits. Example: Someone who exercises for 30 minutes six times a week can gain 2.4 extra years of life, even if he/she remains overweight or doesn't adequately control their blood pressure.

Making multiple changes can give exponential (rather than just additive) gains. Studies show that if you eat nuts regularly, you can add 2.5 extra years to your life expectancy, and if you reduce high blood pressure, you gain 3.7 years. Add that to the 2.4 years you gain from exercising, and the total is 8.6 years--but the actual increase in life expectancy can be even greater.

Not smoking is probably the most important change.  Men who smoke a pack a day lose an average of 13 years of life, while women lose 14 years.

The earlier in life that you start to make changes, the better--but it is never too late.  Important steps are. . .

NUTS.   Studies show that eating one-quarter cup of nuts 5 times a week can add years to your life.  Tree nuts and peanuts (though technically a legume) are rich in beneficial fats, anti-oxidants and other protective phyto-chemicals.  One study found that women who ate peanut butter 5 or more times a week had a 21 percent lower risk of diabetes.

A nut-rich diet can lower LDL (bad) cholesterol by about one-third--the same amount achieved with some statin drugs.

Eat a variety--walnuts, pecans, almonds, filberts etc.--to get a wider variety of protective chemical compounds.

This Step lengthens life by . . .2.5 years

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES.   People who increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables from two to five servings a day can reduce by half the risk of many cancers, including pancreatic, colo-rectal and endometrial cancers.  Produce also greatly reduces risk of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and Alzheimer's Disease.

The fiber in produce binds to potential carcinogens in the intestine and prevents them from entering the bloodstream.  Fruits and vegetables are the best sources of anti-oxidants and other phyto-chemicals that inhibit oxidation and inflammation--triggers that cause normal cells to become cancerous.

Have a serving of fruit with breakfast every day. . .snack on a handful of dried fruit. . .eat carrot sticks at lunch. . . and have a vegetable salad with dinner.

This Step lengthens life by. . .2-4 years

FIBER.  For every 10 grams of fiber you consume every day, your risk of heart attack drops by 14 percent and risk of death from heart disease goes down by 27 percent.  People who eat as little as two servings of fiber-rich whole grains daily can reduce their risk of stroke by 36 percent.

Fiber-rich foods also reduce colon-cancer risk.  Fiber speeds digested foods through the intestine and reduces the time the colon is exposed to carcinogens.  It also binds to excess estrogen and promotes its excretion in stool--this is important for preventing estrogen-dependent breast cancers.  Fiber causes a drop in LDL cholesterol and reduces risk of atherosclerosis, blockages in the arteries that promote heart disease.

Get at least 25-30 grams of fiber daily.  Whole grains are good sources.  Example:  Two slices of 100 percent whole grain bread plus one slice of whole grain cereal can provide up to 10 grams of fiber.

This Step lengthens life by . . .2-4 years

GOOD FATS   People who increase their intake of Mono- and  Poly-unsaturated fats and cut back on Saturated and Trans Fatty Acids can achieve drops in cholesterol comparable to those achieved by taking statin drugs.  Improvements in cholesterol translate into a 12-44 percent reduction in risk of heart disease and stroke.

Mono and Poly-unsaturated fatty acids in cold water fish such as salmon and sardines appear to reduce blood vessel inflammation that creates blood clots, the cause of most heart attacks.

Get 20 percent of total daily calories from healthful fats (in olive oil, nuts, fish, avocadoes, peanut butter, soy etc.).  Limit saturated fat (in butter, red meat, whole milk etc.) to 10 percent or less.

Important:  eliminate Trans-Fats, often called "partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils" and found in many margarines and commercial baked goods. Americans get an average of 3 percent of total calories from Trans Fats.  If we cut that percentage to one percent , risk of heart disease would be reduced by half--and there would be 347,000 fewer deaths each year.

This Step lengthens life by. . .3-5 years

WEIGHT LOSS Excess weight greatly increases risk of cancer, diabetes and hypertension.  A person who is 20 percent over his/her ideal weight is 50 percent more likely to develop heart disease--and the risk increases as weight increases.

To start losing weight: in addition to regular exercise. . .

Eat most meals at home.   Restaurant foods tend to be higher in calories.

Drink water or tea instead of soda.  The sugar in soft drinks is a major contributor to weight gain--and artificial sweeteners have not been proven safe.

Don't eat in front of the TV. Studies show that people who engage in "mindless" eating take in far more calories.

Weigh yourself weekly   to track your progress--or identify backsliding.

This Step lengthens life by. . .11 years ( the difference in life expectancy between obese and normal-weight adults).

EXERCISE   Vigorous exercise is ideal but it's not realistic for many of the 78 percent of Americans who describe themselves as sedentary.  People who engage in moderate exercise 3-5 times a week can reduce their blood pressure by an average of 10 points and dramatically lower their risk of diabetes.

Studies show that even mild exercise, such as walking for 30 minutes a day, can increase life expectancy by 2-5 years.  Any kind of exercise, even working in the yard, is beneficial.

This Step lengthens life by. . .2-5 years.

Steven G. Aldana Ph. D., is author of Maple Mountain Books' new title "The Culprit and The Cure: Why Lifestyle is the Culprit Behind America's Poor Health" . Their website at www.culpritandcure.com is sure to interest longevity buffs.  This report was reproduced from Bottom Line Newsletter, August 2005 under the Fair Use Provision of the U.S. Copyright Act.

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Here's yet another recent book confirming, as does this website,  that a lifestyle based on daily exercise and a plant-based diet are the core principles for staying younger and living longer.  None of these books, however, contains a tenth of the information about living longer, better which is available free on this website and which is constantly updated as new info is released.

Turning Back the Hands of Time

Being young may be largely a lifestyle choice

By Anne McGrath , from an interview published in USNWR, 2/13/06

Here's some news for baby boomers turning 60: Working out and eating right can make you younger. So say Henry Lodge and Chris Crowley, authors of the new book Younger Next Year for Women: Live Like You're 50--Strong, Fit, Sexy--Until You're 80 and Beyond and the men's version published a year ago. Based on the emerging understanding of the biology of aging, the duo say, 70 percent of the typical American's decline is preventable. Lodge, 47, is an internist who teaches at Columbia's medical school. Crowley, a retired New York attorney, showed up at age 65 for a consultation with Lodge, overweight and achy all over. Today, at 71, after several years of spinning classes, he's fitter than ever.

What inspired you to write these books?

Lodge: You take care of somebody, and you see him gaining 5 pounds a year and being sedentary. Then really awful things happen--strokes, heart attacks, and people becoming apathetic and withdrawn. It became clear to me that this was lifestyle choice. Very little of it was related to luck or genetics.

But isn't it hype to say you can be younger next year?

Crowley: Sore joints, arthritis, obesity, the apathy, the lack of sexual interest. When you think about aging, you think that all that stuff is coming. It doesn't have to. I can ski better than I could 15 years ago. A summer ago, I did a 100-mile bike ride with a pal in the Colorado Rockies.

Lodge: If someone who is sedentary really commits to exercising six days a week, he would be something like 10 or 15 years younger in the functional respect within a year.

How much exercise?

Crowley: Steady, remorseless exercise. You've got to do strength training; you've got to do aerobics. Six days a week, 45 minutes a day. If you have to start out at 20 or 30 minutes, fine and dandy, but you really should get to 45 minutes and stay there for the rest of your life.

Lodge: Your other choice is to grow old. A patient of mine came to see me before he retired--100 pounds overweight, blood pressure and cholesterol way up, apathetic, and depressed. He looked like hell. I'd talked to him for years about exercise, and he just said, no. Well, he finally heard the message.

Crowley: You told him he was going to die, Harry.

Lodge: I said something like that, and he went down to Florida, and he started walking on the beach. The first day he went for a quarter mile, and the next day he couldn't get out of bed. A year later, he was walking 5 miles a day on the beach and looked like a million bucks.

Why weight training?

Crowley: You get more bone mass, the grippers that attach your bones to your muscles get grippier, and the goop gets goopier between the joints. The message system that tells your body how to respond to unevenness in the road gets younger. You don't fall down as much.

What is the science behind exercise and aging?

Lodge: The cells in our body turn over all the time. Every time the cells regrow, they regrow either a little bit stronger or a little bit weaker depending on what you ask of them. If you're an early human out on the savanna and the message is there are very few calories available because it's wintertime, your body is going to let cells atrophy. The signal for that is whether you move. If you're sedentary, your body thinks you're starving to death. Lack of exercise is a powerful signal to decay.

You say don't diet--"quit eating crap"?

Crowley: Diets just don't work. Exercise, and don't eat the most awful stuff. Then, by golly, you lose weight.

Lodge: There are two distinct things wrong with the American diet. One is the starch, the other is saturated fat. If you cut those to a minimum, you'd make a profound change in your long-term health.

Why is an emotional connection important?

Lodge: If you draw blood from people who are the most lonely and isolated and the people who are the most connected and out there, they have dramatically different levels of inflammatory chemicals implicated in atherosclerosis and risk of cancer. The more isolated you are, the more likely you are to die. This is like exercise--you have to make it your job to build that social circle so it's there for you for the next 30 years.

Downloaded from USNWR website under the Fair Use provisions of the U.S. copyright law.

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LIVING  LONGER is the title of a Special Five Part Report published in the AARP Magazine, Sept/Oct issue 2006 on Page 54.  This report adds  important new information that had not been previously published and is well worth reading.  It can be found in the Archives of nearly every library. It consists of five parts.

LIVING  LONGER: SCIENCE. During the past few years, researchers have made a series of amazing discoveries about how and why we age.  Here's what they've learned and why we may be on the brink of truly being able to extend life.

DIET: Try this Stay-Young Food Plan.

EXERCISE:   why adding muscle boosts life expectancy.

BALANCE: Easy ways to keep stress from sapping vitality.

THE FUTURE:  A look ahead at promising ideas for curing age-related diseases.

So can the Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan really help us stay younger and live longer?

Startling new findings from the frontiers of anti-aging research have already demonstrated that chronological age is actually irrelevent.  Once past 40, it is entirely possible for us to look, feel and function as well as the average person half our age.

Six  Who  Chose To  Live  a  Long  and  Healthy  Life

Here are brief sketches of six men and women who each set out to stay younger and live longer and who were extraordinarily successful.  Each followed a diet and exercise program almost identical with the Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan endorsed by this website.  It was largely due to the health-building nutrients in the fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes they ate, and through their active lifestyles,  that enabled these men and women to avoid most of the common diseases that afflict older Americans and to retain the vigor of youth into their 90s or beyond.

Luigi Cornaro was an Italian nobleman who lived over 400 years ago.  Until age 40, he lived the life of a dissipated rake.  But then he pioneered his own Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan.  By eating only a pound of healthful food each day, Cornaro regained youthful vitality in less than a year.  During his seventies, Cornaro suffered a broken arm and leg in a carriage accident.  But so robust was his stamina, and so strong his bones, that he swiftly recovered.  At age 83, he put his youth-restoring formula into writing and published How to Live to Be 100 which remains a health book classic to this day.  Although Cornaro didn't quite make it to the Century Club (he died in 1565 at age 99), he more than adequately proved his point.

Larry Lewis, a former circus aerialist, determined to live to be a youthful 100.  He ate only organically-grown plant foods and ran 6.7 miles each day in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.  Until he retired at age 105, Lewis also walked several miles each day to his job as a hotel banquet waiter where he lifted heavy trays.  Lewis finally died of cancer in 1976 at age 106.

Hulda Crooks described herself as "nervous, anemic and perpetually tired " until, in her 40s, she married a doctor.  She then began to exercise and eat a natural diet of foods that grow on plants.  Each year, she became fitter and stronger, so much so that at age 66 she hiked to the summit of Mount Whitney,  highest mountain in the continental U.S.  After that, she climbed Whitney 23 more times.  Then in 1987, at age 92, Hulda Crooks hiked the steep, arduous trail to the 12,388-foot summit of Japan's Mount Fuji.  When asked how she did it, Mrs. Crooks credited her dazzling energy to a strongly-positive outlook, regular exercise and a diet composed almost entirely of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes.

Paul C. Bragg, a physical therapist and author of many health books, decided early in life to live to be 100.  He followed the Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan almost to the letter and he ate only healthful foods..  At age 94, he barely looked 60 and was actively teaching a daily exercise and strength-training class in Hawaii.  As a result of a near-drowning accident during his daily ocean swim, he died suddenly in 1976 at age 95.

Scott Nearing, a former university professor, pioneered the back-to-the-land movement before World War II.  For almost 50 years thereafter, he and his wife inspired thousands to forsake the job market and the supermarket to find greater satisfaction through self-sufficient homesteading.  Through eating a strictly plant-based diet, and by following a lifestyle of strenuous non-mechanized farming, Scott Nearing remained physically and mentally active until well past age 95.  The governor of Maine attended his 100th birthday party in 1983.  Then, still in complete control of his life and health, he chose to fast and died 15 days later.

After his death, Scott's wife Helen continued to follow the same lifestyle and diet.  Reportedly, she continued to enjoy robust health and vigor until she died in a car accident in 1995 at age 93.

WEBSITES  TO  HELP  YOU  WIN  BACK  NEW  YOUTH

The following websites supply a wealth of additional information on various aspects of life extension as well as healthful living and eating.
 

• www.thecentenarian.co.uk The Centenarian.  An extensive, professionally written site about   Living to Be 100, with authentic and detailed information on almost every aspect of living longer--and a very good introduction to the entire topic.   Includes free monthly newsletter.

• www.healthcompass.org

•  Life Centre Group (www.tlchotelgroup.com}   With its fascinating concepts of Longevity Centers, Peter Hall's  fact-packed website is ABSOLUTELY MUST READING  for anyone seriously interested in living a longer and healthier life.    Each button on left side of home page opens an insightful report on such life-extending topics as BioDynamics, Enzymes, Doctor Death, Life Links and a mind-blowing article on Life Extension itself, plus similar topics to help extend your personal life expectancy.  Also highly recommended is Peter's companion website   www.tlc-group.org        packed with updated info and more rich wisdom about staying younger and living longer.

• Aging  Under  The  Microscope, National Institute of Aging      Be sure to order this FREE 60-page book from the National Institute of Aging that explains how insights from recent research can help us move closer to the ultimate goal of promoting health and independence throughout the lifespan.  Order by email at   <niaic@jbsl.com> .

• www.realage.com/   Extensive and authentic website about staying younger longer.  Take their On-Line  Do-It-Yourself health test and get a free diet and lifestyle analysis with recommendations for a 90 Day health improvement plan.  When several of our readers who follow our Live To Be 90 Lifestyle Plan took this test, their Real (biological) Age averaged 12.5 years younger than their chronological age.

• New England Centenarians Study.   Seeking the common denominators of  the longevity  lifestyle.

• InfoAging Website about the biology, health and diseases of aging.

• Gerontology  Research  Group   (www.grg.org)    listings and photos of people still living ,or recently died, aged 110 or over.  Plus other longevity data, primarily about genetic reprogramming for longer life.

• VeggieSource

• Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine

• The Food Revolution--John Robbins

•  Healthy Life Expectancy Rankings.     Gives number of years of life expectancy free of disease or dysfunction, ranked by countries.  18 major countries have a healthy life expectancy that is higher than U.S.A.   For a listing of all countries in order of Healthy Life Expectancy, click on  Rankings.

• www.mercola.com.  Dr. Joseph Mercola's website carries hundreds of reports on every aspect of staying young and living longer.

• Natural Hygiene--The Way To Optimal Health.    How to maximize your health by combining sound nutrition with vigorous daily exercise.  Click on the International Natural Hygiene Society 's website at   http://naturalhygienesociety.org     .

• Calorie Restriction Society  (www.calorierestriction.org)     Fewer Calories!  More life!  Basic info to get you started on a Calorie Restriction diet.

• Phyto-Chemicals:  Beyond Vitamins and Minerals    Vital Reading For Anyone Seeking Ultimate Health. (www.foodproductdesign.com/archive/1999/0799cs.html).  A talented food scientist describes the many health benefits of eating richly-colored fruits, vegetables and other foods that grow on plants.  The pigments that produce the colors of many plant foods are powerful anti-oxidents and cancer-fighters.

• Nutrition Library    In-depth reports on the health benefits of various foods by nutritional scientists with top credentials. More Vital Reading For Anyone Seeking Ultimate Health. (www.foodproductdesign.com/archive/banner/admframe.html)

• Unraveling The Secrets of Human Longevity     (http://longevity-science.org) from The Center on Aging, University of Chicago.  An important scientific and educational website to help us understand the mechanics of aging and longevity in order to extend healthy and productive human lifespan.  Focuses on the authors' pioneering Reliability Theory of Aging   (Vital Reading for all students of life extension).  plus scores of links to human longevity studies and other sources of information on important aspects of aging, gerontology, longevity and life extension.

• Dr.Mercola: Reduce Your Risk of Cancer with Sunlight Exposure.    How avoidance of exposure to sunlight may boost risk of a variety of life-shortening cancers.  Be sure to read links to other life-enhancing Vitamin-D reports

• Whole Grains Council (www.wholegrainscouncil.org)    Scroll down left column to Consumer Info for a complete review of whole grains.

• Okinawa Centenarian Study. A great read for longevity buffs! Full description of the Okinawa lifestyle and diet and how it compares to the American; also covers many aspects of longevity.
• Vitamin D Council (www.vitamindcouncil.org)  The Vitamin D