JustCare

Tag: Aging

  • How to stay young? Travel

    How to stay young? Travel

    Fall is in the air and, before long, many Americans will be bracing themselves for the cold or planning a trip to warmer climes. According to a new study, that trip could slow the aging process, Andrea Sachs reports for The Washington Post.

    Researchers at Edith Cowan University looked at the benefits of travel and found that travel is a way to stay young. How could that be, you might wonder? Well, in many cases, travel means social interactions, activity, and good feelings. Travel also activates your mind.

    In short, travel satisfies important health needs. When you take a fun trip, it’s good for your body’s “low entropy,” slowing the aging process. It engages you mentally and socially. It often exposes you to the outdoors, lowering your stress level and improving your mood. It gets you walking. All of these positive aspects of travel can keep you young.

    Travel is also somehow associated with healthy eating. The theory is that you eat better when you’re traveling. And, the latest research reinforces what we already know, eating a healthy diet is good for your health. In the study, which took place over 25 years, more than 25,000 women reduced their risk of dying by eating a healthy diet.

    According to the researchers in Australia, travel is good for lots of people, including people who are not in great shape. Travel can slow down or stop a worsening health condition, promoting quality of life.

    Keep in mind that all travel is not good for your health. The “wrong” travel can endanger your health, creating health issues. A bad travel experience or destination could lead to danger and disease or aggravate a person’s anxiety.

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  • Live longer, eat less protein?

    Live longer, eat less protein?

    Protein is critical to our well-being. It’s a macronutrient promoting growth, tissue repair and strength, among other good things. As we get older, protein is all the more important. Emily Laurence reports for The Huffington Post that we should not reduce our consumption of food high in protein because it helps maintain muscle, but we also should not eat too much animal-based protein.

    Howard LeWine MD at Harvard Health explains that too much protein can cause kidney stones. Too much red meat can keep you from living a long healthy life. Protein from red meat can cause heart disease and colon cancer.

    In short, we should discriminate among the protein-rich foods we eat. Plant-based proteins are better for you than animal-based proteins. Try to eat vegetables, beans and fish rich in protein. Yogurt also provides good protein.

    If you eat too much protein from meat, it could actually speed up the aging process and hurt the health of your cells. Animal proteins contain a lot of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). AGEs can be bad for your health in combination with sugar in your bloodstream. They can build up in tissue and cause inflammation, which leads to cellular aging. They can cause diabetes and heart disease.

    TMAO fosters a buildup of cholesterol in your arteries. It hurts your heart and, like AGEs, causes inflammation.

    Foods with healthy proteins: Beans, soy, nuts, chickpeas, seeds and lentils. They have lots of antioxidants. They promote heart health and lower inflammation. Americans should also eat a lot more fish.

    One recent study found that eating a lot of fish lowers your odds of dying prematurely. Fish rich in protein has been found to promote brain health, fight inflammation, and foster a hormone balance.

    Keep in mind that, on average, depending upon your weight, you need around 50 grams a day of protein. Protein should represent about 10 percent of your caloric intake each day.

    The takeaway: Stick to a balanced diet with a variety of healthy foods, including vegetables fruits, fish and fiber; and, avoid red meat. Check out the Mediterranean diet or the DASH diet.

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  • Housekeeping is good for healthy aging, especially if you don’t sit around watching a lot of TV

    Housekeeping is good for healthy aging, especially if you don’t sit around watching a lot of TV

    New research from the Nurses’ Health Study, reported in JAMA, offers some hope for those of us who are not inclined to spend a lot of time exercising. The good news, reports Alvin Powell for the Harvard Gazette: Even the little things you do each day to move your body is good for healthy aging, including good mental and physical health.

    We know that people who are physically active are less likely to die early. But, these findings show that physical activity comes in a multitude of forms! You don’t have to exercise intensely to help your health as you age.

    If you do housekeeping or gardening and are moving around a bunch, you are ahead of the game. Though, you should still walk 20 minutes a day and get your heart rate up periodically! People who spend too much time sitting are more likely to pay a big price for their sedentary behavior in the form of memory loss or some heinous physical condition.

    Researchers at Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, among others, studied more than 45,000 people for more than two decades. Most noteworthy, they found that each incremental two hours of additional TV that some people watched, a proxy for being inactive, reduced their likelihood of healthy aging by 12 percent. But, each incremental two hours of mopping floors or tending to gardens increased people’s likelihood of healthy aging by six percent.

    What’s so bad about sitting around the TV all day, you ask? Your skeletal muscles atrophy. And, these muscles are critical for metabolizing glucose, preventing inflammation and ensuring good blood flow to your brain. And, for reasons that are unexplained, sitting around the TV is particularly harmful. Driving is better, as is sleeping.

    In short, almost anything you do other than watching TV, which requires only the most minimal physical and mental activity, will help promote healthy aging.

    Sadly, most people do not spend a lot of time moving as they age. In the study, only about one in 12 participants were sufficiently active to be aging healthily.

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  • Gray hair? It could be a thing of the past

    Gray hair? It could be a thing of the past

    If your hair is grey or would be grey if you didn’t color it, you are part of a club that includes nearly half of all people worldwide. Gray hair is generally unavoidable by the time you’re 50, and most people start graying at a far younger age, reports Erin Blakemore for National Geographic. But, before long, gray hair could be a thing of the past.

    Why does our hair turn gray? According to the National Institutes on Health, melanocyte stem cells, which give our hair color, produce new cells that enable us to retain our hair color. These stem cells occupy hair follicles at the base of each strand of hair. But, as we get older, the stem cells die off. When they do, our hair begins to lose its color and turns gray.  

    Stress also can cause our stem cells to die off. It can speed up the process of our hair losing its pigment and turning gray.

    Consequently, more than one in five people live with half a head of gray hair by the time they are 50.  A significant majority of women dye their hair in order to look younger. But, men do not dye their hair as much, likely in part because silver-haired men tend to “look good” as compared with silver-haired women, who are often seen as “old.”

    One study found that women who let their hair go gray, make up for the time and money they save from not dyeing it by investing in other ways to look good.

    The future of gray hair: It’s very possible that women will be able to keep their natural youthful hair color in the not too distant future. With melanocyte-producing stem cells, their hair color might not fade. 

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