What We Eat Affects Healthy Aging

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From Your Health Journal…..”You sometimes wonder if the old adage ‘You are what you eat‘ still holds true today? Most likely, yes. A healthy diet fuels your body correctly, while an unhealthy diet fuels your body inappropriately. Think of eating as an investment in the future. Just as you invest money in the bank to secure financial health, you invest healthy food in your body to secure good health.”

From the article…..

Molecular changes to our genes, known as epigenetic marks, are driven mainly by ageing but are also affected by what we eat, a new research has revealed.

The study showed that whilst age had the biggest effects on these molecular changes, selenium and vitamin D status reduced the accumulation of epigenetic changes, and high blood folate and obesity increased them.

These findings support the idea that healthy ageing is affected by what we eat.

Researchers from the Institute of Food Research led by Dr Nigel Belshaw, working with Prof John Mathers and colleagues from Newcastle University, examined the cells lining the gut wall from volunteers attending colonoscopy clinic.

The study volunteers were free from cancer or inflammatory bowel disease and consumed their usual diet without any supplements. The researchers looked for specific epigenetic modifications of the volunteers’ genes that have been associated with the earliest signs of the onset of bowel cancer – an age-related disease. These epigenetic marks, known as DNA methylation, do not alter the genetic code but affect whether the genes are turned on or off. These methylation marks are transmitted when cells divide, and some have been associated with the development of cancer.

The investigators studied the relationship between the occurrence of these epigenetic marks at genes known to be affected in cancer, and factors including the volunteers’ age, sex, body size and the levels of some nutrients in the volunteers’ blood.

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