You can reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s by 53%, according to new research from Harvard University. And by adding just three more common nutrients to their dietary recommendations – you can cut the risk even further.
You’ve probably read that ageing is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s
– but that’s not strictly accurate.
What is true, is that you normally accumulate damage to DNA, cells
and organs as you age. It is this damage that results in Alzheimer’s – not the
passing of the years.
So, the good news is that if you reduce, slow or prevent cell
and tissue damage, major new research shows you can more than halve the
risk of dementia.
The even better news is that, if you take the preventative action
outlined below, you also cut your risk of heart disease and stroke – probably by
as much as 80%.
This article was written by Colin Rose, a Senior Associate Member of the Royal Society of Medicine, who has been writing on science for 40 years.
Alzheimer’s facts and figures
A leading cause of death
Dementia is now the Number 1 cause of death in women and the Number 2 in men – according to the UK’s Office of National Statistics in 2017.
That’s because the brain ultimately controls everything – the heart, gastro-intestinal organs, metabolism, etc. Dementia, therefore, becomes a terminal illness, leading to overall frailty, susceptibility to infections, eating problems, pneumonia and breathing difficulties. And is highly distressing to the individual and family.
70% of people with dementia have Alzheimer’s
About 70% of people with dementia have Alzheimer’s Disease, which involves a gradual decline in cognitive function. Vascular Dementia is caused by restricted blood flow, and therefore oxygen and nutrients, to the brain. It is often linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol or follows a stroke or heart disease.
Most Alzheimer’s sufferers are over 65
Most people with Alzheimer’s Disease are 65 and older. After the age of 65, when the risk is about 2%-3%, the risk of Alzheimer’s DOUBLES every five years.
After age 85, the risk reaches almost 30% of all adults.
But if you are reading this, and are in your 50s or early 60s, you should note that Alzheimer’s is a stealthy threat. It begins at least 10 years before the symptoms become apparent in everyday behaviour.
So the time to take action is well before 65.
The genetic links are weak, except for those of Afro-Caribbean heritage
The risk of Alzheimer’s is doubled in people of Afro-Caribbean heritage – a genetic link.
Other genetic links are weak, so that someone of other heritage with a parent or grandparent who developed Alzheimer’s is at only slightly higher risk. But, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, “it is estimated that less than 1 percent of Alzheimer’s cases are caused by deterministic genes – genes that cause a disease, rather than increase the risk of developing a disease)”.
Strong links with heart disease and stroke
There is a strong link between heart disease, stroke, ED (Erectile Dysfunction) and Alzheimer’s Disease. Because a healthy brain and a healthy heart both need unrestricted blood flow through arteries and blood vessels.
High blood pressure increases risk
For this reason, hypertension or high blood pressure increases the risk of Alzheimer’s
Brain ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’
Alzheimer’s brains are characterised by ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’. Plaques consist of dead brain cells and a protein called beta amyloid which is toxic. Tangles are made up of another protein called tau, which becomes abnormal and clumps together leading to neuron cell death and inhibited neural communication.
Noticeable change can take 10 years to show
These changes in the brain may take up to 10 years to become noticeable in behaviour.
Average survival from onset of symptoms is 8.4 years
The average survival time from the onset of symptoms is 8.4 years.
Diabetes increases risk
Diabetes increases the risk – but the development of diabetes can be slowed or prevented with the exact same programme as we discuss below.
Stress, obesity, smoking and alcohol increase risk
Chronic – long-term – stress increases the risk, as do obesity, smoking and high alcohol consumption.
Gum disease may be linked
There also may be a link between a bacterium that causes the gum disease gingivitis and Alzheimer’s.
No drugs yet that prevent or slow Alzheimer’s
There are no drugs yet that prevent or slow Alzheimer’s.
MIND Diet lowers Alzheimer’s risk by 53%
The MIND Diet was developed by Rush University and the
Harvard School of Public Health in 2015. It stands for the Mediterranean/Dash
Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay – and combines the
best of what were previously the world’s two most studied diets.
These were the well-known Mediterranean Diet and the DASH Diet – the latter stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, developed at Harvard University.
The MIND Diet emphasises ‘brain foods’ that improve
focus and memory – foods like berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries
etc), lots of vegetables, green tea, Omega 3 rich oily fish (salmon, sardines,
mackerel etc), whole grains, nuts and olive oil.
Why these foods? Because oily fish (and some nuts and seeds
like walnuts and flaxseeds) provide Omega 3 which is important for brain health
and normal neuron connections. Berry fruits and leafy greens are high in
flavonoids and polyphenols which are brain protective.
A study published in the Journal of the Alzheimer’s
Association found that adults following a MIND diet had a 53% lower risk of
developing dementia than those eating a typical Western diet.
They went further – those eating the most MIND diet servings (in the top third of nutritional intake) were assessed as 7.5 years younger in biological age. Not just healthier brains, but younger brains!
But what is it in the MIND Diet that produces these results? Flavonoids and polyphenols
Flavonoids and polyphenols are a class of nutrients found in
fruits and vegetables that are arguably as important for health as vitamins and
minerals.
Flavonoids include the colourants in the skins of plants – powerful nutrients like the carotenoids, beta carotene, lycopene and lutein. Carotenoids help prevent the formation of the beta amyloid plaques and tangles that degrade neuron brain cells and characterise an Alzheimer’s brain. [They are also important anti-cancer nutrients.]
But flavonoids have another property. They have both an
antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect.
The brain is a fatty organ – and researchers have shown that oxidation or free radical damage to fats sheathing neurons in the brain is a contributory cause of dementia. Anti-oxidants counteract this oxidation and help prevent and slow that damage.
Inflammation in the brain is another contributory cause. So anti-inflammatory nutrients like flavonoids can help prevent inflammation damage.
The effect is not just to keep the brain healthy – the high antioxidant levels in the MIND diet help reduce free radical damage to DNA, tissues and cells throughout the body, which otherwise can lead to cancer.
Furthermore, the MIND diet is also a natural immune system
booster. It’s high in vitamins and minerals like vitamin A, C and D, zinc, in
flavonoids, carotenoids and in Omega 3 – all of which strongly support the
immune system.
Finally, the MIND diet improves blood sugar levels and
therefore helps protect against diabetes, which in turn lowers the risk of
dementia.
Omega 3 is vital for brain health
Sometime between 195,000 and 125,000 years ago, humans nearly went extinct. An ice age set in and much of the earth was ice covered and uninhabitable. The population of our hominid ancestors may have crashed to as little as a few thousand – and most anthropologists agree that everyone alive today is descended from this small group.
The
archaeological evidence is that this group almost certainly survived by extending
their hunting and gathering to the coastal areas of Africa.
There they
were able to harvest shellfish and cold-water fish which are rich in Omega 3
fatty acids. These fats, it is believed, helped drive the evolution of our highly
complex brains – which are over 60% poly-unsaturated fat in composition.
Within
Omega 3 is a compound called DHA. DHA is possibly the single most important
nutrient for brain health. It facilitates the communication between brain cells
and is critical to the growth and survival of healthy brain cells. It also
helps reduce inflammation in the brain and in other body tissues.
In study
after study, diets rich in Omega 3 are found to be protective of brain health. These
include the Mediterranean diet, the Japanese Okinawan diet and certain
Scandinavian diets.
Keep body and brain active to reduce risk too
The hippocampus is a part of the brain that is critical to memory. Normally it shrinks by 1 to 2 percent a year as you get older, leading to potential cognitive impairment, a prelude to dementia. But research shows that that just 40 minutes of brisk walking, three times per week, leads to significant brain growth.
In one study, adults who participated in aerobic exercise – the level where you breathe harder – saw an over 2% INcrease in the size of their hippocampus over one year, in contrast to a 1.4% decline in control subjects.
That’s because exercise raises levels of a brain chemical called BDNF that encourages the growth of new brain cells.
A University of California study shows that people who are
regularly physically active have far fewer of the plaques and tangles that are
characteristic of Alzheimer’s.
Finally, avoid sitting too long without a break. Taking a short break every hour and stretching for even a minute or two can make a significant difference to long-term brain and general health.
To physical activity add some mental effort, whether
crosswords, sudoku, or learning something new like a musical instrument or
language. Use it or lose it!
If your activities are done with others so much the better, because research
shows loneliness can impair cognitive health.
Brush your teeth
Recent
research, reported in 2019 in Science Advances and posted on the UK National
Health Service site, has linked gum disease to Alzheimer’s.
The researchers have noted that bacteria called P. gingivalis, which cause gingivitis, are significantly more common in people with Alzheimer’s than in people without – almost doubly more common. And the harmful proteins produced by P. gingivalis are present in higher concentrations in the brains of Alzheimer’s sufferers.
When mice were infected by the bacterium, they began to show increased tau protein and tangles, which are characteristic of the mental deterioration of people with early stage dementia.
The research has even triggered false internet claims that “you can catch Alzheimer’s”!
But a closer reading of the research shows that this is a small a scale study, involving lab tests on brain tissue and on mice. These types of study are both useful and necessary as early studies, but not necessarily conclusive. And a link between gum disease and Alzheimer’s doesn’t necessarily mean it causes Alzheimer’s. Correlation is not causation!
What is true,
however, is that inflammation in the brain is definitely present in Alzheimer’s
patients and gingivitis is an inflammatory disease – all diseases ending in ‘-itis’
are.
At this stage, the safe conclusion is to reduce pro-inflammatory foods in your diet and increase your intake of anti-inflammatory foods and supplements.
Improving on the MIND Diet
Add CURCUMIN/TURMERIC
Recent research shows that curcumin (the active ingredient in turmeric) may help prevent the accumulation of plaques that build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients – and which interfere with communication between brain cells. Indeed, curcumin activates hundreds of genes that are anti-inflammatory and neuro (brain) protective.
Add BETAINE
There is also recent evidence, published in 2019 in the European Journal of Pharmacology, that a nutrient called betaine could have an important preventative role to play.
The researchers state: “betaine is the first potential medicine that can act preventively, instead of just easing the symptoms”.
It’s important to qualify that this very recent study was on mice and needs to be confirmed in humans – but the report does state that betaine “significantly improves memory and oxidative stress in mice, which indicates that a new AD (Alzheimer’s Disease) medicine might have been found”.
Since we know that betaine also lowers heart disease risk, it
is certainly worth including betaine rich foods in your diet (like seafood and wheatgerm)
and betaine should be included in a health supplement that aims for brain
health.
Add MULTI-STRAIN PROBIOTICS
Probiotics – ‘good’ bacteria – might improve brain function in existing Alzheimer’s patients. A 2016 study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience reported on 60 Alzheimer’s patients who drank milk that included four probiotic bacteria species for 12 weeks.
The strains were Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Bifidobacterium bifidum, and Lactobacillus fermentum.
There
was a ‘statistically significant’ improvement of cognitive function compared
with those who drank regular milk.
Although researchers do not yet know exactly how gut bacteria influence behaviour or brain function, one theory is that a leaky gut may allow compounds to pass into the blood stream that harm the brain.
By reducing the permeability of the intestinal walls, certain probiotics like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium may help prevent this leakage.
It might, therefore, be worth considering a multi-strain probiotic as part of an overall programme to cut the risk of Alzheimer’s.
A Best of the Best Eating Plan
At the end of this article is an eating plan that improves even on the MIND Diet, in that it includes curcumin, betaine and other specifically neuro-protective foods and nutrients.
BUT if you’re trying to get all the nutrients you need by eating only regular food, you may find it difficult. For instance, the number of daily portions of fruits and vegetables in the MIND studies is considerably higher than a simple 5-a-day recommendation.
Indeed, both the American Cancer Society and University College London in a recent huge study conclude that the
ideal intake is 9-10 portions of fruits and vegetables a
day – plus 2-3 portions of oily fish a week.
At these levels your intake of vitamins, minerals
and flavonoids ensures that your blood chemistry becomes seriously protective
against age-related illness generally, and dementia in particular.
For most people 70 portions of fruit and veg a week is not achievable. Consequently, I believe that people over the age of 50 – who do not generally absorb nutrients as well as younger people – should take a supplement.
That supplement should
include flavonoids, which are as important to health as vitamins and minerals. It
should also include curcumin, betaine, Omega 3, and the nutrients that promote
positive gene expression – like lutein, lycopene, beta carotene, extra B
vitamins and vitamin D.
A simple one-a day
multivitamin just isn’t enough.
Modified MIND
Diet plus NutriShield health supplement
The one-page summary of the ideal, enhanced MIND diet therefore includes a health supplement called NutriShield Premium, which supplies all these extra nutrients. It was originally designed by Dr Paul Clayton, former Chair of the Forum on Food and Health at the Royal Society of Medicine. And – full disclosure – it is a supplement we created in response to the research on healthy ageing and brain health.
Unlike most supplements,
NutriShield doesn’t just contain the basic RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance)
amounts of vitamins and minerals, which only prevent outright deficiencies.
Instead, it’s designed to provide you daily with the wide range and high level
of nutrients found in the very healthiest diets.
This
article was written by Colin Rose, a Senior Associate Member of the Royal Society
of Medicine, who has been writing on science for 40 years.
If you found this article helpful and believe it can help others who are concerned to help prevent dementia, then please share it. You can also follow me through the icons below.
Register now for a free monthly e-newsletter on the latest in nutrition and health research.
Dr Paul Clayton designed NutriShield as a comprehensive health supplement with OPTIMUM levels of essential nutrients. See more detail elsewhere on this site or click on the button.
Dr Paul Clayton’s best-selling book Health Defence is available from booksellers.
See online here for delicious recipes from the Health Defence Cookbook incorporating healthy foods featuring in a Mediterranean Diet.
References:
MIND diet associated with reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s disease; Morris MC et al, Alzheimers Dement. 2015 Sep;11(9):1007-14.
Involvement of GAT2/BGT-1 in the preventive effects of betaine on cognitive impairment and brain oxidative stress in amyloid β peptide-injected mice. Ibi, D, Tsuchihashi A, Nomura T & Hiramatsu M. (2019). European Journal of Pharmacology, 842, 57-63.
Exercise training increases size
of hippocampus and improves memory. Sayal N (2015) Annals of Neurosciences, 22(2).
doi:10.5214/ans.0972.7531.22
Declining NAD(+) induces a pseudohypoxic state disrupting nuclear-mitochondrial communication during aging. Gomes AP et al, Cell. 2013 Dec 19;155(7):1624-38. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.11.037.
Betaine in human nutrition; Stuart AS Craig The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 80, Issue 3, November 2004, Pages 539–549
Nutrition and the Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease; Nan Hu et al; Biomed Res Int. 2013: 524820.
Link: ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/BDNF
Porphyromonas gingivalis in Alzheimer’s Disease brains: Evidence for disease causation and treatment with small-molecule inhibitors; Stephen S. Dominy et al; Science Advances, 23 Jan 2019: Vol. 5, no. 1, eaau3333
https://nutrishield.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Seniors-singing-group-F.jpg310387Colin Rosehttps://www.nutrishield.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/logo-1.pngColin Rose2019-08-23 12:57:372019-08-23 13:03:32How you can avoid Alzheimer's
And do it with food, not expensive pharma medicines
Investors in
biotech companies are putting billions
into a new category of drugs that promise to extend the number of years you can
stay healthy – and improve the quality of life in later years.
Dr Richard Miller is a leading gerontologist at the University of Michigan. In an article in New Scientist headed ‘The Age of Living Younger’, he states:
“We have proven you can slow the ageing process using drugs”.
He’s right.
But Big Pharma’s expensive drugs are not the only – or even the best way. Because
you can get the same result with nutrition and food.
Why does so much illness appear age-related?
The
incidence of almost every debilitating chronic disease – heart disease, stroke,
dementia, cancer, arthritis, vision impairment – increases suddenly around the
age of 60.
But it is
not related to the passing of years. It is related to accumulated, unrepaired
damage to DNA and to the cells that make up our tissues and organs – causing
those organs to gradually fail. The damage accumulates because the body’s cell
repair mechanisms stop working properly.
Prevent, limit or even reverse that damage, by
boosting cell repair mechanisms, and you stay healthier for longer. But how?
Toxic dead ‘zombie’ cells need to be cleared
The trillions
of cells in your body are continually turning over. They replicate and
ultimately die. Indeed, an estimated 50 billion die each day! A normal cell death occurs through a process
called apoptosis, and those dead cells are usually cleared away.
But occasionally the dead cells or debris
from the dead cells is not cleared away. These are called senescent cells – cells that have
suffered irreversible damage, but which have not been eliminated from the body.
Scientists sometimes
refer to them as them junk or zombie cells.
Very recent
research by Judith Campisi at the Buck
Institute for Ageing shows that these senescent cells secret a cocktail of damaging
chemicals that poison surrounding tissues and cause chronic inflammation.
We know
inflammation underlies almost all age-related diseases and the Buck Institute explains
how that inflammation occurs and directly links senescent cells to ageing
itself and to cancer.
Lynne Cox, a biochemist at Oxford University, underlines the threat: “Senescent cells are very bad for you – they
destroy the tissues around them”.
Even a small
number of uncleared senescent cells trigger problems – just as a rotten
strawberry in a punnet can cause the rest to go bad.
(Hold that analogy in your mind, as it will have special significance as we
unravel this latest science).
The huge cost of senescent cells
A result of
this damaging sequence – senescent cells poison surrounding tissues, which
causes chronic inflammation, which causes multiple later life illnesses – is
that the average person will live the last 12 – 18 years of their life with
some sort of health issue and increasingly on medication.
This is not
only distressing for the individual, but a huge cost for society. 80% of
healthcare costs in the US are linked to later-life degenerative disease! It’s
similar in the UK where the annual spend on healthcare is £2,892 for every man,
women and child and most of that is spent on later life.
So, a drug that clears senescent cells and therefore extends healthy life span could literally save trillions.
You are likely to live a somewhat longer life – say typically to around 90 – but, importantly, stay healthy, vigorous and productive until your final year or two. As one researcher put it, perhaps too bluntly,
“We are not trying to fill care homes with geriatrics, we are trying to make sure you live actively and well to enjoy your pension to the full!”
You can see why bio-tech investors are so excited. But our interest is in doing this without Big Pharma’s expensive, patented pills.
How you can clear away senescent “zombie” cells
If you take
senescent cells from an old mouse and transplant them into a young mouse, it
ages prematurely and suffers age-related diseases.
The reverse
is true. In 2011 researchers at the Mayo Clinic used a drug to clear senescent
cells from aged mice – and it significantly extended the time they were disease-free
and enabled them to function as young mice.
Removing senescent cells “jump starts tissues’ natural repair mechanisms” as a Johns Hopkins researcher puts it.
Other studies in 2016 and 2018, including at Newcastle University, showed that a range of illnesses – from simple frailty to heart disease to osteoporosis to dementia and even to osteoarthritis – was halted or even reversed by clearing senescent cells.
As a leading researcher put it, we are now seeing:
“ … how multiple diseases of ageing are being caused buy a single underlying cause”.
It is a genuine breakthrough in understanding how healthy lifespan can be extended.
James Pickett, is head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, and was not involved in the Mayo study. His comment:
“There hasn’t been a new dementia drug in 15 years, so it’s exciting to see the results of this promising study.”
The importance of “senolytics”
So how do we clear away senescent
cells? The answer is with senolytics – defined as molecules that seek
out, destroy and eliminate senescent cells.
There are drugs that do this – like dasatinib, navitoclax and possibly the diabetes drug metformin – but none appears to work very well on their own, without being coupled with flavonoids.
Flavonoids are a class of nutrients in fruits
and vegetables that are as important to health as the vitamins and minerals
that fruits and veggies also provide.
They include the pigments in plants – like resveratrol (found in grape skin, red wine, blueberries and bilberries), quercetin (found in red onions, apples, green and black tea and grapes), beta carotene, lutein and lycopene (the red pigment found in tomatoes).
Many flavonoids are linked to an
anti-cancer effect, as well as being senolytic.
A flavonoid with powerful senolytic action – fisetin
But the most powerful flavonoid with
senolytic activity appears to be a little-known pigment called fisetin – found in strawberries – at a
level that’s 6 times higher than in the next fruit, which is apples.
A lead researcher at the Institute on
the Biology of Ageing and Metabolism at the University of Minnesota told
Newsweek magazine:
“We’re looking for drugs that can kill these damaged senescent cells that are very toxic to our bodies and accumulate as we get older. It turns out that fisetin is a natural product that we were able to show very selectively and effectively kills these senescent cells.”
You’ll note that she didn’t suggest you just loaded up with strawberries. Unfortunately the default reaction from most researchers is to make a natural product into a drug!!
Another proven senolytic – nicotinamide form of Vit B3
Another proven senolytic is nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, which unlike niacin, does not cause flushing. Nicotinamide creates a blood chemical called NAD+, which clears DNA damage from especially mitochondrial cells – the tiny ‘energy factories’ in our cells. That should, in turn, improve energy levels.
There are already supplements on the
market that combine resveratrol, quercitin and nicotinamide. But they are
jumping the gun. Partly because research on quercetin and resveratrol as
senolytics, on their own, is not conclusive. And partly because senolytics are
not the whole story.
All-round cellular spring cleaning
To create a truly comprehensive plan that will clear senescent cells and therefore prolong health, we need to include what are called mTOR inhibitors. O.K. it’s a mouthful – but stay with me!
The mTOR pathway
mTOR is a pathway within your cells that regulates the life cycle of that cell – its growth, repair and natural death. The science is rather complicated, but the key is this.
mTOR senses your nutrient intake and when it senses adequate nutrients, the cell will replicate.
When it is suppressed, then rather than replicating, the cell goes into repair mode.
When it is over-stimulated it can promote excess growth and even tumours.
So it’s a finely
balanced cycle. And sometimes you’ll want to suppress or down-regulate mTOR to
ensure your cell repair mechanisms are working properly.
One way to
suppress mTOR is calorie restriction, which we know improves cell repair and makes
organisms live longer. Which is why some people fast. But starving yourself is
hardly the most attractive way to live longer!
Down-regulating mTOR to up-regulate cell repair
The key fact
to remember is that to upregulate cell repair – thereby boosting health and
longevity – you need to down-regulate or damp down the mTOR pathway.
Assuming fasting is not your option, there are drugs that do this – possibly including metformin. Exercise also helps suppress the mTOR pathway. But again, certain nutrients and food compounds do it.
So why risk the drugs?
Some of the
most powerful, natural, mTOR inhibitors include curcumin, EGCG (an ingredient
in green tea), Omega 3, olive oil, indoles (a compound in broccoli, sprouts and
kale), genistein (a compound in soy with anti-cancer credentials), grapeseed
extract, fisetin (again) and quercetin.
You should note that there are also factors that can dangerously over-stimulate the mTOR pathway, notably excess protein. This makes sense – if mTOR senses excess nutrition intake, it may go into cell replication overdrive and cancer is marked by unrestricted cell replication.
Garbage disposal for old cells
The final piece of the jigsaw is that down-regulated mTOR also cleans out dead cell debris, a process called autophagy – which literally means “self-eating”.
So, although senolytic activity and autophagy are not exactly the same, you want both of them working properly to do a frequent ‘internal spring clean’. Or as one researcher puts it – “to act like a garbage disposal system for old cells”.
The summary so far
Cleaning out senescent cells that are dead, but still present in the body, prevents them causing toxicity which leads to inflammation and thus to many diseases that are related to age, but not caused by ageing. That includes osteoarthritis, cancer and Alzheimer’s.
Damping down mTOR activity encourages the process of cell repair, which otherwise becomes weaker over time. It also ensures that ‘zombie’ cells are cleared away.
You can liken both processes – which are vital for reducing the risk of cancer, heart disease, dementia and even arthritis, and for increasing the years in which you remain healthy – to a regular spring clean.
There are natural compounds that do this – including nicotinamide (vitamin B3), the flavonoids in strawberries, blueberries, turmeric (curcumin), green tea, grapeseed, green leafy vegetables, onions and garlic.
What you can do with supplements
I need to
make a disclosure at this point.
I have been researching nutrition and health for over 30 years. Some years ago, when I was 60, I worked with the then Chair of the Forum on Food and Health at the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr Paul Clayton, to create a comprehensive health food supplement. Because we knew from many surveys that a simple vitamin and mineral pill made little difference.
The multi-capsule daily health food supplement is called NutriShield.
It is high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients, because we knew that oxidative free radical damage and inflammation were key causes of chronic age-related illness.
It includes nutrients known to boost the immune system as we know immune function can decline with age.
It includes nutrients that help express or ‘turn on’ genes that lead to improved health – nutrients like lutein, betaine, omega 3, folate (folic acid), genistein, curcumin and beta carotene.
NutriShield also includes high levels of flavonoids and key vitamins and minerals – levels found in the diets of longevity hot-spots around the world called blue zones. But these levels are hard to achieve in a typical Western diet.
It’s only recently that the importance of clearing out toxic senescent cells has been uncovered.
However, we knew about the need to down-regulate mTOR and already had many of the mTOR down-regulators in NutriShield – nutrients like curcumin, green tea, genistein, Omega 3 and grapeseed.
We included high levels of flavonoids (and nicotinamide) because they are found diets of people who stay healthy the longest. We now know they are also senolytics. The potency of fisetin as a senolytic has only recently come to prominence, so it is not yet included in NutriShield.
Add strawberries every 2 weeks
An encouraging thing from the senolytic research is that it appears you don’t need to take action every day – an occasional, probably bi-weekly, clear-out seems to work very well.
So why not add a large bowl of strawberries at least once every two weeks? That’s certainly no hardship for most people! And canned or frozen are fine out of season.
Try this healthy eating plan – it’s simple and effective
It combines
the best health and nutrition advice from amongst others, Harvard Health, UCLA,
University College London and the American Cancer society.
The combination of NutriShield and the eating plan will tackle those zombie cells too!
This
article was written by Colin Rose, a Senior Associate Member of the Royal Society
of Medicine, who has been writing on science for 40 years.
If you enjoyed this article, please share it with family and friends. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter for daily headline health tweets.
Register now for a free monthly e-newsletter on the latest in nutrition and health research.
Dr Paul Clayton designed NutriShield as a comprehensive health supplement with OPTIMUM levels of essential nutrients. See more detail elsewhere on this site or click on the button.
Dr Paul Clayton’s best-selling book Health Defence is available from booksellers.
See online here for delicious recipes from the Health Defence Cookbook incorporating healthy foods featuring in a Mediterranean Diet.
References:
Cellular Senescence: The Sought or the Unwanted? ; Sun, Y., Coppé, J. P., & Lam, E. W. F. Trends in Molecular Medicine. (2018).
Senescence in health and disease. He S, Sharpless NE. Cell. 2017; 169: 1000-1011
Cellular senescence and its effector programs. Salama R. et al; Genes Dev. 2014; 28: 99-114
New agents that target senescent cells: the flavone, fisetin, and the BCL-XL inhibitors, Yi Zhu, et al, Aging (Albany NY) 2017
Declining NAD(+) induces a pseudohypoxic state disrupting nuclear-mitochondrial communication during aging. Gomes AP et al, Cell. 2013 Dec 19;155(7):1624-38. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.11.037.
It is time to classify biological aging as a disease Sven Bulterijs, et al; Frontiers in Genetics 2015
Inhibition of PI3K/Akt/mTOR Signaling by Natural Products Shile Huang*Anticancer Agents Med Chem. 2013 Sep; 13(7): 967–970.
Senescence-associated secretory phenotypes reveal cell-nonautonomous functions of oncogenic RAS and the p53 tumor suppressor; Coppé, J. P., et al (2008). PLoS Biology, 6(12), e301.
The senescence-associated secretory phenotype: the dark side of tumor suppression. Coppé, J. P., Desprez, P. Y., Krtolica, A., & Campisi, J. (2010). Annual Review of Pathological Mechanical Disease, 5, 99-118.
Autophagy and signaling: their role in cell survival and cell death. Codogno, P. and Meijer, A. J. (2005). Cell Death Differ. 12 Suppl. 2, 1509-1518.
Defining the Role of mTOR in Cancer; Guertin, D. A. and Sabatini, D. M. (2007). Cancer Cell 12, 9-22.
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