How Does What We Eat Affect How We Age?

The results of this study highlight the importance of thinking holistically about nutrition.

According to a recent study by the Butler Columbia Aging Center, Columbia University According to the Mailman School of Public Health, the answer to a seemingly simple question – how what we eat affects how we age – is inevitably complex.

Most of the analyzes have focused on the effect of a single nutrient on a single outcome, whereas traditional single-dimensional approaches to understanding the effects of diet on health and aging have limited the overall You can’t take the picture. A healthy diet should be based on balancing a collection of nutrients, rather than optimizing a series of nutrients one by one.Until recently, little was understood about how dietary changes that occur naturally in humans affect aging. BMC biology.

“Our ability to understand this question is complicated by the fact that both nutritional and aging physiology are highly complex and multidimensional, involving numerous functional interactions.” said Dr. Alan Cohen, associate professor of environmental health. He studied science at the Columbia Mailman School.

“Thus, this study further underscores the importance of looking beyond ‘one nutrient at a time.’ Because it fits the answer.”

Cohen also says the findings are consistent with other studies showing the need for higher protein consumption in older adults, especially to combat age-related sarcopenia and decline in physical performance. .

Researchers have used multidimensional modeling tools to explore the impact of nutrient intake on physiological dysregulation in older adults, thereby uncovering critical patterns of specific nutrients associated with minimal biological aging. identified.

“Our approach presents a roadmap for future research to investigate the full complexity of the landscape of vegetative aging,” said Cohen, who is also affiliated with the Butler Columbia Center for Aging.

The researchers randomly selected 1560 elderly men and women aged 67 to 84 from the Montreal, Laval, or Sherbrooke areas of Quebec, Canada between November 2003 and June 2005. data were analyzed and retested and followed up annually for 3 years. 4 years to massively assess how nutrient intake is associated with the aging process.

Aging and age-related loss of homeostasis (physiological dysregulation) were quantified by integration of blood biomarkers. Dietary effects used a nutritional geometric framework that applied to macronutrients and 19 micronutrient/nutrient subclasses. Researchers examined a range of nutritional predictors and fitted a series of eight models that adjusted for income, education level, age, physical activity, number of comorbidities, gender, and current smoking status.

Four broad patterns were observed.

• Optimal levels of nutrient intake depended on the aging index used. Improved/reduced.
• Intermediate levels of nutrients have sometimes worked well for many outcomes (i.e. the argument against simple high/low is the better point of view).
• There is a wide range of acceptable nutrient intake patterns that do not deviate too much from the norm (“homeostatic plateaus”).
• Optimal levels of one nutrient are often dependent on levels of another (such as vitamin E and vitamin C). Capturing such associations falls short of simpler analytical approaches.

The research team also developed an interactive tool that allows users to explore how different combinations of micronutrients affect different aspects of aging.

The results of this study are consistent with previous experimental studies in mice, showing that a high-protein diet may accelerate aging early in life, but is beneficial later in life.

“These results are not experimental and should be validated in other contexts. Certain findings, such as the salient features of the combination of vitamin E and vitamin C, may not be replicated in other studies.” There is, however, a qualitative finding that there is no simple answer to optimal nutrition that is likely to hold up. This is consistent with many studies of

References: “Multidimensional associations between human nutrition and healthy aging” Alistair M. Senior, Véronique Legault, Francis B. Lavoie, Nancy Presse, Pierrette Gaudreau, Valérie Turcot, David Raubenheimer, David G. Le Couteur, by Stephen J. Simpson and Alan A. Cohen, 1 September 2022, BMC biology.
DOI: 10.1186/s12915-022-01395-z

This study was funded by the Australian Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Quebec Research Foundation (FRQ), and the Quebec Network for Research on Aging.