Recently, foreign countries have emerged for health care tricks such as meditation, valley removal, drinking ayahuascen, and bee venom therapy. In fact, the most mysterious secret recipe for longevity is often hidden in the simplest living habits, such as the Chinese common saying "control your mouth and open your legs".
A study published by Yale University in the authoritative journal Aging confirmed that subjects could be 3 years younger in just 8 weeks by adjusting their basic diet.
For the study, Yale University recruited 43 male subjects aged 50-72 and divided them into a control group and an experimental group. The researchers strictly controlled the diet of the experimental group and conducted a lifestyle intervention for 8 weeks.
The intervention group recipes are as follows:
(1) Centered on vegetables: Eat 2 cups of cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc.), 2 cups of dark green leafy vegetables (such as kale, spinach, beets, mustard greens, etc.), 3 cups of other colorful vegetables, 1-2 medium beets, 4 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds, 4 tablespoons of sunflower seeds per week.
(2) Supplement animal protein: 5-10 organic eggs and 255g liver per week.
(3) Avoid added sugars/candies, dairy products, legumes, and grains.
(4) Light fasting: Do not eat between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.
In addition, with aerobic exercise and work and rest and other lifestyle adjustments. Finally, the researchers evaluated the DNA methylation of the subjects' saliva based on the "epigenetic clock" and found that the lifestyle intervention group was on average 3.23 years younger than the control group.
Yale University researchers said that in addition to biological age, adjusting the diet can also cause a reversal of physical functions, experimental data shows that the blood lipid level of the lifestyle intervention group will be closer to that of young people.
Adjust your diet for 8 weeks, why can ordinary ingredients make people 3 years younger?
It may have something to do with the NAD+ molecule discovered at Harvard University. The precursor of this molecule is a human endogenous substance that can be supplemented by common vegetables, such as 0.25-1.12mg per 100g of broccoli and 0-0.9mg per 100g of cabbage.
Harvard Medical School has published a paper in Cell showing that continuous supplementation of this substance can make the mitochondrial function in mammalian muscles "young" 60%~70%, and biological indicators such as hair and bones will also undergo positive changes.
Mitochondria are the energy factories of cells, and the Polish research team found that mitochondrial damage induces the accumulation of damage in RNA and DNA, promoting apoptosis and autophagy, which are the basis of aging and age-related diseases. Therefore, maintaining mitochondrial function is also included in one of the effective means of maintaining life and health in modern times.
98-year-old American billionaire David Murdoch, insisted on not being stained with meat for 30 years, eating a large number of 25 kinds of fruits and vegetables every day, and the common cardiovascular, muscle, joint problems of the elderly did not appear in him. He believed that he could live to 125 years old in this way. It's just that for a lot of people, it's hard to hold on.
According to the FDA equivalence principle, a 70kg adult should supplement 600mg of the above key substances per day, which means that 54~240kg of broccoli needs to be eaten every day. Only by dietary supplementation, the efficiency is too low.
Previous studies evaluating the relationship between lifestyle and life expectancy have focused on North American and European populations. The Yale experiment above is one of them. Now, together with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Peking University has published China's first study on lifestyle and life expectancy in The Lancet Public Health.
The study tracked 487209 Chinese participants for 11 years, and concluded that maintaining the following five lifestyles may lead to change:
1. Never smoke;
2. Do not drink excessively: daily alcohol consumption or daily pure alcohol intake < 30 grams for men and 15 grams for women<;
3. Active exercise: maintain 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 5 days a week;
4. Healthy eating habits: eat fresh vegetables every day, eat fresh fruits every day, eat red meat 1-6 days a week, eat beans ≥ 4 days a week, eat fish ≥ 1 day a week;
5. Healthy body shape: body mass index (BMI) is between 18.5-27.9kg/m².
The study found that Chinese volunteers who maintained the above five healthy lifestyles had reduced mortality related to cardiovascular diseases and chronic respiratory diseases, and increased life expectancy by up to 8.8 years.
With the economic development, the average life expectancy of mainland citizens is also gradually increasing, and people are paying more and more attention to healthy living habits.