As we age, we lose whole motor units (a measurement of muscle). In cross-sectional studies, it’s been estimated that over the 40-year span between age 30 and 70, people experience a 20 percent decrease in the number of motor units in their thigh, for example. Similar decreases are sustained in both large and small muscle groups all over our body.

Gradual muscle loss is the catalyst for a number of other age-related changes in your body. These adverse changes are . . .

• a slowdown in your metabolism
• a steady increase in body fat
• a declining aerobic capacity
• a reduced blood-sugar tolerance
• a continuing loss in bone density

So how do we prevent or reduce the loss of muscle.

• We exercise what we have – use it or lose it
• we give the body the nutrition it deserves and requires – protein, fats and oils, carbohydrates, Vitamins and Minerals
  • we either get these elements from our diets (good quality natural food) and supplement where necessary with concentrated food source supplements
• we take regular and frequent light exercise
  • walking,
  • breathing – deep cyclical breathing is hugely important and beneficial
  • mobility – exercise the joints and muscles through their full range of movement
  • control exercises – practice manual and physical tasks that require fine muscle control – knitting,
• make exercise a priority – 10 minutes walking twice a day is enough for most people to improve their health

Muscles will only strengthen if the exercise adds:

• Resistance e.g. adding more weight
• Number of repetitions with a particular weight
• Number of sets of the exercise

Again the saying Use it or lose it is just about where it is at.

• Biomarker 1: Your Muscle Mass
• Biomarker 2: Your Strength
• Biomarker 3: Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
• Biomarker 4: Your Body Fat Percentage
• Biomarker 5: Your Aerobic Capacity
• Biomarker 6 Your Body’s Blood-Sugar Tolerance
• Biomarker 7: Your Cholesterol/HDL Ratio
• Biomarker 8: Your Blood Pressure
• Biomarker 9: Your Bone Density
• Biomarker 10:Your Body’s Ability to Regulate Its Internal Temperature

If we make some assumptions and conclude that we’ll live relatively free from illness until the age of 65 years and from that point we begin to experience a growing level of disability due to ageing and illness. We may experience 20 years or more of life after the age of 65 years and we’ll  spend 20 years of our lives in the disability zone.

What happens today for most people is that they begin to rely more and more heavily on pharmaceutical drugs to manage the symptoms of physical dysfunction or illness as they get older.What would happen if instead of reliance on pharmaceuticals we focussed on these 10 biomarkers of ageing and sought to improve them. The evidence from around the world is becoming clearer every day. The earlier we begin to address these biomarkers with natural food, exercise and water (and supplementation where required) there is every probability that we can extend the point at which we enter the disability zone by many years.

A recent study published in the Public Library of Medical Science (January 2008) found that basic healthy habits can add up to 14 years to your life – delaying the entrance into the disability zone by many years. Their focus was on cessation of smoking, eating 5 servings of fruit and vegetables, moderate exercise and moderate alcohol consumption. It was nothing extreme.

So to start with but look at the 10 biomarkers of ageing proposed by the medical community:

Biomarker 1: Your Muscle Mass

Biomarker 2: Your Strength

Biomarker 3: Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

Biomarker 4: Your Body Fat Percentage

Biomarker 5: Your Aerobic Capacity

Biomarker 6: Your Body’s Blood-Sugar Tolerance

Biomarker 7: Your Cholesterol/HDL Ratio

Biomarker 8: Your Blood Pressure

Biomarker 9: Your Bone Density

Biomarker 10:Your Body’s Ability to Regulate Its Internal Temperature

A continuing controversy is whether there exist processes of ageing per se, which can be identified and studied independently of age-related disease. It is clear that there are age-related risk factors for disease, and that these overlap with risk factors for ageing, but there is disagreement about whether diseases to which older persons are vulnerable should be considered merely by-products of ageing, or an essential component of the ageing processes.

In response to “How old are you” He would say, “How you suppose to answer if you didn’t know how old you was?” Paige never knew his exact chronological age because he was born before good records were kept. He used to tell people to use his performance on the pitcher’s mound to estimate his age. But that was almost impossible because Paige’s long heyday as a leading pitcher stretched from the 1920’s to 1950’s.

If you didn’t know your age how would you feel?

I.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let’s say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential –they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation. Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them. One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labeled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa, AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie.

http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com/2009/02/heart-surgeon-admits-huge-mistake-part-2/