Slowing aging process – what are scientists looking at? Part II

Slowing down the aging process is therefore important from the inside out: nutrition, sports, fasting are important, but so is skin care. Also read anti-aging skin care from a dermatological perspective

Other options with a favorable aging-delaying effect are intermittent fasting and regular exercise/sports. Intermittent fasting comes in many varieties. Drinking in between: water, tea or coffee is of course allowed.

16/8 method – time-restricted fasting, in which you fast for sixteen hours and have eight hours to eat.

OMAD-one meal a day: you fast for 22-23 hours and eat within a time frame of 1-2 hours.
The 5:2 principle: you eat normally for five days, the other two days you eat 500 to 600 calories a day.

Fasting alternate days, such as fasting for 24 hours and then eating for 24 hours.
Moderate fasting: On the fasting days, you eat about 25 percent of your normal calorie intake.

Effect of fasting and slowing down the aging process:

Studies show that it decreases inflammatory cells in the body, improves blood glucose and lipid levels, and lowers blood pressure. This process takes place at the cellular level where the protein mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) is suppressed. The reduction of this protein makes it possible to repair cells by stimulating the body’s own repair mechanism.

The big problem is perseverance and the advice is to look for yourself for an intermittent fasting variant that best suits you and your medical condition. Fasting creates a physical catabolic state, which means that the body takes energy reserves from your muscle and fat tissue. This can cause you to lose muscle tissue.

If you plan to fast, discuss it with your own doctor to avoid health risk.

We do not have to reach the human maximum life span of 120 years, but we do have to grow old healthy and radiant. That’s a nice goal.

Gemini study 2022

Researchers in Finland looked at 2,240 twins in two age groups: those aged between 21 and 42 and those aged between 50 and 76. Using the epigenetic clock, a biochemical test used to measure age, the scientists compared chronological age to the epigenetic biological clock. It turns out that the difference starts from the age of 20. Men is biologically 1 year older than women. By age 50, men are four biological years older than women of the same age.

Possible reasons: the beneficial health effects of the female sex hormone estrogen. Another possible factor: BMI, Men are generally more overweight than women.

Literature

Olivieri F, Prattichizzo F, Grillari J, Balistreri CR. Cellular Senescence and Inflammaging in Age-Related Diseases. Mediators Inflamm. 2018;2018:9076485.

Scudellari M. To stay young, kill zombie cells. Nature. 2017 Oct 24;550:448-450.

Anna Kankaanpää, MSc, Asko Tolvanen, PhD, Pirkko Saikkonen, MSc, Aino Heikkinen, MSc, Eija K Laakkonen, PhD, Jaakko Kaprio, MD, PhD, Miina Ollikainen, PhD, Elina Sillanpää, PhD, Do Epigenetic Clocks Provide Explanations for Sex Differences in Life Span? A Cross-Sectional Twin Study, The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 77, Issue 9, September 2022, Pages 1898–1906,