Success Result #5: Age More Slowly
Slow aging by nourishing your cells with the micronutrients (found only in plants) needed for a
properly fueled, fully functioning immune system and other systems.
As Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) said: "Every human being is the author of his own health or
disease." Whether this story has a happy ending largely depends on your diet.
Disease is not a normal part of aging. Our relatively new unhealthy perspective about aging is the
result of our unhealthy lifestyle habits, especially our diets.
Every time you sit down for a meal or grab a snack, you are making choices that will either enhance
your health and help prevent disease, or that will contribute to the development of illnesses and
speed up the onset of old age.
As we age, a number of negative changes take place in all our body’s systems. How quickly these
changes occur and how severe they are depends on a number of factors, including life events,
illness, genetics, and socioeconomics. However, a number of recent studies have shown that
nutrition should be considered the most powerful external factor affecting the aging process.^128
A healthy diet delays and even prevents many of age-related changes to our body. Most of these
changes take place on a cellular level as a result of free-radical damage. Free radicals are
destructive byproducts of the millions of chemical reactions that go on in our bodies every day in
order to sustain life. They are also produced in response to toxins in our environment, like
household chemicals or cigarette smoke.
Because free radicals are made up of unstable oxygen molecules, they ambush healthy cells in order
to give themselves more stability. In the process, they damage the cell's DNA, which disrupts the
cell's structure as well as its function. Scientists have asserted for decades that this damage by
oxygen free radicals is behind much of the deterioration that comes with age, as well as chronic
conditions like heart disease and cancer.
However, it is never too late to defend yourself with a 90% or more plant-based, nutrient-rich diet.
Plant foods contain more than 4,000 flavonoids and a range of other potent antioxidants, which give
them a high Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC), or a powerful ability to subdue oxygen
free radicals. Studies conducted at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging
at Tufts University suggest that increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables with a high ORAC
(like spinach, strawberries, and blueberries) may help slow the aging process at a cellular level by
protecting against free radical damage.
Preventing this damage, and helping maintain the health and integrity of our cells, is key to keeping
other age-related deterioration at bay. For example, recent evidence suggests that the memory loss
and diminished brain function associated with aging, as well as degenerative disorders like
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, may be caused by an increased vulnerability to free radicals.
However, having plenty of antioxidant-rich plant foods in the diet has so far been shown to defend
(^128) Yu BP. How diet influences the aging process of the rat. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med. 1994;205(2):97-105.