Posts Tagged "Aging"

Middle-aged people who eat protein-rich food are four times more likely to die of cancer than someone who only eats a little, according to a new study. The researchers said eating a lot of protein increased the risk of cancer almost as much as smoking 20 cigarettes a day.

They reached their findings, published in the journal Cell: Metabolism, after tracking thousands of people over 20 years. “We provide convincing evidence that a high-protein diet – particularly if the proteins are derived from animals – is nearly as bad as smoking for your health,” one of the academics behind the work, Dr Valter Longo, of the University of Southern California, told The Daily Telegraph.

A high-protein diet was defined as one in which 20 per cent of the calories came from protein. They recommended eating 0.8g of protein per kilogram of body weight a day during middle age.

However, the researchers said protein had benefits during later life. Dr Eileen Crimmins, a co-author of the study, said: “We also propose that at older ages, it may be important to avoid a low-protein diet to allow the maintenance of healthy weight and protection from frailty.”

However Dr Gunter Kuhnle, a food nutrition scientist at the University of Reading, criticised the study for making a link to smoking. “While this study raises some interesting perspectives on links between protein intake and mortality… It is wrong, and potentially even dangerous, to compare the effects of smoking with the effect of meat and cheese,” he said. “The smoker thinks: ‘Why bother quitting smoking if my cheese and ham sandwich is just as bad for me?’”

And Professor Tim Key, of Cancer Research UK, said: “Further research is needed to establish whether there is any link between eating a high protein diet and an increased risk of middle aged people dying from cancer.”

Source: The Independent

Regardless of how much time older Americans spend being active, those who sit for more hours each day are more likely to be disabled, according to a new study. Researchers found that every hour people 60 years old and older spent sitting daily was tied to a 46 percent increased risk of being disabled – even if they also exercised regularly.

“It was its own separate risk factor,” Dorothy Dunlop told Reuters Health. Dunlop is the study’s lead author from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “We know that being active is good for your health and we know a sedentary lifestyle is bad for your health,” she said. But few studies have examined whether moderate to vigorous physical activity offsets the possible negative effects of being sedentary.

Dunlop and her colleagues write in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health that Americans already lead sedentary lifestyles. Among older Americans disability is also a major concern because it has been linked to increased medical spending and a higher risk of going into a nursing home or other care facility.

If future studies can confirm that sedentary behavior causes disability, which this study does not, then older people may possibly avoid becoming disabled by being more active throughout the day. For the new report, Dunlop and her colleagues analyzed data collected in 2003 through 2006 as part of a long-term government study of American health. The researchers used information on 2,286 adults who were 60 years old or older, had worn a device that measures physical activity for at least four days and had a physical exam. Participants were considered to have a disability if they couldn’t perform a self-care task, such as getting dressed, by themselves. Survey participants spent about 14 hours awake each day, on average. Of that, an average of nine hours was spent sitting or otherwise not moving.

After taking into account the amount of time people spent doing moderate to vigorous physical activity, their age, their health and whether they were well-off, the researchers found that each hour of daily sitting was linked to a 46 percent increased risk of having a disability. The study can’t say whether a sedentary lifestyle leads to disability or if having a disability leads to a sedentary lifestyle, however. In addition, the authors note that their records of physical activity may not take into account some forms of exercise, because the devices that participants wore may not pick up upper body movement or cycling. Participants also didn’t wear the devices while swimming.

Stephen Kritchevsky told Reuters Health it’s too early to tell if interventions that get people moving during the day will prevent disability, but they couldn’t hurt because other studies suggest activity improves functioning. He heads the Sticht Center on Aging at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and wasn’t involved in the new research. “The fact that people are physically limited in some way is even a bigger reason to try and do things, because there is plenty of research that shows that’s likely to improve function,” Kritchevsky said.

Dunlop said older adults should be as physically active as possible. They should also know that being sedentary is possibly bad for their health. “The goal here is to accumulate more light activities to replace the sitting and keep going on the moderate activity that you’re already engaged in,” she said.

SOURCE: (Reuters) Journal of Physical Activity and Health, online February 19, 2014.

Described in the early 1980s as “The Silent Epidemic,” dementia in the elderly will soon become a clarion call for public health experts worldwide. The epidemic is largely explained by the prevalence of dementia in persons 8- years of age or older. In most countries around the world, especially wealthy ones, this “old old” population will continue to grow, and since it accounts for the largest proportion of dementia cases, the dementia epidemic will grow worldwide. Eventually, we will have results of studies conducted over longer periods with presumably more definitive findings. But for now, the evidence supports the theory that better education and greater economic well-being enhance life expectancy and reduce the risk of late-life dementias in people who survive to old age. The results also suggest that controlling vascular and other risk factors during midlife and early old age has unexpected benefits. That is, individual risk-factor control may provide substantial public health benefits if it leads to lower rates of late-life dementias.

Read more at the New England Journal of Medicine.

Which twin is the heavy smoker?

We know that smoking is bad for you, and that it ages you prematurely. Now, a new study provides photographic evidence for this claim.

Scientists gathered health and lifestyle information on 79 pairs of identical adult twins who fit into one of three groups: a pair in which one was a smoker and the other had never smoked; a pair in which both were smokers; or a pair in which both were smokers but with at least a five-year difference in the duration of their smoking habit. The researchers photographed them and had independent judges rate the pictures side-by-side for wrinkles, crow’s feet, jowls, bags under the eyes, creases around the nose, lines around the lips and other evidence of aging skin.

The differences in some other factors that can age skin prematurely — alcohol consumption, sunscreen use and perceived stress at work — were statistically insignificant between twin pairs. But the judges’ decisions on which twin looked older coincided almost perfectly with their smoking histories.

“The purpose of this study was to offer scientific evidence that smoking changes not only longevity, but also quality of appearance,” said the senior author, Dr. Bahman Guyuron, chairman of the plastic surgery department at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. “It is harmful any way you look at it.”

Take the New York Times’ Well Quiz here.