From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Eating and Aging: A Complex Dynamic System
Date September 27, 2022 12:05 AM
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[How does what we eat affect our healthspan and longevity? The
answer is unavoidably complex, according to a new study of how normal
variations in dietary patterns affect human aging, longevity, and
overall health.]
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EATING AND AGING: A COMPLEX DYNAMIC SYSTEM  
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September 22, 2022
Columbia University
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_ How does what we eat affect our healthspan and longevity? The
answer is unavoidably complex, according to a new study of how normal
variations in dietary patterns affect human aging, longevity, and
overall health. _

Food, image by shindz (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

THE ANSWER TO A RELATIVELY CONCISE QUESTION – HOW DOES WHAT WE EAT
AFFECT HOW WE AGE — IS UNAVOIDABLY COMPLEX, ACCORDING TO A NEW
STUDY AT THE BUTLER COLUMBIA AGING CENTER AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH. 

While most analyses had been concerned with the effects of a single
nutrient on a single outcome, a conventional, unidimensional approach
to understanding the effects of diet on health and aging no longer
provides us with the full picture: healthy diet needs to be considered
based on the balance of ensembles of nutrients, rather than by
optimizing a series of nutrients one at a time.

Until now little was known about how normal variation in dietary
patterns in humans affects the aging process.

The findings are published online in the journal _BMC Biology._

“Our ability to understand the problem has been complicated by the
fact that both nutrition and the physiology of ageing are highly
complex and multidimensional, involving a high number of functional
interactions,” said Alan Cohen, PhD, associate professor of
environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School.

“This study therefore provides further support to the importance of
looking beyond ‘a single nutrient at a time’ as the one size fits
all response to the age-old question of how to live a long and healthy
life.”

Cohen also points that the results are also concordant with numerous
studies highlighting the need for increased protein intake in older
people, in particular, to offset sarcopenia and decreased physical
performance associated with aging.

Using multidimensional modelling techniques to test the effects of
nutrient intake on physiological dysregulation in older adults, the
researchers identified key patterns of specific nutrients associated
with minimal biological aging.

“Our approach presents a roadmap for future studies to explore the
full complexity of the nutrition-aging landscape,” observed Cohen,
who is also affiliated with the Butler Columbia Aging Center.

The researchers analyzed data from 1560 older men and women, aged
67-84 years selected randomly between November 2003 and June 2005 from
the Montreal, Laval, or Sherbrooke areas in Quebec, Canada, who were
re-examined annually for 3 years and followed over four years to
assess on a large-scale how nutrient intake associates with the aging
process.

Aging and age-related loss of homeostasis (physiological
dysregulation) were quantified via the integration of blood
biomarkers. The effects of diet used the geometric framework for
nutrition, applied to macronutrients and 19 micronutrients/nutrient
subclasses.

Researchers fitted a series of eight models exploring different
nutritional predictors and adjusted for income, education level, age,
physical activity, number of comorbidities, sex, and current smoking
status.

Four broad patterns were observed:

* The optimal level of nutrient intake was dependent on the aging
metric used. Elevated protein intake improved/depressed some aging
parameters, whereas elevated carbohydrate levels improved/depressed
others;
 
* There were cases where intermediate levels of nutrients performed
well for many outcomes (i.e. arguing against a simple more/less is
better perspective);
 
* There is broad tolerance for nutrient intake patterns that don’t
deviate too much from norms (‘homeostatic plateaus’).
 
* Optimal levels of one nutrient often depend on levels of another
(e.g. vitamin E and vitamin C). Simpler analytical approaches are
insufficient to capture such associations.

The research team also developed an interactive tool
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explore how different combinations of micronutrients affect different
aspects of aging.

The results of this study are consistent with earlier experimental
work in mice showing that high-protein diets may accelerate aging
earlier in life, but are beneficial at older ages.

“These results are not experimental and will need to be validated in
other contexts. Specific findings, such as the salience of the
combination of vitamin E and vitamin C, may well not replicate in
other studies.

“But the qualitative finding that there are no simple answers to
optimal nutrition is likely to hold up: it was evident in nearly all
our analyses, from a wide variety of approaches, and is consistent
with evolutionary principles and much previous work,” said Cohen.

_Co-authors are Alistair M. Senior, David Raubenheimer, and Stephen J.
Simpson, University of Sydney; Véronique Legault and Francis B.
Lavoie, University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada; Nancy Presse and
Valérie Turcot, CIUSSS-de-l’Estrie-CHUS, Sherbrooke, Canada;
 l’Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal, Montréal,
Canada, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada; Pierrette
Gaudreau, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; David G. Le
Couteur, University of Sydney and Aging and Alzheimers Institute and
ANZAC Research Institute, Concord Hospital, New South Wales,
Australia._

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