Live Longer by Making Changes to Your Daily Diet

Changing the diet from a typical Western diet to an optimized diet that includes more legumes, whole grains and nuts, and less red and processed meat may add more than a decade to life expectancy and help you live longer, according to a new study published in PLOS Medicine. Not only for young adults but also for older people such dietary changes provide smaller but still substantial gains to life expectancy.

Food is the basis for health and dietary risk factors are estimated to cause 11 million deaths and 255 million disability-adjusted life-years annually worldwide.

In the new study, researchers used existing data from the Global Burden of Diseases study to build a model that provides the instant estimation of the effect on life expectancy (LE) of a range of dietary changes.

The model is now available as a publicly available interactive online tool called the Food4HealthyLife calculator https://food4healthylife.org

The model estimates that a long-lasting change from a typical Western diet to the optimal diet at the age of 20 would increase LE by more than a decade for women (10.7 [uncertainty interval 5.9–14.1] years) and men (13.0 [6.9–17.3] years).

The largest gain in LE years would be made by eating more legumes, whole grains, and nuts while consuming less red meat and processed meat.

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Even such dietary changes at the age of 60 would still increase LE by 8years for women and 8.8years for men, and 80-year-olds would gain 3.4 years.

“Understanding the relative health potential of different food groups could enable people to make feasible and significant health gains,” says Dr. Danine Fruge, ABFP, the medical director at the Pritikin Longevity Center.

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Research until now has shown that health benefits associated with separate food groups or specific diet patterns but information on the health impact of other diet changes is limited. This new model methodology has bridged this gap.

The Food4HealthyLife calculator could also be a useful tool for clinicians, policymakers, and laypeople to understand the impact of dietary choices.

In modern culture, aged people often feel that they deserve the opportunity to let down their guard and eat anything they want.

However, the evidence suggests the contrary that it is more important to supply the aging body the nutrition it needs to enjoy the best health.

Young people also find it challenging to appreciate the importance of nutrition since they have great resilience after poor dietary habits.

It is never too early or too late for anyone motivated to make simple nutritional changes that have powerful and life-changing effects on health.

Tips for switching to a plant-based diet

• Eat more food derived from plants
• Start to swap animal for plant protein
• Having at least five colors every day can help achieve a diet that’s more focused on fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds.
• Choose unsaturated oils such as soybean, corn, safflower, canola, olive, and sunflower oil.

Our dietary changes have a dramatic effect on whether we develop the disease, reverse disease, and our longevity. Even Hippocrates noted, ‘Let food be our medicine, let medicine be our food’.

References:

1. National Center for Health Statistics - (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm)
2. A plant-based diet is a powerful way to achieve good health. - (https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/plant-based-diets)
3. Plant Based Diet - (https://www.nutritionscience.in/)

Source-Medindia