Don’t Sugarcoat it! AGE-Proof your Body

It is tempting to associate the idea of sugar with “spice and everything nice.”  But if you are truly interested in enjoying the sweet life after 50, you need to understand the downside of excess sugar. Continuous exposure to sugary foods not only puts you at risk for diabetes, it promotes a sticky situation called glycation. Glycation, a chemical reaction between sugar and protein, results in deformed and nonfunctioning molecules.  Glycated proteins produce toxic advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which generate free radicals and promote inflammation.  As the damaged proteins cross-link they make certain tissues in the body stiff and tough.  Organs such as the heart, eyes, and skin, which must be flexible in order to function well, are particularly vulnerable to glycation damage during aging.  

It’s a myth that people with diabetes suffer from high sugar diets!
The more AGEs you make, the faster you age because glucose-modified proteins are much “stickier,” adhering to blood vessels, leading to atherosclerosis, blindness, impotence, and kidney damage.   High levels of AGEs are found in people with diabetes but they are also found in those without diabetes who makes poor nutritional choices that can just as well accelerate their rate of aging.

The Biochemistry of Glycation
Glycation is known to be a significant factor in the development of age-related diseases, including atherosclerosis, heart failure, Alzheimer’s disease, complications of diabetes, cataracts, and premature aging of the skin.  AGEs develop from chronic consumption of high quantities of sugar and refined carbohydrates found in the typical American diet.  Furthermore, cooking foods at high temperatures results in a “browning” effect, where sugars and certain oxidized fats react with proteins to form even more AGEs in the food. As a result, these toxins accumulate in tissues, eventually helping to create a state of inflammation that leads to disease or early aging. The older you get, the harder it becomes for the body to remove AGEs.  There is no routine blood test to measure the AGEs levels in your blood and no medical treatment to reduce them, so the only way you can guard against excessive AGEs intake is to cook your foods in ways that don't lead to formation of these toxins.

Understanding AGE and aging
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City found that AGE levels are elevated in healthy people and higher in older people than they are in younger ones. The study divided 172 men and women by age – one group ranged in age from 18 to 45; the other ranged from 60 to 80. The researchers recorded their subjects' body weight, body fat, everything they had eaten for three days and collected blood samples to measure C-reactive protein, a marker for inflammation, and for two types of AGEs, carboxymethyllysine (CML) and methylgllyoxal (MG). The blood tests showed that people age 65 and older had AGE levels 35 percent higher than those in the younger group, and that the greater the consumption of foods high in AGEs, the higher the levels of inflammation. They also found that in some cases, AGEs levels were very high in some members of the younger group. Here, too, the higher the levels of AGEs, the higher the inflammatory markers. The study was published in the April 2007 issue of The Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.
 
Steps to minimizing Glycation
•    Avoid the "white menace" - white sugar, white flour and white fat (Crisco or "hydrogenated fat".)
•    Eat more fiber
•    Eat some protein with every meal.
•    Exercise in your target heart zone for 30 to 40 minutes at least 4 times a week
You can moderate this process by keeping blood sugar low and stable. That means eating less bread, white potatoes, crackers, chips and other snack foods, pastries, and sweetened drinks, less refined and processed foods, and by avoiding fast foods and products made with high fructose corn syrup. Instead, eat more whole grains, beans, sweet potatoes, winter squashes and other vegetables and temperate fruits such as berries, cherries, apples, and pears instead of tropical fruits such as bananas, pineapple, mango and papaya. Limit your total caloric intake to achieve a healthy body composition.  Avoid cooking foods at high temperatures.  Supplementing with carnosine, a naturally occurring nutrient in meat, may help protect the body’s proteins from glycation.  A dietician or physician specialized in preventive-aging medicine can provide individualized guidance.