Here’s proof you CAN EATto BEAT ageing

ALL this week in the Daily Mail — as part of our Good Health for Life series — we will be sharing advice by leading experts about how to stay healthier for longer, to help ensure you stay in the best shape possible, well into your later years. From tips to protect your memory, to eating right to support an older body and exercises that will help keep you supple and strong, we will show you the surest ways to fight the effects of time. In today’s pullout, we reveal how changing your diet and fasting for a few days each month can protect you from diseases associated with old age, based on a book called The Longevity Diet, by ageing expert Professor Valter Longo. He is an award-winning researcher, gerontologist, biological science professor and director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California in the U.S.

THeRe’S plenty of truth in the saying: ‘You are what you eat.’ The science is now unequivocal — food can determine how you look and function, whether you sleep well at night, how your brain operates, whether you will stay thin or gain weight, even whether your body is shaped more like an apple or a pear.

But research by Professor Valter Longo at the University of Southern California in the U.S. has also shown that there is another key element of our diet that can transform our health, our risk of disease, even the rate at which we age: Fasting.

We know how important it is to eliminate or minimise the consumption of food that will make your life shorter and sicker, and to increase the consumption of nutrients that will make your life longer and healthier. But that is not enough.

He is convinced that a short period of fasting two or three times a year can be powerfully rejuvenating — and well worth incorporating into your life.

The only problem is, proper fasting — drinking only water for a few days — is tough and can cause side-effects.

So in addition to discovering potent regenerating and rejuvenating effects of fasting, he has developed and rigorously tested what is known as the ‘fasting mimicking diet’.

This plan is low in protein and sugar, but rich in healthy fats; and provides enough calories, vitamins, minerals, and essential nutrients that mean it doesn’t necessarily require medical supervision.

It is a five-day plan based on

800 calories a day split between 400 calories of complex carbohydrates (mainly vegetables) and 400 calories of healthy fats (nuts, oil and seeds), which you can incorporate intermittently into your life. He has tested the fasting mimicking diet on himself, on patients as part of clinical trials and also monitored thousands of patients with cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases to fully understand the association between the consumption of certain foods and illness.

These studies have shown it to be more effective and feasible than full fasting, particularly when strategically incorporated as part of the so-called Longevity Diet, which brings together robust research and the eating habits of the world’s longest living people.

According to these studies, says Professor Longo, a precise Longevity Diet (which is described on the next page) accompanied by periodic fasting can extend the healthy lifespan.

This is thought to be the optimal diet plan for maintaining a healthy weight and waist measurement, too.

And that’s really important because too much abdominal fat is associated with increased diabetes, elevated blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease.

Studies have suggested that having a waist circumference of more than 40 inches in men and 35 inches in women doubles the

risk of premature death, compared with having a waist circumference of less than 33inches in men and 27 inches in women.

THE BENEFITS OF FASTING

Fasting forms a strong part of our history and evolution and is one of the most powerful interventions we can make to promote beneficial changes to our health if used correctly, according to Professor Longo.

short periods without food have been shown to have a profoundly beneficial effect, reducing the risk factors for many diseases because fasting appears to awaken a highly coordinated response that is already built into the body, but that has fallen dormant after many generations that never seem to stop eating.

Fasting helps minimise disease and maximise a healthy lifespan because it acts on the ability of the body to regenerate and rejuvenate itself.

But studies by Professor Longo and his team have shown that you can glean the same incredibly beneficial effects without having to go without food completely.

the carefully controlled balance of nutrients on his fasting mimicking diet keeps you healthy and functioning, while your body goes through all the health-giving checks and processes it would on a complete fast.

in this way, he has measured how a fasting mimicking diet can effectively ‘treat’ the ageing process and help promote longevity through a number of important processes:

it switches cells throughout the body to a protected ‘anti-ageing mode’ — an effect which endures beyond the fast.

it Promotes a natural reset programme whereby damaged cells and cell components are cleared out and replaced with fully functional newly generated ones.

it shiFts the body into an abdominal fat-burning mode, which continues after returning to a normal diet (probably through a process which modifies proteins which bind to our Dna).

indeed, a particular study by Professor Longo of 100 people yielded impressive results. it found that adopting a fasting mimicking diet for five days a month over a period of three months led to weight loss of more than 8lb (most of it abdominal fat), and reduced blood pressure, cholesterol, cancer risk and blood fats — as well as more controlled blood sugar levels (which returned to normal in those with borderline type 2 diabetes).

additionally, many people who try the fasting mimicking diet report that it generates glowing younger looking skin, stronger mental focus and an ability to resist bingeing (many of the people in their studies reported reduced consumption of sugar and naturally cutting back on alcohol and desserts, for example).

the studies suggest it is a safe and potent way to reverse many age-related and diet-related problems by rejuvenating cells, systems, and organs in a natural way.

CAN I EAT WHAT I LIKE WHEN NOT FASTING?

there are clearly great lifeextending health benefits to be had from short periods of fasting, but you can maximise the effects by incorporating a regular fast into a longer term healthier way of eating, says Professor Longo.

he has pooled many years of research to come up with an eating protocol that puts periodical fasting as just one of the eight important tenets of healthy eating to form what he calls his ‘Longevity Diet’.

it incorporates all the most important dietary elements proven to help extend your life (see panel on the right).

the dietary recommendations he makes are based not on opinion, but on rigorous science. Because, he says, in order to understand how people can live long, healthy lives, we need to combine scientific, epidemiological, and clinical studies but also investigate the actual populations that age successfully. it would be far too simplistic to suggest that one key element — such as taking high doses of vitamin c — could extend a healthy human lifespan. that’s like trying to improve a mozart symphony by increasing the number of cello players.

the cello might be a beautiful instrument, but to improve a mozart symphony, you need to be a better composer than mozart. adding cellos alone won’t do it, says Professor Longo.

our bodies are much more complex than a mozart symphony. we cannot expect a simple supplement to make something that’s almost perfect even better, so we cannot expect that we will live healthier and longer lives just by adding or taking away a single component to our diet. one of Professor Longo’s key recommendations is of a fundamentally vegan or pescatarian diet.

he urges us to choose vegetables over meat, and add a little fish into the mix occasionally.

this makes the diet intentionally lower in protein than many other diet plans — by design.

instead, the Longevity Diet puts a big emphasis on eating more not less, but by consuming vegetables and healthy fats with complex carbohydrates (vegetables, legumes and wholemeal grains), and a return, as much as possible, to enjoying the foods of our ancestors.

this doesn’t just address the health issues associated with huge populations now struggling to digest the toxic components of a typical western diet.

even so-called health foods can be more harmful than helpful to people whose ancestors never consumed them. Quinoa, historically cally consumed in certain South American regions for instance, might be perfectly digestible for the great majority of people around the world.

But for some, it could lead to allergies, intolerances, and even autoimmune diseases if your body has not adapted to tolerate it.

That's why he recommends finding out where your grand-parents came from and what foods were common — and uncommon — in those places and identity