IN FRATERNAM MEAM: THE ANTI-AGING DIET

IN FRATERNAM MEAM

Friday, August 15, 2008

THE ANTI-AGING DIET

FIVE SUPERFOODS THAT WILL KEEP YOU LOOKING AND FEELING YOUNG.

1.) AGE-DEFYING FOOD
SPINACH
How it deeps you young. When it comes to avoiding osteoporosis, calcium gets all the praise. But another major player is vitamin K. "new studies suggest K can improve bone density and lower the risk of hip fracture", says Katherine Tucker, PhD, director of Nutritional Epidemiology at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. Leafy greens are a prime source - 1 cup of fresh spinach supplies more than one and a half times your daily requirements.
As well as safeguarding your skeleton, spinach keeps your eyes sparkling and clear. Years of exposure to sunlight can damage the center of your eye's retina, heading to muscular degeneration and blindness. But spinach is the number one source of zeaxanthin and lutein, nutrients that make up part of the retina. There, they soak up harmful light before it can do cumulative damage.
For and additional anti-aging kick, top a spinach salad with strawberries. They are rich in plant chemicals, polyphenols, which keep you quick-witted. "When we start to get older, our brain cells become like an old married couple - they don't talk to each other very much anymore". says James Joseph, PhD, director of the Neuroscience Lab at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, also at Tufts. "Polyphenols get the conversation flowing again by promoting signals between cells, encouraging them to communicate and enhancing memory.

2). AGE-DEFYING FOOD
CURRY POWDER
How it keeps you young. Curry helps maintain your mental muscle. In fact, some parts of India, where it's eaten daily, have one-fourth the U.S. rate of Alzheimer's. Curry is packed with tumeric, a spice that's rich in the antioxidant curcumin. Researchers at UCLA believe that curcumin wards off Alzheimer's by preventing the growth of amyloid plaques, sticky proteins that are toxic to brain cells. In addition, it shields us from harmful free radicals (formed when we metabolize oxygen), which attack our cells, damaging tissue and organs. Those strikes increase in frequency in the body as we get older, says Joseph. Curry prevents those assaults from happening in the brain, where they can impair thinking and memory.

3.) AGE-DEFYING FOOD
TOMATOES
How they keep you young. Don't toss your sunscreen, but filling up on tomatoes may help protect your skin, according to German researchers. Volunteers swallowed a daily shot of tomato paste mixed with olive oil or just plain olive oil for 10 weeks. after daily exposure to UV light, the tomato group had 40percent less sunburn than those who consumed only olive oil. The magic ingredient? Lycopene, which protects skin from the oxidation that results from sun damage and leads to wrinkles. Drizzling tomatoes with a little healthy fat like olive oil helps you better absorb the lycopene, as does cooking or chopping this red fruit.

4.) AGE-DEFYING FOOD
ALMONDS
How they keep you young. Almonds are packed with hard-to-get vitamin E (just one small handful delivers half your daily dose), a nutrient that keeps you agile and graceful. When researchers from several leading medical schools looked at the impact of different vitamins and minerals on speed, coordination and balance in people over age 65, the only one that made a difference was vitamin E. Volunteers with the weakest physical performance had the lowest level of vitamin whereas more agile participants had adequate amounts of the vitamin in their system. Researchers surmise this power vitamin keeps you coordinated by neutralizing those troublesome free radicals in both muscles and nervous system.

5.) AGE-DEFYING FOOD
CHOCOLATE
How it keeps you young Dark chocolate doesn't just satisfy that intense craving that so many of us have., it also lowers blood pressure. That's heart-healthy news since blood pressure typically rises as you get older, increasing your risk for heart attack and stroke. Lucky for your waistline you don't need much chocolate to benefit from its blood pressure lowering effects. German researchers recently found that just a quarter of an ounce of dark chocolate per day (the amount in one-sevent of most chocolate bars) trimmed two to three points off hypertensive patients blood pressure. The reason? Cocoa is rich is flavonoils, potent plant chemicals that encourage blood vessels to relax, keeping them youthful, supple and pliable.

(Source: FAMILY CIRCLE by: Karen Ansel, R.D.)

posted by infraternam meam @ 10:54 PM

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