Super Antioxidants

Archive for the ‘Super Antioxidant Foods’ Category

The secret to longevity is eating antioxidant rich foods and supplements. So imagine You were told you could live 5.1% longer? Further let’s say I told you it had been as simple as swallowing a couple of gulps of water? Might that get your interest? Well, research conducted recently offers some stunning evidence that living longer could be just as simple as that.

The study was published in the June 2009 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The researchers found the effects of supplementation with a multivitamin on telomere length.

A telomere is the disposable area of repetitive DNA at the end of the chromosomes. Although telomeres hold DNA, the DNA they contain isn’t important to cell function. Here is the reason it’s important.

Once our cells divide the strands of DNA split up to create two new cells, the very ends of the chromosomes where the telomeres are, are lost in the process. This is a normal side effect of cell division. Since the telomeres aren’t crucial to cell function, their shortening does not matter. If they were not there, then each time our cells divided, we would lose critical genetic material and before long would come to the end of life. But being there, our cells can regularly divide without ever dropping any of our genetic code.

But there’s a small obstacle. If the telomeres become shortened each time a cell divides, then what happens when they shorten to the point that they are no longer able to protect the chromosomes?

Whenever the cells divide and the telomeres shorten, an enzyme starts to restore it. The enzyme, telomerase, will cause the telomere to elongate back to their initial length in time for another division. So as long as these enzymes can still rejuvenate our telomeres, we should be in a position to live for a very long time.

We now have the know-how to take a blood sample, separate the white blood cells from it, and measure the length of the telomeres. Naturally, the longer the telomeres are, the better your telomerase enzymes will work. The better the enzymes perform, the better off you are going to be — and the longer you will live. This is where the study quoted above comes into play.

The investigators wanted to check to see if taking multivitamin regularly causes longer telomeres in females. So they checked 586 women between the ages of 35- 74. They evaluated how frequently they took a multivitamin as well as what types of foods they ate. They measured the length of their telomeres. Here’s what they found.

Compared with nonusers, the relative telomere length was an average of 5. 1% longer among everyday multivitamin users. But that’s not all.

When they analyzed diet factors, they found that the women who had the highest intake of foods containing vitamins C and E, which are powerful antioxidants, also had longer telomeres. Women who had the longest telomeres were the women who had the highest intake of the antioxidant rich foods plus took a multivitamin. But in the women who didn’t take a multivitamin, the intake of the antioxidant rich foods also resulted in increased telomere length. Those with the shortest telomere length were the women who did not take a multivitamin, and who ate the least amount of foods filled with vitamin C and E.

Why the difference? I believe it’s because good multivitamins contain high amounts of itamin B12 and vitamin b folic acid. These important B vitamins are necessary for a molecular bodily process called methylation. And it’s through the process of methylation that the telomerase enzymes are able to repair and re-lengthen the telomeres.

So don’t forget to take a good only multivitamin. Recent results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that 35% of the U. S. adult population regularly consumes a multivitamin.