Nutrition Archive

Here's how to maintain your current active lifestyle.

Older adults want to enjoy their independent living as long as possible. Yet this can become a challenge as people face more health issues.

"Most life changes that cause older adults to lose some or all of their independence occur either gradually or suddenly," says Dr. Jennifer Rhodes-Kropf, a primary care geriatrician at Harvard-affiliated Hebrew SeniorLife's Center Communities of Brookline, Mass. "You need to stay on top of critical areas that can jeopardize your health and lifestyle."

Research we're watching

Sticking to certain healthy lifestyle habits at midlife could add disease-free years to your life, according to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Study authors found that 50-year-old women who maintained five healthy habits — exercising at least 30 minutes a day, following a healthy diet, maintaining a body mass index in the normal range, having no more than one serving of alcohol a day, and not smoking — lived on average 10.7 more years free of diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, compared with initially healthy women who practiced none of those habits at age 50. Their findings, published online January 8 by BMJ, were based on 34 years of data from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which involved more than 73,000 women and some 38,000 men.

Image: © kitzcorner/Getty Images

On call

Q. More and more nutrition advice seems to be anti-sugar these days. So are artificial sweeteners a good alternative, especially when it comes to weight loss?

A. Many people consume artificial sweeteners, which include acesulfame, aspartame, neotame, saccharin, stevia plant extract, and sucralose, because they want to lose weight, avoid the "empty" (non-nutritious) calories of sugar, or avoid weight gain. Replacing concentrated sugar with products that have few, if any, calories should tilt energy balance in favor of weight loss. Some short-term studies suggest that artificial sweeteners may have that effect.

Among all the grains, oats appear to be the most effective when it comes to lowering cholesterol. In fact, back in 1997, oatmeal was granted the first food-specific health claim permission by the FDA, based on research showing that soluble fiber from oats lowers the risk of heart disease.

Soluble fiber, which dissolves in water, forms a gel in the intestines. This gel traps some of the cholesterol in your body, so it's eliminated as waste instead of entering your arteries. Some evidence also suggests that eating oats helps regulate blood sugar levels and helps you feel full.

The right kind of inflammation is essential to your body's healing system. But chronic inflammation can be a problem.

The saying "too much of a good thing" applies to much of life, but especially to inflammation.

"People think inflammation needs to be stomped out at all times, but it plays an essential role in healing and injury repair to keep your body safe and healthy," says Dr. Robert H. Shmerling, medical editor of Understanding Inflammation from Harvard Health Publishing and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Some inflammation is good. Too much is often bad. The goal is to recognize when inflammation is simply doing its job, and when it can potentially cause problems."

Learn the risks before diving into this experimental eating style.

Intermittent fasting is a popular eating strategy being studied in labs and practiced in kitchens across America. And it's more than a fad. Restricting your calories or mealtimes may have the potential for many benefits, such as weight loss and reduced risk of various diseases. We don't have much evidence, however, about intermittent fasting's effect on the health of older adults.

What is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting restricts when or how much you eat — and sometimes both. There are several approaches.

Look for whole-grain breads with the fewest ingredients possible.

It takes just four ingredients to create bread: flour, yeast, water, and salt. After a little kneading and some time in the oven, they transform into a hearty dietary staple that can add texture to your breakfast or structure to your sandwich. But the type of flour, plus additional ingredients, can make or break bread's nutritional value.

What makes bread healthy?

Healthy bread starts with flour that comes from whole grains, such as whole wheat, oats, brown rice, rye, or barley.

News briefs

As we've reported before, eating or drinking heavily processed foods — like sugary drinks, chicken nuggets, frozen dinners, or sweetened cereals — is associated with an increased risk for weight gain, heart disease, and even early death. Now a large observational study published online Dec. 16, 2019, by JAMA Internal Medicine links the consumption of such "ultraprocessed" food to an increased risk for developing diabetes. Researchers evaluated the questionnaire responses of more than 100,000 diabetes-free people (average age about 43) over six years. People who ate the most ultraprocessed foods (about 22% of their diet) had a higher risk for developing diabetes compared with people who ate the least amount of ultraprocessed foods (about 11% of their diet). The risk for developing diabetes went up 15% for a 10-percentage-point increase in the amount of ultraprocessed food in the diet. The connection held up even after scientists accounted for known risk factors for diabetes, such as weight and physical activity. The takeaway: Skip processed foods in favor of whole foods, including lots of vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains.

Image: Jamesmcq24/Getty Images

In the journals

People with heart disease also have a higher risk of developing cancer, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions in November 2019.

Researchers evaluated data from 12,712 people from the Framingham Heart Study who did not have heart disease or cancer at the study's launch. They used a risk estimator that predicts a person's chance for getting heart disease within 10 years.

Ask the doctors

Q. I've heard a lot recently about inflammation being a health risk, but I'm not sure I really understand what it is. Can you explain?

A. When people talk about inflammation, they're actually talking about your immune system's response to a perceived injury or infection. When you're injured, this inflammation is actually a good thing. The area you injured will become red and swell as an army of beneficial white blood cells flow in to fight infection and help you heal. The same response occurs in other parts of your body when you encounter a virus or infection. But sometimes this immune response occurs when it shouldn't. It can be triggered, for example, when you are exposed to toxins, and by other causes such as chronic stress, obesity, and autoimmune disorders. In these cases, instead of moving in, healing the problem, and then returning to normal, the inflammation persists over time. It's thought that this chronic state of inflammation can lead to numerous health problems, including heart disease, arthritis, depression, Alzheimer's disease, and even cancer.