Ask Dr. J

by Jim Cross, ND, LAc

The Magic of Anti-Aging Information

Many of my patients are alarmed at how their appearance is changing to make them look years older than they really are. They ask me what can they do to “slow the onslaught.” The simplistic answer lies in one word: mindfulness! Unfortunately, most Americans are not looking to make the serious changes needed to age gracefully, as you will see with Dr. Johan Hultin below.

To me, effective aging techniques require the following:

1. Effectively control cortisol; or, don’t let the stresses of life get the better of you.

2. Achieve optimal sleep consistently.

3. Move your body like Europeans do; don’t overuse your body like Americans do in fitness clubs.

4. Choose wisely, as the old knight said in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy is attempting to choose Christ’s chalice. Jesus was a carpenter and there was only one wooden chalice. Similarly, don’t choose a place to live where it’s severely polluted or a profession that will dramatically pollute your body, as happened to many people employed in the lead industry during much of the 20th century.¹

5. Maintain a healthy spine.

6. Make sure your emunctories (kidneys, liver, large intestine, etc.) are operating efficiently.

7. Eat photon food, not too much, according to your genes. I have written before about these words, which I have adapted from Michael Pollan. I want to focus on the “not too much” part today for this column.

I would first like to offer up an example of someone who figured out 50 years ago that calorie restriction could be an incredible anti-aging tool. Johan Hultin was born in Sweden in 1925. He came to the US in his early 20s as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, researching the 1918–1919 plague that killed some 50 to 200 million people worldwide. He traveled to Brevig Mission, Alaska, where 72 of the 80 native Inuit had died during the epidemic. The bodies he found had unfrozen, so there was no usable virus. This was fortuitous, as there wasn’t the technology yet to analyze the base sequence of the virus. Plus, Johan thought that he would have gotten a “big head” and not progressed as far as he could have as a human being if the discovery then had made him famous. He came back and graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.²

Fast-forward to 1997, when Dr. Hultin learned of the work of a government scientist, Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, who was attempting to map the 1918 virus using minute specimens collected in 1918 and embedded in wax. Hultin wrote a cordial, stupefying letter: Would Taubenberger be interested in tissue if Hultin could dig it up? Stunned, Taubenberger said yes. Johan set out alone for Alaska a week later on his own dime because he was hiking somewhere out of the country that week and needed to wait one week before he could fly to Alaska.

Long story short, Dr. Hultin returned to Brevig, where the matriarch of the village remembered him from her youth. She gave him two young males to help him dig in the graveyard, where he found one obese Inuit who hadn’t unfrozen, whom he named Lucy. He removed three samples from her lungs and sent one via UPS, one FedEx, and one USPS. Remarkably, the virus was still intact which Taubenberger used to map the base sequence.³

At the end of the article in which I read the above, it talked about how approximately 50 years ago Dr. Hultin had cut his calories in half and almost completely removed wheat from his diet and had emphasized protein and fat. He had looked into eating according to blood type way before Dr. Peter D’Adamo. He then used the rudimentary lab testing available to him at the time and found no changes in red blood cell count, hemoglobin, hematocrit, and so on. with his calorie reduction.⁴

I was extremely intrigued by this article and also extremely lucky to have found a phone number. I looked in the San Francisco phone directory, and there was Johan’s number. I called the number and left a message. One week later, a very thick Swedish/English accent wanted to know “vhat I vant vith him”! We talked and he came to a pathophysiology class that I was teaching to talk about his adventure. We hit it off and began meeting monthly at O’Reilly’s Irish Pub & Restaurant in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. Johan would order corned beef and cabbage and tell them not to bring the bread, which they would always do. That was good for me, as their Irish soda bread was outstanding.

He was 77 at the time. His grip would make Michael Jordan wince. He also walked around the hilly part of San Francisco for 5 miles every day. I went with him one day on his daily trek. I was astounded. Very few 20- to 30-year-olds could keep up with him! Basically, here was a living, breathing example of the long-term benefits of calorie restriction and eating according to your genetic type. We continued our monthly outings for several more years until I stopped teaching in San Francisco. Granted, this is one person but let’s look at other evidence of calorie restriction leading to successful aging.

First off, can you trim calories and still have your patients be satisfied with eating fewer calories? It seems that this is possible if you replace typical American food with low-glycemic-load/high-phytonutrient food choices or foods that have a low energy density. Unrefined foods with a low energy density will induce a feeling of fullness at a lower caloric intake.⁵ This type of food contains a large amount of bulk per calorie. Kale or turnip greens are bulky, packed with nutrients, but low in calories.⁶ Basically you are having them eat food that has a much lower impact on their insulin and blood sugar levels, and that is colorful or containing abundant amounts of phytonutrients.

A low-energy-density diet decreases appetite by delaying gastric emptying time. Refined sugar in the diet stimulates appetite. Persons eating refined and processed foods have been shown to consume 25% more calories than people on a low-energy-density diet.⁷

So now, where is there evidence of long-term calorie restriction’s leading to an increased life expectancy? It appears this is the case on the Japanese islands of Okinawa. The islands of Okinawa, a lush archipelago southwest of the main island of Japan, are home to the largest per capita and healthiest population of centenarians on earth. The Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare has been conducting large-scale and extremely accurate nutritional surveys yearly since 1946.⁸ Legal birth certificates have been kept in Japan since 1872, so the number of centenarians is very reliably calculated. Today, Okinawa appears to have the highest number of centenarians per 100,000 people at 38.⁹ The US has more overall centenarians due to a larger population but only 22 centenarians per 100,000 people.¹⁰

Specifically, Okinawans have:

• more people over 100 years old per 100,000 population than anywhere else in the world;

• the lowest death rates from cancer, heart disease, and stroke, the top three killers in the US;

• the highest life expectancy for males and females over 65; females, in particular, have the highest life expectancy in all age groups.¹¹

In the US, we average approximately 3770 calories/day.¹² In Japan it’s 2810/day.¹³ On Okinawa, it’s 20% less than Japan, only 2248 calories/day. They must not be eating at the fast-food restaurants at the military bases on Okinawa! On Okinawa they practice hara hachi bu, which translates literally into “80% full.”¹⁴ Unfortunately, the stretch receptors in our stomachs are a tad slow to signal their fullness to our brains. As a result, it takes about 20 minutes for our stomachs to signal the brain that there’s no need for more food. Hara hachi bu gives the brain a chance to catch up before the calories spill over!

The Okinawan food culture is the product of cultural synthesis with a heavy influence from Chinese food culture, trade with other countries in South East Asia, and the Pacific Islands, and also a strong Japanese influence. The locally grown satsuma sweet potato provides the largest part of the energy intake. Salient features of the Okinawa diet include:

1. a calorie-restricted diet, only 2248 calories/day as I listed above. Their diet consistently averages no more than 1 calorie per gram of food. Also, the average Okinawan BMI averages only 20.2. An antioxidant-rich diet that contains mainly local green, orange, and yellow vegetables such as the satsuma sweet potato and local fruits, roots, and tubers. All of these are rich sources of beta-carotene, flavonoid and polyphenolic compounds, and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, and zinc.

3. A diet low in sugar, with only 25% of the sugar and 75% of the grains of the average Japanese diet.

4. A primarily vegetarian and seafood-rich diet that includes a relatively small amount of fish and more fermented soy, tofu, low-calorie vegetables, seaweed, and other legumes. Almost no meat, eggs, or dairy products are consumed. Fish provides an excellent source of the omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA. Soy is an excellent source of protein, plant sterols, antioxidant tannins, and soluble dietary fiber. The local vegetables, fruits, roots, and tubers contain phytonutrients that offer substantial protection against heart disease, stroke, and various cancers, which are extremely rare on Okinawa.¹⁵

The concept that food is medicine is also an intrinsic part of Okinawan culture.¹⁶ This principle was gleaned from Chinese herbal medicine. Food-centered and ancestral festivities provide a means of keeping this concept of food as medicine continually integrated into Okinawan society.¹⁷ Seaweed and tofu are indispensable ingredients in festival menus and are used every day in Okinawan food culture and intimately linked with an enduring belief in their highly developed social structure and network.

Much has been written about the Okinawan diet. Since the Okinawans live such long and healthy lives, we must need to imitate them. In The Okinawa Diet Plan, by Bradley Wilcox, MD; D. Craig Wilcox, MD; and Makoto Suzuke, MD, they have divided food items into four categories based on caloric density:

1.

The featherweight foods

: Food items that provide less than or equal to 0.8 calories per gram belong to this category: citrus fruits such as orange, low-calorie vegetables such as spinach, cucumber, etc. One can eat freely many servings per day without major concern.

2.

The lightweight foods

: Food items with a caloric density from 0.8 to 1.5 calories per gram fall in this category. Certain fruits such as banana and vegetables such as satsuma sweet potato are examples in this category. One should consume these in moderation.

3.

The middleweight foods

: Food items having a caloric density from 1.5 to 3.0 calories per gram are included under this category, such as cereals, legume products, fish, and lean meat. It is advised that one should eat only while carefully monitoring portion size.

4.

The heavyweight foods

: Food items which provide 3 to 9 calories per gram belong in this category. Many oils and fats, nuts, oil seeds, and red meat fall in this category, which one should eat only sparingly.¹⁸

These categories catalog the food in a way that I had never seen before. I like the terms that the authors used and the way the categories were selected. Quite ingenious!

Elders on the island also claim that some of the centenarians still have active sex lives, which unfortunately hasn’t been independently verified. There are, though, some Super Seniors who clearly are a cut above most seniors the world over. Ninety-six-year-old martial arts expert Seikichi Uehara defeated a 30-year-old ex-champion boxer several years ago. After the match, Seikichi was quoted as saying that his opponent had not yet matured enough to overpower him! Nabj Kinjo became a local legend when, at 105, she hunted down and killed a poisonous snake that invaded her home with a fly swatter!¹⁹

My last example will be the Italian Luigi Cornaro. He was a Renaissance nobleman who was born with a delicate constitution unfortunately paired with a fiery, choleric temperament. Luigi left his university studies behind and threw himself into the wild, decadent life of Padua’s café society. After years of indulging in excesses of every sort, his health began to crumble, and by age 37 he was dangerously ill. Finally, almost at death’s door, he listened to one last doctor who forced him to adopt a dietary restricted regimen of approximately 1500 calories/day. He wrote a famous biography, The Art of Long Living, about his gastronomically successful experience which allowed him to live to the ripe old age of 102.

What was unique about Luigi was that he believed that only each person can be a perfect physician for oneself alone. This means that a good deal of experimentation and keen observation will be each person’s responsibility. In Luigi’s case, he learned that foods he had enjoyed, such as cold, dry wines, melons and other fruit, raw vegetable salads, fish, pork, tarts, vegetable soups, and pastries all harmed him. On the other hand, egg yolks, veal, kidney, mutton, and all sorts of fowl were beneficial, as were new wine (very light wine less than a year old), meat broths, and bread. We, our patients, and people in general need to learn that, in selecting optimal food ingestion, it really is only about you and what makes your metabolism hum optimally!²⁰ South Beach, Florida, might be a nice place to visit in winter but not necessarily a good diet for many people. 

Hopefully, you earn your long life as the people in Okinawa do by perfecting the amount of food that you eat and the mindful food choices that you make. In addition, don’t make the choice that most people do with their lives as expressed in this timely T.S. Elliot quote: “I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.”²¹

Notes

1. Deceit and Denial by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner

2. Fernandez E. The virus detective: Dr. John Hultin has found evidence of the 1918 flu epidemic that had eluded experts for decades [online article]. SFGATE. February 17, 2002. http://www.sfgate.com/magazine/article/The-Virus-detective-Dr-John-Hultin-found-2872017.php.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Leveille PJ et al. Dietary restriction retards age-related loss of gamma crystallins in the mouse lens. Science. 1984;224:1247–1249.

6. Drewnowski A. The Nutrient Rich Foods Index helps to identify healthy, affordable foods. Am J Clin Nutr.

    

   April 2010;91(4):1095S–1101S.

7. Chen LH, Saxon-Kelley DM, Snyder DL. Effect of diet restriction on some biochemical parameters related to aging in mice. J Nutr. 1983;113(5):944–950.

8. Ingram DK et al. Dietary restriction benefits learning and motor performance of aged mice. J Gerontol. 1987;42:78–81.

9. Goodman S. Geographical factors influencing living to 100 [online article]. TheCentenarian. http://www.thecentenarian.co.uk/geographical-factors-influencing-living-to-one-hundred.html.

10. Stepler R. World’s centenarian population projected to grow eightfold by 2050 [online article]. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/21/worlds-centenarian-population-projected-to-grow-eightfold-by-2050.

11. Basaraba S. Blue Zones: Japanese longevity & healthy aging [online article]. Verywell. https://www.verywell.com/the-okinawans-key-to-healthy-aging-2223603

12. Peppers M. Daily calorie intake of countries across the world revealed… and (surprise) the U.S. tops the list at 3,770 [online article]. Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2722815/Daily-calorie-intake-countries-world-revealed-surprise-U-S-tops-list-3-770.html.

13. Daily calorie intake per capita [web page]. ChartsBin. http://chartsbin.com/view/1150

14. Huber L. Eat to live longer: nutrition secrets of Okinawa [online article]. Okinawa-diet.com http://www.okinawa-diet.com/news/20060401_fitness.html

15. Okinawa diet [online article]. www.nutrition-and-you.com. http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/okinawa-diet.html.

16. Sho H, ed. An interview on Okinawan diet, Complete Japanese food standard, Volume 47. Naha: Nosangyoson Cultural Association; 1988

17. Sho H. History and characteristics of Okinawan longevity food. Asia Pacific J Clin Nutr. 2001;10(2):159–164.

18. Wilcox B, Wilcox DC, Suzuke M. Okinawa Diet Plan. Harmony; 2005.

19. Okinawa Island is “the healthiest place on earth” [blog post]. March 26, 2012. Zazenlife.com. http://zazenlife.com/2012/03/26/okinawa-island-is-the-healthiest-place-on-earth.

20. Czapp K. Art of Living Long by Luigi Cornaro [review]. Wise Traditions. Spring 2011. Available at http://www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/the-art-of-living-long-by-luigi-cornaro.

21. T.S. Eliot quotes [web page]. BrainyQuote. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/tseliot103921.html.