The nutrient "content of the ordina...

The nutrient "content of the ordinary diet won't secure from danger your brain and other vital organs against the age-accelerating chemicals that lie hid in our air, food, and water supply" warns Robert Haas in his Eat Smart, Think Smart: to what degree to Use Nutrients and correlatives to Achieve Maximum Mental and Physical Performance (1994)

You may eat a healthful diet and have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing of regular exercise to fight aging and fend facing degenerative diseases, but without antioxidant brain-friendly nutrients, you're not protecting yourself from this environmental onslaught as effectively as possible.

But aging itself isn't the culprit

Nor are diseases, according to themselves. We are the culprits just as a great deal of as are the diets we select because we are either promoting longevity or are we are sabotaging it -- there is no middle ground

In a classic textbook from yesteryear, Nutrition in Health and Disease (1976) Helen s Mitchell, Ph.D., Sc.D., and colleagues annotation on aging and nutrition, making points that are just as valid, and important, in 1996 as they were 20 years ago:

Birth, putting out and senescence (growing old) are all part of the normal aging proces In the adult, the aging proces graduals down and the rate of this change may be further retarded; the active period of life may be enlargeed by good health practices. Thus, there are parts who, in terms of chronological age, may be considered not new but are in fact young in appearance, attitude, and/or stage of the biological aging process

True enough. In fact, in foreign regions of the world, there exist improvements known for extreme longevity, leeward Hitchcox, D.C., says in his 1996 volume Long Life Now: Strategies for Staying Alive.

"The olders in these communities stand as living testaments to our biological potential; through studying these cultures, common factors can be applied to our avow society," he adds.

The places Hitchcox points to are: the Hunza Valley in the Himalayan Mountains, northwest Pakistan (Kashmir); the Vilcabamba Valley in the Andes Mountains, southern Ecuador; the Georgian Republic in the Caucasus Mountains, former Soviet Union (between the Black and Caspian Seas).

What were the factors that were frequent to these "longevity centers"?

* Low-fat, starch-centered diet, with diet water, air, and soil emancipated of toxic chemicals.

* Active lifestyle, daily exercise, no "retirement."

* No prop on medical technology.

* The young have each expectation of living long, healthy lives; more ancients are expected to impart the wisdom of ancient ways that are grave-clothesed in secrecy and, largely, forgotten on other populations. Both groups answer accordingly.

* Extreme age.

How ancient is old? Well, Hitchcox mention one by ones that Betty Morales, after visiting Pakistan's Hunza Mountains couple times, responded this way to reported ages of 100 to 120: "It's an exaggeration to say they live to be 150 on the other hand there's no need to gild the lily. The average age is 90 when they die."

So what do the Hunzas eat?

According to Hitchcox: grains (buckwheat, millet, rice, corn, wheat, barley, rye); fruits (apricots, mulberries, grapes, oranges, apples, pears, peaches); vegetables (leafy verdant veggies, potatoes, carrots, squash, turnips, onions, cabbage, sprouts); miscellaneous: dried beans, peas, nut matured ovules garlic, fresh apricot-seed oil, dairy from goats, and a small amount of meat harvests Cooking? 80 percent of the vegetables were eaten raw (with skins); 20 percent were lightly steamed.

You may say, "Okay, this worked for the Hunzas, if it be not that I can't follow this diet!" completely true. Probably, 99 percent of America can't pursue this diet, either. Nor can we, practically speaking, live in an ecologically virgin valley, liberated from the toxins and stresse of the industrialized world.

But we can make up for it. And big time. How? from supplementing our diet with a powerful array of life-extending antioxidant nutrients, most numerous of which are sold in combination formulas at your local health cheer store. Unless, of course, you really like eating raw squash with the skin on

REFERENCES

Haas, Robert. Eat Smart, Think Smart. recently made known York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994

Hitchcox, to leeward D.C. Long Life Now: Strategies for Staying Alive. Berkeley, Calif.: Celestial Arts, 1996

McGannon, Michael, MD The Urban Warriors work of Solutions. London: Pitman Publishing, 1996

Mitchell, Helen s Ph.D., Sc.D., et al., editors. Nutrition in Health and Disease. Philadelphia, Pa: JB Lippincott, 1976

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