thenutritionwatchdog.com What's in your food? Discover which "healthy" foods are harming your health and which foods protect your body by Mike Geary – Certified Nutrition Specialist and Author of The Diabetes Fix and The Truth About Testosterone
While listening to my daily health podcasts and reading articles, I was fascinated recently hearing about a particular super-centenarian (someone who lives to over 110), a woman from Spain (Maria) who lived to 117…
I’ve studied centenarians and super centenarians a lot over the years, and I’ll share what I learned about her and about other super agers who make it to 100 or even well past 100.
For one, as with almost every centenarian that I’ve studied, Maria was surrounded by people she loved, and she felt valued and deeply connected even well past 100. Having deep connections, feeling loved, and being in a community where you feel supported and feel valued are some of the most important characteristics of almost all people that are super agers.
The second most important characteristic of Maria (and almost every other centenarian I’ve studied) is that she apparently had a very positive outlook on life and very optimistic and happy. Pessimistic and angry people tend to have more health problems than optimistic and happy people.
As for exercise, I do know that Maria was very active and played with kids and dogs, but I don’t see much about her exercise habits. From what I know about most centenarians though, they usually do a lot of walking, gardening, and often racquet sports frequently too. But centenarians were typically never endurance athletes like marathoners or overly-intense workout people like cross-fitters.
Overly intense and overly long endurance training usually actually increases aging and wears down the body because it’s too much stress instead of the right amount of stress. I think some good resistance training to keep your bones and muscles strong and prevent Osteoporosis is important, and so is a lot of walking and light activity like gardening for stress reduction and heart health.
Maria also had both high LDL and high HDL… mainstream medicine considers high LDL a bad thing, but I don’t agree with that, and some studies actually show that people that live longer have higher total cholesterol and higher LDL. This makes sense because LDL is important in the body for hormones and your immune system. Artificially lowering LDL (without existing heart disease) doesn’t make sense and in my opinion harms your health.
Maria also never smoked and only drank alcohol on special occasions. Although I will say that as I’ve studied centenarians over the years, I often hear that many of them actually are light drinkers, having 1-2 drinks per day at most, but never over-doing it. One theory is that a small dose of a daily toxin like alcohol can increase your body’s natural production of internal antioxidants like glutathione to deal with that small daily dose.
Another important thing was that researchers said that Maria had a very healthy gut microbiome, and one thing about her diet really stood out…
She apparently ate yogurt 3x a day. That’s a lot of yogurt!
Yogurt is one of the healthiest forms of dairy because of the probiotic content, and it’s also easy to digest because the fermentation of yogurt (or kefir) helps partially pre-digest some of the proteins and the fermentation usually consumes most of the lactose.
Also, the dairy fat in a high quality yogurt contains significant amounts of 2 powerful healthy fats called CLA and C15, both of which have been studied for their possible relationship to lowering heart disease risks, Diabetes risks, and possibly even cancer.
Overall Maria lived a great life, and the reason she lived to 117 seems to be a combination of great genetics combined with an amazing lifestyle, positive attitude, and high quality food.
In order to live past 100 though, we need to prevent the biggest killer… and the #1 biggest cause of death is heart disease currently. With that in mind, don’t miss this important message…
Duke MD Says: “The #1 Food that Helps Prevent Heart Attacks is NOT Actually a Plant Food”
There are many powerful nutrients in plant foods such as polyphenols, flavanols, lycopene, and bioflavonoids in foods like citrus, berries, dark chocolate and more that help improve blood flow, lower blood pressure, and reduce your risk of heart attacks.
However, there’s actually ONE particular nutrient that is ONLY found in certain types of meat that is significantly more important for the strength of your heart than anything else.
If the levels of this one unique nutrient in your heart are LOW, your chances of heart problems skyrocket.
(Hint: it’s NOT omega-3 fats this time.)
This common deficiency doesn’t show up on standard blood work panels.
“Almost everyone forgets their heart is a muscle. And like any muscle… it needs protein-like nutrients to stay strong,” says Dr. Rick Cohen.
Dr. Cohen’s natural solution has helped thousands of people enjoy a healthy heart without living constantly on drugs.
And he has recently released a short video revealing what this uniquely powerful nutrient found in certain types of meat is, and how to get it.
Watch it here:
>> Dr Rick Cohen Reveals the #1 “Heart Strengthening” Nutrient Backed by 600+ Studies