Your health depends not only on what you eat, but also on what you avoid from your diet, and researchers have identified certain foods that, when cut down from your daily diet, could help reverse signs of aging.
A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, vitamins and minerals is essential for healthy aging, but recent studies have found that every gram of added sugar can increase your biological age, even if you’re eating a healthy diet.
A study published in Jama Network Open investigated the relationship between added sugars and epigenetic aging, which assesses an individual’s aging through DNA methylation patterns. The findings revealed that reducing sugar intake can have a significant effect and potentially reverse biological aging at the cellular level.
“We knew that high levels of added sugars, perhaps more than any other dietary factor, lead to poor metabolic health and early disease. Now we know that accelerated epigenetic aging underlies this relationship, which is likely one of the many ways that excessive sugar intake limits healthy lifespan,” Elissa Epel, co-senior author of the study, said in a news release.
“Because epigenetic patterns appear to be reversible, eliminating 10 grams of added sugar per day, if continued over the long term, may have an effect similar to turning back the biological clock by 2.4 months,” said co-senior author Barbara Laraia. “Emphasis on foods rich in key nutrients and low in added sugars may be a new way to motivate people to eat healthier diets to live longer.”
The study looked at the food records of 342 black and white women in Northern California with an average age of 39. To understand their epigenetic scores, the researchers assessed the participants’ saliva samples and compared them to the food records.
The researchers also compared participants’ dietary scores to a Mediterranean diet, which is rich in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant foods and is associated with a reduced risk of chronic disease.
Finally, the researchers assessed the diets using the “Epigenetic Nutrition Index (ENI),” which measures nutrients related to antioxidant or anti-inflammatory processes, and DNA maintenance and repair. The results suggest that adherence to all diets rich in vitamins A, C, B12, E, folate, selenium, magnesium, dietary fiber, and isoflavones was associated with reduced epigenetic age. However, the strongest association was seen with the Mediterranean diet.
The researchers made a key discovery: eating foods with added sugar accelerates biological aging, even if the rest of your diet is healthy.
“The diet we investigated is consistent with existing recommendations for disease prevention and health promotion, particularly emphasizing the benefits of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients. From a lifestyle medicine perspective, it is encouraging to know that following these recommendations may help to promote a younger cellular age relative to one’s chronological age,” said Dorothy Chu, first author of the study.
