I’m a scientist in a pharmaceutical company so I frequently remind people that our body is the only home we will ever live in this life.
Every other thing in life is secondary.
Period.
If we spend the same effort in our body as a primary home like our own residing home or apartment, the dividend it provides will last forever.
When we talk about our body, we have to keep in mind the key fundamentals.
Our genes are like computer hardware, we can not change them as per our desire.
Our epigenome, where many things are a part, is like software, which requires programming.
And we ourselves are the programmers of our epigenome through our activities, diet, and lifestyle.
“We ourselves are the programmers of our epigenome through our activities, diet, and lifestyle.”
Our essential key fundamental is we can increase our healthspan by improving our metabolic health.
Our good metabolic health means we have ideal blood sugar and insulin levels, blood pressure, blood lipids including triglycerides, high density lipoproteins (HDL), cholesterol, and no abdominal obesity.
Metabolic syndrome is the combination of insulin resistance, hypertension, high triglycerides, and abdominal obesity.
If our metabolic health is not good, our body foundation leaks all the time and that increases the risk of developing serious problems like heart disease, cognitive decline, dementia, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.
We become metabolically healthy if we have waist circumference less than 40 inch in men and less than 35 inches in women, systolic blood pressure less than 120 mm Hg, diastolic blood pressure less than 80 mm Hg, fasting glucose less than 100 mg/dL, HbA1c less than 5.7%, HDL cholesterol at least 40 mg/dL, total cholesterol less than 180, Lp(a) less than 30 mg/dL, ApoB vs LDL cholesterol less than 70, uric acid less than 5 mg/dL, and homocysteine 5 to 15 mcmol/L.
We have to treat these numbers as a pre-check list like before to operate any important equipment.
Remember, if our fasting triglycerides are over 100, we might have insulin resistance.
This indicates poor metabolic health.
Likewise, if the ratio of our triglycerides/HDL is above 3.5, this also indicates insulin resistance and dyslipidemia, that means higher risk for developing dementia, cardiovascular disease, and shortening healthspan.
“If our fasting triglycerides are over 100 and the ratio of our triglycerides/HDL is above 3.5, we might have insulin resistance.”
If we have insulin resistance, glucose will not enter our muscle cells to store as glycogen.
It stays in blood and increases our sugar level.
In addition to muscles, insulin travels into two other main places: fat cells and neurons for its actions.
This high glucose goes to the liver where it turns into triglycerides and packages into very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) particles.
This rise in triglycerides leads to a decrease in HDL production.
Remember, it’s all connected, our body is too complicated, it doesn’t work in one dimension, and has many moving parts together.
And another truth, every body is different, every body’s biochemistry is unique.
Each LDL particle is carried around in the blood by one particle of Apo B, Apolipoprotein B.
Apo B levels may be a more important determinant of our overall risk of atherosclerotic heart disease.
If we have many smaller LDL particles, our LDL level might be normal, but our Apo B will be high.
Comparatively, larger LDL particles thus with lower Apo B might be more protective.
The protein Apo E is involved in how our body handles cholesterol and lipids.
Specific Apo E protein types carry a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, and stroke.
Around 30 percent of us carry the Alzheimer’s gene ApoE4.
LDL particles in our blood can cross the wall of our blood vessels.
On the wall, LDL particles get oxidized and these oxidized LDL particles are taken by macrophages, white blood cells.
These are called foam cells, which die and this process continues to make a large plaque in the blood vessels.
This plaque consists of cholesterol crystals, and living and dead foam cells.
This will stiffen the wall of the blood vessels and is the main cause of high blood pressure, hypertension.
This large plaque can rupture the blood vessel wall and can cause blood to clot and that will lead to a heart attack.
Recently, US senator Lindsey Graham died due to the same reason.
Remember, plaque formation starts early in our teens but we don’t see its effects clinically until many years later.
LDL related plaques take decades to become large enough to become clinical burden.
“Plaque formation in our blood vessels starts early in our teens but we don’t see its effects clinically until many years later.”
One of the important factors to determine our biological age is the status of our telomeres.
Telomeres are the cap on our DNA like the cap on our shoe lace.
Our telomere length might give us a clue about our biological age.
Telomere length is diminished in people with chronic disease.
Nobel laureate, and author of ‘The Telomere Effect’ Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, says “due to telomere damage, the protein that our DNA codes in our body becomes altered and that causes degradation in our cellular function and aging.”
Remember, chronic stress, persistent negative thoughts, and harsh environments can accelerate telomere shortening continuously.
What are the key habits for good metabolic health?
Good diet and good lifestyle including good night sleep and regular exercise.
Remember, our diet is our fuel to run our engine, so always think before putting anything into the mouth.
We cannot outrun, out exercise, or medicate away a poor diet and a poor sleep.
This is the key that many people just ignore or don’t understand.
The good news is that we can stop or reverse metabolic syndrome through healthy lifestyle changes.
We must be the programmers of our software, the epigenome.
Our sleep, diet and exercise layout our healthspan including telomere length.
Micronutrients including specific vitamins run our body’s biochemistry smoothly.
For example, methylfolate, the active form of folic acid and methylcobalamin, the active form of vitamin B12, contribute a methyl group to an amino acid called homocysteine in our bloodstream and convert it to a harmless substance.
An elevated homocysteine level damages our inner lining of our blood vessels caused by elevated cholesterol levels.
Folate is equally important for telomere health and its maintenance.
People with Alzheimer’s disease seem to have had low vitamin B9 and B12 levels.
Homocysteine levels rise in the face of vitamin B deficiency.
Vitamin B supplement is key for weak metabolism.
Homocysteine has a direct role in the cause of dementia because it might lead to increase in oxidative stress and inflammation in the brain, leading to atrophy of some areas of the brain.
This is the hard truth of our life.
Eighty percent of us will die from cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, or a progressive neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a collection of waste products that accumulate in the brain and destroy the nerve cells.
These waste products are called beta-amyloid plaques between neurons and sticky proteins, tau, that form tangles inside the neurons.
A healthy diet, quality sleep, and exercise are the best ways to decrease brain beta-amyloid to lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Michael Greger, MD, in his book ‘How Not to Age’ says that curcumin in turmeric powder is protective for our body, improves memory and minimizes early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. It is anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer.
Half of the fat in our brain is DHA, docosahexaenoic acid, a type of omega-3 fatty acid, and the other half is AA, arachidonic acid, a great source of which is egg yolks in our diet.
“A healthy diet, quality sleep, and exercise are the best ways to decrease brain beta-amyloid to lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
Sarcopenia is a natural process of age related loss of lean muscle mass.
The best way to counteract this problem is regular strength training with a proper diet.
I’m a runner so I want to know about my basal metabolic rate (BMR) and I believe everybody should be, at least, aware about it.
The key is to know where you stand.
Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the energy we expend at rest.
The basal metabolic rate (BMR) in men can be calculated as: 66 + (6.2 X weight in pounds) + (12.7 X height in inches) – (6.76 X age).
For women: 65.1 + (4.35 X weight in pounds) + (4.7 X height in inches) – (4.7 X age).
I calculated my BMR from the above formula which is 1402.38.
This means I will burn 1402.38 calories in a day at rest.
What is yours?
Just calculate.
Soluble fiber is another essential food for good metabolic health.
It is to maintain calories and glucose.
When we eat soluble fiber, it makes a thick slime on the inside of our gut walls.
This slows our absorption of glucose, which helps our body manage a glucose load.
The reason we need resistant starch in our food is because resistant starches are soluble fibers.
These are tightly bound chains of sugar molecules that are nearly impossible for your digestive enzymes to break down to be absorbed so that they are called resistant.
These unabsorbed sugars arrive deep in our large intestine where our gut bacteria enjoy.
Gut bacteria convert these sugars into short chain saturated fats that power us and our intestine cells.
Sweet potato, turnips, parsnips, tutabagas are some examples.
Uric acid is produced during the metabolism of fructose.
Fructose is bad for our body.
Remember, glucose gives glycogen, that is how our body stores energy.
But fructose gives fatty acids and helps to increase fat in our liver.
Only our liver breaks most of the fructose that we eat.
Liver tries to get rid of extra fats.
Liver package it as VLDL, very low density lipoprotein, which is full of triglycerides.
This is the reason that fructose can cause fatty liver, insulin resistance, increase triglycerides, increase uric acid, and cardiac disease.
“Glucose gives glycogen, that is how our body stores energy, but fructose gives fatty acids and helps to increase fat in our liver.”
People who burn more glucose for energy to sustain simple activities of daily living have poor metabolic health due to mitochondrial inflexibility.
The more you exercise, the more sensitive to insulin your muscles become.
One of the key findings from research is that rice eaters have little or no heart disease because of the absence of wheat germ agglutinin, WGA, from wheat in their diet.
Steven Gundry, MD, the author of ‘Plant Paradox’ says “The more lectins we eat, the more the receptors for insulin for our muscles are filled with WGA and other lectins, and more muscle we waste.
It goes into our gut and initiates leakage of LPSs, lipopolysaccharides, into our bloodstream and incite hormone mimicry.”
WGA behaves like insulin pumping sugar into fat cells and blocking sugar into muscle cells. The result is weight gain and insulin resistance.
Remember, WGA isn’t gluten, gluten is just one form of lectin.
Gluten is found in white bread but WGA is found in bran, so basically both types of bread contain lectins in different forms.
Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans have lower heart disease rates than Americans, because their main food is rice which has no WGA.
Taro root, millet, sorghum, and yams which are main food in Africa, and they also have no WGA.
Indian white basmati rice has the most resistant starch with no WGA.
We can make this starch even more resistant by refrigerating rice after cooking, and then reheating before using it.
If you take glucosamine sulfate as a supplement, it binds to WGA and other lectins in the gut and are eliminated before entering the blood stream. It removes inflammation and pain, especially in joints due to removal of WGA.
Natural anti-inflammatory compounds like boswellia extract, high dose of fish oil and vitamin D3 are also effective.
Consider taking them if you are suffering from recurring inflammation.
Another noticeable lifestyle that we are ignoring and is leading to poor metabolic health is over consumption of meat.
Eating meat makes us as fat as eating sugar does.
Remember, red meat contains Neu5Gc, the sugar molecule linked to both cancer and heart disease.
Certain amino acids in animal proteins like methionine, leucine and isoleucine are culprits for promoting rapid aging and cancer growth.
Over consuming and then having to metabolize large amounts of protein to sugar is linked to high blood sugar levels, obesity, and a shorter lifespan.
Lectin binding sugar called Neu5Ac, is on the lining of blood vessels and the absorptive cells on the gut walls called enterocytes.
Neu5Gc looks like Neu5Ac.
When our immune system is exposed to the foreign sugar molecule Neu5Gc from red meat, we develop antibodies to the lining of our own blood vessels, which have Neu5Ac.
This makes the antibodies attach to the lining of our blood vessels, mistaking our own naturally occurring Neu5Ac for the Neu5Gc we have consumed.
Cancer cells use Neu5Gc to attract blood vessels to grow toward them.
Cancer cells also use Neu5Gc to hide from our immune cells.
The surprising thing is that human tumors have large amounts of Neu5Gc, though we don’t have genes to manufacture it.
All we get from meat.
I would like to share one important thing regarding milk that all of us drink.
Cows started to make protein casein A-1 in their milk instead of the normal casein A-2.
During digestion, casein A-1 is turned into a lectin-like protein called beta-casomorphin.
So the solution is to prioritize goat or sheep milk over cow milk if we have lectin problems.
IGF-1, insulin like growth factor-1, is an easily measured marker for aging.
Research shows that lower the IGF-1, the longer we live, and less chance of developing cancer.
To lower IGF-1, we have to lower sugar and animal protein.
Animal proteins are rich in certain amino acids like methionine, leucine, and isoleucine, they activate the cellular sensor of energy availability, mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin.
“Animal proteins are rich in certain amino acids like methionine, leucine, and isoleucine to activate mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin, which increases IGF-1 for fast aging.”
David Sinclair, PhD, professor at Harvard Medical School and author of ‘Lifespan’ says that mTOR senses energy availability and if it senses lots of energy as food, it’s time to grow and TOR stimulates cellular growth by activating IGF-1.
If mTOR senses little energy or no energy means no food, IGF-1 is lowered.
mTOR cannot be measured but its downstream messenger, IGF-1, tells cells to either grow or wait to grow.
We can manage our rate of aging by measuring our IGF-1, by consuming less sugar and less animal protein.
For a remarkably healthy long life, eat anchovies with rosemary everyday.
This is supported by the blue zones centenarians, a research done by author Dan Buttener from his book, ‘Blue Zones.’
Another key lifestyle change is regular fasting.
Fasting is good for health, humans can adapt to use ketones as a primary fuel when we are without sources of sugar from carbohydrates and proteins.
A billion and half years ago, long before humans evolved, one single eukaryotic cell swallowed up bacterial organisms that lived together interdependently as one cell.
The mitochondria that lives in our cell today are the evolved generations of these bacteria.
As a result, we have a symbiotic relationship.
Healthy mitochondria are pillars to strong metabolic health.
Dr. Dale Bredesen, MD, a leading dementia scientist from UCLA and author of ‘Ageless Brain’ says “The longer you go between meals, the more metabolic flexibility you develop in your mitochondria, especially in the neurons of your brain.” Dr. Dale Bredesen’s TedTalk ‘A precision approach to end Alzheimer’s Disease’ is worth watching.
When we stop eating, our body shifts from burning glucose to utilizing fatty acids and produces ketone bodies like beta-hydroxybutyrate that optimize mitochondrial efficiency.
Fasting triggers a metabolic switch that forces mitochondria to clean up damaged cells, reestablish their networks, and improve cellular energy production.
“During fasting , our body shifts from burning glucose to utilizing fatty acids and produces ketone bodies like beta-hydroxybutyrate that optimize mitochondrial efficiency.”
Daria Mochly-Rosen, a scientist and professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and author of “Life Machines” says “mitochondria convert food into ATP (fuel), split and fuse to repair themselves, and act as environmental sensors influencing everything from immunity to cognitive capacity in our body.”
The author of ‘Longevity Simplified’ Dr. Howard Luks, MD, has a nice summary for excellent metabolic health, “To increase longevity without chronic disease, stay lean by caloric deficit, get good night sleep, eat real food without processing, move your body often throughout the day, push and pull things for your muscles, socialize, and have a sense of purpose in life.”
Finally, I strongly recommend watching Peter Attia‘s TedTalk, author of the great book ‘Outlive’, ‘Is the obesity crisis hiding a bigger problem?’
Conclusion
We ourselves are the programmers of our epigenome through our activities, diet, and lifestyle.
If our fasting triglycerides are over 100 and the ratio of our triglycerides/HDL is above 3.5, we might have insulin resistance.
Plaque formation in our blood vessels starts early in our teens but we don’t see its effects clinically until many years later.
A healthy diet, quality sleep, and exercise are the best ways to decrease brain beta-amyloid to lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Glucose gives glycogen, that is how our body stores energy, but fructose gives fatty acids and helps to increase fat in our liver.
Animal proteins are rich in certain amino acids like methionine, leucine, and isoleucine to activate mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin, which increases IGF-1 for fast aging.
During fasting , our body shifts from burning glucose to utilizing fatty acids and produces ketone bodies like beta-hydroxybutyrate that optimize mitochondrial efficiency.
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.”
