Older Bolder Life

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calorie restriction

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Older Bolder Links, Reads, Podcasts, Recipes and More 16 March 2022

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Inquiring Minds Want to Know is Back

After a several month absence posting links, reads, podcasts, recipes and more, we’re back this week with a pretty damned eclectic list of things I’ve been reading and studying the past several months.

There’s a very interesting story behind the pause in posting here on the Older Bolder Life that I’ll share over the next few weeks; we’ve been busier than ever before in terms of our mission to promote and teach tools, concepts, and practical actions to optimize health for those of us over 30 during the pause.

Suffice it to say for now that simply asking hard questions during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic – questions directed toward many of my (former) colleagues in traditional / conventional medicine and related fields – invoked some fascinating and very unexpected reactions and what has been at times even extreme pushback.

It’s a stunning story in some respects and we’re deliberating the best way to tell the tale without being put on big Pharma’s hit list. More to come.

More Shameless Plugs for Exercise Regardless of Your Age

Surprising benefits from playing Pickleball.

Traditional medicine may be coming around on minimalist footwear.

Sisson on simple balance drills and why you should be doing them consistently.

Power walk for your brain health.

More steps, longer life.

Here’s the Lancet reference for the article above.

High intensity exercise preserves bone health better than Pilates in postmenopausal women.

Digging a little deeper on improved brain health from late life physical activity.

An Eclectic Collection of Nutrition and Diet Data

Why I continue to change my diet. A great testament to dropping dietary rigidity for customized nutritional plans.

Olive oil is still a superfood.

More dietary fiber = less dementia risk?

How caffeine plays a role in heart disease risk reduction.

Coffee and tea might lower risk of stroke and dementia.

Does that one extra drink a day matter? Yep, it most likely does.

A major regional health care organization “discovers” that IF reduces inflammation.

Another plug for overall calorie restriction.

Brown adipose tissue reduces insulin resistance.

COVID News You’re Not Hearing in the Mainstream Media

Experts in the UK ask why is infection acquired immunity in COVID-19 being ignored.

An impressive look at natural immunity in COVID-19 and reinfection rates.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Older Bolder Links, Reads, Recipes, and More 21 September 2019

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The panacea of human aging: impacts of calorie restriction and exercise – a very interesting perspective with some profound implications that should be easily attainable for the masses.

An MCT-based (20 g of MCTs) ketogenic “formula” improved cognition in a small group of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s memory loss improved with TEMT – transcranial electromagnetic treatment.

Commentary on the importance of birth year for the incidence of dementia.

In Britain, people over 55 are far happier than those under 35.

Sure seems to be a flurry of commentary defending statins of late – here’s one noting that despite statin-related myalgia, statin users didn’t have significant impacts in aerobic capacity or maximal fat oxidation. I will still venture the myalgia impacted group was less active overall due to their pain levels…

A peek behind the medical policy and funding curtain: nearly 2/3’s of the costs of managing cervical radiculopathy prior to surgery are related to diagnostic testing. Impressive, and a perfect example of how pricing/costs of medical intervention in America simply isn’t sustainable…

A layman’s look at why more men under 40 are having MIs.

A stunning contrast in American death rates, even if there’s some educated guesswork involved.

If you’re overweight, it’s more likely your dog will be too.

There’s been a bit of a flurry over discovery of this Hungarian hominid pelvis – here’s an example from American news.

Food, Glorious Food

Food is more than the sum of its parts. (Pithy, pointed, and true.)

Vid to watch: Low carb diets and mortality in NHANES.

Our Recipes from the Week

Slow roasted gochujang chicken thighs and more
Charred scallion dressing
Garlic bomb cauliflower rice

Nutritional Ketosis Science Thursday: NK and Mitohormesis

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A few weeks ago I posted a link to this article – Nutritional Ketosis and Mitohormesis: Potential Implications for Mitochondrial Function and Human Health – from none other than Jeff Volek (yep, one of the scientific heavy-weights in the ketosis world), VJ Miller, and FA Villamena.

[Citation: Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism. 2018; 2018: 5157645]

IMHO, for those interested in digging a bit deeper into a science behind why nutritional ketosis (NK) provides the hosts of benefits it does, this will go down as one of the landmark articles detailing in particular NK’s impact at the mitochondrial level.

Why does that matter? From the abstract (cited above) –

The free radical theory of aging proposes that reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced accumulation of damage to cellular macromolecules is a primary driving force of aging and a major determinant of lifespan. Although this theory is one of the most popular explanations for the cause of aging, several experimental rodent models of antioxidant manipulation have failed to affect lifespan. Moreover, antioxidant supplementation clinical trials have been largely disappointing. The mitochondrial theory of aging specifies more particularly that mitochondria are both the primary sources of ROS and the primary targets of ROS damage. In addition to effects on lifespan and aging, mitochondrial ROS have been shown to play a central role in healthspan of many vital organ systems. In this article we review the evidence supporting the role of mitochondrial oxidative stress, mitochondrial damage and dysfunction in aging and healthspan, including cardiac aging, age-dependent cardiovascular diseases, skeletal muscle aging, neurodegenerative diseases, insulin resistance and diabetes as well as age-related cancers…

They go on to discuss the roll that reactive oxygen species (ROS) play in tissue/cellular damage (one of the principal driving forces of aging), the ‘built-in’ systems designed to mitigate ROS damage, and the lackluster results in large scale trials of antioxidants with regards to mortality and morbidity, with a possible exception being Alzheimer’s disease.

They focus a large part of discussion on the mitochondrial free radical theory of aging, which (as complex as it is) is discussed in detail, leading to presentation of the key concept of mitochondrial signaling and mitohormesis –

Apart from generating detrimental oxidative damage, ROS have numerous crucial biological roles in signaling and stress response (reviewed in [33-35]). Emerging evidence suggests that oxidative stress might promote longevity and metabolic health through the concept of mitochondrial hormesis (mitohormesis). The mitohormesis theory hypothesizes that low levels of oxidative stress induced by either caloric restriction, exercise [36], or other stimuli may trigger adaptive responses that improve overall stress resistance, probably through increased endogenous antioxidant defense, which may eventually reduce chronic oxidative damage [37] and subsequently achieve lifespan extension…

The Take Away

While part of the paper details the ongoing search for and testing of pharmacologic agents which induce mitohormesis, the authors clearly reference studies and the science supporting nutritional ketosis, calorie restriction, and exercise (among others) as potential drivers of mitohormesis.

NK’s ability, when properly executed, to induce / encourage these types of adaptive changes at the cellular level is quite impressive, and should lead most to take a more serious look at using NK as an intermittent tool to improve their health.

The paper happens to be extensively referenced, and for those who want to dig deeper into NK, there are several weeks of additional reading and pondering to do…