Category Archives: Diet and aging

Vitamin Pills and Aging — Part II

When I recently speculated that taking vitamin pills may contribute to unhealthy choices because many people assume the pills shield them from the choices’ ill effects, I figured there was no way to support my hunch. But I was mistaken: A recent Taiwanese study demonstrated that taking multivitamins does indeed make people feel protected against [...]
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Yes, Red Wine May Hold Some Answers. Recheck Dosage.

If you’ve tuned into the resveratrol story over the past five years, you’ve probably heard that you’d need to take giant doses of the red-wine ingredient to do any good. That idea was based on mouse studies in 2006 that showed massive doses of the compound blocked bad effects of eating too much fat. A [...]
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Vitamin pills and healthy aging

The idea that taking vitamin pills can’t hurt and might do some good recently became a harder sell after two studies suggested that the pills may actually increase the risk of death. In one study, involving more than 38,000 older women, taking a daily multivitamin was found to be associated with a 2.4% higher risk [...]
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Does obesity speed up aging?

Obesity is a major risk factor for a list of diseases that seems to be getting longer every week. Recent additions include metastasizing prostate cancer and cirrhosis of the liver. Over the past few years, brain shrinkage and Alzheimer’s disease have been added, as have arthritis, various cancers, and even incontinence. Scanning the multitude of [...]
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More on Demi, Ashton and Aging

If you’re tracking developments in aging research, don’t miss the issue of National Enquirer that hit newsstands today (dated Feb. 28)—it contains a full-page spread based on the Ashton-Demi Gerontology Seminar on the Beach that graced celebrity news outlets last week. You might also want to take a look at the related piece I did [...]
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The Birth of Applied Gerontology

Gerontology, the study of aging, has long seemed a field of basic research that’s only tangentially related to the nitty-gritty world of geriatrics, the medical specialty devoted to ills of the elderly. But as gerontologists have delved deeper into the molecular roots of aging, they’ve increasingly found themselves shedding light on what gives rise to [...]
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Of meat, aging and the backyard grill

Is eating red meat hazardous to your health? If you’ve tracked recent conflicting studies on this question, you might think nutrition researchers have nothing intelligible to say about it. But before throwing up your hands, consider some light that aging science has shed on the question. First, the contradictory findings: In March, a major report [...]
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