10 Tips for Healthy Aging
Through Healthy Eating

Discussions about healthy aging should occur hand-in-hand with discussions about living longer with an excellent quality of life.

“Chronic diseases exact a particularly heavy health and economic burden on older adults due to associated long-term illness, diminished quality of life, and greatly increased health care costs. Although the risk of disease and disability clearly increases with advancing age, poor health is not an inevitable consequence of aging.”

It seems that we all want to live longer—at least if we can remain healthy and happy… and being happy is more likely if we’re healthy—so, how can we look forward to a wonderful, vibrant, happy, productive long lifetime? …one that’s free of so-called diseases of aging, which seem to be too readily accepted as a fact of life. We all know the general behaviors that keep everybody healthy—eat right, get exercise, stop smoking, breathe fresh air, drink clean water, and enjoy good relationships—but since this website is about healthy eating, that’s what the focus will be.

The 10 Tips for Healthy Aging:

1. Eat a plant-based diet (AKA vegan ). According to T. Colin Campbell PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II in The China Study, “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” said Dr. Campbell of his research study.

2. Eat a low-fat diet . Joel Fuhrman MD in Eat For Health 2 Book Set (Clicking on this link will take you to Dr. Fuhrman's website.) says to limit your consumption of oil to one tablespoon daily. Eliminating animal foods will help immensely. This will make it easy to lose weight and maintain your optimum weight.

3. Eat whole foods. Avoid processed food. Always eat foods as close to their natural state as possible. Processed foods contain all sorts of toxic additives. Whole foods contain much-needed fiber, vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, and nutrients whose importance to human health hasn’t even been discovered yet.

4. Don’t eat too much protein . Once again, eliminating animal foods helps with this recommendation. Protein deficiency is virtually unheard of in the United States. Too much protein can contribute to chronic disease, such as kidney disease, heart disease, cancer, and arthritis. Many people think protein isn’t protein unless it comes from a dead animal. Not so! Dr. Campbell in The China Study states, “There is a mountain of compelling research showing that ‘low-quality’ plant protein…is the healthiest type of protein.” Get your protein from a healthy plant-based diet and expect healthy aging.

5. Eat lots of raw fruits and vegetables. Eat nutrient-dense foods for healthy aging. Dr. Fuhrman suggests as the appropriate proportions to aim for: Vegetables (30-70% of calories), fruits (25-50% of calories), beans/legumes (10-30% of calories), whole grains/raw nuts/seeds (5-20% of calories), oils (very little to none). Other experts may differ on the amounts of starches, but if you eat predominantly vegetables and fruits, you can’t go wrong.
   
   
   
   
6. Reduce your salt intake. Most Westerners eat too much salt, but if you’re eating mostly whole plant foods, you should be eating much less salt than those on the standard American diet. To add healthy flavor to your food, experiment with natural herbs .

7. Organic food is preferable, but sometimes a compromise is necessary for economic reasons or availability. For more information, click here .

8. Stop eating refined sugar. Nancy Appleton PhD, the author of Lick the Sugar Habit, says a healthy body can take 2 teaspoons of sugar at any one time. In a 12-ounce cola there are 10 teaspoons of sugar. People are drinking these things all day long. No wonder there’s so much disease in this country. Dr. Appleton says that eating sugar leads to a weakened immune response, which is worse in diabetics, and an interference with the transport of vitamin C.

9. Beverages – water is best. No sodas (see number 8 above). Coffee should be avoided. If you drink tea, Dr. Russell Blaylock says white tea is the safest. He also says to not add lemon to your tea; it increases the absorption of aluminum, of which tea is naturally high along with fluoride.

10. Be thankful and peaceful while you eat. Your thoughts and state of mind can affect the digestion of the food you eat, no matter how healthy it is.

The CDC has said that poor health is not an inevitable consequence of aging. By following simple guidelines we can look forward to the prevention of the so-called inevitable diseases and instead eagerly anticipate many vibrant, productive years of healthy aging. Encourage your loved ones to be on the same path, so you can enjoy growing old together.