The Best Anti-Aging Foods: Part II

A few weeks ago I posted this article regarding the best types of foods with which to fill your diet, in order to help slow the aging process. Here is another one I ran across, which is a bit more specific. A good read nonetheless.

It seems to go without saying, but the foods you eat, much like the gas you put in your Hummer, have a huge impact on your body’s performance. Given this – and the fact that we’re basically on a slow decline to death from the moment we’re born – you’d think we’d care more about what goes into our mouths. Instead, we gorge ourselves on fast food and spend thousands of dollars on anti-aging “miracle” treatments that claim to undo the years of damaged we’ve inflicted on ourselves by ingesting things we can’t even pronounce.

There are plenty of foods, however, that can nourish you and help keep age-related demons like cancer, dementia and osteoporosis at bay. They’ll also whittle your waistline, which is something that study after study shows increases longevity and improves overall health. Excess weight contributes to a whole host of life-shortening problems; a joint study between the National Institute on Aging (Bethesda, MD), the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection (Bilthoven, Netherlands) and the National Center for Health Statistics (Hyattsville, MD) concluded that “heavier weight in late middle age [is] a risk factor for coronary heart disease in late life,” and the American Cancer Society estimates that excess weight is linked to more than 90,000 deaths annually.

Ready to age gracefully? Read on to find out which foods you should add to your diet in order to add years to your life.

Garlic
Once thought only to be useful in warding off vampires and unattractive blind dates, garlic has turned out to be a nutritional superstar that adds a wealth of taste to dishes without adding excess calories. Allicin, which is responsible for garlic’s strong smell and biting flavor, is actually an extremely potent antioxidant, and research published by the National Academy of Sciences shows that eating garlic appears to boost the body’s natural supply of hydrogen sulfide, which is manufactured by the body as an antioxidant and means of transmitting cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow. Dr. David W. Kraus, associate professor of environmental science and biology at the University of Alabama and author of a large-scale study on the health benefits of garlic, advises crushing garlic and letting it sit for 15 minutes before cooking it in order to trigger a reaction that boosts the healthy compounds in the plant.

Continue to the rest of Part II

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