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    [1] Thoughts
    [2] Community Update


[1] Thoughts

What this series is about... As we age, keeping physically active is essential. It not only improves the appearance of the body, it also prevents the occurrence of health complications in the future. Join the discussion in this series as we research the various programs that can help maintain a healthy mind and body.

 


 

Part 1 of Successful Ageing is available in the archive section.

Part 2 in this series on Successful Ageing will discuss the elixir of youth ... reality or a myth.

Staying Young: Successful Ageing Part 2

The elixir of youth ... reality or a myth ?
The idea of an elixir of youth is as old as recorded history. Alchemists from ancient Egypt onwards have tried to make a powder or a liquid (from a precious material or stone) that could cure all diseases and prolong life. And there are dozens of fairytales from all over the world featuring an ageing king who offers his beautiful daughter to a youth who will bring back the elixir.

These days we do not have to go much further than the shelves of a pharmacy, health food or department store. And never mind pulverised stone --- today we can get pills, creams, ointments, tonics, infusions --- all containing combinations of vitamins, herbal extracts, minerals and antioxidants, but promising the same thing as the alchemists of old: health and longevity.

A typical example for an internet search on elixir of youth gave 189,000 pages, citing the book Can We Live 150 Years? An extract from the book (authored by Mikhail Tombak) states

A recipe for the elixir of youth, a type of garlic extract, was found in 1971 by a UNESCO team in a Tibetan monastery and was dated about 4-5 centuries B.C. The extract cleans accumulated fat out of the body, rinses out insoluble calcium, radically improves metabolism, cleanses blood vessels, prevents heart attacks, arteriosclerosis, and paralysis, removes the sensation of buzzing from the head, improves sight, and regenerates the entire body.

Dietary supplements
Many of the so-called anti-ageing products on the market shelves contain antioxidants. These are compounds that mop up free radicals --- those unstable by-products of metabolism that cause damage to skin and connective tissue in the body. Below is a list of the more popular antioxidants available as supplements:

So, do they work?

There is some evidence they may be effective in a limited number of degenerative conditions. Antioxidant supplements (tablets) have been shown to slow the loss of vision in people with a degenerative disease of the retina called macular degeneration.

Unfortunately, there is no solid evidence that antioxidant supplements prolong life or prevent normal ageing.

Antioxidants in our diet, however, have been shown to have beneficial effects in preventing some diseases. For example, studies have shown that green tea, red wine, fruits and vegetables and garlic help prevent heart disease --- the effect is thought to be from the antioxidants they contain. They may prevent us from dying prematurely. However, they need to be taken as part of a balanced diet, not as tablets or pills. Usually (with macular degeneration as an exception), pills or tablets do not work. Either the antioxidant is destroyed in the extraction process, or it may be that in concentrated form it is not biologically active.

Creams and ointments
Applied to the skin (mainly to the face), lotions, creams and ointments promise to erase the first signs of ageing, help minimise visible lines and wrinkles and produce visible results after just eight days --- etcetera.

Most of these products are marketed at women (although I dare say some men are also succumbing to this form of advertising). Actress Jane Fonda once said: Women are not forgiven for ageing. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old age wrinkles.

Mostly manufactured by cosmetics companies, some contain moisturisers (which make the skin look smoother and more supple) while others contain antioxidants (which are supposed to reverse the effects of free radicals in the skin). These products are often marketed as having specific functions --- for example as moisturisers, toners, collagen activators, and body and cellulite treatments --- often in combinations.

The Choice magazine of the Australian Consumers Association recently reviewed a range of anti-ageing creams. It found they do smooth the skin, though only half the anti-ageing products tested did a better job of smoothing the skin than a standard moisturising lotion. However, none made a visible difference, even though about a third of users claimed they did work (this was probably a placebo effect). One thing they did have in common is that high cost of the products.

Fasting and caloric restriction
Research on animals going back to the 1930s suggests that drastically reducing our energy intake might make us live longer. The life spans of worms, spiders, rodents, dogs, cows and monkeys have been shown to increase by about 30 per cent by restricting the kilojoules they eat.

The reason is thought to be that with fewer kilojoules to burn; the animal´s metabolism slows down, producing fewer free radicals and causing less destruction to cells and body tissues. In humans, reducing energy intake has been shown to lower blood pressure, fats, and glucose --- which in turn reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, our major killer.

The problem is that energy restriction in effect means slow starvation --- kilojoules intake has to drop by roughly 30 per cent to achieve the longevity effect. This is equivalent to dropping from a typical diet of 2,500 kilojoules a day a day to 1,750 --- which is not enough to meet our needs and stave off hunger. So for most people it is not an easy option over the longer term.

Anti-ageing drugs
These are marketed as drugs rather than dietary supplements, though some also contain antioxidants. Others contain compounds like amino acids, drugs like statins (which lower blood fats), corticosteroids like dehydroepiandosterone (DHEA), or hormones like growth hormone, estrogen or melatonin, or combinations of these substances.

Despite what the manufacturers claim, there is no evidence that they prolong life or slow ageing, and they may be harmful. Some, especially hormones and steroids, may be dangerous. They may interact with each other, or with other compounds or prescribed medications a person is taking. At best these are a waste of money.

Future promises
The good news is that while we are getting older, we are also living longer in old age, thanks to medical advances, improved education, social marketing campaigns, better nutrition, and increased prosperity.

According to data of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are now 12 times as many more centenarians in Australia than there were in the 1970s. Also, around one in every three children born in the developed world today can expect to live to 100 years. And the average age will continue to increase, thanks to new technologies that are now in their infancy but one day may become commonplace. Things like:

Slowing the ageing process
These are years off into the future. For now, we can not reverse or stop ageing --- though there are some things we can do to make sure we do not age faster than we should, allowing us to stay fit and healthy into our eighties and beyond.

Much of what determines how fast we age is in our genes --- experts think that about 30 per cent of ageing is hereditary, and the rest is due to the environment --- the worst offenders being ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun, smoking, and too much alcohol combined with unhealthy food and inadequate physical activity.

For example, repeated exposure to UV in sunlight causes wrinkles, mottled pigmentation (including freckles and liver spots) and dry, rough and dull skin or smoking ages the skin (and other organs); probably by constricting tiny blood vessels and hence reducing blood flow. So, to give the body a best chance of ageing slowly also includes seven or eight hours of sleep a night and drinking 6-8 glasses of water each day.

These are the secret ingredients of the Essence of Ripe Old Age. They are a lot more effective (and less costly) than the Elixir of Youth.

Part 3 in this series will discuss Youthfully Ageing.


[2] Community Update

1.  Hi-5 to get kids up and moving
Hi-5 has joined the Commonwealth Government's high profile team of Healthy Active Ambassadors to encourage children and their parents to eat well and have fun together.

Hi-5's Charli, Kellie, Tim, Nathan and Sun join Harry Kewell, Brett Lee, Michael Clarke, Luke Mangan, Cathy Freeman and Kieran Perkins as Healthy Active Ambassadors.

Hi-5 is already great role models to thousands of young Australians. Healthy lifestyle messages are part of the group's performances.

We are proud and excited to be asked by the Commonwealth Government to be Healthy Active Ambassadors, Charli said.

We love to be active, we sing and dance and jump around all the time. We also love to talk about healthy food, especially fruit and vegetables, Kellie said.

This program is a perfect fit with Hi-5's view of the world - that our kids are precious and we need to ensure we do all we can to help them grow up to be healthy and happy, Nathan said.

And the Healthy Active Ambassador program is such a wonderful way to encourage and educate kids, Sun said.

We try to inspire children to develop their own potential and take a joyous and active part in life, Tim said.

The Healthy Active Ambassador program is an initiative of the Commonwealth Government targeting all Australians, with a particular focus on our youth. Ambassadors attend key youth events to promote the importance of a healthy lifestyle, getting active and making smart food choices.

 2.  Australia-New Zealand Collaboration on Transfats launched Opening the inaugural meeting of the Australia New Zealand Collaboration on Transfats today the Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing, Christopher Pyne, said that this was an important public health initiative.

In this connection Christopher Pyne added:

Last October, I announced the fact that Food Standards Australia New Zealand, the National Heart Foundation, the Dietitians Association of Australia and the Australian Food and Grocery Council had got together to form this collaboration with the important role of reducing damaging transfats in the food supply.

I am also pleased to see that the collaboration has now become a trans-Tasman initiative. This is particularly important as Australia and New Zealand are increasingly becoming a single market for food manufacturing.

There is a scientific link between the consumption of transfats and heart disease. Transfats not only increase bad cholesterol in our blood, a key indicator for heart disease, they may also decrease good cholesterol.

This collaboration is chaired by Food Standards Australia New Zealand, which is conducting a formal scientific review of transfats in the food supply. It will be reporting back to the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council, which I chair, by May this year.

As part of the review, Food Standards Australia New Zealand has worked with the NSW Food Authority, the New Zealand Food Safety Authority and South Australia Health Department to survey the amount of transfats consumed in Australia and New Zealand, and the results are interesting.

Australians obtain only 0.6 per cent of their daily kilojoules from transfats and New Zealanders only 0.7 per cent. This is well below the World Health Organization recommendation to consume no more than 1 per cent of your daily kilojoules from transfats and well below many other countries.

Consumers can reduce these intakes even further by following healthy eating guidelines: that is, to reduce overall consumption of all fats and limit consumption of transfats and saturated fats.

One of the reasons we consume less transfats than other countries could be due to the excellent collaborative work already carried out over the last decade or so between organisations like the National Heart Foundation, the Dietitians Association of Australia and the food industry to encourage the use of healthier fats.

While looking at the transfats issue we have no wish to undo much of this good work, for example, by manufacturers and retailers returning to use saturated fats such as palm oil, tallow or lard.

Already I have seen reports in the media where a food outlet is telling consumers that they had gone 'transfat free' when, in fact, it is using palm oil, which is high in saturated fat. I have also seen claims that butter is virtually transfat free when it, too, is high in saturated fats.

While we are consuming levels of transfats well below the WHO recommendation, we are eating above the WHO recommended levels of saturated fats.

We urgently need to reduce our saturated fats intake, too, and remember that total fats and saturated fats are already listed on food labels in the nutrition information panel.

I look forward to hearing the outcomes of this collaboration, especially in what you recommend to further reducing transfats in our food supply in the context of a balanced diet.

A report on this collaboration is due to be released to government in the first quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, a fact sheet on transfats on Food Standards Australia & New Zealand web site at http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/newsroom/factsheets/factsheets2006/transfattyacids24oct3388.cfm

 

Monika Bhatia
Editor, Health and Ageing

21 February 2007