Why All Seniors Should Go High-Fat
Old age doesn’t have to be scary. If your nutrition and attitude are on point, then it can mean the happiest years of your life
Lead by example
If you’re 60 or older, chances are that you’ve acquired an extraordinary amount of knowledge throughout the years. You’ve probably already told or can’t wait to tell some invaluable life advice to your grandchildren. That being said, even when you’re not teaching them, they’re constantly learning from your behavior, including the way you eat.
All seniors should be aware of the foods that their bodies and minds require and act accordingly. Let’s figure out which diet will make us live the longest and provide the most enjoyable playtime with our grandchildren.
New things to consider when older
The nutrition aspects that must be in the centerpiece change over time. The diet of a 12-year-old should not be the same as the diet of a 22-year-old, which should not be the same as the one of a 62-year-old. Our bodies change with time, and it’s vital for our way of eating to reflect that. I’m 20 years old, and I’m eating completely differently than I was just 5 years ago. In fact, my nutrition on Mondays and Tuesdays isn’t the same either, nor are most of my lunches and dinners.
Things like physical activity level, mental state, menstrual cycle phase, and the nutrients that you consumed yesterday should all dictate the food choices that you’re going to make today. Whilst not many people would disagree with taking these points into consideration, not many would take a big interest in age.
Why age doesn’t matter? First of all, your current age cannot accurately represent your physical or mental state, for that matter. I’ve seen 70-year-olds that are in much better shape than most millennials or Gen Z. I’ve also seen 20-year-olds that are much more open-minded and curious than most seniors. In other words, age does not define you.
It may sometimes feel like you have one hand tied behind your back, but that makes it all the more impressive. You can become the “hyper old guy who kicks butt”. It’s up to you to make age be irrelevant and youngsters jealous.
Why age matters? Although it does not define you, your physique is naturally affected by it. New things need to be considered, such as maintaining muscle mass while not gorging on protein, getting around chronic inflammation in the joints, and avoiding the increased risk of overtraining. Keeping your testosterone level adequate, blood pressure stable, and brain working 100 percent should all be your number one priority as a senior.
Our biology, unfortunately, did not intend for us to be healthy and fertile after 50. It made us into crazy-fast growing beasts that procreate fairly young and are destined to die a horrible death, either by a bear or by rotting from within. On that note, let’s redefine what it means to be old. We’ve narrowed down most losses of life to natural death, now let’s make those the least painful or get rid of them altogether!
The best diet for muscle retention and testosterone production
Loss of muscle mass is one of the most accurate predictors of aging (1). And yes, I do consider aging a disease; not yet preventable but treatable (2). You need sufficient muscle strength all the time, but once you’re older, especially if you lack mobility, you have less room for error. The falls and the fractures get much more fatal, and hence, spending time with your grandchildren, sadly, becomes a risk versus reward situation.
So how can you guarantee that you won’t lack muscle mass as a senior?
Answer — by listening to your biology.
It’s indeed much better to ensure that you don’t waste too much muscle rather than try to increase it once the negative effects of aging have already kicked in. Skeletal muscle loss caused by aging is called sarcopenia (3). Albeit you have to put some effort to keep the gains as a senior, just by being conscious about it, you’re very likely to outperform most young adults.
The problem is that in order to retain muscle you have to consume quite a bit of protein, which, especially animal-based, accelerates factors that promote aging, such as IGF-1 in the bloodstream and the activation of mTOR (4, 5). Long story short, both of them are awesome when you’re a kid, but an excess of either could be fatal when you’re not. That is why we need to make sure that once we’re elderly, we preserve the protein that we have and don’t consume too much at the same time.
Apart from exercise, ketones are extremely effective at preventing the protein from being oxidized (6, 7). Wait, does this have something to do with the keto diet? Yes and no. First, let’s put on our science glasses for a moment.
It’s been shown that the main ketone body, beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), greatly reduces the oxidation of the amino acid leucine and promotes protein synthesis (8). Even though a high-fat, very-low-carb, “ketogenic” diet would probably be the most efficient at making and utilizing these compounds known as ketones, there are other options. Fasting intermittently for about 16 hours per day would do the job, so would replacing vegetable oils with some coconut oil. Simply increasing your intake of medium-chain triglycerides (the main type of fat in coconut and palm oils) would likely notably up-regulate the production of these magical ketone bodies.
All in all, the more fat that you consume, the less protein you’ll need, the slower the process of aging will be.
Let’s also not forget our amazing adrenal glands, which make a bunch of awesome hormones, including the one that’ll give you a reason not to cancel the gym membership — testosterone. A decline in this natural steroid and its receptors is a problem for all genders. If you want to lose fat, increase muscle mass and bone density, then boosting your natural production of testosterone should be a top priority. Therefore, your diet must ensure an appropriate amount of all sex hormones as well as a proper sensitivity to them.
Since testosterone is made from cholesterol, an increase in saturated fat consumption may not be the worst idea. A couple of disclaimers: these fats don’t have to come from animal sources (actually, it’s better if they don’t), secondly, don’t mix butter and carbs. Saturated fats from cacao or coconut oil are totally fine, but they cannot go together with bread, sugar, or any other type of carbohydrate. Somewhat higher levels of LDL can be your friend and won’t cause any cardiovascular issues if you don’t allow it to get oxidized by eliminating insulin resistance or avoiding carbs altogether (9, 10).
In addition, a very-low-carb diet increases the sensitivity to all hormones, including testosterone. And there is good research suggesting that high-fat diets are better equipped at making testosterone than high-carb options (11, 12).
The best diet against chronic inflammation
If you want your joints to not be a burden that’s preventing you from enjoying life, then an anti-inflammatory approach to nutrition is necessary. Lo and behold, that’s a plant-based, whole food, low-carb diet with a bit of fish on the side (13, 14). It’s not any vegan diet, nor does it have to exclude meat completely. All you need is enough chlorophyll-rich vegetables, gut-friendly fermented foods, no processed crap, and above all, NO SUGAR. And no, it’s not just added sugar; it’s total sugar, including the million different names that companies use to hide it.
If you want to have some nice Sunday waffles with your kids, then fine. If you keep buying apples and oranges, squeezing them till there’s nothing left, then you’re not setting a good example and wrecking your metabolism at the same time (15, 16).
Sugar is sugar is sugar.
As with every single point that I make, other lifestyle factors often play equally important roles. Stress, lack of sleep, overtraining can wreck your body with chronic inflammation just as much as a bad diet would. Whilst going to the gym does promote the good kind of inflammatory response, it’s still up to you to recover properly afterward and make it increase your longevity, not the other way around.
Largely plant-based diets are the way to go, but simply getting rid of meat will not suffice. If you’re wondering, the magical ketones that we talked about are anti-inflammatory as well; thereby, considerably upping your fat intake sounds even more encouraging (17).
The best diet for lowering blood pressure
Although high blood pressure is one of the biggest factors that’s contributing to aging, there aren’t many dietary solutions. Hypertension is a chronic condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is elevated. At first glance, a diet that could fix this would restrict you from using salt. Unfortunately, as a senior, you’re losing a lot of minerals, and sodium is an essential micronutrient for everyone. Therefore, we need to find a diet that would efficiently get rid of excess sodium but ensure that we get enough of it with our meals.
While a processed food diet would guarantee reasonable amounts of this mineral, only high-fat, Mediterranean-style diets would protect from excess being stored in the kidneys. The equation for this is quite simple and quite complex at the same time. I’m sorry to say, but we’ll have to put on our science glasses one more time.
Since 1 gram of carbohydrates requires about 4 grams of water, by reducing your carb intake, you make your insulin drop, which causes your kidneys to excrete more H2O. The water and sodium loss regulates your blood pressure, making it low and stable (18, 19). Besides secreting more salt without reducing it, the probable fat loss could be monumental for your cardiovascular health and blood pressure as well.
The best diet against dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s diseases
Even though most dietary changes that attempt to fight cognitive decline have been experimental at best, there is one fairly promising option. Nutritional ketosis (90% of calories from fat) has been helping kids with epilepsy since the 1920s (20). Conditions, such as Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injury, appear to benefit from a ketogenic diet (21, 22). Despite the fact that it’s still unclear how a high-fat diet would do so, changing the pathway as well as the primary fuel source for the brain seems to be the main cause.
I swear that this is the last time I’ll ask you to go deep into science with me.
Ketones, byproducts of fat metabolism, are much more efficient and preferred by the brain than glucose. The most common one, beta-hydroxybutyrate, can provide vital organs with much more energy per unit oxygen (23). Over time, the human’s body, including the brain, becomes less and less capable of using glucose effectively. What’s fascinating is that this energy decline does not seem to happen at the same rate with ketones.
When medium-chain triglycerides are introduced to a diet (not under ketosis), the brain decreases the use of glucose slightly but heavily overcompensates by absorbing these MCTs for energy. The end result is the brain working at 113% capacity, which significantly reduces the likelihood of any cognitive decline due to aging (21).
Cool, right?
Old is gold, enjoy it!
Although building a diet that’s powerful against aging is crucial, so is enjoying life itself. By going high-fat, you’re naturally getting rid of excess sodium, saying goodbye to chronic inflammation, and thus, boosting your quality of life tenfold. With that in mind, creating the perfect environment for dying is not enough. You likewise have to actually live it and be an excellent role model for the new generation. You‘ve already built up a great deal of wisdom, now make sure that you also walk the walk.
