Tips for Seniors healthy life!

Tips for Seniors healthy life!

Getting older is always associated with health challenges. Nowadays,
as a gift of health care systems and global awareness, people can live more
than ever before.

Living as healthy elders needs several fundamental requirements as
having physical activity, losing weight in overweight people, eating healthy
foods, taking necessary vitamins as supplements.

Most of the seniors’ health challenges are the chronic diseases like
Arthritis, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimer Disease, and Cancer. For
managing of these problems, there is an urgent need for keeping the normal
physiology of the body.

There is a common key for preventing all above challenges in
seniors and even for managing the course of these diseases: Nutrition and Healthy
life style.

One of the leading theories proposed that damage to cellular
mechanisms and tissues occurs because of chronic damage resulting from
oxidative stress on the organism due to free oxygen radicals. Results of some
studies have shown that people with a high intake of antioxidant vitamins by
regular diet or as food supplements, generally have a lower risk of major
chronic disease, such as cardiovascular disease, than people who are low
consumers of antioxidant vitamins. Scientists believe that lower calorie intake
in seniors will affect the vitamin level of their body. For instance, reduction
in vitamin D and calcium during the elder ages is also associated with
arthritis and fractures. So, elders need to pay more attention to their diet
and they may need to take enriched foods and vitamins by supplements.

One of the most known antioxidant vitamins that body everyday needs
for its normal physiology is vitamin C. Regarding to available scientific data,
there are several clinical evidences that vitamin C consumption due to its
protective effect on telomere region of human genome can directly affect the
lifespan.

Daily vitamin C recommended dose for men is 90 mg and for women is
75 mg in adults. In elders although there is not any other recommended doses
and consumption of 150 mg of Vitamin C daily could help having more protection against
oxidant damages like mitochondrial dysfunction. Oxidant damages are
considerable in elders and could reduce the cellular energy and consequently
cause many diseases.

Further Reading!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2682456/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15182881

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminC-Consumer/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3184498/

www.vitamincplanet.com

Top 10 Tips for your Heart Health!

Top 10 Tips for your Heart Health!

1.    Give up Smoking!

Smoking is one of the main causes of coronary heart disease. Smoking damages the lining of arteries, leading to building up of fatty materials, which can narrow the artery. Narrowing of the arteries increases the risk of myocardial infarction. So, if you smoke even 1 cigarette a day, try to stop it. The risk of heart attack may reduce by half in a year after stopping smoking. It should be also mentioned that second-hand exposure to smoke could increase the risk of heart disease as well.

2.     Monitor the Blood Pressure!

High blood pressure is known as “The Silent Killer”. The higher blood pressure, the greater the risk of heart attack.

3.     Monitor your Cholesterol blood level!

High blood level of cholesterol, may be an important risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. If you have high levels of blood cholesterol, revise your diet and life style to reduce cholesterol. However, be informed that cholesterol is one of the most important molecules in human health and a healthy diet, does not mean the elimination of cholesterol in your diet.

4.    Take the heart-healthy fibers and Anti-Oxidant Rich Snack

Oat, barley, apple, pear, and avocado are rich sources of soluble fibers. Healthy beans can help reducing the blood level of bad cholesterol, as a main factor in cardiovascular diseases.

5.     Eat Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate contains healthy flavonoids. Flavonoids could help lowering of the risk of heart disease by reducing the inflammation responses.

6.     Take Vitamin C Daily

Pauling, the Nobel Prize winner, was believed that there is a tight relationship between the heart disease and chronic Vitamin C deficiency. Vitamin C can help the heart heath trough many known and some unknown mechanisms.

7.     Keep Eating Breakfast on Time

The first meal of the day is so important for the cardiovascular diseases patients. Eating low-fat dairy products, such as low-fat milk, yogurt, or cheese, whole grains, such as oatmeal, fruits and vegetables, all help the heart to be in a normal physiology.

8.     Do Exercise Consistently

Being physically active is important to prevent heart diseases. 150 minutes of physical activity per week is recommended by FDA for a healthy life.  Physical exercises could regulate your body metabolism and in particular will control your glucose and lipid profile as well, which both affect the heart health.

9.    Take Ginger

Ginger contains compounds similar to NSAIDS (anti-inflammatory medications) which can help the heart to be in a normal situation. Inflammatory responses are important in heart diseases, Ginger can modulate the immune responses and can lower the risk of heart attack.

10.  Take Garlic in your Diet

Garlic can help keeping cardiovascular system healthy through two ways. First, the garlic can lower the rate of atherosclerosis by reducing the blood levels of cholesterol, and second, garlic can reduce the blood pressure as an important cause of heart attack.

Further Reading

https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/heart-health

Top 10  Foods for Keeping Healthy Weight!

1.    Take Green Vegetables

Green vegetables have low calorie and low carbohydrates but are rich in fiber. Leafy greens can raise your food volume and make you full before taking lots of calories from fats and carbs. Many leafy greens are rich in minerals, vitamins and anti-oxidants as well. Some minerals like calcium can help fat burning based on some clinical studies on overweight people.

2.    Take a Whole Egg for Breakfast

Taking egg for breakfast instead of bagels has shown to be effective in losing weight in overweight women based on a recent clinical study (published in Nature).

3.    Take Oily Fish

Oily fish are kwon as healthy foods and are being suggested in different conditions including diabetics, cardiovascular care and losing weight diets. Oily fish, in particular Salomon, can keep you feel full with low calories. Fish can help thyroid to work properly. Thyroid has a central role in your body metabolism and keeping healthy weight is of its functions.   

4.    Take Boiled Potatoes

Potato although at first is seen as a source of carbohydrates; however, it also has a little bit of almost everything that your body needs. Boiled potato is a good source of “resistant starch”. Resistant starch can pass the digestive tract unchanged. This property makes it suitable for weight loss diets. The health related benefits of resistant starch include improving insulin sensitivity, lowering blood sugar levels, and reducing appetite which all are involved in losing weight .

5.    Take Vitamin C

If you aim to shed pounds don’t forget to take Vitamin C. Daily recommended dose of Vitamin C is approximately 100 mg, but according to a study published in of the “American College of Nutrition”, high doses of Vitamin C are associated with better weight lose profile. Body deficiency in Vitamin C is a why some individuals are unsuccessful in their weight loss attempts. Results of several studies have shown the impact of oxidative stress, redox balance and lipid oxidation in the obesity and related health problems. Vitamin C as a known anti-oxidant can take an important role in changing the play in your body metabolism and avoiding putting weight. Meanwhile, results of some animal studies have shown that the injection of Vitamin C directly to the adipose tissue in rats can reduce the number of adipocytes. On the other hand, obesity is characterized by presenting mitochondrial dysfunction and ROS (Reactive oxygen species) overproduction, in this scenario Vitamin C can help your body to balance its redox potential and the level of ROS.

6.    Take Avocado

Avocado is a good source of healthy fats. It also contains potassium and fiber. A 50g serving of avocados contains 80 calories, so you can easily put it in your diet to lose weight.

7.    Take Apple cider vinegar

Results of several clinical studies have shown that the consumption of the apple cider vinegar can increase feelings of fullness and is associated with weight loss.

8.    Take Whole Grains

Oats, brown rice and quinoa, as known whole grains, are rich in beta-glucans and soluble fibers. They have shown increasing satiety and improving metabolic health. Whole grains also contain resistant starch which can make you feel fullness.

9.    Take Chili Pepper

Regarding to some clinical studies, “Capsaicin”, as the major component of chili pepper, can reduce your appetite and increase fat burning. Capsaicin is even sold in supplement form for weight loos.

10.  Take Full Fat Probiotic Yogurt

It has been recently demonstrated that gut microbiome is directly associated with human body shape and weight. Probiotics as good bacteria in the gut environment can affect your body metabolism through several ways as by changing the lipid profile particularly after fat enriched foods. Meanwhile, inflammation and leptin resistance as two causes of obesity can be ameliorated by appropriate gut flora.  

 Further Readings!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278243854_Vitamin_C_in_the_Treatment_andor_Prevention_of_Obesity

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/want-healthy-feet-keep-a-healthy-weight 

Garcia-Diaz DF, Campion J, Milagro FI, Paternain L, Solomon A, Martinez JA. 2009. Ascorbic acid oral treatment modifies lipolytic response and behavioural activity but not glucocorticoid metabolism in cafeteria diet-fed rats. Acta Physiol (Oxf) 195: 449–457.

Why should you take Vitamin C daily?

Why do we need Vitamin C?
Vitamins are essential molecules that could not be synthesized by human body and so, for a healthy life you should take from food or drink.
Vitamin C is one of the most important Vitamins with a wide range of biochemical activities in human body. It is essential in the biosynthesis of Collagen which is an important structural protein in muscles, bones, gums, cartilages, skin,....
So, human regardless of genre and age should take Vitamin C in a daily basis.

Why should you take Vitamin C daily?
Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin and could not be stored in the body. It means, that if you take high amounts of Vitamin C, the excess Vitamin C would be excreted from your body and you would need to take Vitamin C the day after as well.

How much Vitamin C do we need?
Adequate amount of Vitamin C for everybody is different based on the sex, age, and lifestyle. It could be summarized as follows:

Men
Adult men ..................................... 90 mg per day
14-18 years old boys .................... 75 mg per day
Smokers men ...............................125 mg per day

Women
Adult women ............................... 75 mg per day
14-18 years old girls .................... 65 mg per day
Smoker women ...........................110 mg per day
Pregnant women .......................... 85 mg per day
Breast feeding women ................120 mg per day

Kids
0-6 months ................................... 40 mg per day
7-12 months ................................. 50 mg per day
1-3 years old ................................ 15 mg per day
4-8 years old ................................ 25 mg per day
9-13 years old .............................. 45 mg per day


For more information about Vitamin C: www.VitaminCPlanet.com