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Can Changing What You Eat Help You Live Longer?
Did you know that what you eat today can have an impact on your health long into the future? Scientists are learning more about the fascinating field of nutriepigenomics – the study of how the food we eat affects our body. You’ve probably never heard of that word before, so let’s break it down:
Nutri
all about diet and nutrients we get from our food
+
Epigenetic
changes in the molecules of your body that can impact how your genes act
Your Body’s Genes
Studies on the long-term impacts of eating certain foods are showing that your diet affects more than just your energy levels and waistline. It actually changes how your genes behave.
Genes are like little instructions for your body. They live in your cells and are the reason for things like your eye color, your height, and your personality. You get half of your genes from your mom and half from your dad.
How genes affect our bodies is called gene expression. Your cells don’t use every gene all the time. Instead, they regulate which genes are active based on what the cell needs at a given moment. Some genes can be strongly activated to produce certain proteins, while others are suppressed, or kept at a low level. This fine-tuned control allows cells to adapt, specialize, and respond to their environment. For example, a cell might turn “on” the gene that instructs it to produce melanin. This, in turn, creates melanin protein, which shows up as brown hair or skin.
Scientists are trying to learn more about how environmental factors, like diet, can impact your gene expression. What they’re finding is that when we eat the good stuff – fruits, vegetables, and whole grains – the healthy genes turn on. Eating well might alter our gene expression to reduce inflammation or it might turn on the genes that help protect and repair DNA.
Research in this fascinating field is still ongoing, but there have been many important discoveries already.
Diet and Aging
A study of about 4,000 women examined how certain nutrients impact cell aging. It looked at biological aging in women and learned that increasing certain nutrients like coumestrol, beta-carotene, and arachidic acid in one’s diet slowed biological aging. These nutrients can be found in everyday foods like peanut butter, carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach, soybeans, and chickpeas.
Conversely, the study found that an increased intake of foods with added sugar, gondoic acid, behenic acid, and vitamin A made aging happen faster. These nutrients are found in foods like jojoba oil, peanut oil, eggs, fish, sugary drinks, and condiments.
This does not mean that you shouldn’t eat any of the foods on the “aging faster” list. Despite these findings, all of the nutrients studied (with the exception of added sugar) have good qualities to them, so the study isn’t telling you to immediately stop eating things like fish and eggs. But this study, and another analysis done in 2024, show that the relationship between diet and long-term health is complicated, so we need to learn more about the impact certain foods might have on aging and how they can be part of a larger, healthy, balanced lifestyle.
So, can changing what you eat help you live longer? Maybe! We don’t have an exact nutritional plan to prescribe that’s guaranteed to slow aging. But we do know that diets rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants (like fruits, vegetables, seeds, legumes, and nuts), promote healthy aging. Eating more healthy fats like fish and avocado and reducing inflammatory foods like fast food and processed meats are good choices too.
Diet and Prenatal Health
Rates of autism, ADHD and type 2 diabetes are on the rise. The reason and the extent are not completely clear and need further study, but one study suggests that diet can affect gene expression even while in the womb. Research is still ongoing, but programs that better educate mothers on the benefits of eating healthy during pregnancy hope to give moms and babies the best chance at managing gene expression in a healthy way.
Diet and Disease Prevention
One of the most interesting potentials of this field of research is studying whether dietary changes can help us prevent some genetic diseases. If we can change our lifestyles to turn “on” the good genes and “off” the bad ones, we might be able to lower our disease risk for certain conditions? There is more research needed, but it’s a fascinating possibility.
Are Personalized Diets the Future?
Genes are unique to every individual – like fingerprints – so how your genes react to your diet (or exercise or environment) depends on your individual genetic code. That means that whatever solutions scientists develop through the study of nutriepigenetics will have to be customizable rather than one-size-fits-all. We might even be looking at a future where everyone has a meal plan that is specifically designed for them to live a long, healthy life.
CONTRIBUTING EXPERT
Chandar Abboy, MD
Dr. Abboy is a physician board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonary disease, critical care medicine, and sleep medicine. He is a Principal Investigator at Care Access, overseeing multiple clinical trials.
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The information provided on Care Access is intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Our products and content are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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