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How Much Does A Vegan Diet Affect Biological Aging?
Plus: 7 days of celery juice... What's the verdict?
The 10almonds Team
August 04, 2024
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
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In A Rush?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
It’s uncontroversial that broadly speaking, eating more plants and fewer animal products is healthy
Today’s main feature looks at evidence that takes it further: when it comes to cellular biomarkers of aging, it turns out that enjoying a vegan diet for just 8 weeks can result in measurably slower biological aging!
Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.
Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!
Today’s featured recipe is for a tasty tofu scramble, a culinary experience that hits the same notes as scrambled egg, with many similar nutritional benefits too, and some of its own!
Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive
A Word To The Wise
Watch and Learn
7 Days Of Celery Juice: What’s The Verdict?
Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!
Saturday Life Hacks
Slow Your Aging, One Meal At A Time
This one’s a straightforward one today, and the "“life hack" can be summed up:
Enjoy a vegan diet to enjoy younger biological age.
First, what is biological age?
Biological age is not one number, but a collection of numbers, as per different biomarkers of aging, including:
Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)
Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)
Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)
Cellular markers of aging (e.g. telomere length)
We wrote more about this here:
A vegan diet may well impact multiple of those categories of aging, but today we’re highlighting a study (hot off the press; published only a few days ago!) that looks at its effect on that last category: cellular markers of aging.
There’s an interesting paradox here, because this category is:
the most easily ignorable; because we all feel it if our knees are giving out or our skin is losing elasticity, but who notices if telomeres’ T/S ratio changed by 0.0407? ← the researchers, that’s who, as this difference is very significant
the most far-reaching in its impact, because cellular aging in turn has an effect on all the other markers of aging
Second, how much difference does it make, and how do we know?
The study was an eight-week interventional identical twin study. This means several things, to start with:
Eight weeks is a rather short period of time to accumulate cellular aging, let alone for an intervention to accumulate a significant difference in cellular aging—but it did. So, just imagine what difference it might make in a year or ten!
Doing an interventional study with identical twin pairs already controlled for a lot of factors, that are usually confounding variables in population / cohort / longitudinal / observational studies.
Factors that weren’t controlled for by default by using identical twins, were controlled for in the experiment design. For example, twin pairs were rejected if one or more twin in a given pair already had medical conditions that could affect the outcome:
❝Inclusion criteria involved participants aged ≥18, part of a willing twin pair, with BMI <40, and LDL-C <190 mg/dL. Exclusions included uncontrolled hypertension, metabolic disease, diabetes, cancer, heart/renal/liver disease, pregnancy, lactation, and medication use affecting body weight or energy.
Eligibility was determined via online screening, followed by an orientation meeting and in-person clinic visit. Randomization occurred only after completing baseline visits, dietary recalls, and questionnaires for both twins❞
As to the difference it made over the course of the 8 weeks…
❝Various measures of epigenetic age acceleration (PC GrimAge, PC PhenoAge, DunedinPACE) were assessed, along with system-specific effects (Inflammation, Heart, Hormone, Liver, and Metabolic).
Distinct responses were observed, with the vegan cohort exhibiting significant decreases in overall epigenetic age acceleration, aligning with anti-aging effects of plant-based diets. Diet-specific shifts were noted in the analysis of methylation surrogates, demonstrating the influence of diet on complex trait prediction through DNA methylation markers.❞
You can read the whole paper here (it goes into a lot more detail than we have room to here, and also gives infographics, charts, numbers, the works):
Were they just eating more healthily, though?
Well, arguably yes, as the results show, but to be clear:
The omnivorous diet compared to the vegan diet in this study was also controlled; both groups were given a healthy meal plan for their respective diet. So this wasn’t a case of “any omnivorous diet vs healthy vegan diet”, but rather “healthy omnivorous diet vs healthy vegan diet”.
Again, the paper itself has the full details—a short version is that it involved a healthy meal kit delivery service, followed by ongoing dietician involvement in an equal and carefully-controlled fashion.
So, aside from that one group had an omnivorous meal plan and the other vegan, both groups received the same level of “healthy eating” support, guidance, and oversight.
But isn’t [insert your preferred animal product here] healthy?
Quite possibly! For general health, general scientific consensus is that eating at least mostly plants is best, red meat is bad, poultry is neutral in moderation, fish is good in moderation, dairy is good in moderation if fermented, eggs are good in moderation if not fried.
This study looked at the various biomarkers of aging that we listed, and not every possible aspect of health—there’s more science yet to be done, and the researchers themselves are calling for it.
It also bears mentioning that for some (relatively few, but not insignificantly few) people, extant health conditions may make a vegan diet unhealthy or otherwise untenable. Do speak with your own doctor and/or dietician if unsure.
We would hypothesize, by the way, that the anti-aging benefits of a vegan diet are probably proportional to abstention from animal products—meaning that even if you simply have some “vegan days”, while still consuming animal products other days, you’ll still get benefit for the days you abstained. That’s just our hypothesis though.
Take care!
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This Or That?
Vote on Which is Healthier
Yesterday we asked you to choose between kidney beans and fava beans—we picked the kidney beans (click here to read about why), as did 66% of you!
Now for today’s choice:
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Click on whichever you think is better for you!
Recipes Worth Sharing
Tasty Tofu Scramble
If you’re trying to eat more plant-based, this is a great way to enjoy a culinary experience that hits the same notes as scrambled egg, with many similar nutritional benefits too, and some of its own!
Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:
One-Minute Book Review
Young Mind Young Body: Transformational Approach to Rejuvenating Youth and Vitality – by Sue Ziang
This is a very “healthy mind in a healthy body” book, consistent with the author’s status as a holistic health coach. Sometimes that produces a bit of a catch-22 regarding where to start, but for Ziang, the clear answer is to start with the mind, and specifically, one’s perception of one’s own age.
She advocates for building a young mind in a young body, and yes, that’s mind-building much like body-building. This does not mean any kind of wilful self-delusion, but rather, choosing the things that we do get to choose along the way.
The bridge between mind and body, for Ziang, is meditation—which is reasonable, as it’s very much mind-stuff and also very much neurological and has a very real-world impact on the body’s broader health, even simply by such mechanisms as changing breathing, heart rate, neurotransmitter levels, endocrine functions, and the like.
When it comes to the more physical aspects of health, her dietary advice is completely in line with what we write here at 10almonds. Hydrate well, eat more plants, especially beans and greens and whole grains, get good fats in, enjoy spices, practice mindful eating, skip the refined carbohydrates, be mindful of bio-individuality (e.g. one’s own personal dietary quirks that stem from physiology; some of us react differently to this kind of food or that for genetic reasons, and that’s not something to be overlooked).
In the category of exercise, she’s simply about moving more, which while not comprehensive, is not bad advice either.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for an “in” to holistic health and wondering where to start, this book is a fine and very readable option.
Penny For Your Thoughts?
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Wishing you a wonderfully restorative weekend,
The 10almonds Team
