Food is both a vehicle for well-being and a link with the world around us: we have known this for centuries, even if in recent years we have forgotten it a little.
Even from official medical science, for some years, it considers food choices one of the factors that can substantially affect health, favoring the onset of certain diseases or, on the contrary, protecting us.
Under the pressure of increasingly worrying data on the spread of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer, studies have multiplied that have examined the Mediterranean diet, relating it to the risk of developing these diseases.
Why so much interest in the diet of our grandparents? The main reason is that in this diet are well represented all the foods considered more “protective” and are poorly present, however, those possibly “dangerous”.
Fruits, vegetables, legumes and cereals in fair quantities, dried fruit and oilseeds, condiments low in saturated fats (olive oil), reduced amounts of animal proteins and moderate consumption of alcohol (a little wine during meals).
These are the essential “ingredients” of the Mediterranean diet. In 2008 a group of Italian researchers from the University of Florence reviewed all the scientific works that in the previous forty years had studied the relationship between nutrition, mortality and incidence of diseases.
They were able to discover that the subjects most assiduous in following a Mediterranean-type diet were the longest-lived, had a reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disorders or cancer, as well as developing degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
In the following years other research provided further confirmation. In particular, a study that followed the clinical histories of over 120,000 US women for more than twenty years (Nurses’ Health Study), while collecting information on lifestyles, in which fewer cases of myocardial infarction and cerebral stroke were found in association with eating habits closer to the Mediterranean ones.
Similar conclusions have been reached with regard to mortality in general, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, several other studies conducted on subjects of both sexes and also in European populations.
Keeps DNA young
A recently published study investigated what may be the physiological mechanisms underlying the positive effects of the Mediterranean diet.
Also as part of the Nurses’ Health Study, a group of 4,676 women was isolated from whom a blood sample was taken: in the white blood cells the DNA sequences located at the ends of the chromosomes, the telomeres, whose characteristics have long been linked to the aging processes of the cells, were analyzed.
With advancing age, telomeres normally undergo a gradual shortening, which can be accelerated when there are high concentrations of oxidizing molecules (free radicals) in the body.
The faster the telomere shortening, the lower the life expectancy and the greater the risk of developing chronic diseases.
It has also been seen that in some individuals telomere shortening occurs at a slower rate regardless of chronological age, and this has led to the assumption that there is an individual variability in the rate of aging of cells, probably linked in part to genetic differences and conditions of lower oxidative stress.
Finally, the American study showed that the cells of women more scrupulous in following a Mediterranean diet had longer telomeres.
The hypothesis that the researchers have put forward to explain this result is that the high concentration of antioxidant substances present in Mediterranean foods may contribute to “keeping them young”.
Joycelyn Elders is the author and creator of EmpowerEssence, a health and wellness blog. Elders is a respected public health advocate and pediatrician dedicated to promoting general health and well-being.
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