You can easily learn how chronic disease and aging work and what you can do to stay healthier longer! Many of you remember the interest in antioxidants like vitamin E and vitamin C. Antioxidants were popular because science had learned oxidants are central to chronic disease development and aging. Vitamins E and C did not work out. They did not prolong healthy life, New science has led us to antioxidants that do work.
This one diagram can help you learn all you need to know. Look off to the right mid-diagram. There is a red box containing tobacco smoke. Each puff of cigarette smoke contains ten to the fifteenth oxidative particles. Smoking cigarettes dramatically increases the oxidants in the body and accelerates aging and chronic disease development. All the other red boxes increase oxidant production when eating processed carbs and sugars which increase abdominal fat. Abdominal fat produces the factors in the red boxes. The arrows all represent gene activation. Stress increases cortisol production which is another red box factor. Cortisol is a steroid that activates oxidant production in the the upper right corner using the MR receptor just like aldosterone does. The red boxes help you understand how smoke, poor diet, abdominal fat and stress increase oxidant production. In turn, oxidants switch on the master metabolic genetic switches epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR). mTOR switches off (symbol looks like an upside down T) the master metabolic switch AMP kinase (AMPK). The red boxes, oxidants, and the downstream genetic signals all combine to accelerate aging and the development of heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. They destroy our health and bring death sooner.
These genes in the red boxes and they genes downstream stay on once they are switched on. In fact, if these genes are turned on prior to having children, they can be passed on for the next two generations to cause heart disease and cancer in grandchildren. That is a big part of how heredity causes chronic disease in families. It is not changes in the genes themselves but how the genes are regulated. The factors in this diagram also cause high blood pressure and diabetes. The genes that raise the pressure and sugar remain switched on, even when diet and exercise return the risk factor numbers to normal levels.
Here is the good news. All the green box treatments are either antioxidants that work, or they directly inhibit oxidant signaling downstream. There is proof that the green box interventions prolong healthy life by 8 years while delaying heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. They reduce cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. If you want to be healthier longer, this diagram gives you a framework to guide you on your path. There is an important lesson here too. If you have type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure, and you achieve normal numbers through diet and exercise, that is great. But you don’t want to stop you medicine entirely because the genes that caused those conditions are still turned on. They will hurt you if you don’t block them with losartan, a statin, and metformin.
Here is the craziest part of the whole diagram. The genes in the diagram are essential for the normal development of children before and after delivery. In that case these genes are regulated like a perfect symphony. Once these children have become healthy young adults, these genes are much less active. They are reactivated later in life by poor diet, abdominal fat, inactivity, and smoking to accelerate aging and chronic disease development. Now you can understand how it all works well enough to do something about it! This information is very new to most of you and you must have some questions or comments that will help others understand better too. Don’t hold back. I want you to understand.
Very helpful! Thank you