Understanding the Associations Between Nutrient Intake and Healthy Aging in Humans

The answer to a relatively concise question — how does what we eat affect how we age — is unavoidably complex, according to a new study. While most analyses had been concerned with the effects of a single nutrient on a single outcome, a conventional, unidimensional approach to understanding the effects of diet on health and aging no longer provides us with the full picture: healthy diet needs to be considered based on the balance of ensembles of nutrients, rather than by optimizing a series of nutrients one at a time. 

“Our ability to understand the problem has been complicated by the fact that both nutrition and the physiology of aging are highly complex and multidimensional, involving a high number of functional interactions,” said Alan Cohen, PhD.

The researchers analyzed data from 1560 older men and women, aged 67-84 years selected randomly between November 2003 and June 2005 from the Montreal, Laval, or Sherbrooke areas in Quebec, Canada, who were re-examined annually for 3 years and followed over four years to assess on a large-scale how nutrient intake associates with the aging process.

Aging and age-related loss of homeostasis (physiological dysregulation) were quantified via the integration of blood biomarkers.

Four broad patterns were observed:

• The optimal level of nutrient intake was dependent on the aging metric used. Elevated protein intake improved/depressed some aging parameters, whereas elevated carbohydrate levels improved/depressed others;
• There were cases where intermediate levels of nutrients performed well for many outcomes (i.e. arguing against a simple more/less is better perspective);
• There is broad tolerance for nutrient intake patterns that don’t deviate too much from norms (‘homeostatic plateaus’).
• Optimal levels of one nutrient often depend on levels of another (e.g. vitamin E and vitamin C). Simpler analytical approaches are insufficient to capture such associations.

The results of this study are consistent with earlier experimental work in mice showing that high-protein diets may accelerate aging earlier in life, but are beneficial at older ages.

“These results are not experimental and will need to be validated in other contexts. Specific findings, such as the salience of the combination of vitamin E and vitamin C, may well not replicate in other studies. But the qualitative finding that there are no simple answers to optimal nutrition is likely to hold up: it was evident in nearly all our analyses, from a wide variety of approaches, and is consistent with evolutionary principles and much previous work,” said Cohen.

Sources:

Alistair M. Senior, Véronique Legault, Francis B. Lavoie, Nancy Presse, Pierrette Gaudreau, Valérie Turcot, David Raubenheimer, David G. Le Couteur, Stephen J. Simpson, Alan A. Cohen. Multidimensional associations between nutrient intake and healthy ageing in humans. BMC Biology, 2022; 20 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s12915-022-01395-z

Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “How does what we eat affect our healthspan and longevity? It’s a complex dynamic system.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 September 2022. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/09/220921210039.htm>.

Materials provided by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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