What are AGE’s?
AGE’s are Advanced Glycation End products. AGE’s can be either in the food you eat or formed within your body. AGE’s occur when sugar molecules attach to protein or fat molecules without an enzyme.
So what’s the big deal about this, you ask?
Well, AGE’s are a serious promoter of aging in the body, as well as the beginnings of many chronic diseases. In fact AGE’s are one of the biggest factors in diabetes, heart disease and others as well.
These AGE’s form a sticky plaque-like substance in the brain, nerve tissue, and the rest of the body. It is reported that when AGE’s are consumed, about 10-30% are absorbed into the body. The body’s ability to eliminate these once they are absorbed is very limited, meaning that once these gunky, gooey, nasty things get in human cells, it’s damage that cannot be fully undone.
While all human tissue is subject to damage by AGE’s, the lining of blood vessels is especially sensitive, as well as certain nerve cells that can quickly accumulate damage—
especially in blood capillaries of the kidneys and eyes, brain and nerve cells, collagen, and your DNA. This is pretty serious and destructive stuff.
AGE’s are responsible for wrinkly, sagging skin, damage to the pancreas that causes diabetes, and damage to blood vessels, which leads to the plaque buildup that causes heart disease.
Besides the irritation and inflammation they create in blood vessels, they damage collagen in blood vessel walls, which leads to high blood pressure. Glycation also weakens the blood vessel walls, can cause aneurisms and deadly hemorrhagic strokes.
AGE’s also help form the sticky amyloid proteins and neurofibril tangles that take over the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease, causing severe memory loss and dementia.
They can easily damage the nerves, causing peripheral neuropathy and deafness, as well as attacking the tiny blood vessels in the eyes, which in turn can lead to blindness, as well as creating dangerous by-products that can become cancer.
The wide variety of diseases is the result of glycation interfering with the cellular function of the body and highly oxidizing byproducts.
As you can see, AGE’s are highly destructive. Where do they come from?
Advanced Glycation End products are from two primary sources:
• From our diet (Exogenous AGE’s)
• Internally produced in the body (Endogenous AGE’s)
Any food that is browned or roasted such as brown bread, browned or grilled meat, bacon, crispy brown cookies, chips, crackers, etc. contains AGE’s. They form whenever food browns with heat as in roasting, frying or grilling. Cooking food at high temperatures without water or liquids (as in frying) causes the sugars in the food to bind with the proteins or fats to form AGE’s.
Any food that is high in fat, protein or sugar is likely to cause AGE’s when cooked without water. Using water when cooking as in steaming, poaching or boiling helps to prevent the sugars from attaching to the proteins and fats and helps to prevent AGE’s.
Cooking at a lower temperature also helps to minimize AGE’s. And of course, eating a portion of your foods raw also minimizes AGE’s that you consume.
You know that crispy skin on the roasted Thanksgiving turkey? That’s full of AGE’s. So are French fries, bacon, chips, and just about anything that is baked or fried to a golden brown. Even that juicy steak (the outer browned layer, not the interior), the brown outsides of that muffin or bagel, and that delicious caramel on your dessert are full of AGE’s.
Processed, packaged foods often have added AGE’s to enhance their flavor and make the food look more appealing. Caramel coloring is a good example of this. The list of foods with added AGE’s also includes donuts, cakes, crackers, chips, dark colored soda, and even dark beer.
While it’s important to try to reduce your intake of exogenous AGEs from browned foods as much as you can, keep in mind that you can also help counteract their effects in your body by eating a high-antioxidant diet.
Endogenous (or internally formed) AGE’s occur in the body from the sugar and carbohydrates in the food you eat. Excessive sugar in the body (in the form of blood glucose) binds to proteins and causes glycation. People with chronically elevated blood sugar have the most damage from AGE’s, such as those with type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome.
As nutrition expert Johnny Bowden says, “It’s like putting sugar in your gas tank, it totally gums up the works.”
Certain types of sugars such as fructose are much more likely (as much as 10x more likely) to glycate in your body. If you look at the huge amount of foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, or the large numbers of people eating sugary, processed foods and drinks, is it any wonder why there are such high rates of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other inflammatory diseases?
So if you want to age slower, a big priority should be minimizing or eliminating high fructose corn syrup in your diet. That means it’s very important to eliminate soda and other sweetened drinks. Note that the small amount of fructose found in natural whole fruits is generally healthy and well tolerated by your body. However, fruit juices should still be avoided as it concentrates the sugar in a higher amount than you’d get with whole fruit.
AGE’s can be measured by the same test given to diabetics to monitor long-term blood sugar control. This relatively new blood test is known as the Hemoglobin A1c test.
For optimal aging, your A1C levels (whether diabetic or not) should be less than 5%, which would mean keeping your blood sugar level at about 90 mg/dl on average. While that seems fairly low by some conventional medical standards, this percentage is easily attainable if you eat the right foods to keep blood sugar stable.
Minimize the effects of AGE’s
• Keep blood sugar low with a low carb/low sugar diet. Especially avoid the sugar that comes from fructose, as in high fructose corn syrup and fruit juices.
• Avoid or minimize grains —especially wheat and corn, as they tend to significantly raise blood sugar. And grains are often baked or fried to become crispy and brown, which makes them even higher in AGE’s. Sorry, that includes that wood fire roasted pizza too, as well as donuts, muffins, pastries, and bagels.
• Cook meats at lower temperatures more often – Higher temperatures produce far more AGE’s than slower cooking over low heat. Cook meat in broth if possible such as crock pot cooking as this dramatically minimizes AGE formation. Also rare and medium-rare meats have fewer AGE’s than well done meats. Fried meats like bacon would have the highest concentrations of AGE’s of any meats and should be limited to an occasional treat as opposed to a daily habit. Another example -- When cooking sausage, you can cook slowly over low heat and a tiny bit of water and covered with a lid to minimize AGE formation compared to pan frying over high heat.
• Eat vegetables and fruits raw, boiled, stewed, slow-cooked, or steamed – boiling and steaming introduce water to the cooking process, which stops glycation.
• Avoid all processed foods. Not only are they higher in sugar content, they often have caramel coloring and other additives high in AGE’s to improve color and appearance.
• Avoid browned, roasted, grilled, carmelized, or fried foods. If it’s golden brown or brown, it most likely contains AGE’s.
• Avoid dark colored sodas, dark beer, and anything with caramel coloring in it.
Combat AGE’s With These Foods:
All low-glycemic foods that don’t raise blood sugar much...
Kale, collard greens, or spinach
Tomatoes
Carrots
Sweet potatoes
Red, yellow or green peppers
Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts
Artichokes
Berries
Cherries
Kiwi
Plums
Red or black grapes
Beans
Green tea, black tea, white tea, and rooibos tea
Cinnamon, Cloves and Turmeric
Supplements that Battle AGE’s
• L-carnosine - An amino acid found in some proteins. L-carnosine helps prevent glycation by generating an enzyme that is able to counterattack AGE’s that have already been formed. This supplement is said to decrease the risk of attracting neurodegenerative disorder and inflammatory diseases by removing the unsaturated aldehydes (sugars). Since meat contains this amino acid, eating meat is less likely to produce as many dangerous AGE’s in the body as compared to eating breads and other browned carbohydrate sources.
• IC-5 blood sugar control – this is a very unique natural blend of herbal ingredients that have been proven to exhibit strong ability to control blood sugar from meals. And of course, lower average blood sugar means less formation of AGEs in the body. This unique blend is not available in stores and can only be found online at this page: http://tinyurl.com/ic5-blend
• Benfotiamine - A fat-soluble synthetic form of vitamin B-1. This substance has been studied to stop AGE’s from being formed. It blocks the biochemical processes that can cause vascular, nerve, kidney and retinal damage that are connected AGE’s and high blood sugar levels. Benfotiamine is a synthetic supplement and not naturally derived from foods or herbs. Since this is a synthetic compound and not natural, I’d personally steer clear of using this as the long term side effects would be unknown at this point in time.
• Pyridoxamine - Vitamin B6 is involved in hundreds of beneficial enzymatic reactions in the body. This unique form of vitamin B6, called Pyridoxamine, is thought to interfere specifically with toxic glycation reactions in the body.
• Antioxidants – Foods and supplements high in antioxidants will help to combat the damage that AGE’s do in the body. Antioxidants that I prefer to get from food as opposed to a supplement are vitamin C and vitamin E, beta-carotene, zinc, selenium, quercetin, and flavonoids. However, two supplements that are particularly powerful antioxidants among other benefits include alpha lipoic acid (which is contained in the IC-5 blood sugar control supplement we just mentioned a few paragraphs ago), as well as astaxanthin from Krill Oil … these 2 supplements can be a great addition to your anti-aging arsenal for reasons beyond just antioxidant power.
• Spices – spices such as cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and cayenne all contain powerful antioxidants while also containing compounds that help control blood sugar response from meals. I choose to use all 4 of these spices (and many other spices too) liberally in any cooking and seasoning of foods. Since we may not always use these 4 spices in particular on a daily basis in foods, I also like to use capsules of these spices as a supplement on a daily basis as well.
• Seanol P™: This is a rare seaweed extract (from Ecklonia Cava) and one that is very intriguing. It has been found in ORAC testing to have 3.5x the antioxidant power of even blueberries!
For more great info, please subscribe to my blog as more will follow!
AGE’s are Advanced Glycation End products. AGE’s can be either in the food you eat or formed within your body. AGE’s occur when sugar molecules attach to protein or fat molecules without an enzyme.
So what’s the big deal about this, you ask?
Well, AGE’s are a serious promoter of aging in the body, as well as the beginnings of many chronic diseases. In fact AGE’s are one of the biggest factors in diabetes, heart disease and others as well.
These AGE’s form a sticky plaque-like substance in the brain, nerve tissue, and the rest of the body. It is reported that when AGE’s are consumed, about 10-30% are absorbed into the body. The body’s ability to eliminate these once they are absorbed is very limited, meaning that once these gunky, gooey, nasty things get in human cells, it’s damage that cannot be fully undone.
While all human tissue is subject to damage by AGE’s, the lining of blood vessels is especially sensitive, as well as certain nerve cells that can quickly accumulate damage—
especially in blood capillaries of the kidneys and eyes, brain and nerve cells, collagen, and your DNA. This is pretty serious and destructive stuff.
AGE’s are responsible for wrinkly, sagging skin, damage to the pancreas that causes diabetes, and damage to blood vessels, which leads to the plaque buildup that causes heart disease.
Besides the irritation and inflammation they create in blood vessels, they damage collagen in blood vessel walls, which leads to high blood pressure. Glycation also weakens the blood vessel walls, can cause aneurisms and deadly hemorrhagic strokes.
AGE’s also help form the sticky amyloid proteins and neurofibril tangles that take over the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease, causing severe memory loss and dementia.
They can easily damage the nerves, causing peripheral neuropathy and deafness, as well as attacking the tiny blood vessels in the eyes, which in turn can lead to blindness, as well as creating dangerous by-products that can become cancer.
The wide variety of diseases is the result of glycation interfering with the cellular function of the body and highly oxidizing byproducts.
As you can see, AGE’s are highly destructive. Where do they come from?
Advanced Glycation End products are from two primary sources:
• From our diet (Exogenous AGE’s)
• Internally produced in the body (Endogenous AGE’s)
Any food that is browned or roasted such as brown bread, browned or grilled meat, bacon, crispy brown cookies, chips, crackers, etc. contains AGE’s. They form whenever food browns with heat as in roasting, frying or grilling. Cooking food at high temperatures without water or liquids (as in frying) causes the sugars in the food to bind with the proteins or fats to form AGE’s.
Any food that is high in fat, protein or sugar is likely to cause AGE’s when cooked without water. Using water when cooking as in steaming, poaching or boiling helps to prevent the sugars from attaching to the proteins and fats and helps to prevent AGE’s.
Cooking at a lower temperature also helps to minimize AGE’s. And of course, eating a portion of your foods raw also minimizes AGE’s that you consume.
You know that crispy skin on the roasted Thanksgiving turkey? That’s full of AGE’s. So are French fries, bacon, chips, and just about anything that is baked or fried to a golden brown. Even that juicy steak (the outer browned layer, not the interior), the brown outsides of that muffin or bagel, and that delicious caramel on your dessert are full of AGE’s.
Processed, packaged foods often have added AGE’s to enhance their flavor and make the food look more appealing. Caramel coloring is a good example of this. The list of foods with added AGE’s also includes donuts, cakes, crackers, chips, dark colored soda, and even dark beer.
While it’s important to try to reduce your intake of exogenous AGEs from browned foods as much as you can, keep in mind that you can also help counteract their effects in your body by eating a high-antioxidant diet.
Endogenous (or internally formed) AGE’s occur in the body from the sugar and carbohydrates in the food you eat. Excessive sugar in the body (in the form of blood glucose) binds to proteins and causes glycation. People with chronically elevated blood sugar have the most damage from AGE’s, such as those with type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome.
As nutrition expert Johnny Bowden says, “It’s like putting sugar in your gas tank, it totally gums up the works.”
Certain types of sugars such as fructose are much more likely (as much as 10x more likely) to glycate in your body. If you look at the huge amount of foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, or the large numbers of people eating sugary, processed foods and drinks, is it any wonder why there are such high rates of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other inflammatory diseases?
So if you want to age slower, a big priority should be minimizing or eliminating high fructose corn syrup in your diet. That means it’s very important to eliminate soda and other sweetened drinks. Note that the small amount of fructose found in natural whole fruits is generally healthy and well tolerated by your body. However, fruit juices should still be avoided as it concentrates the sugar in a higher amount than you’d get with whole fruit.
AGE’s can be measured by the same test given to diabetics to monitor long-term blood sugar control. This relatively new blood test is known as the Hemoglobin A1c test.
For optimal aging, your A1C levels (whether diabetic or not) should be less than 5%, which would mean keeping your blood sugar level at about 90 mg/dl on average. While that seems fairly low by some conventional medical standards, this percentage is easily attainable if you eat the right foods to keep blood sugar stable.
Minimize the effects of AGE’s
• Keep blood sugar low with a low carb/low sugar diet. Especially avoid the sugar that comes from fructose, as in high fructose corn syrup and fruit juices.
• Avoid or minimize grains —especially wheat and corn, as they tend to significantly raise blood sugar. And grains are often baked or fried to become crispy and brown, which makes them even higher in AGE’s. Sorry, that includes that wood fire roasted pizza too, as well as donuts, muffins, pastries, and bagels.
• Cook meats at lower temperatures more often – Higher temperatures produce far more AGE’s than slower cooking over low heat. Cook meat in broth if possible such as crock pot cooking as this dramatically minimizes AGE formation. Also rare and medium-rare meats have fewer AGE’s than well done meats. Fried meats like bacon would have the highest concentrations of AGE’s of any meats and should be limited to an occasional treat as opposed to a daily habit. Another example -- When cooking sausage, you can cook slowly over low heat and a tiny bit of water and covered with a lid to minimize AGE formation compared to pan frying over high heat.
• Eat vegetables and fruits raw, boiled, stewed, slow-cooked, or steamed – boiling and steaming introduce water to the cooking process, which stops glycation.
• Avoid all processed foods. Not only are they higher in sugar content, they often have caramel coloring and other additives high in AGE’s to improve color and appearance.
• Avoid browned, roasted, grilled, carmelized, or fried foods. If it’s golden brown or brown, it most likely contains AGE’s.
• Avoid dark colored sodas, dark beer, and anything with caramel coloring in it.
Combat AGE’s With These Foods:
All low-glycemic foods that don’t raise blood sugar much...
Kale, collard greens, or spinach
Tomatoes
Carrots
Sweet potatoes
Red, yellow or green peppers
Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts
Artichokes
Berries
Cherries
Kiwi
Plums
Red or black grapes
Beans
Green tea, black tea, white tea, and rooibos tea
Cinnamon, Cloves and Turmeric
Supplements that Battle AGE’s
• L-carnosine - An amino acid found in some proteins. L-carnosine helps prevent glycation by generating an enzyme that is able to counterattack AGE’s that have already been formed. This supplement is said to decrease the risk of attracting neurodegenerative disorder and inflammatory diseases by removing the unsaturated aldehydes (sugars). Since meat contains this amino acid, eating meat is less likely to produce as many dangerous AGE’s in the body as compared to eating breads and other browned carbohydrate sources.
• IC-5 blood sugar control – this is a very unique natural blend of herbal ingredients that have been proven to exhibit strong ability to control blood sugar from meals. And of course, lower average blood sugar means less formation of AGEs in the body. This unique blend is not available in stores and can only be found online at this page: http://tinyurl.com/ic5-blend
• Benfotiamine - A fat-soluble synthetic form of vitamin B-1. This substance has been studied to stop AGE’s from being formed. It blocks the biochemical processes that can cause vascular, nerve, kidney and retinal damage that are connected AGE’s and high blood sugar levels. Benfotiamine is a synthetic supplement and not naturally derived from foods or herbs. Since this is a synthetic compound and not natural, I’d personally steer clear of using this as the long term side effects would be unknown at this point in time.
• Pyridoxamine - Vitamin B6 is involved in hundreds of beneficial enzymatic reactions in the body. This unique form of vitamin B6, called Pyridoxamine, is thought to interfere specifically with toxic glycation reactions in the body.
• Antioxidants – Foods and supplements high in antioxidants will help to combat the damage that AGE’s do in the body. Antioxidants that I prefer to get from food as opposed to a supplement are vitamin C and vitamin E, beta-carotene, zinc, selenium, quercetin, and flavonoids. However, two supplements that are particularly powerful antioxidants among other benefits include alpha lipoic acid (which is contained in the IC-5 blood sugar control supplement we just mentioned a few paragraphs ago), as well as astaxanthin from Krill Oil … these 2 supplements can be a great addition to your anti-aging arsenal for reasons beyond just antioxidant power.
• Spices – spices such as cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and cayenne all contain powerful antioxidants while also containing compounds that help control blood sugar response from meals. I choose to use all 4 of these spices (and many other spices too) liberally in any cooking and seasoning of foods. Since we may not always use these 4 spices in particular on a daily basis in foods, I also like to use capsules of these spices as a supplement on a daily basis as well.
• Seanol P™: This is a rare seaweed extract (from Ecklonia Cava) and one that is very intriguing. It has been found in ORAC testing to have 3.5x the antioxidant power of even blueberries!
For more great info, please subscribe to my blog as more will follow!
Thanks Andrew great info I can use all the help I can get lov you bro !!!
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome Maria!
Delete