I’m working on a podcast about AGEs (advanced glycation end products). I’ll be interviewing David P. Turner PhD, President Anti A.G.E Foundation. “Everybody knows” AGEs comes from high blood sugar and browning of food. Some of that is even true but there are other factors, including: the importance of insulin sensitivity, and of insulin itself, as well as the protective effects of phytonutrients.
What questions would you like addressed?
You could ask about what happens when LDL is glycated and can’t be docked on the liver and recycled.
I’m looking forward to this one. Will you post it here when it’s done?
We had AGEs before sugar even existed in our diets. No point in talking about that; it’s best to ask what can actually be done about it.
I’ll start: take acarbose with every meal, and also metformin on the days when not building muscle. What else can be done?
Has AGE formation actually been reversed in any live organism? I’m not talking about just slowing down the problem accumulation.
I have researched AGEs extensively and ways to inhibit or reverse them in the past and the short version is that the main thing you can do now to slow down their formation is sadly the same thing you could do twenty years ago, which is to keep your average blood glucose low. That’s number 1, 2, and 3. Everything else that is available todays is minimally effective relative to that.
They get more atherogenic when glycated.
Yes it has but only to a very small extent in some tissues. This is what age-breakers like ALT-711 were designed for. But ALT-711 had minimal effectiveness and almost nothing has been developed since so we’re far off from having an intervention that reverses a significant portion of AGEs in the body. There is a great need for more companies in the life-extension space that look into ways to reverse AGE formation in tissues. It’s an area that doesn’t get enough attention IMO.
We have food databases for CML but are there databases for any other dietary AGEs? Where can they be found?
I doubt it, but I can’t say I have looked for such databases recently. In any case, dietary AGEs, although harmful in excess, aren’t really related to tissue AGEs at all. The latter is what’s important for aging while dietary AGEs are much less important because they are merely indirectly harmful.
Disagree. Dietary AGEs make significant contributions to the body’s AGEs.
I think you misunderstood what I meant. We may be talking about different things here.
If you eat AGEs and they get absorbed into the blood, they are merely exogenous AGEs that were already formed before entering the body and are now in the blood and will mostly be excreted through the kidneys later. This is very distinct from the tissue AGEs that are formed in vivo in your body such as in the extracellular matrix where they are embedded and accumulate with age. The latter are what’s really important for aging. Orally absorbed AGEs only indirectly contribute to tissue accumulation of AGEs such as by increasing inflammation and oxidative stress, which are both conditions that tend to increase glycation, the first step in AGE formation.
If you’re talking about serum AGEs, then yes you’re right in that orally absorbed AGEs contribute to the body’s burden of them. But serum AGEs are far less important and are not a good representation of the tissue AGEs accumulation.
I’ll get this as well. Thanks
Thanks. It’s an important distinction. I’ll find out what the Anti A.G.E Foundation (https://anti-ages.org/) thinks about it.
I looked briefly at their website, and it looks like they are focused on dietary AGEs and ways to reduce them rather then on endogenously formed AGEs. But I guess you’ll find out for sure when you do the interview.
Here’s an interesting Lustgarten video about AGEs in the diet and how to lower absorption of AGEs: fish oil, soluble fiber, and vit k to heal leaky gut.
And yet, here I am, 5 years past my “best use-by date”. and have been eating a high-AGEs diet all of my life. It’s my heritage. My mother lived to be 93 years old and lived a hard life and not many people have eaten more bacon for breakfast, she loved it. She didn’t suffer a slow decline she was mobile and sound of mind until almost the very end.
As I have said before, I do believe there is some truth to genetic-based diets.
Though they are often derided, no one has disproven this theory to my satisfaction.
I agree on the genetic-based diets. Tolerance will vary between individuals. I also think that even though dietary AGEs are generally harmful for longevity, they are not quite as harmful as the rodent studies would indicate. The reason is that, unlike rodents, humans have been using fire to cook food for thousands of years and by doing so have built up a pretty good tolerance to dietary AGEs. I also think the harm is lower in people that do a lot of other things to keep their inflammation low. Hopefully you have pretty good tolerance to them like your mom seems to have had.
But people don’t generally ask “How long did your grandparents live?” when they are selecting their partners. Had they done so for generations, we’d probably have much longer lifespans.
We are here only because our parents lived long enough to reproduce. They ate what they could, not what would extend their lives well beyond age 80.
I do think dietary AGEs make a difference–a big difference. I can see it in my same-aged peers. My diet has been low AGEs for more than four decades, even before I knew of their existence, and I would not trade that for anything! Even if one is genetically gifted such that the kidneys can clear almost all of these strange, large compounds, I still think they’d do better if their kidneys didn’t have to.
I generally agree. I didn’t mean to imply I think dietary AGEs are not harmful. My point was that the harm is greater in animals that never evolved to eat cooked foods. I have been trying to avoid dietary AGEs for a long time myself.
My interview with David Turner is now scheduled for the end of September so I’m still preparing for it. And any questions for David would be appreciated.
Based on talks by many different researchers, I believe that AGEs are negatively influencing health, both AGEs we eat and those we make in our bodies (which are affected by the food we eat). However, metabolically healthy people (non-insulin resistant) with non-leaky guts and strong antioxidant systems (glutathione) and properly functioning kidneys are very good at avoiding most accumulation of AGEs. The accumulation that does occur contributes to the progression toward metabolic illness, and then, more rapid accumulation of AGEs in the body, which further accelerates the problem.
Reversing AGEs seems hard. Stopping the accelerated aging is easier to understand but not easy to do (lose excess body fat forever, keep blood sugar low normal, avoid blood sugar “excursions”, teach the system to burn fat sometimes while burning glucose sometimes).
We should do what we can where we can. For now I’m trying to add to my program the avoidance of AGEs in my food, and which is a real bummer. No fried food, no grilled meat, emphasis on wet cooking.
More to come. Please send questions for Dr Turner.
Lactose intolerance is the most obvious example of inherited traits affecting our diets.
“The most common type of lactose intolerance, primary lactose intolerance, is the result of an inherited genetic trait that runs in families”
Usually, we don’t know except from experience what our body likes.
As I said before, I have tried many diets over the years. Barring the weight loss or gain attributes, I can say, they never had much effect on how I felt subjectively. There are some foods that my body doesn’t seem to like, mostly manifested in digestive tract problems.
Then we come to my overriding principle: If I don’t like it, I don’t eat it. This principle probably does not lead to the “ideal diet”. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your diet viewpoint, I simply do not enjoy most vegetables.
I have inherited a tendency towards insulin resistance. My father and his brother died of it. I am winning the battle but the war goes on. I have learned to (really) like “healthy” food, and not eat UPF or high glycemic foods without a plan to exercise within 60 minutes. I also use metformin, Farxinga and berberine like a madman.