Dear friends, 

This week's video report from Dr. Baumgartner deals with the Holy Grail of preventative health care: the fountain of youth. Obviously, there is no such thing, but what Dr. Baumgartner shows us is how our current diet directly impacts how well we age. The foods you eat have a direct impact on your health, both immediately and in the long term. Even down to the genetic level--your diet affects gene expression.

For example, eating a carrot will active certain hormones that increase your metabolism and make you healthier that day. Eating a donut will activate altogether different hormones that will negatively affect your metablism, making you less healthy that day. Watch the short video below for more insight into how your diet determines how well you're going to age. 

As always, I wish you the very best of health.

~Lee Swanson

Video Transcript: 

If there's one thing we're all looking for it's really that fountain of youth. You know, what can I do to keep my body younger, stronger healthier, for a longer period of time so I can enjoy what god gave me and what I was born into. So defining the really basic things like eating right eating healthy actually has a long term effect on how your body ages.

This has actually been dissected out in the literature now to show that people that actually eat healthier during certain decades in their life, for example from age 50-60, they're going to age much better from their 70's to 90's and it comes down to what you're putting, in your body, so really, you are what you eat. Even down to a cellular level we're finding that you can change the way that genes are expressed by certain foods you eat.

So, if I eat a carrot, that's going to change my gene expression that day as opposed to it, I ate a donut. So, what the carrot's going to do, it's going to increase my metabolism, it's going to increase the production of certain hormones, it's going to increase the things that burn fat and it's going to make me healthier that day. If I eat a donut, it does the exact opposite. It's going to activate genes that may slow down my metabolism. It's going to activate hormones that might make me store things up as fat. So, you really are what you eat.

When people ask, "Well, what can I do, what can I eat that's going to give me that longevity or that fountain of youth," it really comes down to just studies on a couple of things. The Mediterranean diet is one that's been very healthy. The Mediterranean diet, they have a lot of fruit and vegetables and Omega 3 fatty acids like olive oils. The meats that they're eating are mostly small animals, chickens and a lot of fish, fish are also high in Omega 3's and then a limited amount of fresh grains.

And so, one caveat of fresh grains is people are like, "Oh, bread, it's a grain, awesome, it's made of wheat." But it's not. A bread is a processed product that has a lot of sugars in it, it's metabolized slightly different than a fresh grain. A fresh grain is going to be like a steel-cut oat. It's very grainy. If you try to eat it right off the bat, you're going to have to chew it 100 times good enough to digest. But that's good: The more you chew something the harder it is to digest, the slower it is absorbed through your body which means the less weight gained. So, Mediterranean diet is one way to look at it.

Another good one that has a lot of studies behind it is the Paleo Diet. The Paleo Diet, it's real similar to the Mediterranean diet except that you're taking out most of the grains. You're getting your healthy fiber and carbohydrates from more vegetables and fruits and you're adding to that a little more nuts. The nuts have a lot of good fatty acids, a lot of good different fats that make you less hungry and slow down, or increase your metabolism and slow down your hunger.

And then the Paleo diet also has a little bit more of the meats in different sources there. So, the Mediterranean, the Paleo, they're very clean, great diets to get your body, one, healthier longer and if you do have some extra body weight, actually the studies show it's going to start to shed that body weight down to a leaner more muscular fit and physique.