One of the things that worries me about getting older is becoming weaker and less mobile.
It’s known that after the age of 30, unless you do something about it, you lose up to 5 per cent of your muscle mass for every decade that passes. This means you can’t do as much but also, over time, bits of you begin to sag, wobble and bulge.
That’s why I do resistance exercises – such as press-ups and squats – every morning, which work the biggest muscles in your body, in your thighs and upper body. Despite the fact they never get easier or more enjoyable, I continue with them because I know they’re really important if I want to enjoy a healthy old age.
As well as doing resistance exercises, I also make sure that I’m eating plenty of protein. That’s because it is critical for keeping your muscles and bones in good shape.
I like to start my day with eggs, writes Dr Michael Mosley. Whether you prefer them boiled, scrambled or fried, a couple of eggs adds up to around 14g of protein
And by ‘enough’ I mean nearly twice as much as the NHS recommends for adults over the age of 19.
That’s because there is mounting research showing that the guidelines (45g of protein a day for women, 55g of protein for men) are too low for optimal health, particularly after the age of 60.
For example, in a recent study in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle, researchers in Taiwan found that boosting protein intake to much higher levels not only leads to trimmer waists and improved strength, but a significant reduction in levels of unhealthy blood fats.
In the study, 98 people, most of them women and all in their 60s, were asked to either add a daily soup containing 30g of protein to their diet, or continue as normal.
What I found interesting about this research is that at the start the volunteers were already eating above the NHS recommended levels of protein.
Adding in the protein-rich soup pushed average levels up from about 60g to around 90g a day.
As well as consuming more protein, the soup drinkers were also asked to do about nine minutes a day of resistance exercises, and to stick to this new regimen for three months.
By the end of the study the soup group had not only lost more fat from around their waists (around 2cm), but experienced bigger improvements in grip strength, walking speed and levels of triglycerides. (Like ‘bad’ cholesterol, triglycerides build up in your blood vessels and are linked to heart attack and stroke.)
Protein helps you lose weight because it keeps you feeling fuller for longer, and when you eat more protein you tend to eat fewer carbs, and this improves blood fats (carbs drive their rise).
This tallies with the results of another study, published in 2005 in the Journal of Nutrition where 48 women, all in their 40s, were asked to eat either the recommended levels of around 50g of protein a day, or a diet that contained twice those levels.
They were also asked to follow an exercise programme where they walked briskly three days a week, and did resistance exercises on two days. At the end of four months the group on the higher-protein diet had lost 8.8kg (1.4st) of body fat, 3.3kg (7.3lb) more than those on the lower-protein diet.
Greek yoghurt is also a good way to top up protein levels, particularly if you add nuts. A small serving (200g) with nuts will deliver around 25g of protein
It’s not just how much, but when you eat your protein that matters; it is better to spread your intake across the day, rather than eating it all in one meal.
That was the conclusion of a study by the University of Texas in 2014. The volunteers were asked to spend two weeks eating meals containing 10g of protein for breakfast, 20g of protein for lunch and 60g of protein for their evening meal — which is fairly typical of how most of us eat.
Then, for another two weeks, each meal (breakfast, lunch and dinner) contained 30g of protein.
Before and after the experiment they bravely agreed to have muscle biopsies taken. It turned out that when the volunteers were consuming equal amounts of protein for every meal, they produced more muscle than when they ate their protein in a more uneven fashion.
So how can you get more healthy protein into your diet?
I like to start my day with eggs. Whether you prefer them boiled, scrambled or fried, a couple of eggs adds up to around 14g of protein. If you add in smoked salmon or a couple bacon rashers, that will push you up to 30g.
Or you might opt for kippers for breakfast. A small kipper, around 100g, will give you 25g of protein.
There is mounting research showing that the guidelines are too low for optimal health, particularly after the age of 60
Greek yoghurt is also a good way to top up protein levels, particularly if you add nuts. A small serving (200g) with nuts will deliver around 25g of protein.
For lunch, or your evening meal, your best bet for a protein boost is meat or fish, with a palm-sized piece of either delivering about 30g of protein.
If you’re a vegetarian, then beans and lentils are a protein-packed option. One cup (200g) of cooked lentils provides around 20g of protein. And tofu, which is a great meat substitute, gives you about 18g of protein per 150g.
If you struggle to get enough protein in your diet then you may want to supplement with protein bars and drinks.
Anthropologists say that in the past singing around the fire would have played a big part in group bonding
While I’m no good at singing, I do like to belt out a tune. And I’m not alone.
There’s something special about singing as it is common to all cultures and been practised for tens of thousands of years (strangely enough, our brains contain many of the same genes you find in songbirds).
Anthropologists tell me that in the past singing around the fire would have played a big part in group bonding, a way of expressing emotion that brings us together.
Singing also has an important part to play when it comes to restoring damaged brains. Now researchers at the University of Helsinki say they’ve discovered why singing helps stroke patients recover the power of speech.
Previously this team had shown that stroke patients with aphasia (a reduced ability to understand or produce speech) made better progress after four months of singing therapy than with standard care. It also made those patients (and their carers) feel less socially isolated.
In the latest study the Helsinki researchers took brain scans of stroke patients with aphasia which showed that after four months, those who had singing therapy (in the form of a weekly group session, and singing at home three times a week) grew new brain cells in areas linked to language and speech. And as these areas recovered, so did their ability to speak.
I like the idea of growing new brain cells, so despite my wife and family’s occasional protests, I plan to go on belting out songs, however tunelessly.
A few weeks ago there were reports that a form of intermittent fasting, known as time-restricted eating (where you limit the hours within which you eat), might be bad for your heart.
However, as I pointed out in this column, the study that had generated the negative headlines has not yet been published and was flawed.
So I was pleased to see the results of a recent study, published in the Journal of the Medical Heart Association, which shows that time-restricted eating can indeed be good for the heart.
A group of 48 middle-aged people who’d recently had a heart attack were asked to either continue with their normal diet or try a form of time-restricted eating called 16:8 — fasting each day for 16 hours, then eating within an eight-hour window.
After six months the fasting group experienced greater improvements in their blood pressure, and their hearts also functioned better than the control group.
What advice are your children most receptive to? Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recorded advice given by parents to their children about to start secondary school. When they followed this up later, they found that the most helpful advice — from a child’s perspective — was to treat new experiences, even bad ones, as learning opportunities. The good news is that even the youngsters who didn’t seem to be receptive did try to put their parents’ advice into action.
Source: Mail Online
