Protecting Your On-Camera Look: Aging Can Be Controlled

• Television Is About How You Look
   
• Protecting Your Career And Appearance

MME will continue providing new updates about dietary/health practices that might improve On-Air performance, look and overall health. We will try to keep you updated with useful performance related information, as often as possible.

From the BBC:
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: 
EXERCISE 'CAN FIGHT AGING'

Exercise seems to stimulate a key enzyme. Long-term physical activity has an anti-aging effect at the cellular level, a German study suggests.

Researchers focused on telomeres, the protective caps on the chromosomes that keep a cell's DNA stable but shorten with age.
They found telomeres shortened less quickly in key immune cells of athletes with a long history of endurance training.

The study, by Saarland University, appears in the Journal Circulation. "This is direct evidence of an anti-aging effect of physical exercise," says Dr Ulrich Laufs of Saarland University

In a separate study of young Swedish men, cardiovascular fitness has been linked to increased intelligence and higher educational achievement. Telomeres are relatively short sections of specialized DNA that sit at the ends of all our chromosomes.

They have been compared to the plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces that prevent the laces from unraveling.

Each time a cell divides, its telomeres shorten and the cell becomes more susceptible to dying.
National athletes

The researchers measured the length of telomeres in blood samples from two groups of professional athletes and two groups of people who were healthy non-smokers, but who did not take regular exercise.

One group of professional athletes included members of the German national track and field athletics team, who had an average age of 20.

The second group was made up of middle-aged athletes who had regularly run long distances - an average of 80km a week - since their youth.

The researchers found evidence that the physical exercise of the professional athletes led to activation of an enzyme called telomerase, which helped to stabilize telomeres.

This reduced the telomere shortening in leukocytes, a type of white blood cell that plays a key role in fighting infection and disease.
The most pronounced effect was found in athletes who had been regularly endurance training for several decades.
Potency of training

Lead researcher Dr Ulrich Laufs said: "This is direct evidence of an anti-ageing effect of physical exercise." 

"Our data improves the molecular understanding of the protective effects of exercise and underlines the potency of physical training in reducing the impact of age-related disease."

It is still difficult to separate cause and effect from these studies - as longer telomeres may still be a marker of fitness

Professor Tim Spector
Kings College London
Professor Tim Spector, an expert on genetics and aging at Kings College London, said other studies had suggested more moderate exercise had a beneficial effect on aging. He said: "It is still difficult to separate cause and effect from these studies - as longer telomeres may still be a marker of fitness."

"Nevertheless - this is further evidence that regular exercise may retard aging,"Spector said.

Professor Kay-Tee Khaw, of the University of Cambridge, an expert on aging, said: "The benefits of physical activity for health are well established from many large long-term population studies.
"Even moderate levels of physical activity are related to lower levels of many heart disease risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol and lower risk of many chronic diseases associated with aging such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers."

Intelligence Link
In the second study, published in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from the University of Gothenburg analysed data on more than 1.2 million Swedish men born from 1950-1976, who enlisted for military service at age 18.

They found that good heart health was linked to higher intelligence, better educational achievement and raised status in society.
By studying twins in the study, the researchers concluded that environmental and lifestyle factors were key, rather than genetics.

They said the findings suggested that campaigns to promote physical exercise might help to raise standards of educational achievement across the population.

Lead researcher Professor Georg Kuhn said cardiovascular exercise increased blood flow to the brain, which in turn might help forge more and stronger connections between nerve cells. However, he said it was also possible that intelligent people tended to make more exercise.

CONSUME ENERGY BARS AND BEVERAGES WITH CAUTION

CONSUME ENERGY BARS AND BEVERAGES WITH CAUTION
MORE VITAMINS, NOT ALWAYS BETTER
HIGH LEVELS OF VITAMINS BUILD UP, THEY CAN CAUSE NAUSEA, VOMITING AND EVENTUALLY LIVER DAMAGE.

MME will continue providing new updates about dietary/health practices that might improve On-Air performance, look and overall health. We will try to keep you updated with useful performance related information, as often as possible. . From THE LA TIMES

By Elena Conis Los Angeles Times
February 9, 2010

These days, it's not difficult to consume 600 percent of your daily recommended value of B vitamins or 2,000 percent of the recommended amount of vitamin C - all before lunchtime.

Many energy bars, juices and other products are crammed with sky-high levels of vitamins. Gulp down an Odwalla Blueberry B Monster smoothie and get 360 percent of the daily value of four types of B vitamins. Swallow a shot of Emergen-C and you could get more than 1,600 percent of the daily value of vitamin C.

That's not necessarily good. At some point, the upsides of added vitamins disappear - and may even about-face into downsides.

When it comes to vitamin consumption, "some is good, but more is not necessarily better," says Joan Salge Blake, a clinical associate professor of nutrition at Boston University.

Vitamin C is a case in point. Adults need 75 to 90 milligrams a day, but many fortified juice drinks and self-proclaimed immune-boosting products, sometimes called "functional foods," provide 10 times that amount in a single serving.

A little extra vitamin C may be helpful. Studies suggest that taking about twice the recommended amount could shorten the duration of colds. But consuming much more than that has little benefit, largely because vitamin C is water soluble, says Mary Ellen Camire, professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Maine in Orono.

"Your body excretes the excess, and you get very expensive urine," Camire says. Not to mention cramps, nausea and diarrhea - the other potential side effects of taking several grams of vitamin C or more in a single day.

The B vitamins are another good example. Overconsumption risks depend on the B vitamin in question: Consuming 500 milligrams a day or more of B6 (adults need 1.3 to 1.7 milligrams) can cause reversible nerve damage, whereas several hundred times the recommended amount of B12 (which is 2.4 micrograms) is harmless.

But it's not clear why you would want more than the daily value anyway. Contrary to claims made by some supplement promoters, vitamin B6 hasn't been found to alleviate the symptoms of depression or premenstrual syndrome, and vitamin B12 hasn't been found to prevent heart disease, improve mental acuity or boost exercise performance.

Vitamin A, meanwhile, dissolves in fat, so any excess beyond what the body needs can get stored in tissue. For that reason, consuming mile-high levels of these vitamins poses its own risks.

As high levels of the vitamin build up, they can cause nausea and vomiting, blurry vision, lack of coordination and, eventually, liver damage.

In 2006, doctors at the Mayo Clinic Arizona, in Phoenix, reported in the journal Liver Transplantation the case of a 60-year-old man with rashes, sore muscles, hair loss and chronic liver disease -- the result of taking 20 to 100 times the recommended value of vitamin A daily for 10 months. A similar case was reported in the journal Annals of Hepatology that same year by doctors in Buenos Aires who had treated a young man who had been taking high levels of vitamin A in order to build muscle.

Such cases are, admittedly, rare. But the trend toward vitamin supplementation combined with the popularity of so-called functional foods has led to some concern among nutritionists and public health experts, Camire says. In a survey of 1,200 teens and adults published in the Canadian Journal of Dietary Practice and Research last year, respondents reported that they would increase their consumption of certain foods - including snacks and juices - if they were fortified with extra vitamins. (The survey was conducted by the Dairy Farmers of Canada, an industry group.)

The fear of over consumption may be there, but the evidence of harm is so far lacking, Camire adds. To date, there's no evidence that vitamin toxicity has become more common as a result of increased consumption of heavily fortified foods.


In a study published in the journal Food and Nutrition Research in October, researchers in nine European countries pooled data on consumption of food, fortified foods and supplements to determine how frequently people were meeting or exceeding the tolerable upper limit of vitamins and minerals - the limit is the level at which toxic effects, such as vomiting or lack of coordination, can occur. Even among people who consumed high amounts of vitamins, consumption was well below the upper limit.

"With most vitamins, the upper limit is so high that it's hard to hit," says Roger Clemens, a professor at the USC School of Pharmacy whose research has focused on functional foods.

The risk is, at least theoretically, most pronounced in people who consume both supplements and fortified foods, he says.

Eating a variety of foods, functional or not, diminishes any overconsumption risk. "If you have diversity in your diet, it's very remote that you would exceed the safe upper limit" for any vitamin, Clemens says.

Camire has another piece of advice: If you're worried you might be getting too many vitamins, switch over to unfortified juices and snacks.

"In most cases, you're not going to get too many vitamins from natural foods," she says.