Bioactives: Using food to redefine healthy aging
Although we are living longer, our health isn’t always better. Globally, one in six adults will be over by and the proportion of those over is predicted to treble.. In good health, men can expect to live an average of years, while women can expect to live an average of years.This suggests a growing divide between leading a longer and healthier life.
These additional unwell years have a detrimental effect on people’s quality of life and place a great deal of stress on the healthcare system, which supports the individuals as well as their families. Therefore, the focus of society needs to change from just living longer to living longer with better health.
Although the likelihood of illness rises with age, it is not a necessary side effect of aging. Numerous intricate aspects impact the process of ageing in a healthful manner. Certain aspects, like heredity, are uncontrollable, but other factors, like nutrition and food, are acknowledged factors that can be changed by behavior.
It is commonly known that maintaining normal, healthy function and, more significantly, lowering the risk of disease can be achieved by eating a diversified, balanced diet high in foods that supply the necessary macronutrients, fiber, and vitamins and minerals.
Researchers are also uncovering novel approaches to enhance and even optimize health through nutrition and shedding new insight on the factors that contribute to good aging. This includes recent and fascinating studies on bioactives, or “non-essential” nutrients, which demonstrate the potential importance of naturally occurring food components for maintaining health as we age.
Benefits of bioactives for health
A broad and varied class of substances found in food called “bioactives” can influence bodily functions and improve people’s health. Flavanols, or flavan-3-ols, are among the most studied bioactives. They are found in large amounts in a variety of plant-based foods, such as tea, apples, berries, and cocoa. For more than 20 years, there has been mounting evidence supporting flavanols’ health advantages. Research has indicated that they have a positive impact on metabolic outcomes, cognitive function, and cardiovascular health and function.
In their investigation of flavanols, researchers at Mars Edge, a division of Mars Incorporated devoted to nutrition research and products, have now accomplished a significant milestone alongside our partners. The COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) released its major findings earlier this year.
Over 21,000 generally healthy adults over 60 participated in the multi-year trial, which was led by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US. The trial’s goal was to determine if a daily flavanol supplement—which came in the form of a standardised cocoa extract—or multivitamin could help lower the risk of specific health conditions like heart attack, stroke, or invasive cancer.
The results demonstrated that the flavanol supplement had a positive impact on cardiovascular health: participants assigned to the flavanol group experienced a 27 percent decrease in cardiovascular deaths when compared to the placebo group; when self-reported compliance was taken into account, the reduction in cardiovascular deaths was strengthened to a significant 39 percent. These results demonstrate the significant impact of dietary approaches on health, especially in light of the fact that the trial’s average participant age was 72 and that almost half of the patients were on preventative aspirin and/or statin regimens.Over the course of its five-year span, COSMOS gathered tens of thousands of data points from individuals ages 60 to 100, providing a unique view into health and aging well. Nowadays, the common definition of health is the absence of disease, but in reality, health encompasses much more. Nevertheless, the range of health that may be described by non-disease-related biomarkers is constrained. Considering their age, it is important that all of the COSMOS participants were in generally good health at the beginning. This allows us to evaluate the factors that have kept them healthy throughout time and the factors that have damaged their health as they have aged. All of the information gathered about nutrition, lifestyle choices, food habits, and a variety of metabolic and physiological results
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What comes next?
The scientific findings from COSMOS are just getting started, even though the intervention study is now done and the first papers have been published. Our understanding of flavanols, nutrition, lifestyle, health, and healthy aging will be increased as the data is analyzed, and many more studies will be published in the next months and years. These recent studies are expected to provide new perspectives on healthy aging and significant new insights into the variables influencing our health as we age. The findings might possibly pave the way for the official formulation of a flavanol guideline.
The numerous new discoveries made possible by COSMOS are probably going to have a good effect on how later-life health promotion is approached, motivating and enabling individuals