To celebrate healthy aging month, we caught up with Kaytee Boyd – an inspirational Integrative Nutritionist with over 25 years experience in the health industry.
While we’re firmly against “anti-aging”, we’re all about getting the most out of life for as long as possible. To achieve this, it’s important to understand what’s involved in healthy aging. To celebrate healthy aging month, we caught up with MitoQ ambassador Kaytee Boyd – an Integrative Nutritionist with over 25 years of experience in the health industry. Keep reading to learn about how health and aging are interconnected, how aging is linked to your cells, what foods are always on Kaytee’s shopping list, + more!
Kaytee: Humanity has been striving to live forever, and life expectancy dramatically increased over the past century, jumping from 49 in 1900 to 79 in modern times. Even though life expectancy has increased, health expectancy is decreasing. Historically, the major factors contributing to the decline in healthy aging have been: lack of appropriate exercise, food quality, smoking, alcohol and/or drugs, stress, and environmental factors such as air and water pollution and use of chemicals in the home.
Healthy aging to me means being able to do EVERYTHING I want and am doing now and in each future decade of this precious life, without fatigue, mental or physical impairment. Getting old isn’t for sissies, that's for sure - so I am acutely aware of the effects of lifestyle, diet and mental health on the aging process and what we can do to make it as seamless as possible.
I am lucky to have great examples of people I have met that have taken the time to educate themselves on health and wellbeing so that they can enjoy their life as MUCH as possible as they are aging. Obviously, you can’t control everything, but you do the best that you can.
What does that look like? Eating well, adequate sleep, exercise with the long-term in mind and on a regular basis. Having a fabulously fun, full and rich life - take for example the blue zones around the world where centenarians live… social people, they eat healthy food, they have community and purpose. AND they move often. We have to keep moving as humans. Like they say, use it or lose it. Both mentally and physically.
“Healthy aging to me means being able to do EVERYTHING I want and am doing now and in each future decade of this precious life, without fatigue, mental or physical impairment.”
Kaytee: Absolutely your state of mind and how you deal with stress (mindset). A 2012 study, published in the journal PLoS ONE found that individuals with the most job stress had the shortest telomeres - telomeres are bits of our genetic code that sit at the end of each chromosome, like the plastic ends of a shoelace that protect it from fraying. Every time a cell divides, our telomeres get shorter.
When those telomeres become too short, cells can die or become damaged. Shortened telomeres have been linked to cardiovascular disease, Parkinson's, cancer and type 2 diabetes. Interestingly those who did not experience work exhaustion had longer telomeres.
In research, those who aged well and lived longer had many commonalities:
Kaytee: We are understanding more and more why we age. Some theories claim that aging is caused by injuries from ultraviolet light over time, wear and tear on the body, stress, lack of nutrients or byproducts of metabolism. Other theories view aging as a predetermined process controlled by genes.
No single process can explain all the changes of aging. Aging is a complex process that varies as to how it affects different people and even different organs. Most gerontologists (people who study aging) feel that aging is due to the interaction of many lifelong influences. These influences include heredity, environment, culture, diet, exercise and leisure, past illnesses, and many other factors.
Unlike the changes of adolescence, which are predictable within a few years, each person ages at a unique rate. Some systems begin aging as early as age 30. Other aging processes are not common until much later in life. Although some changes always occur with aging, they occur at different rates and to different extents. There is no way to predict exactly how you will age.
The human body replaces its own cells regularly. ... About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, ~ about 1 percent of all our cells (mind blowing!!). In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.
All of our cells require stimulation for activity and healthy growth. Depriving our cells’ stimulation, like hearing or visual loss, seems to speed up aging. Those who continue to be active – mentally, socially, physically, sexually and spiritually – not only maintain substantial quality of life, but also tend to age slower in other key areas. Aging has no single factor to target, rather the sum of many factors – some damaging, some protective. Researchers have been manipulating that process for decades, and a better understanding of the factors and pathways involved in aging is a continuous field of wonderment and excitement.
“The human body replaces its own cells regularly. ... About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, ~ about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.”
Kaytee:
Kaytee: For maximum cellular health, we need the building blocks of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, water and vitamins as well as minerals which make up the six essential nutrient groups for the human body. The energy required to blink the eyes, to breathe, to keep the heart beating, to think, to read, digest food, to lift a finger, to walk, even to sleep and to dream—each one depends on an intricately choreographed interplay of chemistry involving these essential nutrients. We are literally a walking miracle of finely orchestrated metabolic processes every microsecond!!! I can hardly believe it, even now.
Just one example of what we need is magnesium - involved in over 700 metabolic enzymatic pathways. Magnesium is particularly important in helping the activation of T-cells (a type of white blood cell) whose action is to help with cancer surveillance and assist in reducing sickness from viral infections. It also has a key function in the production of ATP (energy). Virtually everyone isn’t getting enough magnesium.
Kaytee: Protein and fats keep me in a high-energy state. Things like quality eggs and avocado for breakfast, with fried mushroom and onion. I’m a huge fan of cutting kumara into sandwich thickness slices and throwing it in a sandwich press and using it like “toast”.
Lunches and dinners are the same, adequate protein to feel satisfied for hours afterward and high energy with mental clarity. Typically, I eat a lot for my size, ~ 150-200 g protein per meal with large salad/vegetables and kumara, buckwheat or quinoa based. Sometimes wild or purple rice or soaked beans that are finished in the pressure cooker. There is always a generous amount of olive oil drizzled over top.
Don’t forget about dark chili chocolate!!!
My healthy vices:
Kaytee:
Fresh Produce:
Fluids:
Miscellaneous:
Chocolate section:
Frozen:
Grains/Seeds/legumes:
Protein:
From my garden (or we fish/forage/visit markets for what we don’t have growing):
Kaytee: It’s really simple. The bottle lives by the bedside. Each night I take a bottle of water to bed and, when I wake up, I take two of the MitoQ curcumin and have at least 500 ml of water. Having a busy lifestyle and remembering to drink water is not my strong suit so this really helps set me up for a good start to the day. It is an absolute must for me in my life.
