Study: If You Want To Reach 100, Keep Your Inflammation Levels Low

Well then, run to your doctor and SPECIFICALLY ask how to keep chronic inflammation low. No dissembling allowed.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/08/09/study-if-you-want-to-reach-100-keep-your-inflammation-levels-low/
In a new study on aging, researchers have identified which health markers play the most crucial roles in people reaching 100 and beyond. More than any other, chronic inflammation surfaced as the most important, changeable factor for both reaching the century mark and enjoying better physical and mental health on the way.
The study included more than 1,500 people, with ages ranging from 50 to 110. About 680 of the participants were centenarians and 167 others were pairs of offspring from that group. The researchers measured several health markers known to contribute to aging, including metabolic rate, inflammation levels, liver and kidney function, and telomere length (telomeres are the protective “caps” at the ends of chromosomes that are linked to aging and susceptibility to disease).
The researchers found that offspring of centenarians have the best chance of keeping telomere length “youthful,” which seems to give them a better-than-average shot of hitting 100. But telomere length isn’t a malleable factor for most of the population. If one of your parents lived to 100 or beyond, it’s good news for you, but less so for everyone else.
Inflammation, on the other hand, is malleable, and it’s the factor this study identified as playing the biggest role in how long people live and their mental sharpness as they get there.
“It has long been known that chronic inflammation is associated with the aging process in younger, more ‘normal’ populations, but it’s only very recently we could mechanistically prove that inflammation actually causes accelerated aging in mice,” according to study co-author Professor Thomas von Zglinicki, from Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing. “This study, showing for the first time that inflammation levels predict successful aging even in the extreme old, makes a strong case to assume that chronic inflammation drives human aging too.”

 

Inflammation levels increased with age for everyone in the study, but participants with the lowest levels had the best chance of growing older while staying sharper mentally and living independently.

“Our study showed that over a wide age range, including unprecedentedly large numbers of the extremely old, inflammation is an important driver of aging that might be something we can develop a pharmacological treatment for,” according to Zglinicki.

The study results make perfect sense in light of what we’ve learned about the role chronic inflammation plays in diseases ranging from diabetes to heart disease to depression to Alzheimer’s to some forms of cancer. We’re not talking about the sort of inflammation that hurts when you get a cut or burn, but the kind that exists below the perception of pain. The inflammation implicated in chronic disease is cellular inflammation, and it’s damaging your cells typically without any overt symptoms. That’s why it’s so insidious – the diseases that result from cellular inflammation manifest once the damage has reached a threshold level, at which point we’re facing serious symptoms. It logically follows that consistently lower inflammation levels would underpin longer, healthier lives.

For more on the connection between your diet and chronic inflammation, check out this interview.

The study was published in the journal EBioMedicine.