How Diet Impacts Health and Longevity

Our regular diet and nutritional choices have a profound impact on our health and longevity. Good dietary choices help us live longer, more active lives with fewer illnesses. Unhealthy eating habits not only reduce how long a person may have to live, but they also make those years more burdened with preventable diseases.

The Standard American Diet Leads to Chronic Illness

US life expectancy increased during the years from 1990 to 2010, but the number of people who lived longer while enduring chronic illnesses has also increased. Consider that over 42 percent of Americans are obese. About 47 percent of Americans have high blood pressure, while 34 million have type II diabetes and 88 million Americans meet the criteria for pre-diabetes.

These chronic illnesses are often caused or worsened by what we eat. In the US., it's called the Standard American Diet (SAD) and is an eating pattern that greatly contributes to the tsunami of chronic illness and shortened lifespans in the US. The Standard American Diet is characterized by frequent, regular consumption of:

• Red meats
• Processed meats
• Pre-packaged foods
• Processed foods
• Excessive added sodium
• Refined sugars
• High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
• Trans-fats and other unhealthy fats
• Excessive amounts of alcohol

None of these foods and food ingredients are particularly harmful to a person’s health in small, infrequently consumed amounts. The SAD, however, is a consistent style of regular food choices and consumption habits that aggravates some chronic conditions and causes other hard-to-shake disorders that can easily be lethal.

The Standard American Diet contributes to chronic illness through many biological processes, but two of the most impactful are obesity and systemic inflammation. A diet that causes, aggravates, or sustains systemic inflammation seriously harms to a person’s health, making them more vulnerable to severe illnesses like cardiac disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disorders.

Often, these chronic disorders co-occur, multiplying the harm caused by poor food choices in a cascade effect. For example, consider that a diet full of sugar, unhealthy fats, and refined carbohydrates causes a person to become obese. The excess weight makes it harder to exercise, leading to a more sedentary lifestyle, which worsens the effects of excessive sugar and fat intake.

Most eating habits that lead to prolonged systemic inflammation also lead to obesity, which is a serious co-morbidity in all the disorders mentioned above.

Diet, Disease, and Inflammation

Diets that cause or sustain systemic inflammation are known to cause and contribute to dangerous disorders such as:

• Obesity
• High blood pressure
• Stroke
• Cardiovascular diseases, including coronary artery disease
• Type II diabetes
• Metabolic syndrome
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

Obesity increases the risk of these disorders by elevating the level of chronic systemic inflammation throughout the body. Systemic inflammation causes a low but constant release of chemicals in the body that put cumulative stress on all cells and tissues, eventually causing organ damage.

As an illustration of how poor nutrition can affect several major body systems at once, let’s look at how a diet that’s high in unhealthy fats and salt can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, and kidney disease, all at the same time.

Over time, as a person eats too many salty, fat-laden meals, blood vessels accumulate deposits of cholesterol. The immune system attacks these fat deposits, causing the arteries to become inflamed. The inflammatory process causes blood vessels throughout the body to become more susceptible to developing clots of fatty plaque.

As inflammation increases, arteries become stiff and fragile. This makes them vulnerable to rupturing during episodes of high blood pressure, which could cause a stroke if it happens in the brain.

In this case, high blood pressure accompanies clogged articles because diets that are overloaded in fat also tend to be too high in sodium, which leads to the body retaining water to ensure the blood’s mineral levels stay balanced. Excess fluid elevates a person’s blood pressure, which puts even more stress onto the arteries that are inflamed and clogged with fat.

The kidneys are also harmed in this situation, as they’re overworked in a constant, losing battle to excrete high volumes of sodium.

As you can see, too much fat and sodium directly harm both the cardiovascular system and the kidneys, greatly increasing the risk of developing high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic kidney disease, and stroke.

What Determines if a Diet is Healthy?

Making a better diet part of our lives is one of the easiest ways to improve our health. By observing people who live in the famed Blue Zones around the world, where the percentage of people living to be 100—or even older—is high, we can draw some conclusions.

Living a long, healthy life is associated with overall eating patterns that are:

• Based primarily on consuming healthy plant-based foods. Diets that rely on fruits, grains, legumes, and vegetables for most of their daily calories are associated with far lower levels of cardiac disease and type II diabetes.
• Filled with whole foods, with no heavily processed foods
• Have little added sugar and no added salt
• Low on meat consumption, with fish being the most common kind of meat consumed
• Full of varied and balanced food choices

These eating habits are all associated with markedly lower rates of:

• Cardiovascular disease
• Diabetes
• Hypertension
• Kidney disease
• Obesity

Everyone can add years of active, healthy living to their lives by including more vegetables, fruits, nuts, and beans to their diet. Reducing one’s daily intake of red meat, eliminating heavily processed foods, and lowering their consumption of sodium and sugar is also an essential part of living a longer, healthier life.

Works Cited

• Aronson, D. (2008). Nutrition for Health and Longevity. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/archive/spring08p20.shtml
• Buettner D, Skemp S. Blue zones: Lessons from the world's longest lived. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2016;10(5):318–321. doi:10.1177/1559827616637066
• Can we reduce vascular plaque buildup? Harvard Health. (2021, September 17). Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/can-we-reduce-vascular-plaque-buildup.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, October 19). FASTSTATS - leading causes of death. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm.
• DiCorleto, P. (2020, August 5). Why you should pay attention to chronic inflammation. Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-you-should-pay-attention-to-chronic-inflammation/.
• Donovan, J. (2017, September 13). Eating for longevity: Foods for a long, Healthy Life. WebMD. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/features/longevity-foods#1.
• Ekmekcioglu C. Nutrition and longevity - From mechanisms to uncertainties. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2020;60(18):3063-3082. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2019.1676698. Epub 2019 Oct 21. PMID: 31631676.
• Hu Y, Costenbader KH, Gao X, Al-Daabil M, Sparks JA, Solomon DH, Hu FB, Karlson EW, Lu B. Sugar-sweetened soda consumption and risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis in women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 Sep;100(3):959-67. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.114.086918. Epub 2014 Jul 16. PMID: 25030783; PMCID: PMC4135503.
• Lobo, V., Patil, A., Phatak, A., & Chandra, N. (2010). Free radicals, antioxidants and functional foods: Impact on human health. Pharmacognosy reviews, 4(8), 118–126. https://doi.org/10.4103/0973-7847.70902
• Pearson, T. A., Mensah, G. A., Alexander, R. W., Anderson, J. L., & Cannon III, R. O. (2003, January 28). Markers of inflammation and cardiovascular disease. Circulation. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/01.CIR.0000052939.59093.45.
• Psaltopoulou T, Sergentanis TN, Panagiotakos DB, Sergentanis IN, Kosti R, Scarmeas N. Mediterranean diet, stroke, cognitive impairment, and depression: A meta-analysis. Ann Neurol. 2013 Oct;74(4):580-91. doi: 10.1002/ana.23944. Epub 2013 Sep 16. PMID: 23720230.
• Shi, M., & Loftus, H. (n.d.). Blueberry as a source of bioactive compounds for the treatment of obesity, type 2 diabetes and chronic inflammation. Journal of Functional Foods. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2016.12.036.
• Team, H. and V. (2021, August 27). How salt impacts your blood pressure & more. Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://health.clevelandclinic.org/kidneys-salt-and-blood-pressure-you-need-a-delicate-balance/.
• The State of Obesity 2020: Better Policies for a healthier America. Trust for America's Health. (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2020/.
• US Burden of Disease Collaborators. The State of US Health, 1990-2010: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors. JAMA. 2013;310(6):591–606. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.13805
• Wei, M., Brandhorst, S., Shelehchi, M., & Mirzaei, H. (2017, February 15). Fasting-mimicking diet and markers/risk factors for aging, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Science translational medicine. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6816332/.