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The Outlay for the Upkeep of the Downhill

(plus Vegetables (kale recipe) and Calcium)

The Outlay for the Upkeep of the Downhill: If we are lucky, we will all get old. Axiomatically, we all will die. Hopefully, when that time comes, we will be very old, very cogent and playing tennis the day before the night we die in our sleep. How do we do this? By filling in the chinks. What do I mean by that? By plunking down the cash "outlay" for the "upkeep" of the "downhill". You wonder why I take supplements? This is why? Wonder why I have an 80% organic plant-based diet? This is why? Why do I hike and walk and do chi gong? Meditate? Am an optimist? Don't drink or smoke? Have loving friends? All ditto. I have read all of the longevity literature and know what is supposed to work and given that we don't have a terrible genetic component, all research shows that this lifestyle should work. And even now, with the science of "epigenetics", the genetic component is in question. (Read Bruce Lipton's The Biology of Belief.)

Part of the aging process is the slowing down of all systems with a loss of that youthful zest and energy that most of us boomers can fondly remember. I think that filling in the chinks as we age is very important so that, hopefully, all of our systems can age at approx, the same rate. What if it's your digestion that's iffy? Test for food allergies and give enzymes. If you are not digesting, you are not nourishing. Heart? Lots of supplementary help here including Hawthorne and CoQ. Skeletal system? Lots here too, including MSM and glucosamine. Brain? I love my thinking organ more than any other, so I take good care of it with lifestyle and supplements, including GPC, ALC, Phos Serine and many others. There is pretty much a natural treatment for almost every aging problem you may have.

Yes, aging is not for the faint of heart, but there are ways to make it a lot less angst provoking and one of the main ways is investing in the outlay for the upkeep of the downhill. Think about it. I will be writing more about this in future newsletters, reviewing a couple of books I have just read: The Blue Zones and The Jungle Effect, both about what it takes to become a centenarian.

The Magic Vegetable: Jane Brody writes a column every Tuesday in the Science section of the New York Times. Usually she is pretty right wing in her unbridled support of Big Pharma, blindly ignoring its shameless posturing and I have mostly stopped reading her for personal blood pressure reasons. But I was seduced by her article on vegetables in the 10/5/10 issue: First of all she extols vegetables and tells us how good they are for us (duh), then grumbles that even though they are so good for us, not many of us are eating them in the form that they actually do us some good.

She then ranked vegetables according to nutrient content, (from the advocacy group, The Nutrition Action Health Letter.), I guess to try to persuade us recalcitrant and picky eaters to eat our veggies and here it is: "Kale leads the list, followed by spinach, collard greens, turnip greens, Swiss chard, canned pumpkin, mustard greens, sweet potato, broccoli and carrots. Others among the "superstars" listed were romaine lettuce, red bell pepper, curly endive, Brussels sprouts, butternut squash, green pepper, peas and bok choy. Except for the sweet potato with 100 calories per serving, none of the above have more than 40 calories." Alrighty then, hand me that kale.

Here is a recipe for "Lemon Kale Chips", the most edible way I know how to eat kale. Buy two heads of kale. Any kind. Cut the leafy part from the hard stems and discard the stems. Rip the leaves into bite-sized pieces. Put the ripped leaves in a bowl and pour about 1T EVOO, 2T. lemon juice, and shake a bunch of sea salt over everything. Heartily massage all this stuff into the kale with your hands for awhile. The leaves will feel softer. Cut parchment paper to size over your large baking pan (s) and distribute the massaged kale onto the pan. Bake in the oven at 400 until they are sort of crispy.

Do calcium supplements cause heart attacks? According to a recent study, yes. However, in my estimation, the study was deeply flawed. There were 11 clinical trials involving 12,000 people who took daily calcium supplements (all kinds of calcium) around 500 mgs per day. Researchers expected to find that the participants would be protected from heart attacks but were flummoxed to find that there was actually a 30% increase in heart attacks. Confusing matters even further, there was no increase in the risk from stroke or death. Here's my take on it.

First and most important is the fact that there was no vitamin D given along with the calcium supplements. You know how I yell at you about your D levels? Well, that is what allows your calcium to get to the bones where it belongs. Otherwise, calcium is not distributed properly and it becomes glue around your heart and in your arteries. It's actually dangerous to take calcium if you don't have adequate D levels (Over 50). Did you know that about 2/3 of all Americans have low D levels?

Secondly, who knows what kind of crappy calcium they were taking. Walgreens? Costco? Supermarket generic? Bottom line, it's really best to get your calcium from food. The 1200 extra milligrams (on top of the probably 700 mgs that a good diet gives you) that nutritionally un-savvy MD's suggest to vulnerable women is, to me, very ill-advised. Add the low D levels and you have a disaster waiting to happen. To reach your suggested 1200 mgs per day, you would need only a very absorbable 400-500 mgs of supplemental calcium, if that. And your D levels need to be adequate to even take that much extra. (Osteoporosis is not a calcium deficiency, anyway, it's an acid-alkali buffering imbalance.)

Go to this website to find calcium rich foods, then figure out how much you will be able to get from food: www.ucsfhealth.org/adult/edu/calciumcontent/index/html. Or google "calcium rich foods."

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