• Home
  • About
  • News
  • EVOO Library
    • MDR® EVOO World
  • Med Live
  • Events
    • Mediterranean Culinary Concept – March 21-22, 2023
    • Culture of Food, Food Culture | November 15-16, 2022 • Philadelphia, PA
    • Diet, Global Health and Climate – September 15, 2022
    • Positive Nutrition – September 15, 2022
    • MDR Summer Connect 2022
    • Percorsi nel gusto, May 3-7 2022, Salerno (Italy)
    • Ambassador’s Breakfast 2022
  • Recipes
  • Sponsors
  • Contact
    • Home
    • About
    • News
    • EVOO Library
      • MDR® EVOO World
    • Med Live
    • Events
      • Mediterranean Culinary Concept – March 21-22, 2023
      • Culture of Food, Food Culture | November 15-16, 2022 • Philadelphia, PA
      • Diet, Global Health and Climate – September 15, 2022
      • Positive Nutrition – September 15, 2022
      • MDR Summer Connect 2022
      • Percorsi nel gusto, May 3-7 2022, Salerno (Italy)
      • Ambassador’s Breakfast 2022
    • Recipes
    • Sponsors
    • Contact
      • Home
      • About
      • News
      • EVOO Library
        • MDR® EVOO World
      • Med Live
      • Events
        • Mediterranean Culinary Concept – March 21-22, 2023
        • Culture of Food, Food Culture | November 15-16, 2022 • Philadelphia, PA
        • Diet, Global Health and Climate – September 15, 2022
        • Positive Nutrition – September 15, 2022
        • MDR Summer Connect 2022
        • Percorsi nel gusto, May 3-7 2022, Salerno (Italy)
        • Ambassador’s Breakfast 2022
      • Recipes
      • Sponsors
      • Contact
        The First Mediterranean Diet Roundtable: a recap of the 2015 New York edition with a look at the upcoming 2016 California Edition (April 20-21)
        The Mediterranean Diet Roundtable in California: A Network to address America’s health challenges?

        Why Mediterranean? A word from our panelist, Prof. Immaculata DeVivo (Harvard Medical School)

        Eating a Mediterranean diet might help extend your lifespan, suggests a study published in The BMJ in December 2014. The diet appears to be associated with longer telomere length – an established marker of ageing.

        The Mediterranean diet has been consistently linked with health benefits, including reduced mortality and reduced risk of chronic diseases, such as heart disease. It is characterized by a high intake of vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes (such as peas, beans and lentils), and (mainly unrefined) grains; a high intake of olive oil but a low intake of saturated fats; a moderately high intake of fish, a low intake of dairy products, meat and poultry; and regular but moderate intake of alcohol (specifically wine with meals).

        Telomeres sit on the end of chromosomes (like the plastic tips on the end of shoelaces), stopping them from fraying and scrambling the genetic codes they contain.

        Shorter telomeres are associated with lower life expectancy and greater risk of age-related diseases. Lifestyle factors, such as obesity, cigarette smoking, and consumption of sugar sweetened drinks, have all been linked to shorter telomeres. Oxidative stress and inflammation have also been shown to speed up telomere shortening.

        Given that fruits, vegetables, and nuts – key components of the Mediterranean diet – have well known antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, a team of US researchers set out to examine whether adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with longer telomere length. They analyzed data on 4,676 healthy middle-aged women from the Nurses’ Health Study – an ongoing study tracking the health of more than 120,000 US nurses since 1976. Participants completed detailed food questionnaires and had a blood test to measure telomere length. A diet score ranging from 0-9 points was calculated for each participant, with a higher score representing a closer resemblance to the Mediterranean diet.

        After adjusting for other potentially influential factors, the results show that greater adherence to the Mediterranean diet was significantly associated with longer telomeres. Each one point change in diet score corresponded on average to 1.5 years of ageing.

        However, none of the individual dietary components was associated with telomere length, underlining the importance of examining dietary patterns in relation to health, not just separate dietary factors such as intake of whole grains, say the authors.

        “To our knowledge, this is the largest population-based study specifically addressing the association between Mediterranean diet adherence and telomere length in healthy, middle-aged women,” they write. “Our results further support the benefits of adherence to the Mediterranean diet for promoting health and longevity.”

        A Mediterranean diet is the cornerstone of dietary advice in cardiovascular disease prevention, and the fact that it also links with a biomarker of slower ageing is reassuring, says Professor Peter Nilsson from Lund University, Sweden in an accompanying editorial. He suggests that genetic background factors, reflecting ancestry, could probably explain some of the variation in the association between dietary patterns and telomere length, and that future studies on this question “should take into account the possibility of interactions between genes, diet, and sex.”

        READ THE ABSTRACT HERE

        Share

        Related posts

        January 9, 2023

        The Mediterranean Diet Really Is That Good for You. Here’s Why.


        Read more
        April 25, 2022

        Living the Mediterranean Dream, Dolce Vita style


        Read more
        March 30, 2022

        Managing Symptom Profile of IBS-D Patients With Tritordeum-Based Foods: Results From a Pilot Study


        Read more

        Mediterranean Diet Roundtable

        36 Kilsyth Road, Brookline, MA 02445

        TELEPHONE: +1 908 212 7846
        EMAIL: info@mdrproject.com

        Privacy Policy
        Cookie Policy

        Sponsorship Opportunities

        DOWNLOAD OUR 2023 SPONSORSHIP DECK HERE

        © 2022 Mediterranean Diet Roundtable. All Rights Reserved. Website by Grafica Manent
        Manage Cookie Consent
        To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
        Functional Always active
        The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
        Preferences
        The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
        Statistics
        The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
        Marketing
        The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
        Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
        View preferences
        {title} {title} {title}