Stages of Life
Metabolic Engineering™ is a defined dietary program for optimal metabolic efficacy at every stage of life. Although the goals at each life stage may differ, the dietary pathway to achieve them is the same.
There are two reasons to practice Metabolic Engineering during pregnancy. The first is to prevent gestational diabetes, which can have adverse consequences on the fetus. The goal is not to lose weight but to improve the mother’s and child’s metabolic control during pregnancy. The mother should consider consuming four instead of three Zone meals daily to maintain adequate nutrition for herself and the fetus. A normal glucose tolerance test during pregnancy and weight health gain within prescribed limits would be indicators of your dietary success.
The second reason is to ensure that the fetus has an adequate intake of omega-3 fatty acids for cognitive health. The only source of those omega-3 fatty acids is the mother’s diet.
The brain is the fastest-growing organ in the first two years of life. If the child is not getting sufficient intake of omega-3 fatty acids in the womb, their neural development may be compromised. In addition, the rapid growth of the child’s brain requires adequate protein but is balanced by low-glycemic carbohydrates to promote metabolic efficiency. This is especially true during the adolescent years. As in early childhood, the need for omega-3 fatty acids continues as neural connections in the pre-frontal cortex are completed in the early twenties.
The early adult years are characterized by trying to achieve peak physical or mental performance. In either case, this means squeezing the highest energy output of the conversion of food into chemical energy in the mitochondria in the muscles or the brain. There are 30 trillion cells in your body, and each cell contains between 1.000 and 2,500 mitochondria to produce ATP from the food you eat. If mitochondria efficiency is decreased, so will your physical and mental energy. Mitochondrial efficiency in generating energy is controlled by AMPK activity. For the athlete, this means achieving peak physical performance. This translates into peak cognitive performance for the young adult starting any career. Both goals can be enhanced by following Metabolic Engineering™ to improve AMPK activity.
In midlife, one generally begins to sense that their metabolism is slowing down. Your metabolism is becoming less efficient. Not only can you feel that your physical and mental performance is diminishing, but this is the point of life when the symptoms of chronic disease develop because of a decreasing metabolic efficiency. Increased body fat is one of the first physical signs of decreasing metabolic efficiency at any stage of life.
Healthy aging can be defined as increasing your healthspan. Healthspan is your maximum lifespan minus years of disability caused by chronic disease. This is the real payoff for following Metabolic Engineering™ for a lifetime. Even if you have a chronic disease condition, its impact on your daily life can be significantly reduced by following Metabolic Engineering™ even starting later in life.
It’s never too late to enjoy the benefits of Metabolic Engineering™ at any stage of life, but the earlier you start, the greater your healthspan will be.
What exactly is the Zone? Simply stated, being in the Zone is how you slow down aging by reducing inflammation and increasing the repair of inflammatory damage. The Zone is a highly dynamic physiological state controlled by your diet. Like any validated medical science, the Zone is determined by your blood chemistry. Your blood will tell if you are in the Zone or you are not. In the Zone, you can better reduce, resolve, and repair the inflammatory damage caused by any type of injury. The result is decreasing the onset of age-related chronic diseases resulting in the extension of your healthspan.
What is Healthspan?
Healthspan is defined as years of life minus years of chronic disability. The future goal of medicine will not be treating the symptoms of a particular chronic disease but understanding what causes our healthspan to decrease in the first place. For example, many chronic diseases are associated with chronic low-level inflammation. However, what causes this chronic inflammation has not been apparent until recently; it’s the inhibition of the “master switch” of your metabolism, AMPK.
What is Metabolism?
Metabolism is how we convert food into energy to keep us alive. It is AMPK found in every living cell in the body that controls the flow of that energy. If AMPK activity is optimized, you live longer. If AMPK activity is inhibited, you gain weight, develop various chronic diseases at an earlier age, and accelerate your rate of aging. When you are in the Zone, your levels of AMPK are optimal to achieve a longer and better life.
It Can’t Be That Simple?
AMPK also controls your immune system. It’s called immuno-metabolism. The underlying cause of aging and the chronic diseases associated with aging is a growing population of senescent cells that are not eliminated by your immune system. Senescent cells are transformed cells like cancer cells. Instead of growing uncontrollably, senescent cells now generate new sources of inflammation in the body that speed up aging by increasing the levels of inflammation in every organ in your body.
Furthermore, senescent cells can turn other cells into senescent cells. In this regard, senescent cells are often called “zombie cells .” Under normal conditions, your immune system quickly eliminates these senescent cells. But if AMPK activity is not optimal, the ability of the immune system to remove these zombie cells is compromised, and their population begins to grow. This increase in senescent cells accelerates aging and the appearance of the chronic diseases associated with aging, as shown below.
How Do I Get Rid of Senescent Cells?
In the Zone, you can reprogram your immune system to recognize and eliminate senescent cells. Increasing AMPK activity is a critical factor in achieving that goal. As you age, AMPK activity decreases, and the population of senescent cells begins to grow. The removal of senescent cells is called senolytics, and it is ultimately controlled by the activity of AMPK inside the cell.
How Do I Get to the Zone?
There is no magical nutrient or drug that gets you the Zone. However, following Senolytic Nutrition can get you to the Zone. Each dietary component works as part of a complex team to orchestrate the necessary hormonal and epigenetic responses within the cell that are necessary for activating AMPK.
Our Mission
Our goal at DrSears.com is to provide you with the scientific knowledge of why we age and how to slow it down and offer you unique dietary insights to make it easier to reach the Zone. In the Zone, you can extend your healthspan by decreasing the population of senescent cells. Discover the benefits of being in the zone.