It might seem odd to put “aging” in the title when I’m nowhere near “old man” status, but the truth is, the years are passing, and the health decisions I make today might not kill me overnight, but they could easily kill me in 10 or 20 years if I don’t choose wisely.
The funniest thing about improving my diet so dramatically last year is that my current biomarkers don’t necessarily show it. Whereas my triglycerides used to be elevated, they are now perfectly normal, which is great, but unfortunately, my LDL, which was once only barely over normal, is now squarely elevated. Technically, I also weigh more, and, it turns out, my blood pressure is higher. What gives?
Well, first of all, I think the biomarkers are extremely important, so I want to be clear on that. There’s been a very strange trend in recent years for health “influencers” to completely deny these biomarkers, but everything I’ve seen in my limited amount of study seems to indicate that these markers exist because they are extremely accurate for predicting complications and negative health outcomes in the future. But that being said, there’s no easy test for measuring other things like the healthy bacteria in your gut, nor does routine bloodwork attempt to measure things like your consumption of phytonutrients, antioxidants, etc., or search for any indicators of cancer. As I understand it, bloodwork is largely about preventing heart disease and diabetes, and it’s great for that, but very ineffective for many other things.
I eat more fruits, more vegetables, more legumes, and more whole grains, and far fewer ultra-processed foods. But this is only half the battle.
For example, part of eating more “whole foods” is that I add a lot of salt to things. The eggs I eat for breakfast? Salt. The chicken for burritos? Salt. The beef for hamburgers? Salt. The lentil soup cans I occasionally eat? Decent amount of added salt. The baked beans? Salt. In fact, I thought about this the other day, where sometimes I have a homemade hamburger, fries, and either broccoli or baked beans. The beef has salt, the fries have salt, I like to put some salt on the broccoli, and the baked beans – despite being full of goodness – also have a decent amount of salt. Let’s not forget the ketchup. You can see how there is a bit of a problem here, at least for this meal, which I eat variants of maybe 2 or 3 times per week.
Mind you, salt itself is not the problem, it’s eating too much of it. I would argue that if adding a little salt gets me to eat broccoli more often, then I should definitely add the salt, but I also need to look at my overall diet and note how much of any substance I’m consuming. Because again, in years prior, my bloodwork actually looked better, but my diet was worse. Now that I’ve improved my diet, it’s simply important to keep pushing into healthier territory.
The variety of snacky garbage I eat has largely coalesced into ice cream. It’s good to have cut out some of those junkier snacks, but it’s also important to realize that ice cream is high in calories, high in sugar, and high in saturated fat, and this could honestly play a role in not only weighing more but also having elevated LDL. Technically, a pint of ice cream with very few ultra-processed ingredients – as opposed to frozen chocolate pie slices, or some such nonsense – is probably a step up in terms of healthy eating, but that doesn’t mean it’s good, it’s just…less bad, maybe.
It’s also important to note that my diet doesn’t even remotely feel “forced”. I don’t eat foods I don’t like. But now that I’ve improved things, I think it’s important to realize there is still progress to be made. Quite honestly, I think my 3 boiled eggs per day could easily be responsible for my elevated LDL, and with the added salt, it could also be a factor in my elevated blood pressure. I know the former, especially, is controversial, but in trying to find some of the more objective speakers on the subject, it seems that aside from genetic factors which can easily change this, dietary cholesterol can actually have a clear effect on blood cholesterol. It’s not that eggs are bad, it’s that eating 3 every single day is maybe not the healthiest pattern. (But at least I don’t appear to have…what’s the word…familial hypercholesterolemia? LDL didn’t skyrocket, it just went up about 20 points over the course of a whole year). Moreover, few other dietary changes would make sense to have caused the increase in LDL, and the increase in ice cream consumption might only account for some it, since I used to eat a decent amount even when my bloodwork showed better. I talked about this with my gastroenterologist, and she agreed that the eggs were likely a key factor, based on what she had read on the subject (she also told me my reasoning was good to suspect this :] ). It doesn’t mean I should go back to the ultra-processed egg/cheese/pita monstrosities I used to eat, but it does suggest I should either cut back on eggs, find something better, or alternate with something better, so I’m in the process of figuring out how to go about that. My current strategy is to alternate with other breakfast foods. (Also, those eggs are hella expensive, so I really wouldn’t mind finding something else, maybe something oats-based).
This is a lot of personal info, but I guess I don’t mind talking about it if it encourages others to think about the subject, too. Most of my life, I’ve been in this weird limbo where I’m not obese, but I’m not a healthy weight, either. Making changes is…hard. I envy those who were raised eating healthy and never had to change anything. Blissful momentum. But I think it was the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” that talks about how something may not be your fault, but dealing with it is still your responsibility. This is still my responsibility. It’s been a long time since I was a kid growing up in my parents’ house, and especially by this point, in my mid-30s, there is no excuse for not taking responsibility for what I eat. It’s not that I mean to beat myself up over it, but improvement is important, at least if I’m hoping to live well into old (or just older) age. The only alternative is to complain about how I was raised, but, while perhaps cathartic, complaining doesn’t solve problems. [Says the guy who regularly swears at his computer when it doesn’t do what he wants it to do….]
A note on that, too: I have about a dozen posts I haven’t made public because they all suck, but a few discuss this subject in greater detail. See, eating healthy is an important aspect of health, but it’s important to realize that eating the “perfect” diet simply won’t give you “perfect” health. Nobody knows how long they will live, and there are far more factors to longevity than diet. But the problem is, many if not most people end up living quite a long time, and at some point, most seem to develop chronic diseases directly as a result of poor lifestyle choices. It would be easy to chalk up the future to things outside of your control, just to wake up in your 50s or 60s in a special brand of misery that could have been prevented with a healthier diet starting in your 30s. Obsession over health has diminishing marginal returns, true, so it’s kind of silly to spend too much time debating white potatoes vs. red potatoes, for example, but there are macro-trends in your diet (as well as in your life) that have a huge effect long-term, and the key biomarkers (BMI, blood pressure, LDL) are some of our most important tools for gauging this.
These biomarkers absolutely need to be dealt with. For me, losing weight, as I understand it, would likely help all of these, but it could also be as simple as skipping the salt more often, or finding better foods that use less, or none at all. It could be as simple as cutting back on eggs, or reducing my overall consumption of saturated fat. For that matter, cutting out ice cream entirely would probably make a huge difference, but might honestly be very difficult to pull off. It could be a matter of taking short walks after meals. Likely all of these would contribute.
It’s amazing to me how far some technologies have come, and after starting to browse online for blood pressure monitors, I noticed that the brand I had been considering was the precise brand used by my gastroenterologist’s office. If it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for me, and the model I ended up buying was only about $40. This is one way I can regularly check how things are going, at least on the blood pressure side of things. Sadly, checking LDL would likely be much more complicated, but I can just schedule another blood-panel in 3 months. Again, LDL doesn’t typically kill you overnight, but give it time, and you’d better watch out. I like the idea of doing a small experiment to see which dietary changes actually lower this for me.
Your life matters! Take it seriously and be good to yourself.