Eat Less, Eat Better, and Live Longer: Does It Work and Is It Worth It? The Role of Diet in Aging and Disease

Abstract Unless a cure is found, the number of individuals afflicted by, and dying from, Alzheimer’s (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) is projected to rise exponentially such that, by the middle of the twenty-first century, 30% of the aged population will be afflicted by motor and/or cognitive declines. Even though the mechanisms resulting in the onset of AD and PD are unknown, it is clear that oxidative stress, a cellular condition associated with free radical dam¬ age, is centrally involved such that oxidative stress is one of the earliest alterations of AD (Olanow, 1992; Smith et al., 1995, 1996, 2000;Jenner and Olanow, 1996; Finch and Cohen, 1997; Nunomura et al., 2001). Oxidative stress, albeit at lower levels than those seen in neurodegenerative disease, is also centrally involved in aging (Harman, 1992) and likely plays a critical role in the cognitive and functional declines apparent in many aged individuals.