The Ultimate Guide to Cellular Rejuvenation:
The Top 17 Best Anti-Aging Supplements and Foods to Help You Stay Young Naturally

BY ROXY DILLON

groundbreaking research into health and aging has revealed a special class of anti-aging supplements, foods and herbs that rewire your body for health and longevity by activating special proteins called sirtuins at the genetic level.

Activating Your Longevity Genes: The Sirtuins

For centuries, nearly every culture has searched for a way to slow and even reverse the aging process. Greek writers pursued the Fountain of Youth as far back as the fifth century BCE. India still recognizes the ancient science of longevity called Ayurveda, which is believed to add years to your life by nourishing and detoxing the body. My favorite success story of all, however, is that of a Chinese herbalist named Li Ching-Yuen, who, according to some records, was born in 1736 and died 256 years later. Regardless of whether you believe Master Li’s story is myth, reality, or a little of both, you have to admit there’s a part of you that when you hear this thinks, “I’ll have what he’s having.”

Cut to the twenty-first century, and we’re just as focused on discovering the mechanisms that prevent and reverse aging as our global ancestors were. In fact, one of the most studied proteins in the past ten years that’s been found to aid the aging process is called sirtuin, or silent information regulator. Sirtuins control the rate at which we age, and the length of our lifespan, meaning that on many levels they are our bodies anti-aging regulators. They’ve been dubbed “longevity genes,” which is also why I thought it would be a great place to begin our anti-aging supplementation program. Stimulate your sirtuins, the thinking goes, and you’ll live longer and look younger.

One of the most studied sirtuins is called SIRT1. Among other sources, it’s found in garlic, Panax ginseng, and Polygonum multiflorum, an anti-aging herbal supplement grown in China that research has shown demonstrates anti-aging properties that activate a variety of biological processes in the body. There has been some controversy recently regarding possible liver damage resulting from the internal use of Polygonum multiflorum, and for that reason I do not recommend that you use it.

But guess what? These three anti-aging herbs were an integral part of Master Li’s regimen, switching on his SIRT1 when he used them! Even if he lived half the years that sources claim, it’s still an impressive number and one that supports the longevity-enhancing properties of herbs, in a time long before science showed us how.

In this chapter, I’d like to first explain how the body ages and reinforce the importance of addressing anti-aging solutions on cellular and hormonal levels. Then I’ll discuss the power of modern-day sirtuin activating anti-aging supplements that you can add to your daily routine to help you look and feel young.

Aging Is More than Skin Deep

Aging affects every part of your body—how you look, feel, and function. It affects your hair, face, and body in more ways than you probably realize. By the end of this article, you will learn what Master Li seems to have known, too—that you can extend and even reverse your years using natural anti-aging remedies. Some of the herbs that do this are EGCG (found in green tea), turmeric, red grape juice, coffee, hawthorn, gingko, hops, fennel, fenugreek, red palm oil, as well as anti-aging supplements like nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), R-alpha-lipoic acid, ubiquinol and CoQ10, vitamins, minerals, and numerous other compounds that have the power to make a real impact on how long you live and how young you look. We will use these elements and others to improve cellular function and increase hormonal levels to stop and reverse deep changes, at every level of your body, right down to the bones.

We tend to think of aging as an effect on the skin—wrinkles, creases, and sags as far as the eye can see. But as you age, every layer of older skin is depleted and disorganized, from the outermost epidermis to the supporting muscle and the deepest fat layers. Topical anti-aging products and preparations, particularly vitamin A derivatives and natural vitamin E, can repair and plump up the epidermis, the top layer of the skin, and make the surface look smoother and less wrinkled. This is very welcome, of course.

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But aging does not stop at the upper skin layers. It profoundly depletes the deeper layers, leading to unmistakable signs that no makeup can disguise and only anti-aging supplements, foods and products that work at both the cellular and hormonal levels can repair. Not even cosmetic surgery can correct some of these consequences, like pallor due to the loss of capillaries or the loss of youthful lip, eye, complexion, and hair color due to the loss of pigment-producing cells called melanocytes. In my book, Bio-Young you can learn how to repair even these seemingly irreversible changes by using safe, natural substances.

Although using natural anti-aging supplements and substances can make you look decades younger, please keep in mind that the exciting science that explains the mechanisms that underlie their actions is very young and fresh. The bulk of our knowledge about what happens as we age comes from studies that have appeared in the last ten years and have only been available, for the most part, in scientific journals.

The Ultimate One-Two Punch: Cellular + Hormonal Function

To achieve true anti-aging effects, you must activate cellular mechanisms, plus biochemical and hormonal anti-aging pathways, and restore them to youthful functioning. So it’s important to understand how the combination of certain anti-aging supplements, foods and herbs can promote deep and long-lasting effects.

Why this approach? When you improve cellular function, every one of your cells operates better, and this yields great results. When you improve cellular function through natural anti-aging supplements, you reverse your age in a real, biological sense. Your cells are younger, and you look younger.

But cellular improvement isn’t enough. Take the power of vitamin C. Applying this to your face as a serum will increase collagen levels there. Taking it internally will rejuvenate mitochondrial function in your skin and heart. Cellular function acts on the level of every cell, improving energy production, repair, and clearing of cellular debris. All of these mechanisms become slower and less efficient as we age. Improved cellular function very effectively reverses this decline, making you biologically younger at the cellular level. This is visible on the outside! Because there are many changes that aging causes in your body, some are not corrected, or reversed, by only optimizing your cellular mechanisms and require special anti-aging supplements and foods. Think of it this way: a healthy thirty-year-old has great cellular function and hormones working at peak performance. So to look truly young past thirty, and to continue doing so, you must rejuvenate at cellular and hormonal levels. And since vitamin C can only increase the muscle and fat atrophy that shrivels our skin as we get older, we have to add hormones to the picture for deep, and highly visible, anti-aging results.

Varicose veins are a great example of an aging concern caused by cellular and hormonal factors and should be addressed that way, as well. With age, your leg muscles atrophy, skin thins, and your blood vessel walls become weaker. Hormonal factors play a part, since women, particularly during pregnancy, are more likely to develop this condition. So thickening the skin, strengthening the muscles, and increasing elastin in the blood vessel walls bring about great improvement. But how do we do this naturally with anti-aging supplements? Bioflavonoids such as lemon peel and bilberry are very helpful, as they work on a cellular level by strengthening the blood vessel walls.

But many people do not experience varicose vein relief with bioflavonoids alone—you must cure this at the hormonal level by increasing elastin directly in the vein through the use of natural anti-aging foods dill seed essential oil. Because dill is estrogenic, it produces the beneficial effects of this hormone in your body and is known to tighten saggy areas, too.

Dill seed essential oil is just one natural anti-aging supplement that has a positive estrogenic effect on the body, which can also protect you from certain cancers and heart disease. Raising your hormones with safe, natural means can lead to truly astonishing, visible results, because estrogen is a dominant hormone in a woman’s body. As we age, more and more effects of declining estrogen appear, including the decline of elastin, collagen, muscle, and fat. Even the sudden appearance of dry skin after age thirty is due to declining estrogen, which causes a decrease in ceramides and hyaluronic acid, substances responsible for keeping skin moist, supple, and hydrated.

A Note about Hormone-Affecting Substances

It’s obvious that male hormones should be kept low when women are trying to restore their youthful, girly curves and glow. At the same time, raising your female hormones, particularly those in the estrogen family, will not lead to concerns about hormonally sensitive cancers. By using the safe anti-aging supplementation methods outlined in my book Bio-Young, you can rest assured that your risk will not be increased.

However, some of the most well-known hormonally active and oft-suggested anti-aging remedies can actually harm your hormone function. One of these remedies is soy, which has been touted as a cure-all for women of a certain age. The problem is that soy has been shown to lower certain estrogens and can produce detrimental effects, particularly when a woman has reached menopause. In some women soy may lower thyroid function, leading to weight gain and a dramatic loss of energy.

Wild yam is another hormone-affecting anti-aging herb known for producing contradictory effects in women. Wild yam, or Dioscorea villosa, is not related to the yams, or sweet potatoes, that you buy at the grocery store. Dioscorea villosa is thought to work by raising progesterone, though there is a good deal of controversy surrounding this idea, since it’s unclear how the human body could convert diosgenin, the compound found in wild yam, to progesterone.

The interesting thing is that any negative effects are entirely absent when other sources of diosgenin, such as fenugreek or sarsaparilla, are used instead of wild yam. Anti-aging creams that contain pharmaceutical doses of estrogens, such as estradiol, have been shown to produce visible anti-aging effects in as little as one week.

But most women are wary of using pharmaceutical estrogens, as some of the estrogen from the cream will be absorbed by the body, which may result in undesirable side effects like nausea, bloating, breast lumps, headaches, unusual vaginal bleeding, and increased blood clotting, which can lead to strokes. How amazing, then, that these results can be obtained using certain fragrant essential oils that act in a very similar way, but without any of the health concerns.

Finally, bio-identical hormones on the market also come with a degree of risk. Both the more commonly used hormonal replacement preparations and the newer, bio-identical hormones are manufactured in a laboratory and possess marked hormonal activity. Bio-identical hormones resemble the hormones found in your body more closely than the pharmaceutical ones regularly dispensed by doctors, but because they are equally powerful, they can also cause pronounced imbalances in the body that are negative. Supplying your body with hormones leads to reduced glandular function and gland atrophy, and this applies to all hormone-producing glands, including the ovaries and the testes. That is why I only recommend using safe, natural anti-aging supplements, foods and herbs found in nature.

When Natural Choices Are Full of Good Surprises

All that said, when it comes to anti-aging treatments, natural substances are the way to go. They stimulate the beneficial processes that help you look and feel young, while preventing DNA damage and disease. The results can even surprise you in the best way.

The most remarkable example of this occurs in the treatment of blood pressure through natural means—and a stable blood pressure in many ways is essential to healthy aging. Panax ginseng, for example, has been shown to both raise and lower blood pressure, depending on the individual’s needs. In other words, if you take Panax ginseng and your blood pressure is too high, it will lower it. If your blood pressure is too low, ginseng will raise it. In each case, blood pressure will be normalized and brought into a normal, healthy range. This kind of effect can only be achieved if the mechanisms that led to the imbalance in blood pressure, whether high or low, are corrected. Drugs cannot do this, because their pharmaceutical actions are highly specific and unidirectional. They will either raise blood pressure, and do this in all people, at all times, or they will lower blood pressure, and, again, do this regardless of the starting blood pressure of the person who takes the drug, lowering it even if the person’s blood pressure is already too low, and resulting in dangerous side effects. Good natural anti-aging supplements, herbs and foods, however, have balancing effects like ginseng, which work no matter what end of the spectrum you find yourself on.

Another anti-aging remedy for lowering blood pressure will have an effect both while you take it and after you’ve stopped the supplement. This is not the case with most pharmaceuticals. This plant is called hawthorn and has this effect, in part, by inhibiting angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE). This mechanism is the basis of drugs used to lower blood pressure, the ACE inhibitors. But one of the unfortunate side effects of ACE inhibitor drugs is kidney damage, a side effect completely absent when using natural hawthorn. I should also mention that natural hawthorn clears your arteries, strengthens the heart muscle, offers antioxidant protection, and prevents your body’s tendency to lay down fat stores, all beneficial for anyone on an anti-aging supplementation protocol. Not bad for side effects, right?

Many Actions, Many Pathways

Researchers estimate that there are more than one hundred fifty anti-aging pathways active in the human body. It is then necessary to focus on the most effective mechanisms that deliver the most visible results. It is important to remember that every natural substance has many actions, often influencing several anti-aging pathways at the same time, in various beneficial ways. Just as there are so many anti-aging pathways, so there are hundreds of natural anti-aging substances that affect them. There isn’t one anti-aging superfood or one supplement that can do it all, no matter how effective it is.

Because nothing in your body occurs in isolation, activating life-enhancing, anti-aging sirtuins will produce beneficial effects on many other anti-aging pathways. For example, in a model of breast cancer, resveratrol has been shown to activate SIRT1 and, at the same time, inhibit a protein called survivin, in this way preventing the growth of breast cancer cells. Inhibition or disruption of the survivin pathway suppresses tumor growth, so we see that stimulating SIRT1 produces a very beneficial effect on another pathway that plays a role in remaining youthful and disease-free.

Remember Master Li’s sirtuins—aka our “longevity genes,” which control the rate at which we age, and the length of our life span? A part of that anti-aging effect includes anti-cancer effects, brain protection, and younger skin and hair. Adding sirtuin activators to your healthy diet and beauty regimen also gives you the type of expanded lifespan that researchers have seen with landmark concepts like calorie restriction (CR), which was the first means ever found to prolong life across a variety of species, including rats, yeast, fish, mice, dogs, and even monkeys. That being said, there have been no human studies on calorie restriction, and there are a few reasons for that. First, it’s not possible to restrict human calorie intake for a reasonable length of time under experimental conditions, even though we have data concerning oxidative stress, metabolic rate, insulin sensitivity, endocrine, and sympathetic nervous system function, and these point strongly to an anti-aging effect of calorie restriction in humans. In addition, we have “negative” data, that is, data from overfed, obese individuals, which show accelerated aging in all aspects of this process. Second, there are obvious ethical problems with restricting calories from infancy or childhood, or during adulthood, under experimental conditions for a significant length of time. Good thing sirtuins mimic the effects of calorie restriction without producing any negative effects at all! And luckily these can be activated with affordable, natural anti-aging supplements and foods.

Eat Your Way to Sirtuin Stimulation: 12 Anti Aging Foods for Longevity and Health

So far, seven sirtuin proteins have been identified in the human body, each one with a slightly different mode of action. An easy way to activate your sirtuins every day is to choose anti-aging foods from the following list. All of these contain compounds that will stimulate your sirtuin longevity pathways.