Grant: Project Grant

It may seem obvious that what we eat affects how we age, but how diet might affect underlying aging processes remains largely unknown. In light of recent studies showing that vitamin supplements are mostly not helpful and may even be harmful, it is increasingly clear that molecule-by-molecule approaches to guiding nutrition are insufficient. How then can nutritional guidance for older adults be more precise than simply "eat well"? There is very little scientific understanding of how nutrition affects the physiology of aging, in part because the cellular and molecular links are complex and the fundamental mechanisms of aging remain controversial. Addressing this problem is not simple. We need to (1) find appropriate ways to simplify and accurately measure the complexity of what people eat, and of how our bodies age; (2) use data sets that permit us to see how one affects the other within aging individuals over many years; and (3) use sophisticated analytical approaches that let us examine how both nutrition and underlying biology change with age, and how each of these changing systems affects the other as it changes. Our team has this broad expertise, and we will use NuAge, the only cohort study in the world with sufficiently detailed data on both nutrition and biomarkers during aging to tackle these questions. Innovative and validated analytical methods will identify key signals from complex data on nutrition and aging biology, and then assess how these trajectories interact during an individual's lifetime. Our preliminary results have already identified dietary changes that appear to slow aging. The results of our study will (a) help establish how nutrition impacts biological aging processes; and (b) allow us to develop dietary strategies for aging adults exhibiting specific biological aging signatures, measurable through biomarker profiles.