Feeling Good at Any Age: How to Nourish Your Body To Live Longer *and* Better

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Women can do it all, but that doesn't mean we couldn't use a little extra support. Nature's Bounty Women's Multi vitamin Gummies deliver essential nutrients including antioxidants, vitamin C and E to help you stay strong and healthy and just two delicious raspberry mixed berry flavored gummies per day. Explore how you can support your wellness routine at Nature's Bounty dot com Nature's Bounty It's in your Nature. Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is Next Question. Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode of Next Question, which is sponsored by Nature's Bounty. Today, when it comes to taking care of myself, I'm learning that small choices can really add up, especially when it comes to movement and nutrition. That's why I was super excited to talk with doctor Chris Arajo Torres, she is head of US Medical Affairs for Nature's Bounty, about how we can supplement our daily lives to help stay strong and steady over time, from nutrients like vitamin D and calcium to ways to stay active and keep moving. She shares a really fresh perspective on what matters most as we age. We also touch on routines that support your heart, your bones and your mental well being and how they can fit into your everyday lifestyle. Whether you're already paying close attention to your health or you're just getting started, there's something here for everyone, So let's jump in. Doctor Chris, thank you so much for being here tonight. I really appreciate it. I mean, I guess the focus when you're trained as a doctor really isn't on nutrition, but it's something that you felt passionately about, and I'm just curious, why did you want to make it a centerpiece of your focus on wellness.

00:02:06
Speaker 2: It's a great question because really you don't get a lot of training in medical school about nutrition. And if I have to think back, when I was in practice, it was really focused on, Okay, what do you need to do to get people to recover and recover from surgery? So it was like very specific to the topics of disease. And then I came into industry and my first approach was really metabolic health, so managing obesity and diabetes, and in that case, nutrition is at the cornerstone of that management of those patients.

00:02:40
Speaker 3: And then I.

00:02:40
Speaker 2: Started moving to Okay, what what do we need to do to optimize nutrition for for wellness as we age. It's not you know, it's it's important for everybody and at every at every stage. So that's that's how I came about it.

00:02:55
Speaker 1: And it's so important, and I think it's so key to longevity.

00:02:59
Speaker 4: You know, I've been reading so much.

00:03:02
Speaker 1: Longevity has become such a hot topic, probably because it's become hotter and hotter as I age.

00:03:08
Speaker 4: And since I'm.

00:03:09
Speaker 1: Sixty eight, I really interested in longevity.

00:03:13
Speaker 4: I know, I don't look at too.

00:03:14
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, I am sixty eight, and I'm okay looking at I actually am okay looking.

00:03:19
Speaker 4: At you know. And I also feel like I'm proud of my age.

00:03:23
Speaker 1: And when people on Instagram say things like, wow, you look old, I'm like, damn straight, I look old. I deserve to look old. I've been around a while and then I've blocked them. But anyway, tell us you know how longevity has evolved through the years, because I feel like we're hearing so much about it now.

00:03:43
Speaker 4: But we didn't used to write.

00:03:45
Speaker 3: Well because it was really a focus on disease.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: You know.

00:03:49
Speaker 2: It was a focus on you know, you got old and you have to manage all these conditions. But I actually think that talking about longevity is a great success.

00:03:58
Speaker 3: It's a success of.

00:04:00
Speaker 2: You know, we've increased our lifespan and now we talk about health span because we really want to be well until you know, later in our years.

00:04:10
Speaker 3: So it's I think it's a positive conversation.

00:04:13
Speaker 2: Also because wellness is a very dynamic and complex concept, and wellness is not the same for everyone, so we can all tweak and you know, work on our wellness in different ways, in different manners.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: But it's it's you know, it's a concept that it's just positive.

00:04:34
Speaker 1: I also think it's interesting because women live longer, and yet they don't necessarily live better, right you know, they live longer chronologically, but they're they're beset by all kinds of medical problems that really impact their quality of life. And I think sort of the whole longevity movement is really focused on how can you live longer but make those cheers really better and healthier, because you know, if you're infirmed, or you're suffering in pain or whatever it is, you know, with your quality of life really suffers. Right Well, I know that we're not going to have time to get bogged into too many details because we have a number of people we're talking to tonight. But when it comes to longevity, what areas do you feel like we should all be focusing on.

00:05:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I like to work in threes.

00:05:30
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people you know can manage those concepts.

00:05:34
Speaker 3: So for me, it's nutrition.

00:05:35
Speaker 2: It's going to be the first is what you eat, focusing on your right nutrients. There's also you know, some people talking about when you eat as well, So it's not only a function of.

00:05:48
Speaker 3: What, but when during the day. Movement and movement, it is not only.

00:05:53
Speaker 2: Your physical activity, your structured exercise, but also movement is breaking up from the chair, like you know, trying to be less sedentary, is your movement in your garden. So there's a lot of things that you could do in terms of movement and mobility. And then for me, your mental health and mental health is not just you know, focusing on you know, your own well being, but it's also your social networks, is your purpose, sense of purpose, your faith, faith community. So there's a lot of things that you can do in terms of your mental health.

00:06:30
Speaker 1: I know that as you get older, your nutritional needs change, and I was curious why does that happen?

00:06:37
Speaker 4: Why?

00:06:38
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I guess your metabolism slows down a lot, right.

00:06:42
Speaker 2: Well, it does slow down, and you have less calorie needs as you age, but you also have a great deal of specific nutritional needs that you need to address within that calorie So you need to focus on more specific nutrients to meet those demands.

00:07:01
Speaker 3: So that's first.

00:07:02
Speaker 2: We also have something that I don't think people recognize is that you need to focus on your hydration because you reduce your thirst, your perception of thirst. So you need to focus on, you know, making sure that you're getting your fluids.

00:07:17
Speaker 1: What do you mean you mean you don't think you're thirsty, but your body is craving water? What about other liquids? We're going to talk about this, you know, because there is you know, something about having this at city winery.

00:07:32
Speaker 2: Right, everything in moderation is where is where I'm going to stand with that.

00:07:37
Speaker 1: But you know, one thing I actually read once is a lot of times when you think you're hungry, you're actually dehydrated, which I thought was so interesting. All right, So metabolic heal metabolism, absorption, hydration.

00:07:53
Speaker 2: Your absorption also can be impacted for many reasons, like, for example, there's a subset of people that have acid in their stomachs and that impairs your absorption of certain nutrients. You also have inflammatory gastri intestinal diseases or if you have certain medical conditions that are taking medications that impact the absorption of your nutrients. So there's several things that happen as you age. And then for women, and I know that you have you know, super experts and women's health coming after, but for women there's also you know, your hormonal changes that are going to impact your bone health, and you have certain specific needs towards that.

00:08:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think there's so much interest now in the microbiome, which we're not going to get into a great deal tonight, but sort of your gut health and how that impacts every aspect of your body, not just your body, but also your brain. Your brain health is affected by your gut and your microbiome and sort of the good and bad bacteria. But that's sort of a really interesting new area of study, isn't it.

00:08:57
Speaker 3: Gut brain nexus.

00:08:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, like probiotics and all those things. Yeah, tell us about the nutrients you need as you get older. I know you need calcium for example, for your strong bones.

00:09:09
Speaker 2: Exactly, and you need calcium and you know, there's there are recommendations for like general adults, and then there's increased recommendations as you get older. So you know, you go from your thousand miligrams to twelve hundred miligrams, you know, and when you get older, and for women, that starts at fifty one years of age. So you have your vitamin D that you also need to absorb and incorporate your calcium, and it also increases as you.

00:09:35
Speaker 4: Age, and you get that you can get that from food.

00:09:38
Speaker 2: You can get food, So you know there's there's foods there are rich in calcium.

00:09:43
Speaker 3: There are foods that are rich in vitamin D.

00:09:46
Speaker 2: Your dairy products, your milk, you're yogurt and you know those are rich and foods you're greens are also very much rich in calcium. Your sardines when you eat it with the bone, like the canned.

00:09:58
Speaker 1: I can't get into those. I know a lot of people love them.

00:10:03
Speaker 4: Yes, I do not like I do I do you like them?

00:10:11
Speaker 1: There's a sartine lover at table three.

00:10:15
Speaker 3: I can't change recipes.

00:10:17
Speaker 4: Late, but no, it's true.

00:10:18
Speaker 1: And like salmon can salmon in particular exactly. Yeah, another I don't love that that, Yeah.

00:10:25
Speaker 2: But but you know, you can get some of those of sources. Now there's others like, for example, your magnesium. It's also very relevant. And one thing that people do not know is that, for example, I think the latest survey that in Haines that was published in twenty sixteen, forty eight percent of adults do not consume the recommended amount of magnesium. So there's also nutrients of interest because we don't consume them in the diet. You know, So you have as we said, the calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, fiber is very much under consumed and it's fair important for your diet health and protein protein, I will say, it's also something that you need to focus. So if you if you are looking at your diet, then focus on your protein. Focus on the fish and the fatty fish that has the good the good oils you know from for your mega threes and your greens that have a good deal of minerals. And if you have deficiencies, then you need to consult with your healthcare professional and you can supplement those.

00:11:34
Speaker 1: Women can do it all, but that doesn't mean we couldn't use a little extra support. Nature's Bounty Women's multi vitamin Gummies deliver essential nutrients including antioxidants, vitamin C and E to help you stay strong and healthy, and just two delicious raspberry and mixed berry flavored gummies per day. Explore how you can support your wellness routine at Nature's Bounty dot org Nature's Bounty It's in your Nature. I'm going to talk to Mary Claire a little bit later. Like every post I see every real I spend like fourteen hours day on my phone, which is an issue. I'm so glad my husband left. But you know, it's all about getting more protein and your diet and like eating your weight and protein. I'm like, what the hell I could never do that? And is that kind of going overboard? Having you all noticed people are starting to talk more about fiber.

00:12:39
Speaker 2: I'm happy that there is some focus of fiber because it's a nutrind that it's hard to get. On the protein side, there are recommendations like the point to eight rams per kilober body weight day. That's the general, but you know, there are certain circumstances where you need to go a little bit higher, and when you're managing your weight, you might need to go a little bit higher as well. So there are personalized recommendations for protate so.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: You don't have to follow every instagram in influencer. Let's talk about overall bone and joint health, because about fifty four million Americans have osteoporosis, low bent bone mass, or both, and two million osteoporotic fractures cur annually. Researchers predict that the number will exceed three million people a year by twenty forty. Now, I have osteopenia, which I guess is the precursor to osteoporosis. Lovely, I also have some arthritis in my back. But I'm just curious, are what should people be doing to stave off osteopenia osteoporosis, to really keep their bone strong.

00:13:46
Speaker 2: So I will say that the first you can do something at every age, you know, to promote your bone health. It's not that if you didn't do it young and then you're done. No, there's there's every age that you can do to improve your bone health. You're going to focus on your nutrients that we talked about, the calcium, divitamin D, the protein. Those are important, but then exercise, you know, and exercise. It's not only your obit exercise, but also your resistance training. That's really important. And then, of course what you can do to preserve your joint health.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: So let's talk about resistance training and weight training, because that, again is something we're hearing so much more about. Women lose a certain amount of muscle mass every year. So is weight training the best thing to do to come back that? And what does it mean? Like you hear weight training? Is it sort of what do you call it when you use your own weight weight bearing exercise? Weight bearing exercises like planks or do you need to lift really heavy weights? You know, what is the rule of thumb for that? By the way, I did weight training Chris recently with a friend of mine, and I hadn't done so much of these heavy weights in a long time. She made me carry around forty pounds in each hand for like a minute.

00:15:11
Speaker 4: I almost passed out.

00:15:13
Speaker 1: For three days, I had trouble actually sitting on the toilet. I mean, honestly, with all these squats, I was like, this is miserable, and then it made me not want to do it anymore.

00:15:25
Speaker 4: But TMI, I know, TMI.

00:15:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, But you know, you do train and you do improve because it really improves your strength of all your you know, large muscle groups.

00:15:38
Speaker 1: And you were talking telling me backstage how your muscles and your bones actually worked exactly.

00:15:43
Speaker 2: So it doesn't improve It not only improves your muscle health, but it improves your bone health because muscles are attached to your bone, so you know, they pull and they generate, you know, better formation of new bone structure. But the general recome is that at least two times a week you would do a general strength training that incorporates all of your large muscles like your legs, hips, back, shoulders, twice a week. Twice a week, yeah, exactly, And then the rest of the week you're going to do the rest of your physical activity. You're aerobics, you're going to do and that's going to be one hundred and fifteen minutes if you're doing moderate like walking, et cetera, or seventy five minutes since you're a little bit more intense like you're running, et cetera. So you can combine all of those.

00:16:34
Speaker 1: Let's talk about jumping, because that's kind of a new thing too. Have you guys heard about the jump Roe being and all that. Who can jump? At our age? We can still jump? What's wrong with you? You pee?

00:16:50
Speaker 4: Huh? All you pee when you jump.

00:16:54
Speaker 1: This is why I wanted my husband really all right, tell us about jumping and why it's in important and what happened.

00:17:01
Speaker 4: Well, we're going to be talking about incontinence later, ladies.

00:17:06
Speaker 2: Well, jumping is important because it improves your balance, It improves your your increases your heart rate, so you're doing cardiovascular It also is weight bearing, right, so it really combines a lot of those you know, the types of exercise that you want to be doing into into that moving and then it improves your own sense of where your body stands, so it really improves your balance, and balance is really important to avoid falls.

00:17:35
Speaker 1: So ideal, and we're going to talk about balance in a moment, but if you had to jump like my pilate's teachers backstage, I love her, Ashley, Hi, Ashley, but she wanted to know. She got a mini tramp and she said, I jump on that because it's easier on the joints, on your joints. On the other hand, is it is effective if you're doing it on a mini tramp as when you're doing it on the heart a heart surface.

00:17:59
Speaker 2: I think I haven't seen a study that compares one thing to the other in terms of effectiveness. But to me, the most important thing for jumping is do it safely, start with low impact, which that your mini tramp will give you start low impact and you build from that. You know, because heart of like heart surfaces can be a very big impact to your joints, so you really need to start safe, low impact, work on your balance, and then you can move to it.

00:18:31
Speaker 1: But it's interesting, it's just that that on your bones actually just builds them. But again, start slowly and build up. And you mentioned balance, and I think this is so important. This is something I've been trying to focus on. Why is that so important? First of all? Why does why do we start to lose that as we age?

00:18:52
Speaker 2: I think because we lose just the for example, your core tone. You know that your strength, your muscle strength in many places.

00:19:01
Speaker 4: Well it's probably losing that muscle mass.

00:19:03
Speaker 2: You're also losing your range of mobility, your joint flexibility. So when you do balance, what you're really trying to avoid is falls.

00:19:14
Speaker 3: You know, it's.

00:19:15
Speaker 1: It's because the statistics on falls are really scary. You know, if you fall and you break break a hip or whatever, then it's really very difficult after that to.

00:19:27
Speaker 2: Fall downhill from exactly recoveries are not good, so I would say, yes, combine you know, the different type of buxs.

00:19:35
Speaker 1: Or and even like standing on one foot that's for sixty seconds, right, can be good. And lately I've been trying to do it with my eyes closed. It's really hard. I don't know if you all have tried to do it. And why is that sort of helpful versus with your eyes open, Because you know, I think you need that. You know, when you spot or you see a point in the distance and you can look at it during yoga, when you're doing a tree whatever, it really helps.

00:20:02
Speaker 4: But when you close your eyes it's super hard.

00:20:04
Speaker 3: You lose that.

00:20:05
Speaker 2: But also, you know, just stand close to something that you can touch, you know, yeah, like the back of a chair. You know that, you know that you have something there, so you can do all those exercises.

00:20:16
Speaker 3: In the context of safety.

00:20:17
Speaker 1: I think it helps with your posture too, But does that would be sad if you're practicing balance and then you fall because you're trying to have good balance, that would be so depressing. So what are like the three main takeaways for everybody here today?

00:20:32
Speaker 2: Okay, so main takeaways are You're going to focus on your nutrition, focus on those nutrients of interest that we discussed. You're going to focus on your physical activity, your movement.

00:20:45
Speaker 3: Sleep.

00:20:46
Speaker 2: We didn't talk about sleep, but get your seven to eight hours of sleep, and then you know your Marry Claire says.

00:20:53
Speaker 4: Mary Claire says day drinking is healthier. We'll talk to her more.

00:20:58
Speaker 1: About alcohol because honestly, there's a lot of conflicting information, actually a lot of information many of us don't want to hear.

00:21:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then do this social social, your networks. You know your mental health, but also you know your sense of purpose and maintaining your friends.

00:21:16
Speaker 3: That's also very important.

00:21:18
Speaker 1: Well, Chris, thank you so much for Thank you anyway, Thank you appreciate it, thank you, thank you, Thanks for listening.

00:21:41
Speaker 4: Everyone.

00:21:42
Speaker 1: If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. Secutive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our Supervising producer is Ryan Martz. And our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app, or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Women can do it all, but that doesn't mean we couldn't use a little extra support. Nature's Bounty Women's multi vitamin gummies deliver essential nutrients including antioxidants, vitamin C, and E to help you stay strong and healthy, and just two delicious raspberry mixedberry flavored gummies per day. Explore how you can support your wellness routine at nature's Bounty dot com Nature's Bounty, It's in your Nature