Who will age faster, vegans or meat eaters?

And is Creatine, which is one of the supplements of choice for athlete's, also key to our health and longevity?

The vegan diet seems increasingly popular and on the rise at the moment. However, it's no secret that there are a whole variety of key nutrients, which will be missing from your plate if you are following an exclusively plant-based diet, and all of which are extremely important for your body to function correctly each day.

Then on the flip side we have some of the issues with eating meat, such as steroids and other hormones, antibiotics as well as nitrates to name a few. All of which will be horrendous for your short, as well as long term health.

Now a little bit about Creatine.

Creatine

Creatine?has been the superstar gym, sport and training supplement for well over 2 decades now, offering a whole variety of benefits, such as increasing muscle size and improving ATP and energy production.

Creatine is non-essential nutrient produced naturally in the body by 3 main amino acids arginine, methionine and glycine, as well as 3 enzymes:

• L-arginine: glycine amidinotransferase (AGAT).
• Methionine adenosyltransferase (MAT).
• Guanidinoacetate methyltransferase (GAMT).

There are also many other positive health benefits to be gained from creatine other than the well-documented muscle building and performance related ones.

For instance, creatine has been shown to lower both inflammation and cortisol levels, as well as crucially being involved in a process called methylation.

DNA methylation (DNAm) is a process that is essential to life and which happens billions of times per second, where tiny chemical markers called methyl groups will attach to one of the four nucleotide bases on your DNA.?

These methyl groups act like billions of switches, which will either hypo (low) or hyper (high) methylate regions across your genome, which will then affect how specific genes and biological processes function.

The vitamins, minerals, and amino acids from our day to day diets, such as vitamin B12, folate, choline and creatine are required to keep this process running smoothly. There are also genetic factors and oxidative stressors, which can affect how well this pathway works.

Around 50% of the creatine that we use up each day can be replaced in our day to day diets.?But one major issue is that since dietary creatine is only provided in animal products, such as meat, eggs and fish, then virtually all of the creatine lost in vegetarians and to a greater extent vegan’s must be replaced via supplementation.

This then adds yet another crucial nutrient to an already sizeable list of key nutrients such as B12, vitamin D, provitamin A, choline and heme iron, which are missing when following an exclusively plant-based diet.

So, are vegan genes healthier than meat eaters, and who will actually be ageing the fastest between them?

Well over the last 2 years the team at Muhdo Health have analysed a cohort of over 4000 epigenetics, DNA methylation and subsequent biological age samples.

We are currently looking at various factors, which have been shown to correlate to a reduction in biological age such as sleep, diet, exercise, stress and pollution etc.

From this data we have identified key nutrients and lifestyle interventions from 1000’s of time stamped and series epigenetic samples, which have shown clear correlations for their positive effect on reducing biological age.?

Biological age

Biological age is a very well-defined scientific term.?It is not a loosely defined marketing term.?To date there are 2992 scientific publications on biological age and epigenetics, so it is very well characterised.??

Biological ageing includes inability to fight cancer/disease, lack of functioning proteins, hampered energy production, reduced nutrient uptake, loss of circadian rhythm, increased inflammation, loss of new cell regeneration, and many more factors.??

When proteins lose function, the body cannot carry out the necessary tasks – for instance those affecting your memory, eye sight and hearing. They will also affect your ability to properly digest nutrients, to metabolise sugars and fats and to fight disease etc.?

So, your biological age in many ways acts as a fantastic barometer for overall health.?

At the start of next year, we will be releasing our initial findings, which will undoubtedly uncover some extremely interesting areas, as well as a greater amount of data to explore in more detail.

"Are vegan diets genetically better for us"?

Well our analysis will be used to compare different populations and/or different lifestyle behaviours, such as vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, keto or other variations to dietary habits, which by the start of next year should provide us with some good indications and a more definitive answer for you.