What Does Nutrition Have to Do With Aging?

Just like all of your other behaviors and aspects of your wellness, your diet has a lot of influence over aging. Making sure you get the right nutrition at every stage in life helps increase your lifespan by reducing your risk for chronic health issues that often get worse as you age. 

Here at neXendo Wellness in Murray Hill and Long Island City, New York, registered dietician Brandon Caraballosa, MS, RD, CDN, CPT offers individualized nutrition counseling that helps you reduce your health risks as you get older. 

Malnutrition risks your health

Malnutrition, which happens when you don’t get the nutrients your body needs to function at its best, is associated with accelerated aging. That means you could be compromising both your health and longevity by excluding vitamin and mineral-rich foods from your diet or limiting your diet to just a few unhealthy options. 

Malnutrition throughout your life can contribute to or worsen these health concerns, which tend to appear as you get older:

• Anemia
• Heart disease
• Osteoporosis
• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Alzheimer’s disease

For this reason, it’s essential to start prioritizing great nutrition early on in life and maintain those habits long-term. 

Your ability to digest and absorb nutrients declines

While making choices about what you eat, also consider that getting older often causes a decline in your digestion and nutrient absorption processes. Additionally, your older age may mean that you have a lower appetite or struggle with issues like mouth dryness that make eating full meals a more difficult task than it was in the past. 

Realizing that your dietary choices are essential to health at any age is imperative, but it’s also important to consider other factors like these that can lead to malnutrition, too. 

Nutrients to prioritize

Nutritional counseling at neXendo Wellness lets you adopt a healthy diet without being misled by false advertising or fad diets. You can’t put the aging process to a full stop and stay young forever, but you can learn which nutrients will help you age more gracefully and lower your health risks in the process. A healthy diet for gentle aging includes vitamins and minerals like:

• Iron - found in spinach, meat, poultry, fish, sweet potatoes, asparagus
• Magnesium - found in salmon, black beans, peanut butter, avocado
• Zinc - found in milk products, chickpeas, cashews, dark chocolate, seafood
• Selenium - found in eggs, brown rice, seeds, fish, meat
• Manganese - found in brown rice, wheat, barley, quinoa
• Calcium - found in Greek yogurt, cheese, leafy greens, salmon
• Vitamin D - found in almond milk, mushrooms, salmon, egg yolks
• B vitamins - found in whole grains, meat, fish, oranges
• Vitamin C - found in oranges, grapefruit, brussels sprouts, cabbage
• Vitamin A - found in liver, sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach
• Vitamin E - found in nuts, seeds, avocado, cereal
• Vitamin K - found in eggs, tuna, kiwi, broccoli

You should also include foods with antioxidants in your diet, which you can find in dark chocolate, pecans, berries, artichokes, and other sources. Antioxidants fight oxidative stress on your cells, which is a major cause of accelerated aging. 

Visit to find out more

Curious about how you can improve your diet with regards to aging? Schedule an appointment here at neXendo Wellness by calling the office or using the online booking feature.