Mediterranean Diet Associated with Successful Aging, Study Finds

A new study pub­lished in Nutritional Health com­pared the diet of Greeks liv­ing in Greece with those liv­ing abroad.

The study con­cluded that adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet is asso­ci­ated with a higher level of suc­cess­ful aging among peo­ple of the same genetic back­ground liv­ing in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments.

The study aimed to com­pare adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet and suc­cess­ful aging lev­els between Greeks liv­ing in Greece and Greeks liv­ing abroad.

“The Greek pop­u­la­tion is amongst the longest-liv­ing pop­u­la­tions in the world, and rates of aging remain high com­pared to other European coun­tries,” Catherine Itsiopoulos, the exec­u­tive dean of RMIT University Bundoora’s School of Health and bio­med­ical sci­ence in Australia, told Olive Oil Times.

“However, the preva­lence of chronic dis­eases in Greece, such as heart dis­ease, stroke, demen­tia and depres­sion, are on the rise, par­tic­u­larly in the older pop­u­la­tions,” she added. ​“Although dis­ease pre­ven­tion and treat­ment is key to extend­ing life, focussing on improv­ing qual­ity of life and achiev­ing suc­cess­ful aging becomes even more impor­tant.”

While the Mediterranean diet has long been linked with longevity, Itsiopoulos said suc­cess­ful aging entails more than just dis­ease absence as peo­ple age.

“It involves pre­serv­ing func­tional abil­i­ties such as meet­ing basic per­sonal needs, being mobile, mak­ing deci­sions, main­tain­ing healthy rela­tion­ships, con­tin­u­ing to learn, and being a valu­able mem­ber of soci­ety,” she said.

“Although genet­ics is impor­tant in how well we age and whether we are at a greater risk of devel­op­ing chronic dis­eases, our envi­ron­ment and the way we live is impor­tant,” Itsiopoulos added.

In the study, the researchers sought to exam­ine the ​‘nature vs. nur­ture’ of the his­toric lev­els of longevity observed in Greece.

“We com­pared suc­cess­ful aging lev­els in Greeks liv­ing in Greece with Greeks liv­ing abroad (in Australia and the United States) to deter­mine the role of the liv­ing envi­ron­ment in peo­ple of the same genetic back­ground,” Itsiopoulos said.

Researchers used a val­i­dated suc­cess­ful aging index tool (scor­ing from 0 to 10) that includes health-related, social, lifestyle and clin­i­cal fac­tors, includ­ing edu­ca­tion, finan­cial sta­tus, phys­i­cal activ­ity, body mass index, depres­sion, par­tic­i­pa­tion in social activ­i­ties with friends and fam­ily, num­ber of yearly excur­sions, the total num­ber of clin­i­cal car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease risk fac­tors (i.e., his­tory of hyper­ten­sion, dia­betes, hyper­c­ho­les­terolemia and obe­sity) and level of adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet.

“Our study found that Greeks liv­ing abroad had greater suc­cess­ful aging lev­els com­pared to Greeks liv­ing in Greece as they were more phys­i­cally active, smoked less, were more socially active, had lower lev­els of depres­sion, had higher lev­els of edu­ca­tion and were bet­ter off finan­cially,” Itsiopoulos said. ​“Importantly, Greeks liv­ing abroad were fol­low­ing a Mediterranean diet more closely than Greeks in Greece.”

“Our study has shown that people’s per­sonal lifestyle choices, social sup­ports, cul­tural prac­tices and where they live play a very impor­tant role in suc­cess­ful aging, even among those who share the same genetic back­ground,” she added.

The study used the Mediterranean diet score, which ranges from 0 to 55. A suc­cess­ful aging index was eval­u­ated as a range from 1 to 10.

The results showed that Greeks liv­ing abroad con­sumed sig­nif­i­cantly more cere­als, legumes, veg­eta­bles and fruits than the other group.

Greeks liv­ing in Greece con­sumed sig­nif­i­cantly more dairy and pota­toes. Across both groups, con­sump­tion of meat, poul­try, fish, extra vir­gin olive oil, and alco­hol was found to be com­pa­ra­ble.

After adjust­ing for pos­si­ble vari­a­tions, MedDiet Score was pos­i­tively asso­ci­ated with suc­cess­ful aging index scores among both groups.

The study authors note that legumes, cere­als, fruits and veg­eta­bles are notably found to be ben­e­fi­cial for suc­cess­ful aging.

The authors con­clude that adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet is asso­ci­ated with higher lev­els of suc­cess­ful aging among peo­ple with sim­i­lar genetic back­grounds.

However, tra­di­tional dietary habits are grad­u­ally aban­doned in their native coun­tries. At the same time, these habits are con­sid­ered cul­tural her­itage and pre­served among immi­grants.

“To max­i­mize our poten­tial for suc­cess­ful aging, we can all aim to engage in reg­u­lar phys­i­cal activ­ity; engage in social activ­i­ties reg­u­larly and main­tain healthy rela­tion­ships; try to man­age stress, not smoke, and adhere to a Mediterranean-style diet,” Itsiopoulos said.

“Our cross-sec­tional study demon­strated that liv­ing envi­ron­ment and per­sonal choices can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on suc­cess­ful aging in the pop­u­la­tion of Greeks liv­ing in Greece and the Mediterranean,” she added.

Itsiopoulos said future research should include sim­i­lar stud­ies on other pop­u­la­tions with dif­fer­ent cul­tural and socioe­co­nomic back­grounds ​“to assess whether these find­ings are trans­fer­able and gen­er­al­iz­able and to poten­tially iden­tify other fac­tors that may also be impor­tant in suc­cess­ful aging.”

”It would also be impor­tant to exam­ine the effect of the suc­cess­ful aging index lev­els in large pop­u­la­tion groups fol­lowed over time on healthy longevity,” Itsiopoulos con­cluded.