Men And Women Over 50 Should Eat These Proteins For Healthy Aging – Health Digest



Wrinkles and graying hair are not the only changes that occur with age. Your capacity to absorb important vitamins and minerals from food also diminishes, per Howard D. Sesso, director of nutrition research and an associate epidemiologist at the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (via AARP). “Vitamin B12 is one of the essential vitamins, and our ability to absorb it weakens quite a bit as we enter our 60s and 70s.” 

Vitamin B12 is required for a lot of things. From the efficient functioning of your brain and nervous system, and energy production to red blood cell formation, anemia prevention, DNA synthesis, and reducing the risk of macular degeneration, this vitamin plays a crucial role in all of these processes. If you’re not getting enough vitamin B12, you might feel tired and weak. You might also experience nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, weight loss, loss of appetite, numbness and tingling in your hands and feet, vision-related issues, memory problems, confusion, depression, and irritability.  

Your body has a mechanism via which it absorbs vitamin B12 from food, and your stomach acid is involved in this process. It helps extract B12 from food, which then binds to a protein in your stomach before being absorbed by your body. “We tend to produce less stomach acid as we get older. That makes it harder to extract B12 from food,” explained Dr. Meir Stampfer, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (via Harvard Health Publishing). 



Source link