How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older

by Michael Greger

chronic, systemic inflammation. In the search for the mechanism for this response, researchers discovered receptors for AGEs in our body that spark the inflammatory cascade and named them RAGE: receptors for advanced glycation end products.682 RAGE can function as a master switch. When AGE sparks RAGE, a whole host of inflammatory genes are triggered, along with a promotion of further RAGE expression, which leads to a vicious, cyclical feedback loop that can have profound pathological effects.683 As AGEs accumulate in our bones, joints, and muscles, they may contribute to osteoporosis, arthritis, and muscle wasting, the weakening, shrinking, and loss of muscle mass with age.684 AGEs are implicated in age-related memory decline, impaired wound healing, skin aging, cataracts, Alzheimer’s disease, and erectile dysfunction (where the stiffening of penile arteries evidently results in penile unstiffening).685 AGEs have been found to adversely affect virtually all tissues and organs.686 As one pathologist put it, “It is hard to find an age-related disease that AGEs are not involved.