Red Blood Cells Decline During Aging, But Can Be Increased Through Diet

[Mike Lustgarten]

 

 

[mccoy]

Mike, interesting analysis, but I'm missing the bottom line. Yogurt  in non-trivial amounts (up to 400 gr per day on the average) has apparently increased your BRC count, but the whey fraction should have decreased it, whereas the lactobacillus which might have been the causative mechanism has not been found in your gut....  

I take it's nonfat yogurt, since you are on such a lowfat diet.

[Mike Lustgarten]

Thanks mccoy. The microbiome analyses were done before I started eating yogurt, which indicated zero Lactobacillus in my gut. It's possible that including yogurt corrected that deficiency, but I haven't had a microbiome analysis in the past 15 months to confirm that. It's also possible that the magnitude of the whey intake (at most, 75g/d) isn't enough to negatively impact my RBCs, whereas I'm eating ~250g of yogurt/d.

It's now low-fat yogurt, and was full-fat to start with at 450g/d. Whereas yogurt is correlated with higher RBCs, it's also correlated with higher creatinine and glucose in my data, and switching to low-fat for my last blood test measurement was associated with lower glucose and creatinine.