The Verdict is In and It's Simple - Fewer Calories, Longer Life

[Dover]

The basic idea is that, by designing a diet which is lower in calories, but adequate in vitamins & minerals, in addition to lifestyle changes that include exercise, you can live a lot longer.
This has been well estabished (do a google on calorie restriction).

It's the doing of it that is the challenge:

http://www.calorierestriction.org/

http://www.walford.com/

Article on the diet: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-10-23-bare-minimum-diet_x.htm

Other Calorie Restriction resources: http://qualitycounts.com/fpcalorie.html

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Unlocking the Secrets of Longevity Genes

A handful of genes that control the body's defenses during hard times can also dramatically improve health and prolong life in diverse organisms. Understanding how they work may reveal the keys to extending human life span while banishing diseases of old age.


..snip..

The Calorie Connection
Restricting an animal's calorie intake is the most famous intervention known to extend life span. Discovered more than 70 years ago, it is still the only one absolutely proven to work. The restricted regime typically involves reducing an individual's food consumption by 30 to 40 percent compared with what is considered normal for its species. Animals ranging from rats and mice to dogs and possibly primates that remain on this diet not only live longer but are far healthier during their prolonged lives. Most diseases, including cancer, diabetes and even neurodegenerative illnesses, are forestalled. The organism seems to be supercharged for survival. The only apparent trade-off in some creatures is a loss of fertility.
Understanding the mechanisms by which calorie restriction works and developing medicines that reproduce its health benefits have been tantalizing goals for decades . The phenomenon was long attributed to a simple slowing down of metabolism--cells' production of energy from fuel molecules--and therefore reduction of its toxic by-products in response to less food.

But this view now appears to be incorrect. Calorie restriction does not slow metabolism in mammals, and in yeast and worms, metabolism is both sped up and altered by the diet. We believe, therefore, that calorie restriction is a biological stressor like natural food scarcity that induces a defensive response to boost the organism's chances of survival. In mammals, its effects include changes in cellular defenses, repair, energy production and activation of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. We were eager to know what part Sir2 might play in such changes, so we looked first at its role during calorie restriction in simple organisms.

..snip..

From Defense to Advance

Because people have sought to slow aging for tens of thousands of years without success, some may find it hard to accept that human aging might be controlled by tweaking a handful of genes. Yet we know it is possible to forestall aging in mammals with a simple dietary change: calorie restriction works. And we have shown that Sirtuin genes control many of the same molecular pathways as calorie restriction. Without actually knowing the precise, and potentially myriad, causes of aging, we have already demonstrated in a variety of life-forms that it can be delayed by manipulating a few regulators and letting them take care of the organisms' health.


Full Article: http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000B73EB-3380-13F6-B38083414B7F0000&pageNumber=1&catID=2

[mzmolly]

1. Where does wine fit into this plan?

;)

[Dover]

2. Well it DOES encourage eating LOTS of fruit......like grapes....

And I love liquid grapes. :P

[mzmolly]

3. That 's my rationale!

I think I'm going to consider this more deeply. :hi:

[oscar111]

4. bedsores, irritability, etc. bad effects of few calories

i only heard a list of five or so sideeffects, ONCE.

anyone have the full list?

good idea tho.. just curb sideeffects.

thanks for the OP.

and seee website of Dr Cynthia Kenyon, worms live six times longer with gene therapy,.. five hundred year humans if her pills based on worms, really will work ... in a year or so.

U of Calif. Oakland is her worklab.

[drm604]

5. I posted about that Scientific American article a few days ago,

In this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=222&topic_id=5464

I'm not posting to criticize you for doing a dupe, I just wanted to point out that the main thrust of the Scientific American article is that there are probably alternatives to the grueling calorie reduction regime. There's a lot of evidence that CR may work by stimulating the production of sirtuins. I personally felt that the article makes a convincing argument that this is the case. But no one should take my word for it, everyone should read the article and decide for yourselves.

There apparently are, as the article points out, other ways to stimulate sirtuin production. One of the most potent is resveratrol, a small molecule found in red wine and other botanical sources. Animals fed resveratrol (but not calorie restricted) experience the same health and longevity effects as those on calorie restriction, without the negatives of extreme weight loss and repression of reproductive activities. The article has more details on this.

After reading the article, I did some research and purchased what I think is a good quality resveratrol supplement. I feel that a supplement is needed for the maximum benefit since obtaining a similar amount of resveratrol from red wine would probably require the consumption of unhealthy amounts of alcohol. I wanted to be careful in my supplement choice since resveratrol can degrade quickly without special precautions in manufacturing and distribution. Since I've been taking the resveratrol supplement my body temperature has dropped a couple of degrees. It was as low as 96.1 Fahrenheit one morning. This is supposedly used as an indicator that calorie reduction is working and is supposedly an indication of increased sirtuin production and possibly decreased metabolism. Of course, I'm not doing calorie reduction (I've actually been eating quite heartily the last few days) so this has interesting implications.

I DO NOT recommended that anyone experiment on themselves in this manner. Do your own research - Google is your friend, as is pubmed.com - then decide for yourself what you want to do. We're all at different stages in our lives and have various personal health situations so we all have to decide for ourselves whether in our individual case it is more prudent to start experimenting now, or better to wait a number of years for the results of more scientific studies.

I personally haven't decided for sure yet whether or not I will continue supplementation.

[drm604]

6. Kick

:kick:

[Nikia]

7. I disagree

I am in an eating disorder support group. I am recovering from anorexia and began my recovery before it got life threatening. As I learn more about the disease, hear other experiences, as well as my own experiences, I have learned that calorie restriction is not a good idea. Perhaps with a careful diet and supplements, it might be healthier than what the average anorexic does but symtoms like mood disorders, lack of energy and decrease of strength, low fertility (and higher infant mortality if pregnancy occurrs), bad looking hair/skin/nails, and obsession with food seem to be common whether or not there is other damage to one's health. Often significant damage to one's health does occurr, which does shorten lifespan. Some women seem to have a genetic tendency to anorexia which can be triggered during calorie restriction for any reason.
I also wonder if the lab animals who lived a long time had close to normal activity at all. Often humans feel forced or want to have active lives. Those who do and restrict seem to go downhill a lot faster than sedentary restricters.