Damn! Calorie Restriction Makes Monkeys Live Longer
Posted by: Nikki Dowling
Filed in:
news
2:10PM, Friday July 10th 2009
According to a new study done on (cute!) rhesus monkeys, calorie restriction—i.e. eating way far fewer calories than is currently recommended—has been shown to slow the aging process. The monkeys whose caloric intake was reduced by about one-third lived longer than those on a regular diet. Calorie restriction also slowed the loss of gray matter in the brain, which is the part of your noggin that responds to stimuli…
Ugh, this is rough, and certainly not what I wanted to hear after I indulged in a giant, greasy hamburger last night. Cutting calories that much is just crazy, and even the dude who lead the study said he couldn’t keep it up for long. But companies are currently working to develop a drug that will give us the life-extending benefits of this diet without forcing us to practically starve ourselves. As for me, I think I’ll shave a little off my life and indulge in this hot fudge sundae now. What about you? [Wall Street Journal]
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_jsw_
wrote on July 10 2009 @ 02:17 pm: [report]
“...the dude who lead the study said he couldn’t keep it up for long.”
I feel sorry for him, but I’m not sure how that relates to the story.
It’s an interesting report and one that backs up other such reports, but, in the end, there has to be some tradeoff between duration of life and quality of life. Also, in the case of humans, I’d guess that higher income tends to promote longer lifetimes far more than severely reduced caloric intake would. Obviously, severely _increased_ caloric intake is definitely bad, but I doubt there’s as much of a correlation between normal and below-normal caloric intake in humans.
DancerNinja
wrote on July 10 2009 @ 02:29 pm: [report]
What’s the point of restricting diet to live longer if all you end up doing is dreaming of food without enough energy to even get off the couch?
mlyway
wrote on July 10 2009 @ 08:11 pm: [report]
This type of thing has been known for awhile with humans. A lot of people will restrict their caloric diet to about 1500 for a male and 1000-1200 for a female in order to live longer. It can be healthy, but it is a little excessive and extreme. It is most certainly better than eating junk food and not exercising. And living longer is a bonus, but I don’t know if all those restrictions are truly worth it.
chouette
wrote on July 10 2009 @ 10:01 pm: [report]
@mlyway Those figures are surprising- that’s some severe restriction we’re talking about. How depressing for those of us who love foods other than celery…
cadyms
wrote on July 11 2009 @ 02:46 am: [report]
What I’m really intrigued by is *why* does a severely low calorie diet result in a longer life span?
Also - the actual study likely addresses this - but the control chimp was living in a lab, without big vines to climb on and social interaction and baby chimps to help raise and predators to avoid. i.e. His (or her)life seems to have been lacking the physical and social characteristics of a real chimp’s life. So given that the control chimp was on an unrestricted diet, might we have seen the control chimp eating out of boredom rather than hunger? Was the control chimp’s diet representative of the unrestricted diet of a chimp in the wild?
Just saying - life span is determined by a whole lot of things, and I’d be careful about generalizing from two chimps, cut off from their natural environments, and with food rations externally controlled, to the human species. Maybe we’d do better on such a low cal diet. Maybe not. Unfortunately, they’ll never be able to test that scenario b/c I guarantee you they won’t find the number of test subjects necessary who are willing and able to do that diet for a sufficiently long time period.
mlyway
wrote on July 11 2009 @ 08:57 am: [report]
Well many old and reputable studies in animals and humans have found that out of those who live longer, DHEAS (produced by adrenal glands) are higher than average, insulin levels are lower than average, and their body temperatures are lower than average.
In humans who forgo the lower calorie diet, the insulin levels are lower than average, and their body temperatures are lower than average. In addition, their DNA does have as much damage compared to those with normal and higher calorie diets.
Just only a part of the reason why it could work. But it still is extreme.