Slashdot Mirror
Low-Cal Diet Extends Life... As Long as You Don't Eat
There has been a lot of research recently showing that a restricted calorie diet can extend the lifespans of various creatures. Sadly, it seems that as soon as they start eating again, the benefits are lost.
Here's the google link directly to the story.
- b
C'mon people, I like to eat as much as the next guy or gal! The point is, just stop stuffing yourself silly--restricted calories != starvation, just limiting your intake so that you're not pushing yourself past full when you eat. I'm so sick of seeing fat Americans everywhere I go. We really have to do something about our problem. It's gross and embarressing, and *extremely* unhealthy.
Look both ways before you cross the road.
When It comes to improving your health, regular fasting may be just as beneficial as counting calories. In a recent study, mice that were fed only every other day (but could gorge on the days they did eat) experienced similar health benefits to ones that had their portions of food reduced by 40 percent. Researchers believe that going without food imposes a mild stress on bodily cells, which respond by increasing their ability to cope with more severe stress. The fasting mice also showed an increased resistance to Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, and earlier studies found that mice that fasted every other day had extended life spans.
Source: National institute on Aging
Ron Paul
They've seen this effect on a whole range of animals. They've done this on rats and have even tried it out on monkeys.
One article from this NIH site seemed to indicate that, despite prolonging an animal's lifespan, caloric-restriction diets didn't seem to do anything about cognitive decline.
it has to do with reducing the radical ions produced during the normal food 'burning'/calorie buring in the human body..
..the net efect is loss in wieght but still failure to live longer in years..
Radical ions trigger runaway cell growth(press calls it cancer) that cannot be killed off by the normal cell killing mechanisms(doctors call this process cancer), they accomplish this set of bad effects by damamging DNA beyond what DNA repair enzymes and methods can handle..
In summary Fat/Eating challlenged people will live less in terms of number of years...
While increasing metabolish can cause wieght loss..unless reductions in calorie and food intake is made
Don't Tread on OpenSource
The idea is that the very processes of digestion is incredibly stressful on the human body, so if you minimize it, you can extend your lifespan.
We--human beings--are the process of countless thousands of years of evolution. We evolved from a genus that itself was the product of millions of years of evolution. And you're trying to tell me that the one thing every animal on the planet does for survival (eat) is stressful? What the fuck was the point of evolution, then?
My take on it is this: we're humans, we eat. And eat, for a little change of pace we eat some more. This has been goin on for (effectively) millions of years. I'm getting a little irked that people think a process that has been perfected by the hands of natural evolution is still stressful for us to accomplish. For those "scientists" that would say that: you're a god damned moron.
It's not that digestion is stressful, nor is it that most humans today ingest too much cholesterol or fat. It's the process in which we make most of our staple food that kills us. Hydrogenization. Look at good 'ol American Cheese. 2H away from plastic. Look at our non-local dairy milk, enough hydrogen to be utilized as a fuel. All this extra hydrogen isn't good for us, trust me.
Think I'm wrong? Look at the oldest man on the planet (119), looks like he's barely 60. His secret? Nothing but naturally grown and harvested food. This includes fruit and grains (who gives a damn about the starch), naturally raised and slaughtered meats, etc. etc.. Those are the things our bodies are "accustomed" to. What our bodies were meant to use as fuel.
Want to live longer? Start a garden, buy a couple cows and chickens and start breeding for meat. Fuck all the plasticized food American food companies try cramming down our throats, it'll kill us quicker than any bad habit you can think of.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
I spent many hours on PubMed before going on the Atkins. While there is a tremendous amount of editorializing in the literature (similar to your linked articles) on the Atkins diet, the clicinal studies of low glycemic index/low carbohydrate diets is remarkably rare given how popular these diets are. (What this says about research priorities of our government is an issue in itself).
Generally speaking, all the editorial articles are very negative and all the clinical studies are cautiously positive or could not come to any conclusion because the sample sizes were too small and they were derailed by drop outs. The only relevant recent clinical studies that pointed to a potential pitfall tested a very high protein diet and found calcium excretion. This happens because a high protein diet leads to blood acidity, and the body, which uses the bones as a calcium bank, makes withdrawals to neutralize. This diet did not match the Atkins diet, which is relatively higher in fat and lower in protein. However it might be advisable for people who maintain a long term diet that is low and carbohydrates AND fat to supplement calcium (insert standard disclaimer about my not being a doctor here).
With respect to Atkins being unpalatable, this depends. The problem is that most people eat a very limited diet, and when you take things out of the diet, variety suffers. Many people come home from work and automatically reach for the pasta as a quick and easy solution that they can dress up with different sauces. If you take that out of their routine, they end up having bacon and eggs for breakfast lunch and dinner.
I had no such problem, since I come from a very food savvy family in the restaurant business. Rising to the challenge of creating variety was not has hard for me. On my birthday, when my family was eating cake, I made little rollups of smoked salmon and cream cheese, set on their ends and decorated with festive dollops of black and red caviar. This was perfectly satisfactory to me, but most people would have missed having cake and ice cream.
The biggest challenge to staying off the white flour/sugar bandwagon is that these unnatural foods are so available, often to the exclusion of other foods. Social and business engagements that involve eating (often in restaurants) are particularly a challenge. If everyone wants to go to a Chinese restaurante (not real Chinese cuisine mind you, but the General Gau's Chicken kind of place), you're pretty much going to have limited choice from the menu since everything's packed with sugar.
Unfortunately, Atkin's book invites this kind of editorializing, with its revival tent atmosphere and handwaving scientific explanations. As one researcher quipped -- the diet is far better than the book. The problem is that most of this editorializing is straw-man stuff that is even less scientific than the Atkins book, although the arguments may be tarted up in scientific language. For example, most of these arguments simply don't get the details of the book's recommendations right.
I think Atkins could be improved by a greater emphasis on the ratio of vegetable to animal fats, and probably could be liberalized with respect to whole grain foods later on in the diet. Unfortunatley, while Atkins is not as good as it should be, the standard recommendations (low fat, high carbohydrates) are very bad. Although they are prompted by research results, they have no convincing scientific evidence supporting them. That is because they are based on inferences and assumptions that are unjustified. For example, studies showing the cardiovascular risks of saturated fats lead to the recommendation of low fat consumption. There were three extremely shaky assumptions used here. First, that by reducing fat, people would reduce calorie intake. Second, that they would replace calorie dense fatty foods with low calorie, unrefined carbohydrate sources such as leafy vegetables. Third, that fats in general played no positive role in maintaining health. All thes
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Oxygen is a pretty harsh molecule/element/radical, and their hypothesis was that it basically damaged the cells/DNA - so the more you received of it, the more oxidation damage your cells received. They did not look into the effects of exercise when I was there.
..........FULL STOP.
Excuse me. The "Atkins Diet" is quite dangerous, in fact, as proven by no less than a hundred studies out there on the web.
The basic building block of energy is glucose, and carbohydrates provide that. The brain lives ONLY on glucose. You're starving your body of the necessary building block of energy by reducing the single-most important way to deliver glucose to the cells; carbohydrates. Yes, you can get glucose out of the remaining two nutrients found in foot; fat and protein. On the Atkins, you can eat as much of those as you want, and refrain from ingesting carbohydrates.
By just ingesting fat and protein, you're stressing your liver and kidneys out. You're severely reducing your water retention. An excess of fat and protein will also cause your cholesterol to rise to astronomical levels. The reason people seem to lose weight on the Atkins, is because your body has to use a completely different metabolic pathway to turn that fat and protein into glucose. It takes a LOOONG time to turn fat into glucose, and similarly for protein. Your muscle tone and fat stores are severely depleted when you're on the Atikins diet. You starve your brain of nutrients, your muscles of nutrients, your liver and kidneys of nutrients. Basically you're killing yourself.
People have just up and dropped DEAD on the Atkins diet, because their heart or liver could no longer function. The reason more people aren't dying on the no-carb diet plans is because NOBODY has the discipline to remove ALL carbohydrates from their diet. Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of foods have carbohydrates in them? Probably not. Nor does anyone else. You can survive on a low-carb diet if you want, but your body is slowly deteriorating; liver, heart, and muscle. You're killing yourself by staying on that diet.
Go search the web and find the studies out there that clearly point out the Atkins diet and other similar "fad" no-carb diets are dangerous to human physiology.
I don't know about that, but men at least have an excuse for something else.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
They tried a low calorie diet with high nutrition and everyone was starving...they where licking their plates clean literally. The man that came up with the idea is still doing the diet...low cal/high nutrition. He beleives he'll live till about 120 or so...but when he was on an interview with American Frontiers the guy was so SLOW...he acted like he was tired all the time!
I've been on starvation diets before trying to loose weight and it is the worst fealing one can have...you're tired all the time...you get a foggy head...it's not fun. I have since adopted atkins and lost about 35lbs on that....and today I'm happy with my weight at 170 and 13% BF.
I suppose the one question that I don't think was really addressed here was the reason why a low calorie diet extends your life....perhaps it has more to do with what they are eating than how they are eating? Everyone knows about free radicals and how anti-oxidents do nothing to stop them....perhaps this study combined with others will help truely extend everyones lifespan 25% without having to starve ourselves by preventing the production of any free radicals. Then all we have to worry about are the time bombs we have on our DNA...
I can honestly say that I think immortality is just around the corner...but hey that's just sci-fi like cloning animals that are long past dead right?
It seems every now and again /. finally runs an article on CR and its life extension benefits. Sorry, I didn't read the article(free reg, blah blah) Having tried several times in my life to completely switch over to CR from a mostly vegan well disciplined diet (no meats, just fish) I can tell you CR is no easy task by any stretch of the imagination. Not surprisingly, it is not for most people who cannot make the time to eat correctly in the first place. It is worth it though as you will feel like you've never felt before after about a month or two of adjustment.
There is plenty of research on the benefits of CR and the clinical studies going on about it at various US universities and their gerontology labs. Worth a read and the effort. Look up Lisa and Roy Walford or Calorie Restriction on Google to get started.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.