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.

Comments

How this really works

[Morris Schneiderman]

I published some of the initial, theoretical work behind this, in 1981 in a journal called Speculations in Science and Technology, vol. 4 no. 3. page 335.

It used to be 'common knowledge' that fully differentiated cells of a given tissue type would each live for a specific length of time and then die.

I argued that this was not so. I suggested that fully differentiated cells of a given tissue type would divide a specific number of times and then stop dividing (Hayflick Limit). I hypothesized the existence of a counter in each cell that kept track of how many more times that cell could divide. Today, those counters are called Tellomeres.

The reason you live longer on a low calorie diet is because your individual cells don't have the fuel to go through their life cycles as quickly. Give them the fuel and they speed up again.

So the idea of waiting until 48 hours before your natural dead would not extend your life by much at all. Sorry.

Tellomeres are like a chain of knots at one end of the DNA. Each time the DNA divides, there's one less knot on the chain. If the cell does not become cancerous, when there are no more knots, the cell ceases to divide. The real answer to life extension will be when we learn how to add knots back onto the Tellomeres.

I expect this problem to be solved within the next 15 years. At that point, it will become possible to slowly roll back the age of the body as, for example, 46th generation smooth muscle cells divide and become 17th generation smooth muscle cells. Over a period of several years your body would effectively become younger.