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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.
studies have shown that research causes cancer in rats.
Kind of redefines the term "lifetime" too
I mean hey, a complete starvation diet is one to last a lifetime!
(a very short lifetime)
Here's the google link directly to the story.
- b
Research also shows that eggs are bad for you .. no wait, make that good. Wait, here is a new study....
Who knows what to believe half the time? A low-calorie diet is good if you need to lose weight, plain and simple. Otherwise, eat the amount of calories you need to maintain your weight. It's not an exact science, but if you avoid the junk food and make half an effort to eat sensibly, there shouldn't be much to worry about.
We'll live longer if we don't eat, drink, smoke, fuck and so on...
/rumagent
But what is the point of having life if you don't live it? Boring people may live longer, but they live less.
... it just seems that way
Can anyone really usefully apply this information to their lives? I don't mean this sarcastically, but in order to practically apply what was learned in this article, we'd have to know our date of death given our current diet. Then, 48 hours before the date of death (assuming we work the same as a fruit fly, which I doubt), we would begin our life-extending diet.
Maybe when we reach a day where we can tell our date of death and are able to keep any permanent damage from happening in the meantime, ie: a heart attack, kidney damage, etc, this would be useful.
On top of that, I didn't see a mention as to what kind of calories the fruit flies were being fed. Does a person who has 1200 calories of McDonalds a day vs someone who has 1200 calories of fruits/veggies/grains a day get the same "armour" effect?
So as it is now, the message is: Restrict your calorie intake NOW and you might live longer. We can't say if you were going to die at 25 given your diet or 90, but start NOW.
In other news: Not skydiving, driving, and living near a coal plant can extend your life.
That brings up another issue... when does life stop being worth living?
This is the question that the euthanasia folks would dearly love society to answer... but they can't; it's an individual decision. This is part of the drive behind people getting living wills, durable powers of attorney for healthcare, and advance directive, etc.
I'm not quite to mid-life, without a single health problem. I run, work out, don't smoke, or drink to excess... and I have a living will, AND advance directives. Why? Because, as a physician, I have SEEN life that's not worth living (at least it wouldn't be for me), and I would never want to get to that point. I encourage people, even healthy ones, to think about a living will... and to have the necessary conversations with their loved ones and significant others. Once you're critically ill/vegitative, unable to make that choice for yourself, and others are trying to deal with the emotional trauma of your incapacitation... that is NOT the time to attempt an objective conversation about it.
Yes, you can diet, and deprive yourself of all the "good things" in life, but is that really a life worth living, particularly if it only buys you a small, arbitrary gain? Again, it's an individual decision.
I think I'll keep eating my cheeseburgers.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
On my "lifesyle" change I had lost 60 pounds. I wobbled a bit and gained 5 back, but I'l losing 1-2 pounds a week again.
There is one things that keeps getting hammered into my head.
We don't need all the food we eat to survive or even be full. Once your stomach learns what it needs, it won't keep asking for more more more.
People with the "supersize" this and the "extra large" that are slowly killing themselves each time they order more than they need.
But let's face it. I'd rather die in my 60's then to live 20 years longer in a nursing home.
Just remember slashdotters, you can have ONE slice of pizza for dinner and still be ok for your daily caloric intake.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Studies have shown that male animals (of various species) that are kept separated from females all their lifes can live up to 20% longer. In other words having no sex lets you live longer. The combination of forced abstinence and strict diet can add decades to a person's life.
As a Belgian Radio announcer commented when this result was published, this finally explains why Catholic priests have a surprising tendency to die around 28.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
How was this post "Informative"? Read the article, folks! The "diet" in question has nothing to do with weight loss. It has to do with length of life.
A study on dogs showed a 16% increase in life span for a calorie restricted diet -- thats a couple of extra dog years or perhaps decade or two of more life for a person. Sounds good, right? The problem was that the dogs had to eat 25% less than normal to get 16% more life than normal.
As someone who enjoys his kibble, I would argue that less chow = lower quality of life. So for 25% less quality of life, I get 16% more quantity of life. Sounds like a bad deal to me.
Moreover, the report said nothing about the energy levels of these poor long-starving mutts -- do starved creatures have any energy for fun and games? Due to the realities of physiology, I'd bet that a 25% reduction in energy input leads to a more that 25% reduction in energy available for discretionary, fun activities. On a restricted diet, a greater fraction of the meager intake is diverted to basic maintenance of the body.
I'm not saying that obesity is not a real killer of both quantity and quality of life. I'm only saying that restricted calorie diets come with tradeoffs.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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 Hillary Clinton asked Strom Thurmond his secret to staying fit, he replied that he never ate anything larger than an egg. I guess it worked for him.
"Extremism in defense of liberty is more fun."
I think that this is fairly non-obvious.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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
Don't forget to get up and move every now and then, as well. People don't realize that this is a major factor in health. Why does the Atkins diet work for so many people? Because you don't need carbohydrates if you sit in an office all day. The food pyramid should practically say, "For an active lifestyle."
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
After my birthday next week, I am hoping to lose 50lbs using the very low carb Adkins type of diet. Our Unix God at work has lost 46lbs so far and kept it off.
No pizza, chips or donuts, but you can eat eggs and meat all day.
The bizzare thing is it lowers your cholesterol. My dads cardiologist has been on it for 6 months and his cholesterol has dropped 30%. Eating eggs and red meat.
I will miss bread and french (sorry, FREEDOM) fries, but it will be nice to be able to take a deep breath...
You misunderstand. This has nothing to do with losing weight. It has nothing to do with exercising. It isn't even about improving your health.
It is about slowing the aging process using a currently unexplained side effect of low-calorie diets. There is a huge difference between eating well (which reduces your chances of life-threatening illnesses) and slowing down the body clock that causes aging.
According to these scientists, you could start this low-calorie diet late in life and still slow the aging process. This is totally different than deciding to stop eating fatty foods late in life when the damange has perhaps already been done. Obviously the two techniques need to go together for maximum results. It makes no sense to slow your aging process down if your arteries are full of fat.
Research showing the life extending benefits of a low calorie diet has been known for a long while. What wasn't known was exactly why it works. One leading theory is that eating food (which contains oxidants) led to the gradual breakdown of cells and other important biological structures. This study seems to suggest otherwise.
If the reduction in the aging process was simply caused by a reduction in oxidation of cells, that means you wouldn't expect to see the same benefit for someone who suddenly went on a restricted calorie diet. That changes the focus to suggest that restricting the diet triggers biological pathways within the organism that has this protective effect.
It may be something very simple, or it may be far more complex. Reduced diet organisms tend to not reproduce and generally slow down. It could be that simply being able to reproduce can lead to forms of mortality that shortens lifespan (e.g. it causes cancer, takes energy away from cell repair, or something else). If it's something that basic, I could see a drug therapy that everyone starts taking after a certain age that switches people's metabolism into "restricted calorie" mode, even if they're eating normally.
Of course, these things are rarely that simple. Even if it was possible to create such a drug, it may simply make people feel too bad (starving isn't usually fun). The few individuals who have decided to go on a restricted calorie diet tend to have pretty poor quality of life, not being able to do really active things or enjoy a meal.
Finally, the research I've seen that relates to long-lived men tend to have one thing in common. They are all in excellent physical shape, regularly exercising an excessive amount. Women evidently have more flexability and don't have to be quite so active, but men seem to need a large amount of physical exercise. It could be that there are two different paths to longevity, one involving eating little and staying still, and the other eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly. Me, I'm going with the second approach. Food tastes too good to me.
(and yes, I do have a master's degree in biology, though it is collecting dust these days)
The funny thing is that although fruitflies on a restricted diet live much longer, they basically stop all reproductive activity -- which, arguably, is the whole point of this "life thing". So the longer lifespan, in some sense, is more like a drawn out death.
If that's not irony I don't know what is.
I think some of the people here are missing the point of the research.
Scientists have known that restricting your intake of food helps leads to a longer lifetime. Note that the emphasis is not on eating correctly or better, but just less. Based on my limited biochemistry/metabolism knowledge, this is thought to be a consequence of how your GI system breaks down food and the long-term effect of the potent chemical processes on your body; this is also briefly restated in the article.
Where this differs is that they have shown that benefits can be had at any time in an organism's life cycle, indicating that something else is afoot. So no, this is not yet another study that says you should go on the Atkins/grapefruit/carrot soup/wicker chair & bagels diet.
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.
on your willpower... would that more people had the same drive to stay fit.
However, instead of willpower, people are going the bariatric surgery route... I've seen more TV news magazine reports recently about this trend than I've ever seen before. Danger, Will Robinson.
Apart from the obvious complications of surgery (bleeding, wound dehissence, infection, obstruction, etc, etc), stomach stapling changes your lifestyle permanently. Some of these things would be real burden for slashdotters... for instance:
You become nable to drink during meals (your stomach is so small after the surgery, it cannot hold both food AND drink)
Carbonated beverages are to be avoided (same reason as above... no Mountain Dew, no Jolt, no Bawls.)
No alcohol (beer will stretch your now-tiny stomach as much as regular carbonated beverages). Also, about half of consumed alcohol is broken down in the stomach via alcohol dehydrogenase... theoretically, you could find that your whiskey sours pack about double the punch as before (not necessarily a good thing).
You are also not necessarily done with surgery after your stapling. Ever see a person who has lost 150lbs or so? They have skin folds just hanging off of them... plastic surgery is required to get rid of the redundant skin. The potential also exists for nutritional deficiencies, like B-12. To be fair, the liver stores a fair quantity of B-12, so this might only show up 10-15 years down the road. Bottom line: The true long-term effects of this operation are not known.
I don't even know what to say to the people who purposely make themselves fatter so they can qualify for the surgery... it's madness.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
how much "living" are you really going to be accomplishing after 80, and based on what standard would you define it?
I've met some pretty spry 70-80yo folks... if you take care of yourself your whole life, you really can extend it in a quality way... I truly believe that.
However, you will not be living the same way you are now. Simple age will intervene at some point; virtually everyone develops medical problems if they live long enough. Even if you didn't work at a nuclear plant, you receive enough background radiation during your life that cancer is always a possibility... genetic damage accumulates. Osteoarthritis will set in eventually, it's a wear-and-tear phenomenon that will get you if you live long enough. Your bowels may not function like they once did (never underestimate the value of a properly functioning GI tract). Your prostate will gradually enlarge (eventually necessitating a procedure to open it up). Your eyesight and hearing may start to decline. You may outlive many of your friends (this can be real problem for the octogenarian+ group, and contributes to isolation, depression, etc). You may develop a heart attack or stroke (much of the body's cholesterol level is genetic, and only partially affected by drugs and diet).
Simply put, living may not be as fun when you are 80+ years of age. This sounds cliche`, but moderation may simply be the key to the whole game. Enjoy yourself, but don't go nuts... that way you'll live a long time (barring genetic defects and accidents), and you'll have plenty of stories about your adventures to bore your grandkids.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
There has been a lot of research recently showing that a restricted slashdot experience can extend the daily amount of sleep enjoyed by various creatures. Sadly, it seems that as soon as they start slashdotting again, the benefits are lost.
Hunger is the best sauce.
Okay... we've uncovered yet another truth in nature... organisms are designed to withstand famine.
Although the human intellect has improved over the millenia, the genetic script for our bodies has been nearly unchanged since the last ice ages. We only see organisms today that can resist famine because evolution has weeded out those strains that couldn't survive. If the creature can't find food or water, it's in the best interest to "pause" some life functions so you can survive until nourishment can be found.
Our bodies are evolved to be fat-storage machines; we have to, because nature can never guarantee the next meal. Our noses, though not as good as some other creatures, are still very receptive to spoiled food. Salt tastes good because our body needs it for cellular processes. Sugar tastes good because it's high energy "food" rare in nature.
But we've broken the cycle. Our insulin proceses the sugars, but never before has so much sugar been available, so now we see diabetes where our insulin receptors are over-exposed and develop a tolerance. We still have fight-or-flight mechanisms, but most of us live such a mundane existance, we release stress chemicals over the slightest event. Then we try these starvation diets, and our bodies don't burn the fat, because it thinks there's real hard times ahead, not realizing we have more food than we can eat.
It's a battle of intellect over evolved chemistry... but slowly we understand what is really going on behind the scenes, and with knowledge comes the power to correct it.
What science needs to create now is a pill [...] without any side effects.
Its on the agenda. Right after that perpetual motion device and the time machine...
You can't take the sky from me...
There are some researchers who beleive they've found the mechanism for this.
When the organism is stressed by lack of food, genes that encode heat shock proteins are activated. HSPs are used when a cell is overtemp, or otherwise stressed, to repair damage to the DNA due to the stress.
The thinking is this: an organism is getting too few calories. The cells start making HSPs due to the stress. The HSPs soak up free radicals, as well as repairing DNA damage. Since the lack of calories is not causing undo damage to the DNA (unlike heat), the net result is more damage due to other environmental effects (radiation, replication errors, toxins) is undone.
In short, the organism's metabolism set to allow it to survive beyond the "famine" to maximize the chances of being able to reproduce once food is available.
The researchers have some good candidate genes for the proteins, and perhaps one day may be able to stimulate the production of these proteins without the need to starve ourselves.
Now, whether the world needs a bunch of long-lived , fat, self-indulgant slobs is another question for which many of the residents of this forum are curiously well-equipped to argue.
www.eFax.com are spammers
...if you move seminal fluid daily by whatever means necessary.
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
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.
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.
Read any Biochemistry text book (Voet & Voet is/was a good one) on metabolism and you'll BEGIN to understand the foundation for the work just published. The lower the calories consumed, the less oxidation is taking place in our bodies. This is why junk food, Ho-Hos, Twinkies, bleached white bread, Softbatch cookies, gummy bears & worms, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and basically all modern refined sugars ARE BAD FOR YOU. These "foods" are pure energy and have little if any nutritional value. When these foods are consumed, the sugars enter the blood stream where insulin and sugars combine, enter our cells, and are metabolized. For some people, the sugars are converted to fat for later use. For others (including myself who is hypoglycemic) the sugars are burned immediately. What happens when you burn things? They (the fuels) oxidize, and our cells also sustain some oxidative damage, leading to decreased life span. What should you do to live a long high-quality and healthy life? Don't eat junk food, exercise, eat lots of fish and dark green leafy vegatables, take vitamins, and minimize the stress in your life. Eating beef is one of the fastest ways of getting iron into our bodies for preventing amemia. Taking iron vitamin supplements is very much less efficient since the iron isn't absorbed as well into the body. In beef the iron is bound in hemoglobin (blood). Our digestive enzymes are designed for tearing apart hemogloblin and efficiently extracting the iron from it. In vitamin form, iron is usually a salt and not very soluble in water, hence most of it passes right through the digestive system.
This study is not really surprising at all, but is very useful. It's just that someone finally took the time to do a research project and publish their findings.
I recently watched a tv show from National Geographic with the name Scientific American Frontiers : Fat and Happy (Episode Title.)
They said that you must get a low calorie (or measuring the average calorie for your daily needs like 2000 Calories) but *high* nutrition.
You do not just starve yourself but you will need to eat foods that have low caloric content but high vitamins and minerals.
They are still doing tests for mice and monkeys. They are still ongoing. They are comparing two groups with one having a regular diet and the other having a low calorie but high nutrition diet. Of course, the one having the higher nutrition and low calorie is doing better (because they are already old.)
I think it is not very difficult to follow a diet this way (maybe hard for Americans because of their lifestyle with too much fast food and fat full foods.) You can still enjoy eating good food but you must manage what you eat.
If you are going to start a diet, *consult a physician.* Based on the show, they will need to get your metabolic rate, etc, to determine your daily neeeds without starving you to death or getting you undernourished.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.
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.
Okay, I'm probably too late for anyone to see this but...
So anorexia isn't a disease, it's a survival mechanism?
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Theres nothing wrong with eating, but unhealthy diets (of which there are infinite combinations) are more dangerous than eating VERY little, or almost nothing at all. There are of course parameters not being taken into account in my post, but it simple terms, the less you need to eat to survive is likely to extend your life. No matter what you eat, if you eat like a bird (Some birds eat many times their weight, I'm only using this as common metaphor) and do not indulge in other damaging behaviours, you can expect to live longer than your insatiable food-soaked cousin.
Flatworm and fruitfly studies exist which show that extenstions to lifespan are possible by continually fasting the creatures and then feeding them a moderate amount to build them back to 'normal' size.
Eating a great amount of any food will kill you soon enough. Drinking too much water will kill you as well.
"Three square meals a day" is probably the stupidest thing I have ever had to live through.
I've fasted on at least 12 occassions, with anywhere from 6-14 days as the duration, and during the fast I have never felt better in all my life. Once food gets introduced, the brain stops working and the body begins to slow down.
I've never had a cavity for fucks sake, despite what some would call vitamin depletion. (I'm 33)
I'm not trying to sound righteous, I just think that food intake self-regulation is a massive problem in ALL the developed world. Eat nothing but rice ONCE per day, and you may well live to be 80 or more without any other regiment.
Try fasting just once you'll see...
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.
Assume you eat 25% less and gain 16% more lifetime. But you gain that 25% for reuse too!
Assume you eat 25% less but insteadm, not wasting that time - have 25% more sex thanks to saved pleasure time. Plus another 16% more sex thanks to prolonged life.
25% less food, 41% more sex, seems like a bargain to me!!!
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