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Calorie Restriction May Not Extend Lifespan
sciencehabit writes "Slash your food intake and you can live dramatically longer — at least if you're a mouse or a nematode. But a major study designed to determine whether this regimen, known as caloric restriction, works in primates suggests that it improves monkeys' health but doesn't extend their lives. Researchers not involved with the new paper say the results are still encouraging. Although the monkeys didn't evince an increase in life span, both studies show a major improvement in 'health span,' or the amount of time before age-related diseases set in. 'I certainly wouldn't give up on calorie restriction as a health promoter' based on these findings, says molecular biologist Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge."
...McDonalds Corporation?
I'd rather be fat and die early having eaten the things I liked, than old, skinny and never enjoyed a triple bacon burger with extra cheese.
If you looks at the CR/longevity studies, it turns out that most of the ad-lib fed rats die of kidney failure, where the CR rats die of cardiovascular, neoplasty, and other causes. I suspect that standard rat chow is very good for turning baby rats into big rats, but maybe not so good at maintaining an adult rat.
Well, if it makes people healthier, will being healthier not increase lifespan?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Olympic atheletes consume unbelievable calories but exercise like crazy. They don't do it their whole lives, but I'd be curious to know what the outcome is for individuals who have an atheletic youth. Actually, it would probably be better to do such a study on people who are simply avid exercisers as opposed to the very top tier. It's a more common condition and less likely to have outliers like doping. Do you get better health from high calorie, high exercise or does the body wear out from processing so much fuel?
I've been following this diet 3 days on and 4 days off for 3 weeks and it's doing fine so far. On the off days I eat what I usually would, plus a bit more and weight has been falling off of me. I also feel more energetic and my wife deifinitely approves. It may or may not extend life but I'm losing weight and feeling healthier. I'm hoping this diet will delay the onset of the diseases of a prosperous old age (obesity, diabetes, heart disease etc.) for a good long time.
When I read about calorific restriction years ago one comment was "more study is needed to assess the impact of restricted diets on resistance to infection and recovery from disease". Historically it has been people with poverty-restricted diets that tended to die at an early age from TB, influenza, etc. Obviously there is a big difference between a poverty-restricted diet and a calorie restricted diet that is tailored to supply the necessary variety, micro-nutrients, and vitamins - but there is still a possibility that those on restricted diets could live a healthier life until they are wiped out by an infection. Does anyone know whether further study has been made in this area?
This study proves that further calorie restriction doesn't extend the lifespan compared to an already healthy diet. *Both* though extend the lifespan compared to eating enough to become obese.
I'm just saying this because there'll be enough people who will take this as a prove that over-eating is fine. It isn't.
By the way, a diet consisting of all the fruits, vegetables and meat you can eat is totally fine. It's very hard to become obese when you avoid sugars, starch and other carbohydrates. Sadly, almost everything ready-made you can buy is full to the brim of these.
So... restricted caloric intake results in your being healthier (less cancer etc.) throughout your life if you're a monkey but being healthier does not correlate to a increased life span? They didn't control for diet between the two groups only calories (groups ate entirely different things not just less) and the group that was healthier had monkeys that originated at least in part from a difference geographical region.
Calories (noun) - Tiny creatures that live in your closet and sew your clothes a little bit tighter every night.
It might turn out that it's not caloric restriction that's important, but periodic fasting.
There is research showing that even if you keep your overall food intake (and body weight) constant, but **fast on alternate days**, you can improve blood glucose and insulin levels
Check it:
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/10/6216.full
The study seems to confirm anecdotally what happened to Roy Walford. On the other hand, the study seems less complete that desirable, if I understand TFA. The fatties were fed a high sugar diet. While that may represent the typical US diet, it would have been nice to see another fattie test group (over-supplied?) with a healthful diet.
I remember when the mice study came out. "Mice live 50% longer! You might live to 150!" and the guy, bald IIRC, started himself on a lo-cal diet.
Mice lived 3 years instead of 2. Did it greatly extend their lives, or did it just add a year? Now we know.
That researcher must have gotten scared when it turned out underweight people had shorter lives than normal, and normal had shorter lives than overweight (but not obese).
Then there was the other scientist who went on the Twinkie and Cheeseburger diet, but half-calorie, and his BP, blood sugar, blood lipids, and so on all went down to normal.
Food is chemicals is drugs. You wanna take tiny pills to compensate for pills the size of hamburgers and plates of spaghetti.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I am observant Hedonist, and I am glad that science finally stopped this assault on my religious freedoms.
The TFA points out that the control group was on a questionably different diet. I haven't dug any further.
The test I would run would use a low net carb diet that's entirely grain free. Ditching so-called "wheat" would be first, followed by all simple sugars (starting with fructose, other than what's naturally in any raw fruits).
Were any of the monkeys on a commercial monkey feed?
Does that feed contain modern dwarf hybrid wheat, the unexamined mutant monster wreaking havok with human health?
If so, the results are not even inconclusive.
Woo hoo....pass the bacon!
I don't. I have to restrict them, because my knees are very sensitive to even extra pound. It's the matter of limping or not, not a lifespan.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Alternatively you can reword this finding like so: overeating causes health problems, so don't.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
I lost 40 lbs in about a year by reducing starchy carb calories and increasing fat calories and so have a bunch of my friends. It works.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
This is not surprising news. The lifespan may not be increased, but the quality of life may be better. The example that comes to my mind (I use it because it's the only one I know anything about) are the monks on Mt. Athos. At most of the monasteries they eat two modest meals per day which are mostly vegetarian (they do eat fish on certain days). The monks are typically in great health and maladies such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are very rare, so their quality of life is pretty good. Nevertheless, most die at the typical time, around 80 years of age.
Proverbs 21:19
I don't feel I sacrifice (literally) a thing. My 'gorging out' experience is better than it was when I ate 'against myself'. I get to gorge out on enriched seitan, tempeh, nut based proteins, diverse beans, chutneys, curries, lasagne, tabouleh and heaps of greens. I haven't knowingly eaten animal parts once in the entire time. Taste buds can be changed. Bacon might as well smell like carpet now, chicken like acetone and chocolate - well it's just not attractive any more. Coke burns by gut. It's all just not stuff I would put into my body. Offer a piece of raw meat to any baby and they'll reject it. It needs the technology of fire before a baby will consider eating it... unlike predators. We've learned to prepare and eat this stuff.
I'm fit, lean, physically strong and almost never sick. Aside from riding my bike I don't exercise at all. It just comes to what you eat. It's the KISS solution - no diets, careful planning. Just got to learn to cook.
"the team found that none of the Maryland monkeys that started calorie restriction when they were young have developed cancer."
The problem is that people read the headline thinking, oh ok now being overweight isn't a problem. In fact that is exactly what my morning new people said on the air today! They're not saying being fat is fine now or that restricting calories will not help you lose weight. They're talking about the theory proposed based on mouse studies that restricting calories down to near starvation levels made the mice live long because it triggered some biological functions that served to allow adults to survive through periods of poor food supply. People here on Slashdot probably get it but people watching the news this morning stuffing themselves with their third McBacon sandwich now thinks they are just fine.
Stupid Apple fanboy...
Dashing the hopes of legions of skinny Slashdotters who had been keeping themselves in optimal physical condition for the arrival of the Singularity.
I had burgers and beer last night out of sheer anguish and not because that's the kind of crap most of us here would be eating anyway.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
one day it'll be cool to be fat and we will hear about "food intake orientation". You got the nerve to tell me I need to eat better? YOU'RE A FATOPHOBE!
I'm stuffed! No really, I'm so full I feel like rolling off this chair. I just had half a pizza and half a bottle of coke, and I'm not entirely sure I won't finish at least one of those two when this settles down!
And with that said, I've lost about 160lbs over the last year and a half. I eat pizza, noddles, burgers, I have ice cream, candy... I eat chips, dip, sauces... Oh man, do I ever... So how did I lose that weight?
I stopped eating so god damn much.
That's it. No exercise, no mysticism, no fad diets. I don't pay particular attention to what food is healthy and what isn't, I just look at how many calories it is, and I eat less of it than I expend in a day. This pizza feast? Oh man, at a guesstimate I binged a good 2000 calories tonight, that's more than I usually eat in an entire day! And that's okay, because I don't do this every day. Tomorrow I won't even feel like eating much for the first half of the day, I'll probably end up eating a pear or two for breakfast just to wake up the system, and then lunch will be something light again. All in all it's not the day that counts, but the average over time.
So yeah, from one former fatass to all the fatasses out there... keep fooling yourself if you want, keep telling yourself that you don't want to lose weight because you'll have to stop eating tasty shit... it's not true, not even remotely. You are using it as an excuse and you know it. It just means you'll have to stop eating twice as much as you need. And no, you won't be constantly hungry if you eat less, people aren't built to eat the amounts you do, it's just your body that has gotten used to it. Once you've stopped that in it's tracks, the body quickly adjusts, and you'll once more only be hungry before meals and so on.
There's no magic. You can keep eating whatever the fuck you want. Just a lot less of it. If you want to eat a LOT, then sure, salad is the way to go... but if you want to eat deliciously greasy... some moderation is key. And it's not harder than that. It's not even much of an effort. No need to go on a diet, no need to even decide to lose weight... just decide to eat less. That's it. Eat less. Weight will fall off, at an unbelievable rate, and you'll still be eating your pizza and chugging that coke... just not for every meal any more.
Restricted caloric intake only makes it *feel* like forever.
Your body has vast mechanisms in place to convert fats to sugars and vice versa
No so much. Yes, fat is synthesized from glucose; however, fatty acid catabolism (ie. breaking down fat) can't produce any appreciable amount of glucose/sugar (only the minor, glycerol backbone *might* get used in gluconeogenesis [making sugar]). Instead, the oxidation products of fatty acids are burned directly by the mitochondria. Besides, the metabolic conditions that trigger burning fat also suppress gluconeogenesis, so that glycerol backbone isn't likely to be made into glucose anyway.
In fact, when one is burning fat, the circulating energy molecules are the ketone bodies, *not* glucose/sugars. These ketones are what the Adkins dieters check their urine for and that give people "starvation breath" (ketones stink and some diffuse from the blood in the lungs). These ketones are converted back into acyl-CoA by the recipient cells that burn it via the Krebs Cycle. You can find all you might ever want to know about beta oxidation or gluconeogenesis with a quick Google.
So, like I said: Sugar from fat? Not so much.
Wrong. You body DOES make vitamin D when you are exposed to the sun.
I remember when the mice study came out. "Mice live 50% longer! You might live to 150!" and the guy, bald IIRC, started himself on a lo-cal diet.
Mice lived 3 years instead of 2. Did it greatly extend their lives, or did it just add a year?
This is my hypothesis on the findings: Short-lived animals, like nematodes and lab mice, tend to produce lots of free radicals as they metabolize calories. Long-lived animals tend to have metabolisms that release far fewer free radicals. Free radicals damage DNA and promote cancer. Most lab mice are bred for a high propensity towards developing cancer because that makes them better test subjects for testing anti-cancer drugs and for finding cancer causing agents. I have been told by friends in the biological sciences that all lab rodents, who don't otherwise meet an untimely end, will die of cancer. So, it makes sense that by cutting a lab mouse's calories dramatically you would also dramatically reduce the level of free radicals in its system and, consequently, how quickly it develops terminal cancer. Higher primates, who are much better at controlling free-radical production, seem unlikely to see the same positive results from a calorie-restricting diet.
I can see there being benefits for human health, but the +50% lifespan projections always seemed ridiculous to me. The other question science has yet to answer here is how much calorie reduction is too much? Presumably, there is a range of caloric intake where you wouldn't exactly be starving, but your body would not have enough calories to function correctly, and that would likely have a negative effect on lifespan and long-term health. I'm not going to jump on the extreme low-calorie diet bandwagon until we know better where the right balance lies.
You're a nutritionist?!
In this post you say your field is ANIMAL SCIENCE
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2688467&cid=39136157
DO YOU THINK ANIMALS AND PEOPLE REQUIRE THE SAME NUTRITION?
I am NEVER eating at your house.
Way to get him on a technicality. So should I keep going and try to twist it back around and say that Vitamin D is not a vitamin in the strict sense of the word? Vitamin D
"An organic chemical compound (or related set of compounds) is called a vitamin when it cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by an organism, and must be obtained from the diet" source. Trivia bit, the word vitamin comes from vital amines (amines being a class of organic molecules).
smoked more pipes than popeye,
Wow, you might want to watch how you are stating the facts about your grandfather. I'm getting a very different picture of him than I think you intended....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
you're worried about nitirites and nitrates in your diet? celery has a lot of nitrites and nitrates. so does spinach. so does lettuce
fruit juice has formaldehyde
chocolate has theobromine
peanuts have aflatoxin, a potent carcinogen
parsley has plyacetylenes
do you want a couple hundred more scary chemicals in your food listed from plant sources?
guess what: the plants ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU. the absolute worst chemicals for you in your diet ARE NATURAL, FROM PLANTS
have been since dinosaurs began munching on them. so herbivores and omnivores like us respond with an organ called "the liver". which breaks down the toxic, carcinogenic, teratogenic, and otherwise lethal brew of noxious chemicals that plants have firing at us for millions of years. it's chemical warfare, us versus them, an arms race
do you know what morning sickness is? do you know why newly pregnant women vomit at the scent or sight or taste of plants?
because evolution has taught women's bodies to stick with THE SAFE MEAT FOOD SOURCES to avoid the noxious alkaloids in plants that will mutate her fetus at the sensitive stage of early pregnancy
just because you can string together a bunch of chemicals doesn't mean you understand what the greatest toxic danger to your body is that is out there: PLANTS
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The primary failed premise of our dietary system is the 2000 calorie diet. Thats fine if you're working with your hands, on your feet. Its too much for the vast majority of people who walk 5000 steps a day and sit on their arse all afternoon. Well that and the idea of shoving pound after pound of sugar, starches and processed foods that are very high in calories into our faces.
I think its hilarious that people look at a happy meal and think the burger is the bad actor. Hint: its the giant fries and soft drink you could start an outboard motor in.
I kicked out the crap junky foods, eat only whole foods that I can recognize in closer to 1500 calorie doses, and lost 70 lbs. I feel and look great. Its pretty easy to stay well within 1500 calories if you just drink water and nothing else...most people take in 500-800+ calories a day in drinks alone.
My typical meals are an egg, bacon and blueberries for breakfast, a salad, yogurt and some citrus for lunch, and a double cheeseburger with a salad I squeeze some limes over for dinner. Yes, thats under 1500 calories...
So the unanswered question is... what's killing off the low-calorie monkeys at a higher rate than the control monkeys? e.g. If they're succumbing to fractured bones and injuries complicated by poor diet, then the opposite of what you say is true. You'd be more likely to end up decrepit in a nursing home sooner due to a low-calorie diet.
http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/the-no-nitrites-added-hoax/
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In these post-reality times it is not the facts that matter but the belief that if the facts were properly shaped that they would support your belief. Look at contemporary politics -- especially on the right wing side but not exclusively. Or medicine... This is truthiness writ large... an alternate reality we all get to live in regardless of how tenuous the connections to the actual physical world. Defining PI as 3 was just the start.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap -- as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation -- and more self-discipline -- than most people are ever willing to muster.
Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits -- and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure -- thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation -- and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Do look at the phrase "sufficient quantities" Do the vitamins your body makes but needs supplements of not qualify since your body made them?
In my Animal Nutrition classes I make it clear that Vitamin C is NOT considered a vitamin in most livestock because only a handful of species lack the capacity to synthesize it. I still get it as an answer on tests though.
Ravenshrike is correct though, the key to that quote is "sufficient quantities". The definition I use in class is as follows:
1. an organic compound of natural food, but distinct from carbohydrate, protein and fat
2. is present in foods in minute amounts
3. is essential for development of normal tissue, as well as for health growth and maintenance.
4. When absent or deficient from the diet, or not properly absorbed/utilized results in a specific deficiency disease or syndrome.
5. Cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by the animal and must be obtained from the diet.
That's a pretty long definition, but that's because vitamins, unlike most other nutrient classifications are not grouped because of similar structure or function, but simply for convenience.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
The title should be "We have a 50% confidence that Caloric restriction extends life"
"Calorie Restriction May No* Extend Lifespan", "works in primates suggests that". FFS! That is politician speak.
Calorie restriction provably extends your lifespan if you are stranded away and your food supplies are finite.