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New report on the cellular effects of a calorie-restricted diet in rats
- djohnston 7y agoso how does this translate to my day to day? can i skip breakfast and eat whatever i want for 6-8 hours, ala IF? does the window of consumption not matter, and i just need to eat fewer calories on the day?
- TheRealSteel 7y agoI don't have any formal education on this topic, but I did lose a bunch of weight and keep it off, partly thru intermittent fasting, so I can offer anecdotal evidence. For me, simply, it's easier to eat less calories if I intermittent fast. For some reason, if I don't eat breakfast or lunch, I find my hunger is actually sometimes lower, and I don't need to eat a bigger dinner to make up for it. Certainly eating low-g.i\high-carb foods seems to make me get hungry again very easily. I also had really good luck with keto, and sometimes a combination of both. I believe the reason is something to do with blood sugar and insulin not spiking as much, but I'm not a biologist in the slightest.
- paulcarroty 7y agoEat less & eat often - doctor recommended me once. And its works fine. He also said fasting and "don't eat breakfast or lunch" are destructive, regular feeding matters.
- jvanderbot 7y agoThat does sound like the "old" advice. Most of the work on IF that I've followed implicates insulin spikes as cutting of cellular "cleanup" mechanisms. Insulin spikes happen after meals. Eating less (less insulin), intermittent fasting (a break from insulin), and low carb (less insulin), all have shown to be effective ways to improve longevity, and all can be at least partially (perhaps mostly) explained by reducing insulin load. But perhaps that is simply one of the many effects. Here's a guide that's not bad. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-guide https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-gu...
- pstuart 7y agoThat's seems like outdated info.
- humanlion87 7y agoI think a lot things have changed since that recommendation. And maybe your doctor has not kept themselves up to date with the new research. I am particularly referring to "don't eat breakfast is destructive". IMO, nutrition is such a complex topic and I feel like we have only begun to start peeling the layers. As an aside, did you know that the saying "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was invented by the founders of the Kellogs cereal?
- ravenstine 7y agoComing from a fasting fanatic, eating often but less can work for some people, but I don't think it works well for people who need to lose weight, whom make up a significant portion of the population. If you eat a small amount but eat often, you're less likely to put yourself into autophagy where your body will actually be using an appreciable amount of body fat to power itself. In order for a "grazing" diet to work for weight loss, people have to burn excess calories through exercising or eat very minimally. The average person won't keep up exercising for very long, especially when they aren't eating food that will give them the explosive energy that they need, and eating lots of low calorie food ends up making people miserable and causes yo-yo dieting. There's nothing destructive about fasting, as long as the person isn't starving. A lot of people confuse fasting with starvation, but they're not the same thing. Body fat is food. As long as you have fat to burn, you're not starving. Few people are going to starve doing even 72 hour long fasts. The human body just doesn't require that many nutrients on an hourly basis. You won't die or get hurt by not eating kale for a few days. It was common wisdom that skipping a meal was destructive, but it's becoming more accepted that it simply isn't true. It doesn't really make sense that we require the sheer amounts of food that we're eating on a regular basis. Most omnivores and carnivores aren't eating the equivalent of 3 meals a day, and are effectively practicing some form of fasting. If we're supposed to not skip breakfast, then all our ancestors must have been pretty unhealthy, yet fossil evidence doesn't really demonstrate this. A grazing type diet can be perfectly fine for someone at a healthy weight, but they're not really benefiting from it in any way besides the enjoyment of eating. Even so, it depends on what the person is eating in the first place. If someone eats toast with jelly for breakfast, it's highly questionable whether they're getting any long term health benefit from that at all. There's a plethora of information about this subject, and I don't have the time to cite it all here. I encourage you to update your knowledge here. Most general practitioners aren't well educated in nutrition, nor are they versed in the latest research, so your doctor may be operating on old wisdom that hasn't panned out.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoNote: that advice is countered by modern nutrition that sees insulin spikes and serum insulin as a bad thing.
- TheRealSteel 7y agoI don't believe the research and evidence are going that way. That being said, I will concede that specifically for some (not all) people with some eating disorders, restricting intake can be detrimental to recovery as it increases the chance of a binge later in the day. If you have binge eating disorder, be aware of that if you're considering intermittent fasting.
- nmfisher 7y ago> That being said, I will concede that specifically for some (not all) people with some eating disorders, restricting intake can be detrimental to recovery as it increases the chance of a binge later in the day. If you have binge eating disorder, be aware of that if you're considering intermittent fasting. This is exactly why I don't do that well with fasting, and I don't even have an eating disorder. With anything more than 16:8, it's very easy for me to start binge eating, so the whole thing becomes counterproductive. Every time I seriously lose weight (usually twice a year, once after winter and once after Christmas), it's eating small, high protein/low-carb meals every 3 hours or so. That puts just enough volume into my stomach to keep the hunger pangs at bay.
- muststopmyths 7y ago>For me, simply, it's easier to eat less calories if I intermittent fast. For some reason, if I don't eat breakfast or lunch, I find my hunger is actually sometimes lower, and I don't need to eat a bigger dinner to make up for it. That has been my experience as well. I feel full a lot more quickly with IF. Even if I fall off the wagon sometimes, I can count on IF as a quick way to fix overeating.
- _arvin 7y ago1. Day to day, you can incorporate it many ways, preferably by intermittent fasting, but you don't _need_ to do intermittent fasting for caloric restriction, which means just eating less. (30% fewer calories according to this study) 2. Yes, it's what I do and I find it works well. If you love breakfast, skip dinner. If you say I love breakfast and I love dinner, well you just won't have the appetite for one of them because of your new ruitine, so it won't really matter. If you start eating at 12pm, you'll want to stop eating by 8pm. If you start eating at 6 am, you'll have your last meal of the day by like 3pm. 3. See above, but as soon as you start eating, the window is now open for business and you may indulge. Ideally, you'll want to compound all of this with a healthy, balanced diet with lots of water, good nights rest, exercise, and limiting stress. It's basically applying a bunch of very simple principles, and sticking with it. The results will show, for sure. The biggest thing is getting in tune with your body and seeing what works best.
- pstuart 7y agoEchoing TheRealSteel's comment: IF with a reduced carb diet has worked for me and was easy to adapt to and to follow. That last point is the key: it's a lifestyle change, not a diet, so you need a regimen that is acceptable enough to actually make it a daily routine. Fasting for a day or three is worth exploring as well and is much easier to do if you're already doing the aforementioned time/carb restricted approach.
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- soneca 7y agoSomewhat tangential. I often see people treating different diet restrictions that make you healthier as if they were competitors. Low carb/high fat, versus low calories, versus intermittent fasting. They imagine the different orientations as startups in a winner-takes-all market and pump their preferred one against the others. I think a better way to frame a healthy diet is that you should aim to follow all three and realize that they (obviously) help each other work. These are collaborative orientations, not competitive. You can control i) what you eat (low carb/high fat), ii) when you eat (intermittent fasting), and iii) how much you eat (low calories). You should be following at least one of them at all times, two of them often, all three of them sometimes.
- devmunchies 7y agoI agree, there's different strategies for different scenarios. However your 3 scenarios don't take into account highly active people who are in shape. When losing fat, I ate less carbs, and did intermittent fasting. But once I had built muscle and kept exercising I need those carbs as short-term energy. Carbs are fuel, if you're not exercising you don't need much fuel, and can probably run on your fat reserves. I'm on a high carb, high protein, low fat diet now, which wouldn't be viable if I stop exercising.
- lawn 7y agoAnother thing to consider is that everyone are different. Some respond well on low-carb even when building muscle, while it never work for others.
- leetrout 7y agoI am not advocating the author nor the diet but there was a book on blood types diet that proposes certain foods are better or worse based on our blood types.
- mhh__ 7y agoAs with methods for sharpening knives, the best diet is the one you actually do
- asdkjh345 7y agoIt doesn't. We are not inbred lab rats with a dysfunctional metabolism, so the effects of caloric restriction on such rats don't apply to us.
- acd 7y agoI have read that calorie restriction can "reset" the immune system. How do you eat calorie restricted diet without getting very thin? If you eat 30% less than you should calories do you not eventually get so thin that you die from under nutrition?
- 0xcde4c3db 7y agoIt was 30% below a "normal diet" (presumably some reference diet for lab rats), not 30% below maintenance. Weight loss wouldn't continue indefinitely.
- jotm 7y agoThat would take literally months, or years. You don't need to do it for months at a time, just a few days/a week per month I believe
- 0xcde4c3db 7y agoDo we actually know whether these effects are triggered by calorie restriction in general, as opposed to restriction of some specific nutrient that's happening incidentally to the calorie restriction protocol? I seem to remember some reports from ~10 years ago that protein restriction, and possibly even restriction of specific amino acids, has shown similar effects.
- jostmey 7y agoI think it’s very clear that is the calorie restriction that’s increasing lifespan. It’s worked across many studies on almost every organism tested
- ravenstine 7y agoIf I'm remembering correctly, it's been replicated from rats to yeast cells, so there's probably a mechanism that goes beyond what's eaten.
- ip26 7y agoHave we ever gotten clarity on whether these are starvation diets pushing the subjects below what would normally be considered healthy weight? Vs reining in over-eating behavior? E.g. if we imagine running this on humans, are we talking about a BMI of 20, or 16?
- DoreenMichele 7y ago“This gives us targets that we may eventually be able to act on with drugs to treat aging in humans.” Oy. Why do we do this nonsense? Why can't it just be research that helps us better understand how to eat healthy? /pet peeve
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoWhy would you do something hard if we could make it easy?
- DoreenMichele 7y agoI don't think the motive is to make it easy. I think the motive is to make it highly profitable for someone.
- pyronite 7y agoI feel like both can be true – the motivation here is likely to both solve a real problem (aging and all that's associated with it) and to make some profit as a result. This is ultimately a product like any other. Like a SaaS product making any hard process easy, you wouldn't expect the solution to be wholly free. People would still have the option to take a different route (caloric restriction) to accomplish the same, but it's clear many people struggle with that.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoMaking hard things easy can be lucrative. Markets work because they align incentives like that.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoIf your goal is actually improving the health of people, making money on it can be a case of not aligning incentives. It can be a case of actively undermining your stated goal. X solution: Actually makes people healthy, doesn't make you rich. Gets no press because it's not making you rich. Y solution: Kind of, sort of addresses some health issue, but at the price of terrible, horrifying side effects. Also: Makes someone rich. Gets all the promotion while no one hears anything about the cheap solution that doesn't come with horrifying side effects and a huge literal price tag.
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- ruminasean 7y agoI've done strict calorie tracking for restriction, keto as well as IF. The best I've ever felt was keto, the easiest for me to adhere to was calorie tracking. It's marginally harder if you eat out a lot, but if you cook for yourself and can throw everything on a food scale for a week or so until you get an idea of what's servings of your most commonly-eaten foods looks like, tracking calories made losing weight for me and reducing my daily eating almost comically easy. There's a switch in my brain somewhere that works really well when I have to enter the calories of everything that goes in my mouth into an app....suddenly that cookie or those chips that were so hard to resist aren't a thing for me at all....my brain manages to yell "200 calories for THAT?? Nope." I found myself eating more at the end of the day just to hit my total calories and macros.
- lmilcin 7y agoThe easiest way I found to stay on a diet as a lifestyle (instead of dieting for a bit and then stopping and regaining the weight) is alternate day fasting. I found I can't just decide never again to eat the things I like and never again feel sated. Feeling hungry constantly isn't exactly my idea for the rest of my life. Alternate day fasting lets me survive a day with no calories knowing that the next day I can be sated and eat (almost) whatever I want. I have also found that when I eat every other day I put much more attention to what I eat on those days -- I mean, if I just did not eat yesterday and I won't eat tomorrow I want to eat well today. Even if I am going to eat sweets -- I will try to go for something better and not feed myself with garbage. I also found that alternate day fasting is good willpower training. Being able to restrict myself from eating for an entire day somehow trains me to be better at other things that require willpower.
- timwaagh 7y agoI don't think I'm mentally capable of following this kind of diet for a very long time. It just makes you hungry and less productive. It also weakens you in terms of physical strength.
- ed_balls 7y agoThat's why I go to gym at least 3 times a week. I build muscle to increase my "static" calories burn - and obviously burn calories while lifting weight. I kicked sugar as well.
- grandmczeb 7y agoSince people are sharing anecdotes I might as well share mine. I’ve personally tried IF, keto, calorie counting, and various combinations of all three. I’ve only ever lost weight when doing some form of calorie counting, and since that’s easiest for me without putting other restrictions on my diet, I’ve settled on just tracking calories long term.
- leetrout 7y agoI have a lot of success with high fat / high protein diets because they let me function better with lower calories. I subscribe to the church of keto / slow carb in broad strokes. I think there is a hormonal element that we don’t fully appreciate that relates to our ability to lose weight effectively. My frustration with pure calories in / calories out is the rumination I do with how much calories we really extract from certain foods. I am convinced (as some science agrees) 100 calories of sugar and 100 calories of bacon aren’t handled the same. I also wonder about how some people must have faster digestive systems and if it moves through faster are you still extracting the same calories as someone else...
- didibus 7y agoFrom what I understand, 100 calories of bacon and 100 calories of sugar is the same. Though there are other compounds in those that may trigger effects in your body. That said, how calories are measured is from an average approximation. It is true that different people may yield slightly more or less calories from the same foods. Calories are what your body extracts from the food post digestion. That said, I've never seen strong indicators that the maximum and minimum are that far apart. So it could be that you are a huge outlier and your body extracts way more calories from food A then the average person, or way less. But I think those chances are slim, that is, for you to be such an outlier.
- adamgluck 7y agoThe only reason a study like this works is because it takes place in a controlled environment where they can actually starve the rats (or sometimes make genetic changes that reduce the rats hunger.) Study after study and clinical experience shows that low calorie diets are really hard for humans “in the wild” to maintain in practice. People who are on them constantly complain of hunger (in the mid-20th century these were actually called “semi-starvation” diets), and go back to their previous weight as soon as they are done. That’s why a lot of modern dieting has oriented around low carb / high fat because it means that you get enough calories, but the composition of your macronutrients causes you to lose weight. You don’t have to go as low as Keto to get these effects (that’s 5-10% carbs) and certainly don’t need to entirely cut out fruit, etc. And the results have been observed clinically for 100+ years. This, however, hasn’t prevented academic nutritionist after academic nutritionist from pushing these narratives without any clinical experience. Can you imagine being at least a little hungry for 20 years... the equivalent time span in humans to get the effect reserved here in rats? That’s insane. And, more bluntly, probably not doable. If you’re skeptical of this try dropping your caloric intake by 30% for two weeks and tell me how you feel :)
- overgard 7y agoAgreed, although I also think intermittent fasting is a good way to reduce calories. Its a lot easier to skip a meal than it is to plan out 3 meals a day with like 20% less calories
- fearface 7y agoThat’s a bit of BS. You don’t loose weight magically because of macronutrients. Bollocks. You loose weight, because you burn your excess fat. Without restricting your intake, there is no reason for your body to burn your fat reserves and that’s why you won’t loose weight just with low carb and same total calories. (You may loose some water, but not fat). On a ketogenic diet, your body is constantly using fat as fuel, which makes it easier to eat less calories and be less hungry. Also ditching carbs prevents insulin spikes, which impact a lot how you feel and act. I lost +30kg with restricting my calory intake by ~25% (calculated on the energy value of the fat loss per month) and keto helped me to not feel hungry and also skip a meal or two without any impact on my energy level.
- hprotagonist 7y agoespecially in lab rats, the null hypothesis is that lab rats eat too much and too regularly. this may or may not generalize.
- zackmorris 7y agoI wish that it was possible to do a caloric restriction study on people who work out. I spent most of my 20s eating roughly twice as much as average and hitting the gym 3-4 times per week and I never felt better, especially after 20 rep squat sessions that naturally raise hormones like testosterone and HGH. I occasionally cut calories to lose weight or train my metabolism to be "ready" for emergency situations (which was honestly camping or going broke, not exactly military excursions), but in my experience it basically felt like death. Like I could feel my body catabolizing muscle and I had flu-like symptoms if I took it too far for too many weeks. Anecdotally, my parents' boomer generation felt that bodybuilding was generally a waste of time. If you watch old movies from the 60s and 70s, people were especially lean. And then unfortunately juicers in the 70s, 80s and 90s ruined the reputation of bodybuilding so everyone figured that being strong meant taking steroids. It's only been in the last 5-10 years or so that I've noticed a resurgence in natural bodybuilding (check out Jeff Nippard, Steve Cook and Mike O'Hearn for examples of what's possible natty). So personally I really feel that lifting weights from about 15-16 years of age for life probably replicates many of the health effects of calorie restriction. Like, Arnold Schwarzenegger did some of his best work in his 40s when he was in better shape than most people in their 20s. Many athletes in their 70s and 80s look like they're 50. An untrained human bench presses about 100 pounds. When I was growing up, a 300 pound bench was considered mastery. Today with YouTube and better workout programs and supplements, that's probably 400-500 pounds. I personally would choose to have 3-5 times average strength (anything above 4 is metahuman IMHO) rather than spend my life at a withered calorie restricted strength of 1/2. Of course ethically, it would be better for the planet if nobody worked out I guess. That's a separate discussion though, and I feel that some of the downside could be alleviated if the extra calories came from relatively benign sources like rice and beans. So my question is, is this all just vanity? Or would a diet/exercise approach be comparable to calorie restriction?
- jotm 7y agoSeems to me like working out you just naturally need more calories. So it's the same thing - you use more calories than you eat. Like how Michael Phelps are something ridiculous like 10,000 calories a day while training.
- waterheater 7y agoI recently read a copy of Isaac Asimov's "The Chemicals of Life." Written in 1954, the book talks about how and why our bodies work. It hardly mentions DNA and focuses on the larger structures of enzymes, proteins, vitamins, and hormones. Some of the information is outdated in its presentation, but the book still holds up in almost all areas. (Also, I had never realized Asimov was a Professor of Biochemistry. He knew his stuff in this area.) The first chapter of the book is titled, "The All-Important Protein." This struck my 2020, DNA-oriented mind as an odd starting point, yet Asimov was very clear: "all life is protein." The book is remarkably lucid, and here's one of the best portions of the book: "Suppose the food you ate contained very little fat. That wouldn't bother your body a bit. It would take the carbohydrate you eat and turn it into fat. It happens all the time. Everyone knows what starchy foods will do for the waistline. "If both fats and carbohydrates are low, the body is still not at a loss. It can manufacture both out of the proteins of the diet. "Where the body does get stuck is in the case of a shortage of proteins. It cannot manufacture proteins out of fats and carbohydrates. Proteins require nitrogen, and neither fats nor carbohydrates have any. So proteins can only be obtained for the body by making certain that protein is in the food. It is impossible to live on a diet of starch, butter and sugar. You can get all the energy you need, but you can't build tissue." Asimov places heavy emphasis on the two primary categories of what our body cannot naturally produce: essential amino acids and vitamins. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. The human body cannot produce nine of these amino acids, and we term these to be "essential" (Asimov said there were only eight; the necessity of histidine for adults was not yet established in 1954.) We must acquire the essential amino acids from a source outside our body. If we don't acquire these essential amino acids, our bodies will fall apart. Wikipedia says "protein deficiency has been shown to affect all of the body's organs and many of its systems" [1]. Asimov later discusses the importance of vitamins, or "atom groupings, which the body cannot make for itself and must get from the food it eats." Without vitamins, we cannot produce certain coenzymes and will fall ill and possibly die. Essential amino acids and vitamins. I've been focusing my diet on the acquisition of those in correct quantities. My diet-optimizing function seeks to minimize sugar, maximize protein, and moderate the rest. So far, it seems to be working well; I still build muscle at the gym and fat stays off. Wonder if this is what keto basically optimizes for as well. So many articles about bodily function I've seen online jump straight to considerations of DNA. Certainly, this approach is more accurate, though I do wonder if we the layperson are approaching health issues with too much detail. To analogize to software, it's like we're trying to debug our complex C++ program by pouring over the binary. The issues are far more likely to be with what we're putting in than what's already there. Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid
- chubot 7y agoI watched part of Aubrey de Gray on Joe Rogan yesterday. He said that fasting (which is caloric restriction if not identical to it) has a smaller effect on lifespan for animals of greater mass: Roughly - worm: 5x longer lifespan by fasting - mouse: 50% longer - dog: 10% longer - human: 1-2% longer I'd be interested to hear support or refutations of this. It seems like something that should be pretty well studied by now.
- bigbee 7y agoOriginal title: “Eat less, live longer Salk scientists show how caloric restriction prevents negative effects of aging in cells” What it should have been: Are you a lab rat? Eat less, live longer! Salk scientists show how caloric restriction prevents negative effects of aging in cells of rats
- ip26 7y agoMany of the observed effects at least distantly remind me of the known effects of exercise. I wonder if there's an intersection, e.g. without adjusting your eating habits, exercise results in an effectively calorie-restricted diet? If there is no intersection, I wonder which is more valuable than the other? Not much exercise is going to be happening on a starvation diet.
- Gibbon1 7y agoI think during physical work your muscles consume glucose. Potentially large amounts. The liver gives up it's stores of glycogen. Afterwords the liver will efficiently take up glucose to replenish it's stores of glycogen. I think that dynamic is a lot better than the insulin mediated glucose to fat conversion dynamic you get with sedentary people.