4 ms·
I can't see a clear conclusion, unfortunately. 'Further study required' as ever. It also seems that 'resilience' to the stress of caloric restriction is key to
by austinjp 2y ago
I can't see a clear conclusion, unfortunately. 'Further study required' as ever. It also seems that 'resilience' to the stress of caloric restriction is key to gaining most benefit but it's not clear exactly what resilience is, and whether it's manipulable.
From the article:
Weight loss and metabolic improvements do not explain the longevity benefits of severe dietary restrictions.
Cutting calories by 40% yielded the longest longevity bump, but intermittent fasting and less severe calorie restriction also increased average lifespan. The dieting mice also displayed favourable metabolic changes, such as reductions in body fat and blood sugar levels.
However, the effects of dietary restriction on metabolism and lifespan didn’t always change in lockstep. To the authors’ surprise, the mice that lost the most weight on a calorie-limited diet tended to die younger than did animals that lost relatively modest amounts.
This suggests that processes beyond simple metabolic regulation drive how the body responds to limited-calorie regimes. What mattered most for lengthening lifespan were traits related to immune health and red-blood-cell function. Also key was overall resilience [...] The most-resilient animals lost the least weight, maintained immune function and lived longer.
In one of the most comprehensive clinical trials of a low-calorie diet in healthy, non-obese individuals, researchers found that the intervention helped to dial down metabolic rates — a short-term effect thought to signal longer-term benefits for lifespan.
But the mouse data from Churchill’s team suggest that metabolic measurements might reflect ‘healthspan’ — the period of life spent free from chronic disease and disability — but that other metrics are needed to say whether such ‘anti-ageing’ strategies can truly extend life.
- CraftingLinks 2y agoMice are very different from humans in that they are prey and we are predator. The reason that this is significant is that evolutionary, mice life history is optimalized for more offspring and shorter life, whereas predators are optimized for long life and few offspring. We know since 1993 with the discovery of the daf-2 gene (a nematode insulin receptor) that genetics can drastically affect longevity. However, and this is my own professional hypothesis, in humans we have tuned the genetic dial to max lifespan, whereas in mice and worms it is not. In these animals there is plenty of flexibility left to tune up lifespan, not so in humans. We may see moderate effects due to increased health though.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> We know since 1993 with the discovery of the daf-2 gene (a nematode insulin receptor) that genetics can drastically affect longevity. We've known that since we observed that humans can easily live more than 70 years while cats tend not to go past 20. And presumably well before then.
- james-revisoai 2y agoPlease can you tell me more about the daf-2 gene and it's role in lifespan for nematodes? Any explainers on this? How does insulin relate to it - the metabolic aspect?
- CraftingLinks 2y agoI can point you to the abstract of my PhD: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/3075889 https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/3075889. Mutations in the daf-2 gene tend to result in huge shifts in physiological and metabolic makeup. The challenge is discriminating those changes that are relevant for longevity from those that are not.
- Yacovlewis 2y agoThis is super interesting. Where are you planning on taking/applying this?
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoIMHO, it is all about lowering oxidative stress. Eating creates oxidative stress in the body because to eat means to create ATP and that means electrons are increased in the mitochondria. More electrons = more oxidative stress in the form of superoxides. I will say that Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition (or CRON) is the healthiest diet but should be geared towards ones heritage or genetics (which is why I think all of the studies on humans have such variable and confounding outcomes.). http://optimal.org/voss/cron_overview.html http://optimal.org/voss/cron_overview.html
- nradov 2y agoThat doesn't seem plausible. Hard exercise increases oxidative stress and yet we have pretty good evidence that frequent hard exercise is correlated with longer lifespan. Calorie restriction like the nonsense you're promoting would leave me too weak to do my favorite activities.
- cmclaughlin 2y agoYou’d be surprised… weight lifting while intermittent fasting is quite effective
- nradov 2y agoEffective for what?
- netr0ute 2y agoLosing muscle
- pessimizer 2y agoBodybuilders were the first people to start intermittent fasting after the mouse study. The title of the front page of https://leangains.com/ https://leangains.com/ is "Leangains - Birthplace of Intermittent Fasting" April 14, 2010: https://leangains.com/the-leangains-guide/ https://leangains.com/the-leangains-guide/