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“Intermittent fasting and/or caloric restriction extends mice lifespan.” is quite old news. The reason mice are used in labs isn’t because they’re a good model
by tomp 2y ago
“Intermittent fasting and/or caloric restriction extends mice lifespan.” is quite old news.
The reason mice are used in labs isn’t because they’re a good model of humans, but because they’re easy to bread and have short lifespans.
Studies of caloric restriction in monkeys didn’t cause lifespan extension, casting doubt on its effect in humans.
Peter Attia (best source of longevity science) wrote about this 5 years ago.
https://peterattiamd.com/calorie-restriction-part-iia-monkey-studies/ https://peterattiamd.com/calorie-restriction-part-iia-monkey...
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- 8b16380d 2y agoMmmmmmm mouse bread
- doubled112 2y agoI read it more like a mouse sandwich. I don’t think there’s much meat on a mouse though, especially when the experiment is to have them eat less.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoNo, the GP is referring to breaded mice. Indeed, the recipe is so easy. Dip mice in batter and deep fry.
- scotty79 2y agoInteresting question is why it didn't work for monkeys. It might have been a difference in protocol. Studies on monkey's are not easy to repeat. Somebody should test caloric restrictions on mice with explicit goal of making it not work.
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- pc86 2y agoWhy? It's much more likely caloric restriction extends the lifespan of mice and doesn't similarly extend the lifespan of primates. What does making some bad scientific study that tells you something incorrect about mice help?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago> that tells you something incorrect I know I’m just nitpicking here but I believe you mean “inconclusive”. If we knew the findings specifically to be incorrect then we’d be learning something.
- scotty79 2y agoI'm not advocating a bad scientific study. I'm advocating a good one for detecting what might be another cause of it not working for monkeys other than 'duh! monkeys aren't mice!" It's not about finding something inconclusive or incorrect. It's about finding all the ways you can make caloric restriction not cause extended lifespan in mice without harming them in some obvious ways that are hard to apply accidentally in research setting. For example, maybe caloric restriction doesn't work if you feed mice badly inappropriate diet.
- pvaldes 2y agoJust speculating. Maybe different levels of stress. Mice feel comfortable and happy in small places. Chimps not so much. Chimps are also very muscular animals. Less fat to burn.
- vlovich123 2y agoI thought so too but this is newer research on monkeys based on a long running study since 1989 linked directly in the first sentence of the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.14963 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.14963. That being said the Wisconsin study does have a fair amount of criticism in that they cut back on a diet composed 30% sugar from an all you can eat buffet so it’s unclear if it’s purely just stopping being overweight / reducing risk of diabetes or if there’s any other benefits.
- appplication 2y agoFWIW as much as it’s fair to criticize the study design, an all you can eat buffet composed of 30% sugar is more or less par for the average American. It’s not like we’re out here in the real world with a healthy and nutritionally balanced baseline. Most of us eat quite a bit of trash, so in the context of the real world the findings seem valid enough.
- vlovich123 2y agoThere’s a difference between “caloric intake reduces obesity related mortality causes like diabetes” and “caloric intake extends lifespan”. Even though they’re related, the latter is claiming everyone would benefit from it including those that aren’t obese and is fighting some kind of fundamental aging mechanism caused by eating while the former is just saying how to fix the American diet to fix obesity and diabetes.
- bluGill 2y agoWhat, if you don't eat the standard american diet? a lot of americans don't. I see a lot of carts in front of me at the grocery store with junk only in them, but there are also a lot with mostly healthy foods.
- dimal 2y agoAre you reading that right? > The investigators were comparing median survival between the CR and control (CON) groups, not longevity or lifespan per se. As I read that, it wasn’t that the study showed that caloric restriction didn’t extent lifespan. It’s that they weren’t investigating the effect of caloric restriction on lifespan, so no conclusions can be made from the study.
- tomp 2y agoNo, read the article I posted. TL;DR: there are 2 monkey studies, with unclear/conflicting results, both had pretty shitty diets, the calorie restrictions were severe, the benefits minimal at best.
- dimal 2y agoThe quote I provided was from the article. I’ve read the whole thing and I’m still parsing it (and your statement about both being fed shitty diets) as going against your original assertion: “Studies of caloric restriction in monkeys didn’t cause lifespan extension, casting doubt on its effect in humans.” According to Attia, the studies weren’t specifically studying life extension, and all the diets were non-typical for the monkeys being studied. So, to me, this argues not that caloric restriction doesn’t cause lifespan extension in monkeys, but that we cannot know from these studies whether caloric restriction with a healthy diet causes lifespan extension in monkeys, which is what we really want to know. I wouldn’t expect to extend lifespan by eating hamburgers and fries but less of them, and that seems analogous to what the studies did. To me, this simply leaves the question of caloric restriction in humans unanswered instead of casting doubt on it. Big difference.
- nradov 2y agoHamburgers aren't necessarily unhealthy. Plain ground beef is an excellent nutrient source. It depends what else you put on them.
- aulin 2y agoWait, isn't Attia a big advocate of periodic fasting?
- nradov 2y agoNot anymore. More recent research has failed to find any real benefits to intermittent fasting, at least for people who are already at a healthy weight. And it seems to have some negative effects for body composition. https://peterattiamd.com/ep-300-exercise-nutrition-fasting-more/ https://peterattiamd.com/ep-300-exercise-nutrition-fasting-m...
- aulin 2y agoNote I used periodic instead of intermittent for a reason. I seem to recall he was recently for something like a day a day and a half fast per month. Don't follow him that closely, did he move away from that too?
- empiricus 2y agoI think he no longer fasts, 1. because it reduces muscles 2. because of lifestyle changes; he now spends almost all time with the family.
- kamaal 2y ago>>he now spends almost all time with the family. I see this too, for some reason people who don't fast kind of find it rude if people around them are fasting. Families even more so.
- consteval 2y agoIt's generally uncomfortable to share meals with people who aren't eating. It's deeply ingrained in many cultures to "break bread" in a way, so I think that's why it can be perceived as rude.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- throw8932899 2y agoMonkeys (more precisely chimpanzees) do not have fasting mechanisms. They never start fasting and go into ketosis, they just die from starvation after week or two. In tropics they have food available all year. They never venture far from food sources. Humans (and other non-tropic animals like mice) have adaptation for seasonal food availability, and can go through extended fasting.
- sigmoid10 2y agoThis should be higher up. Humans split from primates (including chimpanzees) roughly 5 million years ago. Early hominids only evolved the ability to store large amounts of fat and fast for extended periods of time in the Pleistocene, less than 2 million years ago. Any study done on calorie restriction using monkeys has a serious caveat. Mice offer a much better starting point for comparing metabolic activity.
- gweinberg 2y agoYou're kidding, right? I can see saying neither one tells you much about human beings, but saying monkey studies aren't relevant to human but mouse studies are just sounds bizarre.
- tpoacher 2y ago"All models are wrong, but some are useful." ~ George Box
- meowkit 2y agoWhen you frame it like that of course it sounds bizarre. You just ignored the context of ketogenic metabolism being more similar in humans and mice than humans and chimpanzees.
- pessimizer 2y agoIf you're specifically studying something that is a stark difference between other monkeys and apes on one side and humans on the other, studying monkeys and apes is obviously not a smart thing to do.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoHaven't almost 1Bn people intermittently fasted during Ramadan for centuries? Shouldn't there be enough evidence to get an idea if there's possibly a correlation?
- sieste 2y agoThe benefits can be negated by what you eat outside the fasting window. Anecdotally, a few guys I knew feasted on baclava and super sweet tea first chance they got. also not drinking any water during the fast, especially in hot climates might be net unhealthy independent of any fasting benefits. I don't know any studies on that though, happy to stand corrected...
- himinlomax 2y agoThey also abstain from drinking water. Medical science has clearly shown that this is bad for your kidneys. Possibly catastrophically bad. Who should I believe, science or medieval superstitions?
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- thisislife2 2y agoThen religious muslims around the world, who all fast every year, must have the highest rate of medical issues related to their kidneys. Is there any such studies showing this?
- qzw 2y agoAny studies done on potential health effects due to Ramadan will need to deal with the issue of noncompliance, i.e. to what degree do people observing Ramadan actually stick to the fast and not “cheat” at all. But I can imagine that due to the religious significance of the fast, you likely won’t get accurate self-reports of noncompliance. It would also be hard to conduct an accurate observational study since the subjects’ behavior will change due to being observed, again, because of the religious aspects. Without good noncompliance data, I’d be skeptical of any firm conclusions.
- ineedaj0b 2y agoand thrown out with the bathwater is we've bred these mice to be very similar to us in some cases. if you wanted these studies done on humans you'd be dead before the results came back positive or negative.