Fighting Aging by Cutting Calories
Want to live longer, look better as you age? Research has found that eating less and therefore consuming less calories seems to help as far as anti-aging goes. Read the following health news article from the BBC news on how a reduction of calories will benefit you as you age and this is true for both men and women.
“Cutting calories may delay the aging process and reduce the risk of disease, a long-term study of monkeys suggests.
The benefits of calorie restriction are well documented in animals, but now the results have been replicated in a close relative of man over a lengthy period. Over 20 years, monkeys whose diets were not restricted were nearly three times more likely to have died than those whose calories were counted. Writing in Science, the US researchers hailed the “major effect” of the diet.
It involved reducing calorie intake by 30% while maintaining nutrition and appeared to impact upon many forms of age-related disease seen in monkeys, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and brain atrophy. Whether the same effects would be seen in humans is unclear, although anecdotal evidence so far suggests people on a long-term calorie-restricted diet have better cardiovascular health.
The precise mechanism is yet to be established: theories involve changes in the body’s metabolism or a reduction in the production of “free radical” chemicals which can cause damage. Seventy-six rhesus monkeys were involved in the trial, which began in 1989 and was expanded in 1994. Half had their diets restricted, half were given free rein at feeding time.
The rate of cancers and cardiovascular disease in dieting animals was less than half of those permitted to eat freely.
While diabetes and problems with glucose regulation were common in monkeys who ate what they wanted, there were no cases in the calorie controlled group. In addition, while most brains shrink with age, the restricted diet appeared to maintain the volume of the brain at least in some regions. In particular, the areas associated with movement and memory seemed to be better preserved. “Both motor speed and mental speed slow down with ageing,” said Sterling Johnson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine.
“Those are the areas which we found to be better preserved. We can’t yet make the claim that a difference in diet is associated with functional change because those studies are still ongoing.”
It seems to hold true that reducing caloric consumption is a major factor for age management for men and women.
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