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Science

Low-Cal Diet Extends Life... As Long as You Don't Eat 352

Posted by michael from the life-only-seems-longer dept.
There has been a lot of research recently showing that a restricted calorie diet can extend the lifespans of various creatures. Sadly, it seems that as soon as they start eating again, the benefits are lost.
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Low-Cal Diet Extends Life... As Long as You Don't Eat More

Low-Cal Diet Extends Life... As Long as You Don't Eat

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  • in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bsDaemon ( 87307 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:42AM (#7011145)
    studies have shown that research causes cancer in rats.

  • Redefines lifetime. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by questamor ( 653018 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:43AM (#7011147)
    Kind of redefines the term "lifetime" too

    I mean hey, a complete starvation diet is one to last a lifetime!

    (a very short lifetime)
    • But if this was true then wouldn't mayflies (wich don't eat) live forever?

    • Life limited by Oxygen consumption (Score:4, Informative)

      by spineboy ( 22918 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @01:42PM (#7012613) Journal
      I used to work at the National Institutes of Ageing at the NIH in Bethesda MD, with the research scientists who pioneered this area of research. What they found was that lifetime TOTAL oygen consumption for the "starvation" group of rats and the normal diet rats were the same. In other words the rats/mice had a limited amount of oxygen that they could consume in their lifetime before they diet, got cancer, etc.. They could use it up faster by proessing the normal amount of food, or use it up at a slower rate with the calorie restricted diet. Oddly enough, it reminded me of Bladerunner, and the replicants -where Rutger Hauer gives his speech about life - you can burn slowly for a long time, or blaze brighlty for a short time.

      Oxygen is a pretty harsh molecule/element/radical, and their hypothesis was that it basically damaged the cells/DNA - so the more you received of it, the more oxidation damage your cells received. They did not look into the effects of exercise when I was there.

      • They could use it up faster by proessing the normal amount of food, or use it up at a slower rate with the calorie restricted diet.

        Isn't the whole point of this article that it doesn't seem to work this way anyway? Once the flies are off the diet, it's as if they vere never on it in the first place, and would only live a normal lifespan. On the other hand, if they get on the diet late, they would get the same benefits as the ones who had been on it their whole life.

      • What they found was that lifetime TOTAL oygen consumption for the "starvation" group of rats and the normal diet rats were the same.

        The study in the article brings that conclusion into question. If the new findings pan out, it would seem that the O2 consumption had little to do with it, but was simply a natural effect of the restricted diet in parallel with the restricted diet (in other words, an artifact).

  • Google Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by hamster foo ( 697718 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:46AM (#7011157)
    Here's [nytimes.com] the google link directly to the story.

  • And in other news . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Roark Meets Dent ( 650119 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:48AM (#7011159)
    Research also shows that eggs are bad for you .. no wait, make that good. Wait, here is a new study.... Who knows what to believe half the time? A low-calorie diet is good if you need to lose weight, plain and simple. Otherwise, eat the amount of calories you need to maintain your weight. It's not an exact science, but if you avoid the junk food and make half an effort to eat sensibly, there shouldn't be much to worry about.

    • Don't forget... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Oculus Habent ( 562837 ) * <oculus.habent@gma i l . c om> on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:43AM (#7011323) Journal
      Don't forget to get up and move every now and then, as well. People don't realize that this is a major factor in health. Why does the Atkins diet work for so many people? Because you don't need carbohydrates if you sit in an office all day. The food pyramid should practically say, "For an active lifestyle."

      • Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mOdQuArK! ( 87332 )
        I don't have a link at the moment, but I've read that there was some evidence that _too_ much exercise will actually lower your maximum lifespan (by causing your body's metabolism to be higher than necessary).

        Supposedly, the way to live the longest (barring accident and/or disease) is by living with a severely-calorie restricted diet, and with a minimal amount of exercise (just enough to keep your body from atrophying). This will keep your body's metabolism at its lowest possible levels, supposedly lengthe

      • Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Informative)

        by hacker ( 14635 )

        Why does the Atkins diet work for so many people? Because you don't need carbohydrates if you sit in an office all day.

        Excuse me. The "Atkins Diet" is quite dangerous, in fact, as proven by no less than a hundred studies out there on the web.

        The basic building block of energy is glucose, and carbohydrates provide that. The brain lives ONLY on glucose. You're starving your body of the necessary building block of energy by reducing the single-most important way to deliver glucose to the cells; carbohydrat

  • life (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rumagent ( 86695 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:48AM (#7011160)
    We'll live longer if we don't eat, drink, smoke, fuck and so on...

    But what is the point of having life if you don't live it? Boring people may live longer, but they live less.

    /rumagent

    • Re:life (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:53AM (#7011176)
      We'll live longer if we don't eat, drink, smoke, fuck and so on...

      Ahh well the last one isn't a problem for slashdotters...

    • Re:life (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jonas the Bold ( 701271 )
      Kinda like the fact that most electronics will last longer if you don't turn them on.

      I believe in quality over quantity for most things, including life.

    • an important point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Tyro ( 247333 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:00AM (#7011198)
      That brings up another issue... when does life stop being worth living?

      This is the question that the euthanasia folks would dearly love society to answer... but they can't; it's an individual decision. This is part of the drive behind people getting living wills, durable powers of attorney for healthcare, and advance directive, etc.

      I'm not quite to mid-life, without a single health problem. I run, work out, don't smoke, or drink to excess... and I have a living will, AND advance directives. Why? Because, as a physician, I have SEEN life that's not worth living (at least it wouldn't be for me), and I would never want to get to that point. I encourage people, even healthy ones, to think about a living will... and to have the necessary conversations with their loved ones and significant others. Once you're critically ill/vegitative, unable to make that choice for yourself, and others are trying to deal with the emotional trauma of your incapacitation... that is NOT the time to attempt an objective conversation about it.

      Yes, you can diet, and deprive yourself of all the "good things" in life, but is that really a life worth living, particularly if it only buys you a small, arbitrary gain? Again, it's an individual decision.

      I think I'll keep eating my cheeseburgers.

      • Re:an important point (Score:5, Insightful)

        by skillet-thief ( 622320 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:43AM (#7011322) Homepage Journal
        I think the point is that you don't need to totally pig out every time you eat to be enjoying your life. The trade off that another poster mentioned, between 16% longer life and 25% lower quality of life, is also totally bogus, since that would mean that "enjoyment" of one's life can only be measured in food!

        Some people might think that way -- and you could still argue that even for them, enjoyment might not be able to measured in quantity -- but, personally, I can think of a lot of other things besides eating that would make it worth living longer.

        • Re:an important point (Score:5, Interesting)

          by vidnet ( 580068 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @09:09AM (#7011390) Homepage
          If you're If you're hungry and bored, would you get a snack or find something fun to do? If you're hungry and sleepy, would you get a snack or go to bed? If you're hungry and horny, would you get a snack or find a towelette?

          Hunger is one of the strongest drives in human, and it overshadows much of what else you might be doing, so I'd agree that the quality of life would be drastically lowered by a very strict low-calorie diet.

          • Agreed that starvation isn't that much fun. I just don't measure my overall happiness based on quantity of food consumed.

          • Hunger is one of the strongest drives in human, and it overshadows much of what else you might be doing,

            True, but people (over)eat for many reasons, often as a means for coping with society.

            I think we need to eat out of a "solution to society" rather than "due to society". When was it the last time you saw a late-night TV ad for a fresh garden salad??? Can't say I _ever_ have.

            If society readily offers me crap food (inundation of fast food, nutritionally IMbalanced soft drink, etc.) and I accept it

      • From what I've read, it's not a small gain though. That 30% gain is supposedly pretty uniform across all types of animals, from bacteria to mammals. With the average life span in the U.S. hovering around 80, that means it'd buy you an extra 24 years of life.

        Don't get me wrong, I'd rather eat my cheeseburger (and ribs and sushi and curries and...gettin' hungry now...) too, but I imagine if you offered an extra quarter century of life to many people, they'd take it.
        • how much "living" are you really going to be accomplishing after 80, and based on what standard would you define it?

          I've met some pretty spry 70-80yo folks... if you take care of yourself your whole life, you really can extend it in a quality way... I truly believe that.

          However, you will not be living the same way you are now. Simple age will intervene at some point; virtually everyone develops medical problems if they live long enough. Even if you didn't work at a nuclear plant, you receive enough bac

    • Re:life (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:41AM (#7011315)
      Anecdotal results are mixed. It seems for every 100+ year old woman (most seem to be women) who say they never ate meat, drank or smoked and is a very old virgin, there's another who lived on lard, booze and tobacco and screwed everything but stray dogs...

    • Let's see... it looks to me like there's nothing wrong with eating... we just can't overindulge (binge) and expect to live. Okay, I can handle that. Come to think of it, I really don't feel good after a binge anyhow.

      Drinking. Again, a small quantity of wine is good for you, helps your heart and all. Quantities that get you drunk, make you fall down, are not. Okay, again, I really like a good glass of wine, or even better, half a glass. The red that they serve on the airlines is my favorite; as it tur
    • We'll live longer if we don't eat, drink, smoke, fuck and so on...

      But what is the point of having life if you don't live it? Boring people may live longer, but they live less.

      Many people seem to make this point, which IMHO is a grave misunderstanding. For example, after I became a vegetarian I've felt I enjoy life more. Heavy foods with meat and fat can be enjoyable at the moment of eating, but in the long term I felt they made me feel worse. Vegetarian food gives a 'light' feeling and more energy over

  • Low-Cal Diet Does Not Extend Life... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mlush ( 620447 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:49AM (#7011161)
    ... it just seems that way

  • How useful is this information? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LordOfYourPants ( 145342 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @07:54AM (#7011181)
    Can anyone really usefully apply this information to their lives? I don't mean this sarcastically, but in order to practically apply what was learned in this article, we'd have to know our date of death given our current diet. Then, 48 hours before the date of death (assuming we work the same as a fruit fly, which I doubt), we would begin our life-extending diet.

    Maybe when we reach a day where we can tell our date of death and are able to keep any permanent damage from happening in the meantime, ie: a heart attack, kidney damage, etc, this would be useful.

    On top of that, I didn't see a mention as to what kind of calories the fruit flies were being fed. Does a person who has 1200 calories of McDonalds a day vs someone who has 1200 calories of fruits/veggies/grains a day get the same "armour" effect?

    So as it is now, the message is: Restrict your calorie intake NOW and you might live longer. We can't say if you were going to die at 25 given your diet or 90, but start NOW.

    In other news: Not skydiving, driving, and living near a coal plant can extend your life.
    • Actually, this info is REALLY useful. Perhaps it is not useful to John Doe, but researchers can use this fly model to study and attempt to identify the causes of this effect. Because pesky organizations like PETA dont care about flies and they are cheap to work with, coming up with a fly system to study these effects is really important. the real question is how this reseach translates into humans. That is, does the fly model appropriately represent a physiological state in humans?
    • I think it's not quite useless. It sounds like you have a percentage chance of dying that increases with age; if you are in the process of a low-cal diet, though, then it doesn't have an opening. Go off your diet for 48 hours, and it does.

      So it seems to me that the right strategy would to increasingly diet as you get older. Instead of eating more, and getting fatter, eat less and less (towards a goal calorie level in your 50's), and then maintain it.

      At that point, keep it averaged out nicely over any 4

    • How this really works (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Morris Schneiderman ( 132974 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @11:51AM (#7012033)
      I published some of the initial, theoretical work behind this, in 1981 in a journal called Speculations in Science and Technology, vol. 4 no. 3. page 335.

      It used to be 'common knowledge' that fully differentiated cells of a given tissue type would each live for a specific length of time and then die.

      I argued that this was not so. I suggested that fully differentiated cells of a given tissue type would divide a specific number of times and then stop dividing (Hayflick Limit). I hypothesized the existence of a counter in each cell that kept track of how many more times that cell could divide. Today, those counters are called Tellomeres.

      The reason you live longer on a low calorie diet is because your individual cells don't have the fuel to go through their life cycles as quickly. Give them the fuel and they speed up again.

      So the idea of waiting until 48 hours before your natural dead would not extend your life by much at all. Sorry.

      Tellomeres are like a chain of knots at one end of the DNA. Each time the DNA divides, there's one less knot on the chain. If the cell does not become cancerous, when there are no more knots, the cell ceases to divide. The real answer to life extension will be when we learn how to add knots back onto the Tellomeres.

      I expect this problem to be solved within the next 15 years. At that point, it will become possible to slowly roll back the age of the body as, for example, 46th generation smooth muscle cells divide and become 17th generation smooth muscle cells. Over a period of several years your body would effectively become younger.

      • I argued that this was not so. I suggested that fully differentiated cells of a given tissue type would divide a specific number of times and then stop dividing (Hayflick Limit). I hypothesized the existence of a counter in each cell that kept track of how many more times that cell could divide. Today, those counters are called Tellomeres.

        Does this statement contradict with the following statement from the article:

        "It's been assumed that the reason things live longer when they diet is that there i
      • "At that point, it will become possible to slowly roll back the age of the body as, for example, 46th generation smooth muscle cells divide and become 17th generation smooth muscle cells. Over a period of several years your body would effectively become younger"

        This assumes that telomeres are the only thing that cause aging. There may be other as yet unknows or misunderstood processes that cause aging.

  • You wouldn't believe how little we need to eat. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Yo Grark ( 465041 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:01AM (#7011202)
    On my "lifesyle" change I had lost 60 pounds. I wobbled a bit and gained 5 back, but I'l losing 1-2 pounds a week again.

    There is one things that keeps getting hammered into my head.

    We don't need all the food we eat to survive or even be full. Once your stomach learns what it needs, it won't keep asking for more more more.

    People with the "supersize" this and the "extra large" that are slowly killing themselves each time they order more than they need.

    But let's face it. I'd rather die in my 60's then to live 20 years longer in a nursing home.

    Just remember slashdotters, you can have ONE slice of pizza for dinner and still be ok for your daily caloric intake.

    Yo Grark
    Canadian Bred with American Buttering

    • congratulations (Score:5, Interesting)

      by The Tyro ( 247333 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @09:05AM (#7011378)
      on your willpower... would that more people had the same drive to stay fit.

      However, instead of willpower, people are going the bariatric surgery route... I've seen more TV news magazine reports recently about this trend than I've ever seen before. Danger, Will Robinson.

      Apart from the obvious complications of surgery (bleeding, wound dehissence, infection, obstruction, etc, etc), stomach stapling changes your lifestyle permanently. Some of these things would be real burden for slashdotters... for instance:

      You become nable to drink during meals (your stomach is so small after the surgery, it cannot hold both food AND drink)

      Carbonated beverages are to be avoided (same reason as above... no Mountain Dew, no Jolt, no Bawls.)

      No alcohol (beer will stretch your now-tiny stomach as much as regular carbonated beverages). Also, about half of consumed alcohol is broken down in the stomach via alcohol dehydrogenase... theoretically, you could find that your whiskey sours pack about double the punch as before (not necessarily a good thing).

      You are also not necessarily done with surgery after your stapling. Ever see a person who has lost 150lbs or so? They have skin folds just hanging off of them... plastic surgery is required to get rid of the redundant skin. The potential also exists for nutritional deficiencies, like B-12. To be fair, the liver stores a fair quantity of B-12, so this might only show up 10-15 years down the road. Bottom line: The true long-term effects of this operation are not known.

      I don't even know what to say to the people who purposely make themselves fatter so they can qualify for the surgery... it's madness. [ecu.edu]

    • But let's face it. I'd rather die in my 60's then to live 20 years longer in a nursing home.

      I think the idea is if it makes you healthier, your prolonged life will be better. If it makes you less healthy, the end of your life will be crummy whatever age you are.

  • Studies have shown that male animals (of various species) that are kept separated from females all their lifes can live up to 20% longer. In other words having no sex lets you live longer. The combination of forced abstinence and strict diet can add decades to a person's life.

    As a Belgian Radio announcer commented when this result was published, this finally explains why Catholic priests have a surprising tendency to die around 28.
  • This type of study makes me think that the body can only consume a finite about of food in its lifetime. Go through that amount slowly and you extend your time here; go through it quickly and reduce your time here.

  • Quality vs. Quantity, Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:11AM (#7011234)
    A study on dogs [sciencenews.org] showed a 16% increase in life span for a calorie restricted diet -- thats a couple of extra dog years or perhaps decade or two of more life for a person. Sounds good, right? The problem was that the dogs had to eat 25% less than normal to get 16% more life than normal.

    As someone who enjoys his kibble, I would argue that less chow = lower quality of life. So for 25% less quality of life, I get 16% more quantity of life. Sounds like a bad deal to me.

    Moreover, the report said nothing about the energy levels of these poor long-starving mutts -- do starved creatures have any energy for fun and games? Due to the realities of physiology, I'd bet that a 25% reduction in energy input leads to a more that 25% reduction in energy available for discretionary, fun activities. On a restricted diet, a greater fraction of the meager intake is diverted to basic maintenance of the body.

    I'm not saying that obesity is not a real killer of both quantity and quality of life. I'm only saying that restricted calorie diets come with tradeoffs.
    • They tried it out on monkeys [infoaging.org]. Seems it lowered their body temperature and "fasting blood sugar and insulin levels." Not sure if the latter has anything to do with one's general energy level, but I'm certain having a lower body temperature means you'd feel cold all the time.

      I remember reading an article about a group of people who are actually trying this diet out. They're the buzzkills we all imagined they'd be: they're always complaining about how cold it is, they're always grumpy, and they're munching o

    • Re:Quality vs. Quantity, Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bytor4232 ( 304582 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @09:29AM (#7011435) Homepage Journal
      A dog doesn't need to eat all the time to be happy. My Labrador is on a restricted diet, only eats 3 cups of dog food a day, plays half the day, chases cats another half, and even finds time to run aloung my bike when I go for a ride. On top of all that I have never met a dog that is happier. Dog's don't need food to be happy, they need their family, they need their pack. I know ALOT of dogs who don't eat a cup of food a day, and yet are as energetic as any. If anything, feeding a dog too much slows them down. Ask an overweight dog with Hip Dysplacia if he has had a good life because he got alot of food every day.


      You can't rely on a dog to tell you when their are full. I heard a comedian say once that he can go on the road and leave four days worth of food for his cats. He can't do that for his dogs, he leaves out four days worth of food the dog says, "Damn, all this for me!" The comedian gets back after four days and the dog says, "Where the hell have you been! I haven't eaten for four days!"

    • I'm not saying that obesity is not a real killer of both quantity and quality of life. I'm only saying that restricted calorie diets come with tradeoffs.

      Obesity is not a real killer. Period. Lifestyle is the killer. You can genetically be quite fat but eat right and exercise and live way longer than thin people who don't eat as well. You could also starve and diet yourself to thinness (same person...) and live a MUCH shorter life because your f*ing with your natural system. Most people involved in th
  • I would gladly lower my calories entries if only I could cut my appetite. What science needs to create now is a pill that cuts appetite without any side effects.
    • A lot of people in modern society confuse appetite with desire. The food looks good, you desire the taste of it, so you eat it. That whole thought process has nothing to do with hunger or appetite, but it is so common in our society that we assume there is a connection.

      I would suggest that most people (in the USA at least) don't have any concept of what a true hunger feeling is. We are so accustomed to eating because our stomach is empty (which is not hunger, btw) or because some food looks tasty, that
    • What science needs to create now is a pill [...] without any side effects.

      Its on the agenda. Right after that perpetual motion device and the time machine...
  • Be chaste, eat right, excerise, die anyway....

    Sorry, I think I'd rather enjoy these few short years than try to extend them knowing we all meet the same end.

  • stop yer whinin'! (Score:4, Informative)

    by violagal ( 657772 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:25AM (#7011262)
    C'mon people, I like to eat as much as the next guy or gal! The point is, just stop stuffing yourself silly--restricted calories != starvation, just limiting your intake so that you're not pushing yourself past full when you eat. I'm so sick of seeing fat Americans everywhere I go. We really have to do something about our problem. It's gross and embarressing, and *extremely* unhealthy.
  • Low-cal diet extendes life, expands consciousness. Low-cal diet is vital for space travel.

  • The Strom Thurmond diet (Score:3, Funny)

    by GrievousAngel ( 220826 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:31AM (#7011282) Homepage
    When Hillary Clinton asked Strom Thurmond his secret to staying fit, he replied that he never ate anything larger than an egg. I guess it worked for him.
  • When It comes to improving your health, regular fasting may be just as beneficial as counting calories. In a recent study, mice that were fed only every other day (but could gorge on the days they did eat) experienced similar health benefits to ones that had their portions of food reduced by 40 percent. Researchers believe that going without food imposes a mild stress on bodily cells, which respond by increasing their ability to cope with more severe stress. The fasting mice also showed an increased resista

  • Atkins Diet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:48AM (#7011337)
    After my birthday next week, I am hoping to lose 50lbs using the very low carb Adkins type of diet. Our Unix God at work has lost 46lbs so far and kept it off.

    No pizza, chips or donuts, but you can eat eggs and meat all day.

    The bizzare thing is it lowers your cholesterol. My dads cardiologist has been on it for 6 months and his cholesterol has dropped 30%. Eating eggs and red meat.

    I will miss bread and french (sorry, FREEDOM) fries, but it will be nice to be able to take a deep breath...

  • This suggests a possible therapy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PIPBoy3000 ( 619296 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:51AM (#7011342)
    Research showing the life extending benefits of a low calorie diet has been known for a long while. What wasn't known was exactly why it works. One leading theory is that eating food (which contains oxidants) led to the gradual breakdown of cells and other important biological structures. This study seems to suggest otherwise.

    If the reduction in the aging process was simply caused by a reduction in oxidation of cells, that means you wouldn't expect to see the same benefit for someone who suddenly went on a restricted calorie diet. That changes the focus to suggest that restricting the diet triggers biological pathways within the organism that has this protective effect.

    It may be something very simple, or it may be far more complex. Reduced diet organisms tend to not reproduce and generally slow down. It could be that simply being able to reproduce can lead to forms of mortality that shortens lifespan (e.g. it causes cancer, takes energy away from cell repair, or something else). If it's something that basic, I could see a drug therapy that everyone starts taking after a certain age that switches people's metabolism into "restricted calorie" mode, even if they're eating normally.

    Of course, these things are rarely that simple. Even if it was possible to create such a drug, it may simply make people feel too bad (starving isn't usually fun). The few individuals who have decided to go on a restricted calorie diet tend to have pretty poor quality of life, not being able to do really active things or enjoy a meal.

    Finally, the research I've seen that relates to long-lived men tend to have one thing in common. They are all in excellent physical shape, regularly exercising an excessive amount. Women evidently have more flexability and don't have to be quite so active, but men seem to need a large amount of physical exercise. It could be that there are two different paths to longevity, one involving eating little and staying still, and the other eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly. Me, I'm going with the second approach. Food tastes too good to me.

    (and yes, I do have a master's degree in biology, though it is collecting dust these days)

  • Longer life or drawn out death? (Score:3, Funny)

    by groomed ( 202061 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:53AM (#7011346)
    The funny thing is that although fruitflies on a restricted diet live much longer, they basically stop all reproductive activity -- which, arguably, is the whole point of this "life thing". So the longer lifespan, in some sense, is more like a drawn out death.

    If that's not irony I don't know what is.

  • Missing the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by InadequateCamel ( 515839 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @08:55AM (#7011352)
    I think some of the people here are missing the point of the research.

    Scientists have known that restricting your intake of food helps leads to a longer lifetime. Note that the emphasis is not on eating correctly or better, but just less. Based on my limited biochemistry/metabolism knowledge, this is thought to be a consequence of how your GI system breaks down food and the long-term effect of the potent chemical processes on your body; this is also briefly restated in the article.

    Where this differs is that they have shown that benefits can be had at any time in an organism's life cycle, indicating that something else is afoot. So no, this is not yet another study that says you should go on the Atkins/grapefruit/carrot soup/wicker chair & bagels diet.

    • Interesting study, but they gave short shrift to the work that's been done over the past couple of years that points (pretty solidly) to Sir2 (in yeast) and Sir2 homologs (in animals) being the sole mediator of the "calorie restriction" effect. I hate to belabor a point that's been made in other /. stories, but there's decent evidence now (being actively pursued by some folks at Harvard Medical School and a biotech startup as well) that Sir2-linked pathways can be activated by particular polyphenols, resu

  • It's pretty damn obvious that a good diet will result in a healthier body which in itself will result in a longer life span, but as many have stated, at what cost ?

    I guess it depends how much you really do like your 'damaging' food ?

    With a bit of wisdom, however, you can have your cake and eat it - within reason.

    Read into the research of the Human Growth Hormone (HGH), Insulin and Serotonin and you'll find out that you can still eat the 'good stuff' and be healthy, resulting in a longer life.

    So, effecti
  • Many people are missing the point of CRON (calorie restricted, optimal nutrition) diets. The goal of these diets is not to make you skinny. The hypothesis is that even a skinny person who eats a LOT but exercises a LOT is still worse off than someone who just eats very little, even if they end up weighing the same. The idea is that the very processes of digestion is incredibly stressful on the human body, so if you minimize it, you can extend your lifespan.
    • The idea is that the very processes of digestion is incredibly stressful on the human body, so if you minimize it, you can extend your lifespan.

      We--human beings--are the process of countless thousands of years of evolution. We evolved from a genus that itself was the product of millions of years of evolution. And you're trying to tell me that the one thing every animal on the planet does for survival (eat) is stressful? What the fuck was the point of evolution, then?

      My take on it is this: we're humans,
  • There has been a lot of research recently showing that a restricted slashdot experience can extend the daily amount of sleep enjoyed by various creatures. Sadly, it seems that as soon as they start slashdotting again, the benefits are lost.
  • 1. Eat less.
    2. Shit more.

  • Great, now we know that fruit flies are adapated to withstand a season of drought or poor fruit production and still not have the entire species die off. Nifty.

    The article did not say if the flies could sustain the same level of activity while they were starved.
    After all, if you have ever grown drosophila you know that they do not have much more than a quarter liter of living volume, hardly enough room to work up a good sweat, or whatever fruit flies do fo exercise.

    Can the fruit flies also do complex com

  • "Everyone who is fat is a lazy, weak willed moron!" - um, no actually, check out how effective diets are long term; they can't ALL be like that

    "I'd prefer to literally spend several years dying of painful heart disease or cancer than give up my corn dogs!" - Ok... backing away... backing away...

    "They're a scientist; so what do they know? I knew a scientist that was wrong about eggs being bad for you once, and they've even been wrong on other occasions!" - trust me, it would be more scary if they were al

  • Evolution at Work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Orne ( 144925 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @10:47AM (#7011746) Homepage
    Okay... we've uncovered yet another truth in nature... organisms are designed to withstand famine.

    Although the human intellect has improved over the millenia, the genetic script for our bodies has been nearly unchanged since the last ice ages. We only see organisms today that can resist famine because evolution has weeded out those strains that couldn't survive. If the creature can't find food or water, it's in the best interest to "pause" some life functions so you can survive until nourishment can be found.

    Our bodies are evolved to be fat-storage machines; we have to, because nature can never guarantee the next meal. Our noses, though not as good as some other creatures, are still very receptive to spoiled food. Salt tastes good because our body needs it for cellular processes. Sugar tastes good because it's high energy "food" rare in nature.

    But we've broken the cycle. Our insulin proceses the sugars, but never before has so much sugar been available, so now we see diabetes where our insulin receptors are over-exposed and develop a tolerance. We still have fight-or-flight mechanisms, but most of us live such a mundane existance, we release stress chemicals over the slightest event. Then we try these starvation diets, and our bodies don't burn the fat, because it thinks there's real hard times ahead, not realizing we have more food than we can eat.

    It's a battle of intellect over evolved chemistry... but slowly we understand what is really going on behind the scenes, and with knowledge comes the power to correct it [bbc.co.uk].
  • Perhaps the media is at fault for people making this conclusion, but the point of such research is not "Shame on all of you for eating too much -- if you stop eating so much you will live longer."

    The point is more like this: "We've noticed that in controlled lab environments, feeding animals a restricted calorie diet lengthens their life. Our goal is to find out what body process is involved in this so that we can potentially come up with a way to lengthen the life of humans, without having to put oursel

  • The root cause - Heat Shock Proteins (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @11:06AM (#7011826) Homepage Journal
    There are some researchers who beleive they've found the mechanism for this.

    When the organism is stressed by lack of food, genes that encode heat shock proteins are activated. HSPs are used when a cell is overtemp, or otherwise stressed, to repair damage to the DNA due to the stress.

    The thinking is this: an organism is getting too few calories. The cells start making HSPs due to the stress. The HSPs soak up free radicals, as well as repairing DNA damage. Since the lack of calories is not causing undo damage to the DNA (unlike heat), the net result is more damage due to other environmental effects (radiation, replication errors, toxins) is undone.

    In short, the organism's metabolism set to allow it to survive beyond the "famine" to maximize the chances of being able to reproduce once food is available.

    The researchers have some good candidate genes for the proteins, and perhaps one day may be able to stimulate the production of these proteins without the need to starve ourselves.

    Now, whether the world needs a bunch of long-lived , fat, self-indulgant slobs is another question for which many of the residents of this forum are curiously well-equipped to argue.

  • biology (Score:3, Informative)

    by linuxislandsucks ( 461335 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @11:37AM (#7011955) Homepage Journal
    it has to do with reducing the radical ions produced during the normal food 'burning'/calorie buring in the human body..

    Radical ions trigger runaway cell growth(press calls it cancer) that cannot be killed off by the normal cell killing mechanisms(doctors call this process cancer), they accomplish this set of bad effects by damamging DNA beyond what DNA repair enzymes and methods can handle..

    In summary Fat/Eating challlenged people will live less in terms of number of years...

    While increasing metabolish can cause wieght loss..unless reductions in calorie and food intake is made ..the net efect is loss in wieght but still failure to live longer in years..

  • Gerschwin comes to mind... (Score:3, Funny)

    by penguin7of9 ( 697383 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @12:04PM (#7012093)
    Methus'lah lived 900 years

    Methus'lah lived 900 years
    But who calls that livin'
    When no gal will give in
    To no man what's 900 years
    -- Ira Gerschwin

  • Read any Biochemistry text book... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alchemist68 ( 550641 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @12:44PM (#7012299)
    Read any Biochemistry text book (Voet & Voet is/was a good one) on metabolism and you'll BEGIN to understand the foundation for the work just published. The lower the calories consumed, the less oxidation is taking place in our bodies. This is why junk food, Ho-Hos, Twinkies, bleached white bread, Softbatch cookies, gummy bears & worms, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and basically all modern refined sugars ARE BAD FOR YOU. These "foods" are pure energy and have little if any nutritional value. When these foods are consumed, the sugars enter the blood stream where insulin and sugars combine, enter our cells, and are metabolized. For some people, the sugars are converted to fat for later use. For others (including myself who is hypoglycemic) the sugars are burned immediately. What happens when you burn things? They (the fuels) oxidize, and our cells also sustain some oxidative damage, leading to decreased life span. What should you do to live a long high-quality and healthy life? Don't eat junk food, exercise, eat lots of fish and dark green leafy vegatables, take vitamins, and minimize the stress in your life. Eating beef is one of the fastest ways of getting iron into our bodies for preventing amemia. Taking iron vitamin supplements is very much less efficient since the iron isn't absorbed as well into the body. In beef the iron is bound in hemoglobin (blood). Our digestive enzymes are designed for tearing apart hemogloblin and efficiently extracting the iron from it. In vitamin form, iron is usually a salt and not very soluble in water, hence most of it passes right through the digestive system.

    This study is not really surprising at all, but is very useful. It's just that someone finally took the time to do a research project and publish their findings.

  • it is under study (Score:3, Interesting)

    by john_uy ( 187459 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @12:57PM (#7012366)
    I recently watched a tv show from National Geographic with the name Scientific American Frontiers : Fat and Happy (Episode Title.)

    They said that you must get a low calorie (or measuring the average calorie for your daily needs like 2000 Calories) but *high* nutrition.

    You do not just starve yourself but you will need to eat foods that have low caloric content but high vitamins and minerals.

    They are still doing tests for mice and monkeys. They are still ongoing. They are comparing two groups with one having a regular diet and the other having a low calorie but high nutrition diet. Of course, the one having the higher nutrition and low calorie is doing better (because they are already old.)

    I think it is not very difficult to follow a diet this way (maybe hard for Americans because of their lifestyle with too much fast food and fat full foods.) You can still enjoy eating good food but you must manage what you eat.

    If you are going to start a diet, *consult a physician.* Based on the show, they will need to get your metabolic rate, etc, to determine your daily neeeds without starving you to death or getting you undernourished.

  • woody allen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@ColinGregor y P a lmer.net> on Saturday September 20, 2003 @01:37PM (#7012576) Homepage
    You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

  • Anorexia... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gregoyle ( 122532 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @05:01PM (#7013461)
    Okay, I'm probably too late for anyone to see this but...

    So anorexia isn't a disease, it's a survival mechanism?

  • that 25%, 16%... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:30AM (#7015777) Homepage Journal
    Assume you eat 25% less and gain 16% more lifetime. But you gain that 25% for reuse too!

    Assume you eat 25% less but insteadm, not wasting that time - have 25% more sex thanks to saved pleasure time. Plus another 16% more sex thanks to prolonged life.

    25% less food, 41% more sex, seems like a bargain to me!!!

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