Caloric Restriction For Longer, Healthier Life

You are what you eat, but you cease if you eat too much. Of all the supplements and regimes that claim to possess the secret of giving you longer life, only one method has been scientifically proven to extend life -- caloric restriction. But that proof comes from animal studies, and there are questions as to how effectively it may be applied to humans. There are also concerns about how late in life one can start such a program and expect it to have much effect.

Roy Walford, a gerontologist at UCLA, was so convinced by the animal studies that he subsisted on a diet of 1,600 calories per day (average is 2,500). His typical meals consisted of a protein shake and banana for breakfast, veggie salad for lunch and fish or lean meat for dinner.

The 5-foot-9 Walford weighed just 130 pounds. He told people his goal was to live to be 120 years old. He died earlier this year [2004] of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, an incurable neurological condition. He was 79, about five years older than the average American male's life expectancy.

It is impossible to know of course, how long he would have lived on a more typical diet. That is one of the problems with studying caloric restriction among humans -- how do you find a large enough group willing to try it, and what constitutes a 'control' group? None-the-less human studies have begun, and this report describes those, and also reviews the prevailing theories about how caloric restriction extends lifespan.

There is little doubt that caloric restriction also improves health -- so that even you do not extend your lifespan dramatically, you are more likely to remain healthy and active into old age.

A human study by John O. Holloszy, a professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, published earlier this year noted that 18 people who had been practicing CR for three to 15 years showed dramatically reduced risk of developing diabetes or clogged arteries.

Of course, few people have the will or desire to adopt an extreme diet for the rest of their lives, so research into chemical means of mimicing the effects of caloric restriction are ongoing, with some promising results, though progress is slow.

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