I've been pondering something about calorie restriction. I realize that the effects of CR in controlled experiments with lab animals have been known about in the scientific community for quite some time. However, I'll bet most of the general population still doesn't know about CR.
Most of the population do know and have done CR lots of times, but its mostly obesity avoidence, nowhere near the degree needed to have any significant effect on longevity, also dieters don't stick to life long calorie restriction either.
But if CR was truly a human life extender, wouldn't it have become widespread common knowledge ages ago?.
There is some evidence of life extension in okinawa from their CR, but they were only really CR'd until the late 1960's, when they calorie intake averaged around 1600k/cal day. It's now somewhere around 2000k/cal a day. Plus they're quite short people also. In some villages in okinawa there are a high number of cetnenarians, one place equals 170~ centenarians per 100,000. I think okinawa as a whole went upto something around 50 centenarians per 100,000 (population 1.3 million) compared to americas average of around 6-10 per 100,000. If you read some of the interviews from the elder okinawans you will see that they say to eat less food. Okinawa though underestimates moderate to CRs life extending effects because they were not CR'd througout life, not everyone would have been CR'd, some of the elders are actually deficient in various minerals and vitamins.
Calorie Restriction is more than just being thin, or obesity avoidance, it extends the lifespan of rodents to un-natural levels. Have a read of Michael Rae's paper in response to aubrey de grey.
Jay Phelan an evolutionary biologist calculated that all calorie restriction would offer is around 2 years in life expectancy for the average male. I find this prediction absolutely absurd.
A recent hawaii study showed that if one avoids all 9 risk factors the they have around a 70% chance of reaching 85 years Also Seventh day adventist men typically live around 10 years longer than other americans. So SDA have much longer life expectancy, and by more than 2 years (which phelan predicted for CRs L.E) without the help of calorie restriction too. The average SDA male has a BMI of around 24-25, compared with CRers who are around BMI 19
You look at the data coming in about "CRONIES" health, you will see that people who do CR have all the characterists usually present in centenarians. Whether it be low cholesterol, larger LDL particle size, protection against age associated increase in inflammation, high insulin sensitivity, high adiponectin, low glucose, low bp, lower wbc. The risk factors for CRonies getting diabetes, heart disease is extremely low... plus humans die much less often from cancer than do rodents. Immunity is also preserved in every animal on CR. I'm not even convinced that *GENES* account for more 25% of longevity, it's probably less.
CR IS the most EFFECTIVE way to extend lifespan in all species tested, it primes the organism for long life. If anyone is going to have a very high shot at reaching the 100 mark it is a CRONie. We all have longevity genes within us, we just need to express them
1- Midlife Risk Factors and Healthy Survival in Men
http://jama.ama-assn...act/296/19/2343
Edited by Matt, 01 January 2007 - 01:20 AM.