I was wondering if there had been any study made to check the relationship between hunger, more precisely, ghrelin and leptin, and calorie restriction.
For instance, rats that would be deficient in leptin, and - or overexpressing ghrelin; comparing the mean and maximum lifespan of such rats, calorie restricted, or, perhaps more interestingly, fed the equivalent of what would be an ad-lib diet in the same rat without the leptin-ghrelin imbalance.
Similarly, the complementary experience would be to see what happens of rats fed a CR diet, but whose ghrelin levels are deficient, and-or leptin overexpressed.
The idea I'm toying with is of course that hunger, or signals related to hunger, can or could have important effects on the body (maturation and puberty is related to leptin too apparently).
So might it not be that a calorie restricted diet combined with hunger, or maybe signals such as ghrelin, or a leptin deficiency, is necessary to reap the life-extension benefits ? In simpler words, no hunger, no life extending effects, even if you are eating a calorie restricted diet.
Practically speaking, I'm also thinking about those people who are doing CR but who apparently do not feel ravenously hungry, if at all.
Edited by vyntager, 30 August 2008 - 01:31 AM.
