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Caloric Restriction Slows Aging
As I've struggled for many years to maintain a healthy weight, I've blamed my desk job as an academic.
But to be honest, a big reason I gained the weight is because I love food and much of it was unhealthy. A couple of years ago, I got serious about my health and began to lose weight.
It made me think a lot about intermittent fasting which cuts down on calories. It restricts food intake on alternate days, five days a week or to just eight hours a day.
An added benefit is that animal studies suggest it can slow aging, and a recent study in people showed the same result.
Two hundred twenty non-obese healthy people were divided into two groups. One that ate their normal diet while the other ate a quarter fewer calories. For a diet based on 2,000 calories a day, that'd be 500 calories.
Going from 2000 to 1500 calories isn't easy. Researchers took blood samples when the study began and then again after one and two years.
They analyzed changes in DNA and white blood cells for biological aging. When they looked at measures for pace of aging, it was slowed for the group on calorie restriction by up to three percent.
That's for just two years. No one knows what will happen over a longer period. When they estimated their risk of early death, the drop was even more dramatic at ten to fifteen percent.
That's striking! But caloric restriction can cause muscle weakness, lower immune responses, among other effects, check with your doctor first!
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More Information
Calorie Restriction Slows Pace of Aging in Healthy Adults
Calorie restriction, a proven intervention to slow aging in animals, showed evidence of slowing the pace of biological aging in a human randomized trial...
Effect of long-term caloric restriction on DNA methylation measures of biological aging in healthy adults from the CALERIE trial
The geroscience hypothesis proposes that therapy to slow or reverse molecular changes that occur with aging can delay or prevent multiple chronic diseases and extend healthy lifespan...
A calorie-restricted diet may slow aging in healthy adults, research finds
Researchers still don't know exactly why cutting calories may slow aging, but there is evidence it prompts changes at the cellular level...
