Adults, especially young people, have yet another reason for cutting the calories you take in per day. If the monkeys from some very positive research appearing in Science are any guide, by following calorie restricted diets you’ll live longer, look younger and stay disease free.
Monkeys, as close as you can get genetically to people, fed a calorie-restricted diet live longer, have fewer signs of aging and less disease – conditions like cardiovascular disease, brain atrophy and even cancer – according to some new fascinating research.
During the twenty-year study, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found 50% of the monkeys allowed to eat as they wished were still alive, while 80% of monkeys who ate the same foods but with a third less calories have survived.
Other experts believe the long life span of monkeys (about 40 years) means conclusions on longevity and diet can’t yet be drawn and we need to wait a bit to be sure.
“This is the largest and most highly controlled study showing the beneficial effects of calorie restriction on disease and survival in a primate species,” says study author Ricki J. Colman, PhD, of the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
“We believe that what works in primates will work in humans because primates are so closely related to humans. This has allowed us to understand the mechanisms of the aging process.”
The pioneering but long term study began in 1989 with 30 rhesus macaques and was intended to look at the health effects of a calorie-restricted diet.
Earlier work from 1935 had shown that mice fed a calorie restricted diet lived up to 40% longer – the team wanted to see if the same could be true for primates.
In 1994 the research was expanded with the addition of 46 additional animals. All the subjects were adults when they were enrolled, and of the original 76 in the study, 37% of the control monkeys lost their lives to age-related causes – 13% of the animal’s fed a restricted calorie diet died of similar consequences.
The incidence of cancerous tumors and heart disease in the monkeys who ate restricted calorie diets was half that of the animals allowed to eat what they liked.
Incidentally, the oldest monkey still in the study is control subject Owen, who is 29, two years older than the average life span of 27 years in captivity.
One of the more remarkable findings of the research came in the case of diabetes (or pre-diabetes).
This condition was found in 42% of the control monkeys who ate as they liked and none of the monkeys on the restricted calorie diet.
“So far, we’ve seen the complete prevention of diabetes,” points out Richard Weindruch, PhD, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and another author of the study.
And when it comes to brain health, the animals who ate a calorie-restricted diet were better off here too, according to Sterling Johnson, a neuroscientist and another of the researchers.
Continues below…
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Restricting Calories May Be Best Bet To Stop Disease and Halt Aging… Continued
The study found that the areas of the brain that are tied to short-term memory and problem solving are better preserved in these subjects.
These same brain results have been seen on other studies on animals like fish, mice, worms, rodents and spiders. All the experts can say for sure right now is that there are differences in areas of the brain that might be related to what a subject ate.
A rather limited number of these same types of studies have been tried on humans, and have yielded fewer signs of cardiovascular aging according to experts.
More work needs to be done, and researchers who study aging are divided on what stock to put in this work, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a sound case for following calorie restricted diets to keep your body healthy and fit today and also as you age.
To your good health,
Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor
