Calorie Restrictions and Aging: the Effects

Calorie Restrictions and Aging: The Effects

Introduction

For ages, humans have been searching for ways to counteract the aging process. The legendary fountain of youth generated much attention in the past, and more recently, thousands of dollars have been spent each year on creams, pills, plastic surgery, and various forms of therapy designed to make one look and feel younger. So far nothing has been proven to reverse or even retard human aging, but scientists are finally catching a glimpse as to a dietary manipulation technique that might work.

Preliminary Experimentation

In the 1930s, Clive McCay, a scientist at the laboratories at Cornell University, experimented on his rats by feeding them less than they would ordinarily take for themselves, but without depriving them of nutrition to the point of starvation. He found that the food-deprived rats lived considerably longer than expected for a standard rat's life span, and about 33 percent longer than his control group of rats, which were fed as much as they wanted to eat (Weindruch 46). McCay didn't fully understand his results, and although published, they were generally disregarded by the science world (Man Immortal).

Years later, Roy Walford, a nutritionist working at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center, came across the documentation of McCay's experiments, and, using modern technology and mice instead of rats, picked up where McCay had left off (Man Immortal).

Walford found that for the best results to achieve the longest life extension in his mice with the fewest negative side effects, calories should be restricted by 30 percent of what would be taken freely by the mice, and essential nutrients must still be consumed (Mlot 162). Dietary reduction of other things, such as fat intake, may be beneficial to health, but it does nothing to extend life span (Whitlock). Mice usually live anywhere from 38 to 40 months. When calories were restricted by 30 percent, they lived...