Is It True That Eating A Balanced Diet But Low In Calories Lengthen Our Life Span?
Briefly. The theory behind is that our cells are genetically programmed to divide a definite number of times, but if we starve a little bit. but having a balanced diet.so much percentage of Fat…%proteins (good quality aminoacids) etc. The cells will not divide as fast…so Silly example but to make the point clearer… lets assume the the cells are programed to divide 100 times and that they divide once every day. so the person will live 100 days. but if the person starve a little bit in calories. is forcing the cells to divide once every 2 days…so the person will live 200 days. Now the example above was a silly one, but according to some biologists. it could lengthen quite a bit the life of a human … Has someone read something about this idea?
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&sa…
Well you won’t live any longer. But it will sure feel like it.
Now that the obligatory joke is out of the way…
They know this works for roundworms. But humans aren’t roundworms. The results for mice and rats have been ambiguous, which means it probably doens’t work for mammals.
The problem with the theory is that roundworms are wierd animals. They have finite number of cells and a finite number of cell divisions. Every adult roundwrom of the same species and sex will have exactly the same number of cells and every cells will be in exactly the same place. Roundworms are a very highly genetically programmed. SO anyhting that slows down that program shoudl and apparently does increase lifespan, whether it is starving or freezing.
Humans and other mammals exhibit what is called indeterminate growth. We can grow forever, and we produce new cells where and when we need them. As a result slowing down the growth program in mammals appears to have no effect at all.
The whole issue is further clouded because humans have a completely different life strategy to most lab animals. Worms, mice and so forth all produce a lot of young fast, wean them ASAP and then die of old age. It makes sense for such animals to ’stall’ their development in hard times so they can save their mlimited reproductive shots for th best seasons. Humans have few young, care for them and teach them for years and live for 10-15 years beyond the end of our reproductive lives. It’s hard to see hwo such organisms could benefit from stalling development in response to hunger.
To make any meaningful extensions we’d have to test the theory on other animals with the same strategy as people : elephants, chimps or at the very least a cattle and monkeys. Such experimensthave never been attempted AFAIK.
Of course no experiments have been completed on people yet because people live so long. Besides it’s almost impossible to find a large, random sample of people willing to starve themsleves for 50 years or more. A few people are experimenting on themselves. We’ll let you know in a few decades how that works out for them