Fewer calories may lead to a longer life span and greater quality of health.
Is our Life Span Inversely Proportional to Calories Consumed?
Fewer calories may lead to a longer life span and greater quality of health.
Scientists from the US and China completed a study showing that a calorie-restricted diet can delay the onset of age-related diseases. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies investigated the effects of calorie restriction in rats at the tissue and cellular levels. They examined more than 210,000 cells across nine types of tissues and found that more than 25% of the effects of aging expressed by genes were reversed with calorie restriction.
“The Primary discovery in the current study is that the increase in the inflammatory response during aging could be systematically repressed by caloric restriction,” says Jing Qu, a study co-author.
The study divided 56 rats aged 18 months, approximately 50 years for humans, into two groups. The first 28 were fed a regular diet, and the second half a 70% calorie-restricted diet. At 27 months of age or approximately 70 years for humans, the two groups were compared against each other and to a third group of 5-month-old rats, which is roughly 16 years old for humans.
The calorie-restricted group had an average weight of 33% less and had longer median and maximum lifespans than the group fed a regular diet. However, this study dove deeper than earlier superficial measurements of calorie restriction by comparing the two groups at the tissue and cellular levels.
“We already knew that calorie restriction increases life span, but now we’ve shown all the changes that occur at a single-cell level to cause that,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, one of the study’s senior authors.
The authors created a map at the cellular level showing the effects of aging and the reversal of that aging through calorie restriction in brown adipose tissue, white adipose tissue, the aorta, kidneys, liver, skin, and bone marrow. They also studied the altered intercellular communication associated with aging and found that this was repressed with caloric restriction.
Some slight differences were noted between the sexes. Males showed higher sensitivity to aging in brown adipose tissue, and females showed higher sensitivity to aging in aortic tissue. While both sexes showed repression of aging with caloric restriction, it did show a more favorable influence on aging in males.
The risk of dementia, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer increases with age. A clearer understanding of how aging and calorie restriction impacts mammals on a cellular level may provide the foundation for treating or even preventing age-related diseases.
“This gives us targets that we may eventually be able to act on with drugs to treat aging in humans,” stated Belmonte.
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