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January 29, 2006
Bad News for Big Eaters
While digesting my dessert of baked fruit salad with melted white chocolate and vanilla ice cream I noticed this bad news for food lovers: self-starving live-forever crackpots may have a point.
"Ultrasound examinations showed that the hearts of people on caloric restriction appeared more elastic than those of age- and gender-matched control subjects. Their hearts were able to relax between beats in a way similar to the hearts in younger people.
" 'This is the first study to demonstrate that long-term calorie restriction with optimal nutrition has cardiac-specific effects that ameliorate age-associated declines in heart function,' said principal investigator Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D., WUSTL assistant professor of medicine and an investigator at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome.
"Members of the Calorie Restriction Society try to consume between 10 percent and 25 percent fewer calories than average Americans while still maintaining proper nutrition. Caloric restriction tends to resemble a traditional Mediterranean diet, which includes a wide variety of vegetables, olive oil, beans, whole grains, fish and fruit, Fontana said. The diet avoids refined and processed foods, soft drinks, desserts, white bread and other sources of so-called 'empty' calories.
"Research on mice and rats has shown that stringent and consistent caloric restriction increases the animals' maximum life span by about 30 percent and protects them against atherosclerosis and cancer, but human study has been difficult because the caloric restriction lifestyle requires a strict diet regimen, both to keep the total number of calories low and to ensure that people consume the proper balance of nutrients."
My personal belief is that calorie restrictors don't live forever, it just feels like forever because there's no chocolate around.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at January 29, 2006 09:59 PM