Calorie Reduction for Longer Life?

It has been known to the medical community since around the 1930s that many animals can live around 35-45 percent longer on reduced-calorie or minimal-calorie diets. These diets must be nutritionally complete, other than the caloric reduction.

It works like this: When we're young, our cells have plenty of mitochondria to go around. Mitochondria are the powehouses of the cells, the organelle that makes the energy (adenosine triphosphate, more commonly called ATP, for those who are curious.) for the cell.

As we get older, our cells start losing mitochondria. Mitochondria in older individuals produce less energy and produce more free-radicals. Free radicals are essentially oxygen that is loose in the body, oxidizing cells and trying to corrupt them. Antioxidant vitamins such as E, A, and C, as well as Selenium, help prevent these free radicals from being able to oxidize the way they'd like to. Free radicals are thought to be one of the primary sources of the oxidation of DNA that can result in cell corruption and cancer.

When mice and most other animals eat less and less, their cells undergo metabolic changes and the mitochondria actually produce fewer free radicals. Science is starting to indicate that these metabolic changes may occur within humans as well, and that is the basis for the idea that calorie reduction (sometimes extreme calorie reduction) can encourage longer lifespans.

Furthermore, scientists believe that reduced-calorie diets can actually result in more mitochondria in the cells.

During a 6-month study, researchers found that participants who restricted calories by 25 percent (12.5 percent from eating less and 12.5 percent from exercise) showed a 20-35 percent increase in cellular mitochondria, and 60 percent decrease in DNA oxidation from free radicals.

However, studies also showed that in an overwhelming majority of cases, this kind of calorie reduction in people under 30 was not nearly as effective as in people 30 or older. In fact, in many of these cases, the benefits were overshadowed by the risks and detriments, and it ended up being better to eat a diet with normal caloric value (assuming that diet, too, is macro and micronutritionally complete).

This is a rapidly growing field of science, what with most individuals being concerned with their wellbeing after 50. Research will continue, and within the next two years, researchers intend to conduct at least one more study involving calorie reduction in humans of different body-mass indexes.

Perhaps in the future, we will all limit our calories?