A Diet to Lose Weight, Live Longer, and Live Better
July 21st, 2009 at 10:48 pm (Uncategorized)
There are plenty of diets that will help you lose weight, but how many diets can claim to help you live longer, and with a higher quality of life too, and then provide the science to back that claim up?
The basic idea behind the CRON (Calorie Restriction and Optimal Nutrition) diet is to limit calorie consumption while fulfilling all of the body’s nutrient needs. It’s immediately obvious that weight loss would be easy on CRON. Restricting calorie intake while eating only nutritionally optimal foods-such as vegetable and fruits-is a without a doubt a quick way to lose weight. But there is also a great deal of scientific research that has proven the CRON diet to be effective at slowing the aging process and improving quality of life.
In one research study, perhaps the most dramatic one on the practice of calorie restriction, mice fed a minimum amount of calories while having all their nutrient needs met lived up to twice as long as the control group. Subsequent studies have found that test subjects also retain a youthful appearance much longer, and are also more active for a greater amount of time, while being less likely to develop age related illnesses, such as cancer and heart problems.
But does it work in humans too? Since these experiments on calorie restriction began in the 1980s there has been a big push to discover exactly how calorie restriction leads to slowed aging, and whether it would work in humans too. Because while there are many people who follow rigorous CRON diets themselves, and some limited experiments with humans being conducted, the average human lifespan means that it’s going to be decades until we can know for sure whether the CRON diet has a dramatic effect on human aging. So instead of waiting, researchers try to discover how it works.
One researcher announced in 2007 that he had discovered a gene responsible for the relationship between calorie restriction and slowed aging, and claimed that based on his research, similar results can be expected in humans. Other researchers have conducted limited human trials, and have shown that many indicators of a body’s age are slowed by a calorie restriction diet. Another theory states that free radicals and glycation, both of which contribute to aging, are reduced by calorie restriction. Many of the theories have scientific merit, and it may be a combination of several of them, rather than any single one that’s driving the effects of calorie restriction.
Ultimately, because calorie restriction has been shown to work in so many other species, including other primates, and because there is some limited evidence to support it working in humans, it’s probable that calorie restriction does work for humans too.