Study Finds That Calorie Restriction Could Help Improve Health And Long Life

Previous studies have shown that calorie restriction could slow aging, but their findings are inconclusive as they conflict with other studies on the same subject.  A recent study conducted on rhesus monkeys give an insight as to whether restricting calories elongates life span. The researchers noted that their study shows that it is highly probable that humans could experience the same benefits for a longer life.

Scientists have previously shown that cutting a significant amount of calories in animals like mice, fruit flies, rats, certain worms, and yeast, could extend life, health and brain health, for a substantial span and even double or triple it sometimes. However, humans are different from these creatures, and something that works for a mouse or a fly might end up not working in humans, but the study authors believe that there is a possibility that it could work in humans as well.

There has been conflicting evidence for caloric restriction (CR) in primates like monkeys, which are closely related to humans. While a major study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin (UW) found that monkeys that are fed will restricted diets live longer, another major study at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) indicated that calorie restricted monkeys were not likely to live any longer, though they seemed healthier overall, according to The Verge.

The researchers of the new study analyzes the data from monkeys and argue that considering the differences in the ways the previous studies were conducted, their findings are not in conflict. They concluded that although, caloric restriction helps monkeys to live longer and healthier, there are certain specifics about sex, age and diet at which the process begins that are key for making that dietary intervention work.

Even the monkeys allowed to eat without restriction in the original studies, ate less and were given healthier food at the NIA location. They began restricting calories earlier in the monkeys' lives, as it worked well in mice, which had a great effect on the monkeys.

The researchers found that monkeys who had unhealthy diet, tend to have shorter lives, and young monkeys, unlike young mice, do not get healthier if their diets are restricted. Calorie restriction can only elongate life span if the intervention did not begin until the monkeys were adults.

The authors believe that this information is relevant for humans, since monkeys' age in similar ways to humans and suffer from various conditions as they grow older. However, the effect of unhealthy diet on lifespan show that even a small change in diet could be the difference between a longer, healthier life and a shorter one.

The fact that the intervention only works in older monkeys indicate that they need to be developed differently for primates, than they do for mice. The researchers also found that it is bad for male monkeys to eat whatever they want, gaining too much body fat leading to insulin resistance, something that may be relevant for humans as well, according to Daily Mail.

The major finding of the study is what seems to change the biological fact that primates become more susceptible to disease as they get older. The researchers found that humans respond to calorie restriction in a s similar way to rhesus macaques.

However, the procedure has not been test in humans and it is possible that it might not help provide a longer and healthier live for humans as they grow old.  Even if it does work in humans, the problem would be whether people will want to cut their caloric intake from a normal level to achieve this goal.

The difficulty associated with making people to adhere to something like this is the reason why there is no much CR research in people, the Novartis Professor of Biology at the Glenn Laboratory for the Science of Aging at MIT, Dr. Leonard Guarente said.

Researchers are inspired by the growing amount of data showing that CR can lead to a longer and healthier life. Some researchers believe that cutting calories for a short period of time intermittently, due to fasting for instance, could achieve the same benefits.

Food is necessary for life and growth, but it seems research evidence have proved that eating less could help improve health and extend lifespan. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.