‘Could Eating Less Help You Live Longer?’/纽约时报文章插画
An educational piece that introduced the history, theories, research, experiments and trails centering calorie restriction and intermittent fasting both increase longevity in animals.
There are a lot of conflicting ideas and uncertainties. For example, overweighted people actually have lower risk of death, and experiments on calorie restriction on mice still have conflicting results, etc.
Key Elements Mentioned :
Calorie restriction and intermittent fasting helps animal lives longer, the article introduced what the experts have learnt so far, while it is uncertain whether it works the same with human.
The biological reason is that animals – our ancestor are biologically evolved to thrive not only during the seasons of abundance, but also the seasons of deprovision.
There are several theories about the function of calorie restriction: (1) more resilient to stress, toxins and recover faster from injury; (2)lows down metabolism
(3) autophagy
However, several experiments found conflicting results.
(1) What does intermittent fasting have to do with it?
Some experts wondered another variable is that it is not the number of calories but the window of time in which they eat them. One recent study conducted on three groups of mice with the same calorie restriction but were given a 2 hours/12 hours/24 hours window access to the food. And the result shows groups shorter window lived significantly longer.
The conclusion we got is that while calorie restriction is important for longevity, the amount of time spent eating — and not eating — every day is just as critical.
It’s difficult to definitively answer whether intermittent fasting, calorie restriction or a combination of the two could cause people to live longer. It’s very hard to prove it works the same with humans because it takes a lifetime to get the data.
In one clinical trial, more than 100 healthy adults were advised on meal planning for two years. Although they the intake reduction didn’t reach the goal, the result shows that lower calorie intake improves cardio-metabolic health, also, slower ageing. However, another trail that experiment on intermittent fasting on overweighted people group shows no health benefits.
One twist is that that people who are classified as overweight actually have a lower risk of death than those who are normal or underweight, having greater body mass is actually protective.
There is still a long way before we know whether longevity benefits seen in animals will translate to humans. It does seem like calorie restriction and intermittent fasting is helpful for heart and metabolic health. But it’s also possible that eating less might not do much more than leave you hungry.