Posted on 07/09/2009 10:22:46 AM PDT by Nachum
WASHINGTON (AP) - Eat less, live longer? It seems to work for monkeys: A 20-year study found cutting calories by almost a third slowed their aging and fended off death. This is not about a quick diet to shed a few pounds. Scientists have long known they could increase the lifespan of mice and more primitive creatures—worms, flies—with deep, long-term cuts in what should be normal consumption.
Now comes the first evidence that it delays the diseases of aging in primates, too—rhesus monkeys living at the Wisconsin National Primate Center. Researchers reported their study Friday in the journal Science.
What about those other primates, humans? Nobody knows yet if people in a world better known for pigging out could stand the deprivation long enough to make a difference, much less how it would affect our more complex bodies. Still, small attempts to tell are under way
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Wow.
The emaciated have health problems of their own to worry about.
The overweight have a host of health problems including cancer and heart disease.
People with a healthy body weight are somewhere in the middle between these extremes and that is (statistically speaking when assessing risk) the correct place to be.
Ah, but that’s the thing. A healthy body weight is different for everybody.
There was actually a study of US Soliders that lived through the equivalent (or worse, in some cases) of the Shoa -— the Battan Death March and related acts by the Japanese.
They lived (and live) to be quite old compared to their peers.
The issue though is it’s impossible to “correct” for people who are just so tough (or whatever) they live through such dramatic events and calorie reduction.
These same family members were just tough people, and you have a correlation vs. causation issue.
Anyone else getting hungry?
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