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CR better than exersise at slowing aging


whoa182

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Thought this might interest some of you :tu:

Calorie restriction appears better than exercise at slowing primary aging

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/200...o-cra053106.php

Investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that eating a low-calorie yet nutritionally balanced diet lowers concentrations of a thyroid hormone called triiodothyronine (T3), which controls the body's energy balance and cellular metabolism.

The researchers also found that calorie restriction (CR) decreases the circulating concentration of a powerful inflammatory molecule called tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF). They say the combination of lower T3 levels and reduced inflammation may slow the aging process by reducing the body's metabolic rate as well as oxidative damage to cells and tissues.

Previous research on mice and rats has shown that both calorie restriction and endurance exercise protect them against many chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer. However, the research has shown that only CR increases the animals' maximum lifespan by up to 50 percent. These animal studies suggest that leanness is a key factor in the prevention of age-associated disease, but reducing caloric intake is needed to slow down aging.

For the new study, researchers examined 28 members of the Calorie Restriction Society who had been eating a CR diet for an average of six years. Although the CR group consumed fewer calories -- averaging only about 1,800 per day -- they consumed at least 100 percent of the recommended daily amounts of protein and micronutrients. A second group of 28 study subjects was sedentary, and they ate a standard Western diet. A third group in the study ate a standard Western diet -- approximately 2,700 calories per day -- but also did endurance training. The researchers found reduced T3 levels -- similar to those seen in animals whose rate of aging is reduced by CR -- only in the people on CR diets.

But their serum concentrations of two other hormones -- thyroxin (T4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) -- were normal, indicating that those on CR were not suffering from the thyroid disease of clinical hypothyroidism. The findings are published online in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Interestingly, body fat levels did not affect serum T3 concentrations. The people in the CR group and the endurance athletes had similar amounts and composition of body fat. But although the CR group had lower T3 levels, the exercise group had T3 levels closer to those seen in the sedentary people who ate a standard Western diet.

"The difference in T3 levels between the CR group and the exercise group is exciting because it suggests that CR has some specific anti-aging effects that are due to lower energy intake, rather than to leanness," says first author Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis and an investigator at the Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome, Italy. "These findings suggest that although exercise helps prevent problems that can cut life short -- such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease -- only CR appears also to have an impact on primary aging."

Primary aging determines maximal length of life. Secondary aging, on the other hand, refers to diseases that can keep a person or an animal from reaching that expected lifespan. Eliminating factors related to secondary aging allows more people to reach their projected length of life. By slowing primary aging, CR may increase maximal lifespan.

In a related study in 1997, co-investigator John O. Holloszy, M.D., professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, reported in the Journal of Applied Physiology that in rats, CR extended life longer than exercise.

"Sedentary rats who ate a standard diet had the shortest average life-spans," Holloszy says. "Those who exercised by running on a wheel lived longer, but animals on calorie restriction lived even longer."

Earlier this year, Fontana's group reported that CR seemed to prevent or delay primary aging in the heart. Ultrasound examinations showed that the hearts of people on calorie restriction were more elastic than those of age- and gender-matched control subjects. Their hearts were able to relax between beats in a way similar to the hearts of younger people.

This latest study targeted another marker of primary aging. The thyroid gland produces critical hormones that play an indispensable role in cell growth and development as well as in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. T4 is the main product secreted by the cells of the thyroid gland, but most actions of thyroid hormone are initiated by T3. Fontana says T3 controls body temperature, cellular metabolism and to some extent, it also appears to be involved with production of free radicals, unstable molecules that can damage cells. All are important aspects of aging and longevity. In fact, a 2002 study in Science magazine from researchers at the National Institute on Aging observed that men with lower body temperatures tended to live longer those with higher body temperatures.

Fontana says lower levels of T3, cholesterol and the inflammatory molecules TNF and C-reactive protein, combined with evidence of "younger" hearts in people on calorie restriction, suggest that humans on CR have the same adaptive responses as did animals whose rates of aging were slowed by CR.

Holloszy and Fontana are getting ready to launch a 2-year study to look at the effects of calorie restriction. Later this year, they will begin recruiting volunteers between the ages of 25 and 45 who are willing to go on a CR diet for 24 months.

Called the Comprehensive Assessment of the Long Term effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE) study, the goal is to get some clues about whether putting a normal weight person on calorie restriction will lower their levels of inflammation and their serum concentrations of T3, improve their heart function and change other markers of aging, as Fontana and Holloszy have observed in members of the Calorie Restriction Society.

"We want to learn whether calorie restriction can reverse some of these markers of aging in healthy people," Holloszy says. "It's going to be many years before we know whether calorie restriction really lengthens life, but if we can demonstrate that it changes these markers of aging, such as oxidative damage and inflammation, we'll have a pretty good idea that it's influencing aging in the same way that CR slows aging in experimental animals."

Edited by whoa182
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thats intesting whoa but i gotta tell you of course this is only one observation, but a woman i work with she had breast cancer 3 years ago went through kemo the whole thing she was always obese she herself feels that its the reason she got cancer her diet anyways the cancer gone the diet didn't change and she was always sick her immune system not good after the kemo and she changed nothing...Her doctor told her to get the weight off and clean up her diet and it would restore her health...she listened she started to excersise and she knows of the vegan lifestyle so she went back to her roots , this is what i noticed her skin around the neck area used to hang her skin tone was peaked looking now the jowls are gone and she has good tone and i also noticed she isn't sick this year like she usually is... anyways it seems in combo with good eating, excersise is the leader in keeping one looking young...My dad too he looks great for his age ( he isn't what I'd call healthy becasause eats horribly and drinks alcohol to excess doesn't drink water and eats fast food everyday, has High blood pressure and gout) But he looks great he does excersise religiously..so i'd definitley say excerise will keep up young looking no doubt about it......

Your a young man so do you know of anyone older on this diet who looks amazingly younger?????Thats what i'd be curious about not from one that is in his 20's...

Edited by Sheri berri
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thats intesting whoa but i gotta tell you of course this is only one observation, but a woman i work with she had breast cancer 3 years ago went through kemo the whole thing she was always obese she herself feels that its the reason she got cancer her diet anyways the cancer gone the diet didn't change and she was always sick her immune system not good after the kemo and she changed nothing...Her doctor told her to get the weight off and clean up her diet and it would restore her health...she listened she started to excersise and she knows of the vegan lifestyle so she went back to her roots , this is what i noticed her skin around the neck area used to hang her skin tone was peaked looking now the jowls are gone and she has good tone and i also noticed she isn't sick this year like she usually is...

We know that CR and even a good diet can eliminate hormone dependant cancers. In okinawa for example, some of the population still do CR but not intentionally, they also have fairly good nutrition and breast cancer and prostate cancer is almost unheard of. Same goes for heart disease.

anyways it seems in combo with good eating, excersise is the leader in keeping one looking young...My dad too he looks great for his age ( he isn't what I'd call healthy becasause eats horribly and drinks alcohol to excess doesn't drink water and eats fast food everyday, has High blood pressure and gout) But he looks great he does excersise religiously..so i'd definitley say excerise will keep up young looking no doubt about it......

Well the research suggests this not to be the case, but environment has a lot of impact on how one looks. but CR itself does slow down skin aging, not sure if there is any evidence that exersise does. from this study I would guess not.

Your a young man so do you know of anyone older on this diet who looks amazingly younger?????Thats what i'd be curious about not from one that is in his 20's...

I'm one of the youngest in the CR society that have adopted CRON, so hopefully I can expect the most benifits in terms of life extension. Most people who start CR do so in their 50's so the anti aging effect in terms of appearance wont be as dramatic as someone who started at my age.

We do have people who started in their 20's though, one person who is not associated with the CR society is Richard Elixxir who is now around 50 I believe and have been doing CR since his 20s. this is an old article about him from http://whyfiles.org/057aging/lo_cal2.html

He has been on some popular shows like Oprah because of his very young looks.

It's difficult to judge from this photo, but he has been on big shows so obviously there is truth to him looking very young for his age. Also it's what we would expect from CR if one starts at a young age (as shown in Rhesus monkeys) Here is a picture of him at 48~ years old.

http://www.immortalism.com/elixxir.jpg

Over at the CR society we do have practisioners that have been on CR for upto 23 years I believe. but most between 1-15 years maybe. I have some links to online short video interviews if you want...

Edited by whoa182
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Here is a recent article on CR primates

Long-term studies begin to show positives of restrictive eating

http://www.theheraldbulletin.com/peopleand...eyword=topstory

!PICTURE IN LINK BELOW!

http://www.theheraldbulletin.com/peopleand...ge_129172552/xl

Picture taken at the start of the experiment in 1990 show less signs of aging in Eeyore, right column, a monkey on a restricted diet, born in 1980. Signs of aging were more apparent in Johann, left column, a non-restricted monkey, born in 1981. Rhesus monkeys have an average life span of 27 years. Courtesy of Wisconsin National Primate Research Center

MILWAUKEE — A small sign on the cage of Ludwig, an older but fit-looking rhesus monkey, warns “caution, grabby.”

Understandably, Ludwig reaches out of his cage a lot. He’s been on an extremely low-calorie, experimental diet for years and he probably would eat anything he could get his hands on. At the same time, Ludwig’s handlers are hoping to get a better grasp of a quickly evolving concept that could prove to be a mini fountain of youth. Can humans live to beyond 100 if they eat a nutritionally packed diet that contains about 30 percent fewer calories than normal?

Studies in a variety of animals, including fish, rodents and dogs, have consistently showed a 25 percent to 50 percent increase in life span from calorie restriction. But it’s likely to be years, perhaps decades, before a longevity benefit can be proven with human experiments. For that reason, the monkey experiment at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center is being watched closely by scientists around the world. People and rhesus monkeys share 93 percent of the same genes.

Even though the study, which began in 1989, is likely to go on for years, early health benefits seem to be emerging. And in the last few months, some of the first, short-term human experiments also have yielded tantalizing results, making the Madison experiment all the more important. The studies are giving more credence to the concept that only had been tested in animals.

Earlier this month, a group of researchers found that depriving overweight, but non-obese, people of about 25 percent of their normal calories, while still having them eat nutritionally balanced diets, led to physiological changes associated with increased longevity. The six-month study involving 48 people showed that calorie restriction led to improvements in insulin levels, a beneficial decrease of about one degree in body temperature and less DNA damage to cells. The study also found similar benefits in a group whose members cut their calories by 12.5 percent and exercised enough to burn 12.5 percent of their caloric intake.

That’s an important finding because while restricted diets are considered too difficult to maintain for the vast majority of people, exercise is an attainable goal. Exercise also can help preserve muscle. Those who exercised their way into a caloric deficit did so by riding stationary bikes or running on treadmills, said co-author Steven Smith, an associate professor of endocrinology at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. “They worked very hard,” Smith said. “It wasn’t just walking around the block.”

The authors said the exercise finding suggests that the driving force behind the phenomenon is energy deficit rather than just cutting calories. The research, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, comes on the heels of a separate study showing that a small group of people on similar restricted diets had younger hearts and less inflammation in their bodies. The study compared 25 people who had been on restricted diets (between 1,400 and 2,000 calories a day) for an average of six years to 25 similar individuals who ate typical Western diets (2,000 to 3,000 calories). Ultrasound tests showed the hearts of those on the restricted diets were more elastic - the heart normally stiffens with age.

“Their hearts looked like someone who was 15 years younger,” said Timothy Meyer, a member of the Washington University team that reported the finding in January in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. They also had substantially lower levels of inflammatory substances in their blood, proteins that are associated with increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. While the finding does not guarantee they will live to 100, their life expectancy is higher, said co-author Luigi Fontana, an assistant professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis and the Italian National Institute of Health.

“Their risk of developing a myocardial infarction (heart attack) or stroke was close to zero,” Fontana said. There are a number of theories about what is behind the health benefits of a restricted, but nutritionally packed diet. Fontana said much of the effect may come from reducing the chronic state of inflammation that exists when there is too much fat in the body.

Far from being inert, fat cells secrete hormones and other proteins known as cytokines, which can lead to inflammation and the stiffening of various tissues, such as blood vessels and heart muscle. Eliminating excess fat can dramatically reduce that process. Caloric restriction also induces a different metabolic state that may retard the aging process, said Richard Weindruch, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

When cells make energy, unstable oxygen atoms known as free radicals are produced. Free radicals can damage DNA, which, in turn, can lead to diseases such as cancer, coronary artery disease, Type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Weindruch has used a new gene chip technology to analyze vast arrays of genes in animals on restricted diets. He has found that caloric restriction beneficially affects a variety of genes in ways that retard the aging process.

His company, LifeGen Technologies, now is using that technology to screen various nutritional combinations to see if those foods and various anti-oxidants and other micronutrients can mimic the effects of caloric restriction. Given the difficulty of maintaining a restricted diet, finding foods or drugs that mimic caloric restriction is one of the ways the phenomenon eventually may be applied to a large number of people, said Weindruch, who also works as a geriatrics researcher at the VA Hospital in Madison, Wis.

Of course, another possibility would be the development of a safe diet drug that allowed people to cut calories by 25 percent over a period of years.“If that happens, hundreds of thousands to millions of people could restrict their diet long term,” he said.

Researchers at Tufts University now are trying to produce the optimal regimen that minimizes hunger and allows more people in studies to adhere to their diet, said Susan Roberts, a professor of nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts. They are using a diet that maintains normal protein levels as well as vitamins and minerals and cuts calories from fat and carbohydrate, she said. So far, the most successful regimen has been in a group of people that have been able to cut calories by 17 percent for one year, she said.

In addition to dealing with hunger, people on restricted diets, especially those who cut calories 30 percent to 40 percent, may experience a range of often unwanted side effects. Those include low blood pressure, reduced sex drive, menstrual irregularities, infertility, bone thinning, cold sensitivity, loss of strength, slower wound healing and various psychological conditions, according to a recent review article in the journal Mechanisms of Ageing and Development.

“Because the long-term effects of CR (caloric restriction) in humans are not yet known, precautions should be taken before engaging in such a severe CR regimen,” the article concluded. Of course, Ludwig and the rest of the monkeys in the study at the Primate Research Center don’t have any choice in the matter. They get either a normal amount of monkey food or 30 percent less than normal. The study started with 76 monkeys, 38 in each group. The monkeys are kept together in rooms in individual cages. It’s apparent upon entering the high-security lab which monkeys are in which group.

The food trays of the restricted monkeys are always empty while various amounts of food remains uneaten in the trays of the non-restricted monkeys.

Upon closer inspection, there’s another apparent difference: the restricted monkeys generally look younger. They have fewer wrinkles and less aging in their faces, their coats look healthier and they are trimmer.

In addition, four of the monkeys in the non-restricted group developed insulin-dependent Type 2 diabetes, compared with none of the restricted monkeys, said Ricki Colman, associate scientist at the center. There also appears to be less osteoarthritis in the restricted monkeys, she said.

CALORIE CUTS

Caloric restriction is different from an eating disorder such as anorexia, a psychological disorder that involves obsession with starvation and weight loss that can be fatal. While calorie restriction involves weight loss, it is done with the goal of optimizing nutrition and longevity.

For more information, go to the Web site of the Calorie Restriction Society: www.calorierestriction.org.

Edited by whoa182
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Geneticsw also play a huge part.

Not really a huge part, it's estimated around 20-30% of life span can be attributed to genes. The rest is down to you. CR alters gene expression to a much younger profile and even prevents disease is animals that have been genetically altered to develop a disease. CR tends to completely prevent or delay disease progression.

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Hello everyone!

Two CRS members and internet buddies of mine got featured on CNN last night and I thought I'd share with you how weird we are lol... A lot of interesting footage here, especially the difference in the CR and Non-CR monkeys! WOW!

All you need to view this video is Media player and limited PC knowleadge of how to open a website :)

You can either go here: http://edition.cnn.com/video/ and look under 'HEALTH' for "subtract calories, add years" this will then bring you to the video.

or try this link directly at

http://dynamic.cnn.com/apps/tp/video/healt...nn/video.ws.asx (if it doesn't open just save and then open file)

copy and paste that link into internet explorer or media player > file > open URL and it should open.

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