Restricting protein consumption can actually make you live 20% longer! I have been very interested in studying aging and why we get disease. Many experiments with animals have shown that calorie restriction and fasting may increase life and limit disease. There have been many hypothesis as to why this occurs. Is it over-mineralization whereby basically consume too many minearls which fill our cells? Science is not clear. I have experimented with some of the calorie restriction methods and let me tell you this, they are very difficult. The NIH is currently looking at alternate day fasting for weight loss and possibly for longevity. This may prove to be effective but who can do it. I certainly cant. I have been absolutely miserable during every fast I have tried. The new area of research has been looking at protein restriction, specifically amino acid restriction. Studies are looking very positive towards protein restriction for prolonging life. This of course is ironic given all the recommendations to increase protein consumption. This may be due to restricting the amino acid methionine which seems to feed cancer cells. In fact, if you have cancer, methionine restriction could be an important part of any treatment protocol. This is a very good review with excellent articles referenced. I have been impressed with the Daniels Fast, which they refer to in the article. The Daniel Fast follows what Daniel ate in captivity in Babylon, which was basically fruits, veggies, and nuts. They reference studies on people doing the Daniel fast for 21 days with impressive results, but that is of course only 21 days. However, the adventist health studies have shown that vegans tend to live longer than their meat eating counterparts, and even vegetarians! This may be due to methionine consumption which mainly comes from animal products. It could also be due to IGF1 release when eating protein. Regardless, it is a hell of a lot easier to not restrict calories but rather just load up your plate with fruits, veggies, beans, nuts, seeds! From the study: Neither carbohydrate restriction nor lipid restriction appear to be effective alternatives to CR. Lipid restriction has been shown to have no effect on longevity [26,27]. Regarding carbohydrate, several studies have found that increasing intake either increases or has no effect on longevity, suggesting that restriction would not extend life [28,29], also reviewed in [30]. Moreover, both forms of macronutrient restriction fail to decrease reactive oxygen species production or oxidative DNA damage [31,32]. Protein restriction appears to be a viable candidate for an alternative to CR. Sixteen out of 18 reviewed experiments found that protein restriction increased maximum lifespan in rodents (reviewed in [30]). The average increase in maximum lifespan in the 16 positive studies was approximately 20%. When this is compared to the ~40% increase in lifespan found in many CR investigations, it suggests that protein restriction accounts for approximately half of this effect [30]. Moreover, several of the reviewed studies compensated for the reduction in protein by increasing carbohydrate intake; this balanced total caloric intake and ensured that the prolongation of life was due to restriction of protein and not calories. nutritionj/content/10/1/107#B30
Posted on: Wed, 18 Jun 2014 15:41:31 +0000
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