Calorie Restriction – The New Anti-aging Mantra

Take fewer calories than normal and live longer–this is the mantra of calorie restriction and anti-aging. After some successful studies with animals about life extension with calorie restricted diets came to the forefront, the entire anti-aging health and wellness field is abuzz with this unique concept.

What is Calorie Restriction?

Calorie is basically a measure of the amount of energy foods release in our body. So if the label on a piece of cake reads 100 calories, it means the cake when eaten releases 100 calories of energy in the body.

You need energy to do your daily activities. This energy comes from the foods that you eat. If you eat more and work less, you will accumulate more calories and you’ll spend fewer calories. The result is an excess of calories, which usually manifests as fat in the body. Thus, if you take more calories than what you spend, you are to become fat.

Overweight or obese conditions increase metabolism, forcing the cells to work harder, and get tired easily in the process. They then begin to decay marking the beginning of aging. Fat cells are also known to trigger inflammations in the body, which is the first stage of many diseases.

Calorie restriction is taking of fewer calories than normal to reduce metabolism and delay cellular decay. People wanting to go for calorie restriction and anti-aging measures opt for either low calorie foods or drastically cut down their consumption.

The Revelations of Research

Way back in 1935, a nutritionist at Cornell University made an astounding discovery that mice fed 30% fewer calories than their littermates had 40% longer life spans. This discovery paved the way for more exhaustive research to understand the bio-mechanism of calorie restriction and anti-aging.

Subsequently, researches conducted on various laboratory animals like rodents, nematodes and fruitflies began to pour in increasing evidences about postponement of death and diseases through calorie-restricted diets. Moreover, the pace of age-related changes in every cell, tissue and system of the body was also being seen to slow down with calorie restriction.

Activity is an index of aging – aging makes one less active. Experiments with lab animals have shown calorie restricted diets to convincingly hike activity levels, pointing towards comparatively lesser aging. Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio came across some interesting results during a study with rodents. They found that rodents in a control group typically ran about 1,000 meters a day when exposed to a running wheel until they are about eight months old, when they slowly started falling back in pace to about 200 meters a day. In contrast, rodents on calorie restriction may run 4,000 to even 5,000 meters a day till they reach the age of about 2 years, when they progressively begin to slow down. Even at 3 years of age, they were found to be running almost 1,000 meters a day!

Though long-term studies are yet to confirm the benefits of calorie restriction and anti-aging with humans, the truth is that there are already people in many parts of the world, such as in Japan and China, who are practicing calorie restriction since ages and are living healthier and longer lives, compared to their counterparts in other places of the world who are on regular diets.

The craze is already on and apart from staying slim and good-looking, the new passport to healthier and longer life is now calorie restriction.