LOS ANGELES, Calif. (dpa) – Eternal youth, it seems, cannot be bought with pills but has to be earned through sacrifice of a dietary nature. That applies to both humans and animals, experts say.
The skimpier your diet, the healthier and longer you are likely to live – provided you do not cross the border to malnutrition, of course. This theory has been supported by several studies.
Professor Roy Walford, a pathologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, said that data obtained from studying eight participants in the Biosphere 2 experiment backed what was already known about mice, rats and apes.It provided important scientific evidence that the “Jack Sprat” approach to eating – a meagre diet – is beneficial to man. Walford himself is one of the “bionauts” who spent two years in the famous glass bell near Tucson, Arizona, isolated from the outside world. All they ate was what they grew themselves.The four men and four women lost between ten and 18 per cent of their body weight, said Walford, and their metabolism slowed down. Their body temperature dropped by more than one degree Celsius and their blood pressure was around 20 per cent lower than it had been before the experiment started.Regular tests showed that their cholesterol and triglyceride, or blood fat, levels were ideal, and their diabetes risk factor and blood sugar levels dropped by around 30 per cent.Shedding surplus pounds also released toxic residues of pesticides and other environmental poisons in their bodies. These substances are often deposited in layers of fat. In the first year of Biosphere 2, Walford recorded raised toxin levels in the bloodstream of every participant. Not until the second year did levels gradually start to decline.These findings tallied exactly with what other scientists had observed earlier in animals.The less rodents and apes are given to eat, the more seldom they suffer from cancer, autoimmune diseases, diabetes and heart failure. At the same time, their life expectancy grows.This had been demonstrated through an experiment involving a species of mice known for their exceptional longevity. Mice which were fed a low-calorie diet lived for 56 months, whereas those with unrestricted access to food lived only 38 months on average.The life-prolonging effect increases in line with hunger.Something else experts know from animal experiments is that hunger stimulates vitality. Young rats allowed to eat as much as they wanted only covered two kilometres per day on their tread-wheels, and well-padded middle-aged rats managed no more than 500 metres.By contrast, young rats on a restricted diet ran five kilometres a day, and never less than four right up to the day they died.Opinions are divided, however, on the effect of a low-calorie diet on your sex life. Hungry animals, said Walford, “don’t do it as often, but they do it for longer.”
