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Nutrition, Vitamins & Supplements for Seniors
Calorie Reduction Late in Life Restores Health,
Longevity of Life-Long Diet
Researcher says it's never too late, searches for
anti-aging drugs
April 12, 2007 Reducing calorie intake later in
life can still induce many of the health and longevity benefits of
life-long calorie reduction, according to research by Stephen Spindler,
Professor at the University of California, and his collaborators. They
are now using this knowledge to establish a novel screening technique to
find drugs which mimic this longevity effect.
Right now, there are no authentic 'anti-aging
drugs' capable of extending the lifespan of healthy people," says
Spindler.
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"The technique we have developed allows us to
screen a relatively large number of drugs in months rather than years.
The hope is that these drugs will be able to extend the lifespan of
healthy animals, and possibly, after further testing, healthy humans.
Previous research has show that mice can live up to
40% longer if they simply consume fewer calories, but a highly
nutritious diet. Because people are not very good at dieting, Dr.
Spindler and his colleagues would like to identify drugs which can
produce the same beneficial health and longevity effects without the low
calorie diet.
The problem is to find a way to rapidly identify
these drugs.
Spindler and his colleagues are examining the gene
expression patterns which are induced by low calorie diets, and looking
for drugs which mimic these changes. They are searching for drugs which
will have these beneficial effects and slow aging, even when they are
given late in life.
One drug, normally used to treat diabetic patients,
seems to produce many of the beneficial effects of a low calorie diet.
However, it is important to be sure that healthy people will benefit
from the drug. A very low level of toxicity could interfere with the
beneficial effects of such a drug, if it is taken for a lifetime.
Physiological changes associated with aging include
cell damage and the emergence of cancer cells. The most important
effects of low calorie diets and longevity therapeutics given late in
life may not be to prevent this damage, but instead to stimulate the
body to eliminate damaged cells that may become cancerous, and to
stimulate repair in damaged cells like neurons and heart cells.
Low calorie diets drive the body to replace and
repair damaged cells. This process usually slows down as we age, but low
calorie diets make the body re-synthesize and turn over more cells a
situation associated with youth and good health.
Dr. Spindler and his colleagues used their
screening method to search for drugs which cause pre-cancerous and
cancerous cells to commit suicide and to replace those cells with new,
healthy cells. It is thought that the body does this because it normally
kills some cells like damaged and rogue cancer cells to provide energy
when it is starving. Then it replaces these cells when a meal is eaten.
It seems it is the total number of calories which
are consumed, rather than the type of food which is the key to the
effects of low calorie diets on the aging process.
However, it is known that vegetarians and fish
eaters live longer than red meat eaters, and that, generally, the more
fruit and vegetables in the diet, the better your health and longer your
lifespan, according to the researchers.
Editor's Notes:
Professor Spindler presented his results at the
Society for Experimental Biologys Main Meeting in Glasgow on Monday,
April 2.
This work is a collaboration between Professor
Spindler and Dr Joseph Dhahbi (Childrens Hospital Oakland Research
Institute).
Published review paper: S. Spindler and J. Dhahbi.
2007. Conserved and tissue-specific genic and physiologic responses to
caloric reduction and altered IGF1 signalling in mitotic and
post-mitotic tissues. Annual Review of Nutrition, 2007.
The Annual Main Meeting of the Society for
Experimental Biology was in the SECC, Glasgow, UK (31 March 4 April
2007). See
www.sebiology.org/meetings
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