Caloric restriction reduces age-related and all-cause mortality in rhesus monkeys

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140401/ncomms4557/full/ncomms4557.html

by efficientarch • 12 years ago

153 83 12 years ago

nature.com

didgeoridoo• 12 years ago

So if you don't eat much you may live longer.

It will certainly FEEL longer.

dexen• 12 years ago

While stated as sarcasm, this is a very reasonable concern.

Suppose we can extend human life with Calore Restriction, but at the cost of having to slow person's activity to the point that the overall amout of actions (work, leisure etc.) remains the same as during shorter, more intense life.

Would that still be worth it? What would a person gain through longer lifespan if she was limited to roughly the same amout of activity anyway? Wouldn't competing people gain advantage simply by being able to take advantage of opportunities quicker?

mmastrac• 12 years ago

I've dabbled with caloric restriction before for brief periods of time. I found that my body adjusted pretty quickly to it in a metabolic sense and the only real issue (and the reason I dabbled but never became a real adherent) was appetite, which I suspect will eventually be solvable via pharmacological means.

Intermittent caloric restriction is also showing promise. You don't have to starve yourself daily -- just a couple of times a week -- to show some of the same benefits. Perhaps not to the same degree, but far more comfortably.

jarin• 12 years ago

Just thinking all futurism here, but it could be useful in the case where we don't need as much physical activity but rely more on thinking, or if we have things pretty automated and just need to wait for things that take a long time.

crusso4• 12 years ago

Why speculate when we already have some data on activity levels under CR?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction#Activity_le...

peter303• 12 years ago

Scientist thought they could shortcut this process by discovering the underlying biochemical mechanism. One promising lead was the insulin subsystem which is ubiqitous in our tissues and in most animals for nearly 700 million years. This lead to the SIR family of genes and chemicals like red wine that seem to manipulate them. What works in yeast and worms doesnt seem to apply to mammals that well yet. Western mdicine: develop and take a PILL to solve your problems.

Quaro2• 12 years ago

So if you don't eat much you may live longer. It will certainly FEEL longer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7fs33Jewsg&t=4m25s

According to people that do it they feel great (possibly due to BDNF activation in the brain).

epaladin• 12 years ago

BDNF will affect neuronal proliferation, but won't affect how you feel (mood) in the short term.

ElongatedTowel• 12 years ago

To add another perspective to this. If we assume that after a period of adaption eating less is just as much of a joy as eating a bit too much from time to time, there are still other factors.

Most of them are a product of vanity, but they still shape our culture.

How would I look if I reduce calories? I would lose a substantial amount of muscle mass. I would be weaker. I could not recover from endurance and strength work as fast as I'm used to.

If we throw all reasonable studies into a bucket and have them guide our lives, what would happen?

I wouldn't be tan. I wouldn't grow as large because small people supposedly live longer (though this is of course not something we can influence yet). I would have a very low muscle tonus as well as mass and only sufficient muscular endurance and size to do whatever I have to do (which is very little compared to a blacksmith in 1407). I would share a grey substance (heck, let's keep the name soylent) with my date that has everything I need to live. I have no car to reduce my carbon footprint. I will avoid the sun in general due to my skin color which is very prone to cancer (thankfully my children will be genetically altered). I will gladly try to avoid talking about any of this because saying "Don't you think beeing vegan is awesome?" will lead to an imaginary bullet flying in my general direction.

Let's have a vote of how many women find this lifestyle that will carry me into my 100s so mind-boggling attractive while I'm still in my 20s.

judk• 12 years ago

Everything you describe as attractive qualities you don't want to sacrifice are fashion fads that were once considered unattractive.

The insightful notion that life at 20 is permanent adulthood and the future is irrelevant has been believed by 20somethings for millenia.

a8da6b0c91d3• 12 years ago

The test is lab grade monkey chow vs. less lab grade monkey chow. I don't think one can extrapolate that eating less calories on a very high quality and low toxin source of calories is better.

Monkeys do best on perfectly ripe and fresh tropical fruits. Is that what they were eating? I really doubt it.

knodi123• 12 years ago

Toxin is a buzzword that I use to tell when someone is easily deceived by woo-woo fake science.

The idea that anything processed in a factory is full of "toxins" and anything from nature is "healthy" is an irritating and pervasive fallacy.

Were you referring to a specific toxin that is in their foods, or were you using it in the more vague and hand-wavy "woo woo homeopathic" sense?

robododo• 12 years ago

"High quality" in close proximity to "calories" is another sign of woo.

a8da6b0c91d3• 12 years ago

Who said anything about "produced in a factory"? Monkeys eat mostly ripe tropical fruit. The monkey chow here probably includes palm oil and soy.

Specific toxins that accumulate in tissues over time and are known to contribute to premature aging in mammals include certain fatty acids and excess iron intake, for examples. In excessive amounts they are "toxic."

I don't see what is remotely "woo" about this. The whole calorie restriction idea has been pretty well debunked as far as I'm concerned. Whenever it's looked at more closely it's a matter of food quality. Animals with the highest metabolisms among their peers are actually healthiest and longest lived.

dustin• 12 years ago

To be fair, monkeys eating a bunch of processed lab grade crap is probably a better approximation for the modern human than an optimal diet.

cliveowen• 12 years ago

If I'm reading this correctly it says that the findings apply to 1) short lived species and 2) rhesus primates. It also says that the effects of CR may or may not be preserved on humans.

So the only real finding here seems to be that we are now able to extend the lifespan of some monkeys.

collyw• 12 years ago

Both are used as model organisms, because they are similar in many ways to humans. If both mice and animals show the same result, it is reasonable to expect that it may also occur in humans. Obviously this would need to be tested before any definite conclusions can be reached, and that is going to take a long time.

crusso4• 12 years ago

While I don't disagree factually with what you're saying, the way you're saying it sounds like a slight misunderstanding of the results here.

CR has been shown to have effects on short-lived species because that's all that's been testable so far. CR has actually been remarkably consistent in its effects across many different species.

The rhesus monkey studies are the first ones to attempt to replicate the longevity results found in the previous tests that were performed on short-lived species. The NIA rhesus study results released a short while back seemed to be the first failure of replicating CR longevity results. This seemed to be a blow to the theory that CR would be efficacious with higher primates.

However, this study is saying that the first rhesus study was conducted incorrectly and that the results were incorrectly interpreted. They're basically saying that scientifically, CR is still batting a thousand.

PeterisP• 12 years ago

Doing lifespan studies on long-lived species simply takes that much longer times - to test a hypothesis on humans, it'd take some 70+ years.

It can be done and we will do it, but that will be only a benefit for the future generations - all that you and me can do is to assume (or not assume) that the measured effects will generalize to us as well.

netcan4• 12 years ago

Am I the only one who finds this caloric restriction stuff depressing? If starving for 50 years will increase my life I don't even want to know about it. Stupid science. Next they're going to tell us that a combination of caloric restriction & celibacy will do even more.

raverbashing• 12 years ago

I kind of agree, quality of live is important as well

Telomer• 12 years ago

If you could live forever on the condition that you did not eat, would you say no?

a8da6b0c91d3• 12 years ago

Well, orgasm results in a surge of prolactin which is known to have certain negative effects. There's arguably a case for keeping orgasm frequency low.

crusso4• 12 years ago

Ageing has been such an insurmountable problem, any methods that indicate that there are ways to somewhat control it are promising and can lead to other discoveries.

Perhaps CR only invokes the release of hormones that have a protective effect on cells. Replicate the hormone and perhaps actual caloric restriction may not be necessary.

netcan4• 12 years ago

OK crusso. I like the way you think.

From now on you are now in charge of all budgets, articles, blogs, tweets and laboratories relating to CR research. May I suggest that your first fiat be that CR will henceforth only be referred to by acronym.

paulodeon• 12 years ago

Intermittent fasting is the smart way to restrict calories whilst still enjoying food.

netcan4• 12 years ago

Bah!

I'm not sure what bothers me more the slight chance that CR is real enough that I will need to do it or how excited and evangelical people get about their puritanical eating cults.

Intermittent fasting! Just the sound of it is evil.

pvnick• 12 years ago

I would imagine caloric excess and celibacy tend to go hand in hand... so take your pick

tonyedgecombe• 12 years ago

On the other hand age related diseases like diabetes have some pretty unpleasant symptoms, if you could avoid them just by adjusting your diet in later years it's worth knowing about.

neves• 12 years ago

Isn't this an year old published research that was widely reported?

gregwebs• 12 years ago

This paper rehashes 2 studies. In the original Wisconsin one that showed a great benefit to CR

    ... were fed a semi-purified, nutritionally fortified, low-fat diet containing 15% protein and 10% fat.

The monkeys without CR ended up getting diabetes and they were giving them insulin. This study made a big splash, but as others point out it probably really only helps prove that eating less crap is good for you.

This paper appears to include some of the same authors of the Wisconsin study and tries to explain why the NIH performed a study that did not replicate their results. This paper claims that the control group in the NIH study actually underwent CR by comparing them to a database of captive primates. If that is true, then the title still seems strange, because it doesn't mean the NIH study provides meaningful supporting evidence, it means it was an invalid test of the CR hypothesis and instead it provides some extremely weak supporting evidence of the CR hypothesis.

As a side note, there is evidence that the CR benefit is from protein restriction and possibly just avoiding protein imbalances. https://chriskresser.com/do-high-protein-diets-cause-kidney-... (scroll to Is protein to blame—or is methionine?)

naterator• 12 years ago

It should be noted that a parallel study[1] at the National Institute for Aging (NIA) found that this was not the case. The authors of this study (UW) claim (as far as I understand) that the NIA study was flawed because both Control and Calorie Restricted (CR) monkeys were fed diets that were both restrictive, and not sufficiently different. There also seem to be some debate about the composition of the diets. The controls in the UW study were allowed to eat as they pleased (i.e. become fatties if they wanted). They claim that if both "modest" or "moderate" CR are equivalent, it would be a very important conclusion. The practical consequence, if true, would be that we wouldn't have to starve ourselves too much.

Mouse models had suggested years ago that calorie restriction could lead to ~%50 increase in lifetime. However, the problem with mouse studies is that they are pretty different, and also the mice they use are really inbred and perhaps non-ideal examples. The conclusion from the primate studies is really stacking up to be a common sense "eat in moderation, healthy, and you'll live at least a little longer, maybe a lot". Not really groundbreaking stuff, to be honest. And still not conclusive when you consider the resources that went into these studies. This also teaches us nothing about mechanisms, which would be really useful. Just my cursory assessment so far.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/30/science/low-calorie-diet-d...

exratione• 12 years ago

The publicity materials for this recent set of results do a good job of explaining why the researchers think that the NIA study is flawed. In essence the NIA control monkeys are probably on CR.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/monkey-caloric-restriction-...

“In Wisconsin, we started with adults. We knew how much food they wanted to eat, and we based our experimental diet on a 30 percent reduction in calories from that point.” In contrast, the NIA monkeys were fed according to a standardized food intake chart designed by the National Academy of Science.

Through their own experience in monkey research, and by reference to an online database recording the weight of thousands of research monkeys, the Wisconsin researchers concluded that the NIA controls were actually on caloric restriction as well, says Colman. “At all the time points that have been published by NIA, their control monkeys weigh less than ours, and in most cases, significantly so.”

Weindruch also points to some results from the NIA that seem to contradict the “no significant result” analysis. Twenty monkeys entered the NIA study as mature adults, 10 in the test group and 10 in the control group, and five of these (four test monkeys and one control monkey) lived at least 40 years. “Heretofore, there was never a monkey that we are aware of that was reported to live beyond 40 years,” Weindruch says. “Hence, the conclusion that caloric restriction is ineffective in their study does not make sense to me and my colleagues.”

mrfusion• 12 years ago

People are mentioning caloric restriction not being worth it for humans because of quality of life vs length of life.

However one thought that I find interesting, is that for our generation, living just two or three extra years could potentially make a huge difference.

If you subscribe to the idea of a coming technological singularity, or even to the idea that we're a few decades away from SENS escape velocity, you'd hate to miss it by just a couple of years.

unchocked• 12 years ago

Or you'd hate to have been hungry for most of your adult life in order to live two years longer, and still miss the rapture.

huherto• 12 years ago

Or not being able to pay for it. If it ever happens it will probably be available first for the very rich.

crpatino• 12 years ago

See comments above, the original research is flawed. New research shows that moderate caloric restriction has no statistically significant effect over eating a healthy diet within your caloric needs. It is overeating which decreases your life span.

anigbrowl2• 12 years ago

Might be. I think the quality of life issues are overstated, but I'm an ectomorph so I can change my food intake on a whim. Being hungry isn't a distraction to me unless I'm very busy physically.

dfc4• 12 years ago

  > I'm an ectomorph

As in ecto|meso|endo-morph? I thought that the scientific community put that idea in the trashcan.

ca98am79• 12 years ago

I thought about doing CR for a while - I read the "120 Year Diet," and was considering giving it a try. Then I met up with a couple who was into hardcore CR. I had dinner with them. Two things made me decide not to do it:

1) they seemed frail and weak - the man seemed to have a constant runny nose. I felt that if he fell down he would break his hip. The risk of injury and death from physical weakness seemed like it would counter any benefits from CR for lifespan.

2) They put so much effort into measuring every ingredient, and running computer programs with recipes to get the optimal nutrients with as little calories as possible. It seemed to take so much time in preparation, and you could mostly only eat at home.

mishkovski• 12 years ago

Ketogenic diet combined with intermittent fasting can be simple solution for this. Ketogenic diet controls your appetite and having one meal a day helps you to control your calorie intake.

Quaro2• 12 years ago

Then I met up with a couple who was into hardcore CR.

You probably met someone on the extreme hardcore edge of it. Certainly it's a spectrum and counting calories and nutrients with computer programs is extremely normal today -- there are about a million programs that do it on your phone for you including taking photos of bar codes, etc.

fatjokes• 12 years ago

A lot of people are jumping to extremes. I don't take this to mean I should starve myself. Instead this does encourage me to stop eating until I'm full, just until I'm no longer hungry.

netcan4• 12 years ago

Well CR doesn't really refer to moderation. It refers to restrictions to the point that it is unpleasant to most people.

RighteousFervor• 12 years ago

I think these scientists should starve themselves instead of animals. It's called having skin in the game.

gwern• 12 years ago

Some of them do.

jasonkolb• 12 years ago

Caloric restriction is absolutely fascinating in all forms. I think intermittent fasting might be the best-known variant of this, but there are others. All of them cause dramatic changes in the way bodies function, from changing the hormones secreted to changing the form of fuel it uses to run itself (e.g. ketones in low-carb diets instead of glucose).

Caloric restriction has a whole bunch of knock-on effects, any one of which could have a huge impact on health and aging. For example, restricting calories means that you're restricting protein. Most people think of protein as a good thing, but that's what stimulates the hormone IGF-1 to be secreted, which is necessary for growth of all kinds--muscle growth (which is why bodybuilders eat as much protein as possible), but also including cancer.

I've seen research that suggests that cells don't go into "repair mode" in the presence of IGF-1. This is just one example of a possible mechanism that caloric restriction could have a hugely beneficial effect on aging and illness in general.

I have a half-written blog post about this I should push out. I'd love to get some more conversation going around this.

KVFinn2• 12 years ago

For example, restricting calories means that you're restricting protein. Most people think of protein as a good thing, but that's what stimulates the hormone IGF-1 to be secreted, which is necessary for growth of all kinds--muscle growth (which is why bodybuilders eat as much protein as possible), but also including cancer.

While people on CR do seem to try and keep IGF-1 on the lower side, there's no consensus on protein yet. Most seem to eat a normal proportion, (though still less than average person since their overall intake it lower.).

I have seen some people doing CR specially avoid whey protein because it's known to particularly raise IGF-1 (which is why on the other hand people trying to maximize size of muscles like it)

X4• 12 years ago

Ok, I think most of you who read PROTEIN, may misunderstand a bit here, I'll add a bit of info to clarify the protein debate a bit.

There are almost indefinite combinations of proteins, many of which have vastly different effects on the body and it's cells. To shed a bit of light on proteins, you should know that most enzymes are proteins too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme

Some forms of 'proteins' may increase cancerous growth, other may inhibit it and there are many of such activators/inhibitors, just so you know. Only take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myosin which there are proteins ("enzymes"), which may inhibit it, leading to a super-muscular body. It's a very small change, but the result is not what you would expect from just a protein. The contrary is true too, it could have damaging effect too. We are NOT talking about supplements here, but the form of proteins that occur in Nature. They are by far not researched enough to give any form of advice and there are still new breakthroughs, findings and surprises made in the area.

Roughly saying that no calories means, more lifetime, is like saying that not fueling a motor will increase it's lifetime.

Human Life is not about getting as old as possible anyway. My personal opinion is that it's there to bring healthy and smart kids to the world, which help in the betterment of the world with their creativity, skills, ideas, muscles, efforts and visions. Simple as that.

001sky• 12 years ago

Most people think of protein as a good thing, but <that's> what stimulates the hormone IGF-1 to be secreted, which is necessary for growth of all kinds

When you say "that's" are you referring protein and specifically its presence or absence? It would be interesting indeed to see more research on this as well if possible dimensionalize by not only retsricted/normal kCal but at variations in % kCal by proteing etc. It would also perhaps be very interesting to understand if the variations align as mean values above and below "normal" caloric restricion. Ie, imagine a polar explorer who is operating in caloric deficit yet at high exertion thresholds for days on end. And/or contrast this with caloric restriction in the sense of < normal 2200 per day (or whatevs).

salimmadjd• 12 years ago

Received 12 October 2013 Accepted 05 March 2014 Published 01 April 2014

Am I the only one who finds this crazy? It takes 6 months from submission date till publication!

The peer review process should move faster and become modernized. I undrestand, you want to be published on prestigious journals, but Nature and others can modernize to publish more. You can argue, we lost 6 months or half a year of progress because of the pace of antiquated publication process.

randlet• 12 years ago

Done correctly, reviewing papers is a tedious, time consuming & utterly thankless job that takes time away from your own research. Papers also often go through 2 or three rounds of reviewing/revision. Each one of these cycles can take 1-2 months so it's not surprising it's a slow process.

lutusp• 12 years ago

The counterargument should be obvious -- peer reviewers are often unpaid experts who review pending articles in whatever spare time they happen to have, between delivering lectures, research, and applying for grants. To speed up the process woulds be to increase its cost, possibly very much, or to degrade the peer review process.

The defects of another alternative should also be obvious -- paid peer reviewers. If this change took place, people would line up for positions they aren't qualified for on the simple ground that they can get paid to appear to be what they aren't. Also, for many cutting-edge fields, there simply aren't more than a handful of qualified reviewers at any price.

searine• 12 years ago

Welcome to science.

At best you have a 2-3 month wait. At worst, years.

dfc4• 12 years ago

You misspelled "understand" in a comment criticizing the review process. If this was irony, I must say your trolling is sublime. However if this was an error I think you might want to rethink your position. I have no problem waiting 6 months or a year for peer reviewed publications.

tokenadult3• 12 years ago

What's interesting about human all-cause mortality trends is that human beings in the developed countries have been gaining three months of lifespan for every year that they live (sometimes described as "six hours each day").[1] Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,[2] originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. A lot incremental improvements in both public health and in medical practice, as well as much better nutrition than in the old days, are steadily increasing life expectancy.[3] This is happening for people of all ages; life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising, and all-cause mortality and morbidity declining, throughout the developed countries of the world.[4]

So the monkey research needs to be meshed in with human research that shows that mildly "overweight" (if fit) human beings have better mortality outcomes than human beings of normal weight[5] to tease out what the causation is for health outcomes of different patterns of nutrition. The example of Rimonabant[6] shows that sometimes an animal model doesn't adequately predict treatment effects in human subjects.

[1] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....

[2] http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...

[3] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...

[4] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...

[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23280227

[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19578688

beagle32• 12 years ago

Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long

I'm sure this is backed up by studies and references, and at the same time I am amused at the hubris of making this statement. It's a cheap prediction to make, given that it will be around 2070 before you can verify it - and how right it is depends on lack-of-catastrohpies (e.g. in 20 years we'll have an idea how the meltdown in Fukushima affects lifespan), same-rate-and-same-kind-and-availability of advances, etc.

And before you criticize me for being "anti-sciece" - I am not, and unlike a lot of other assertions, this might technically be science (I haven't reviewed the source material) - however, it is not useful science because it may take 70 years to falsify.

Furthermore, a lot of -- perhaps most -- extrapolations of past trends had been wrong. At the time of Wallace & Darwin it was "scientifically" extrapolated that food will only grow linearly. And in 1980 climate studies had shown that if we don't do anything (and we didn't) by 2000 quite a few coastal cities will be underwater. If I wasn't anonymous, I'd place a long bet that the data crunching that led to this prediction will turn out to be complete rubish.

Houshalter• 12 years ago

It's just a simple projection, it's not meant to be taken so seriously. I expect that it's extremely conservative. We are currently in the dark ages of medicine where we just shoot people up with random chemicals and see what happens. There is a lot of room for improvement. Not to mention the singularity.

scarmig• 12 years ago

in 1980 climate studies had shown that if we don't do anything (and we didn't) by 2000 quite a few coastal cities will be underwater

Cite?

jessriedel2• 12 years ago

Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,[2] originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject.

You or someone else presented this highly speculative claim as fact a long time ago on HN. I've tried to find the comment link, but I can't.

In any case, the support for this supposed fact is very dubious. You link to one article by Vaupel in Nature who, in making this claim, cites only this paper

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/

by Christensen et al. The paper says, in the abstract,

If the pace of increase in life expectancy in developed countries over the past two centuries continues through the 21st century, most babies born since 2000 in France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the USA, Canada, Japan, and other countries with long life expectancies will celebrate their 100th birthdays.

Very few medical researchers are likely to find that "if" statement at all plausible, so this claim about most newborn girls living to 100 is bogus. If you have a better source for this claim, please present it. Otherwise, stop posting it.

tokenadult3• 12 years ago

(Thank you for your concern.) How would one prove this claim wrong? There is signal in current mortality and morbidity statistics about how long the individuals now alive will last before they die off. Is anyone interpreting this signal from official medical reports any differently from Vaupel and Christensen? Both Vaupel and Christensen are very well respected demographers (as Vaupel's publication in Nature should adequately suggest to readers familiar with the scientific literature). Paul Graham has a great essay online titled "How to Disagree"[1] and I invite you to apply those steps in any thread on Hacker News where you see a factual claim with which you disagree (as I think I have seen you do in countless thoughtful earlier comments that have been posted here from your keyboard).

If you have a better source for this claim, please present it. Otherwise, stop posting it.

What you seem to be objecting to here is not the factual statement (you have not suggested any reason to doubt the factual statement, and haven't cited anyone who works in demography) but rather the strikingly concrete way in which the statement was made. But that manner of making the statement was chosen by Vaupel (in agreement with Christensen, whose works on the topic I have also read) and I'm just passing on the ideas of recognized experts whose published papers on the topic look plausible to me and look especially plausible to demography researchers on human aging I know locally. I learned about the papers of these two authors from local researchers who sometimes collaborate with Vaupel and Christensen (especially Christensen).

It shouldn't be objectionable here on Hacker News to pass on user-readable citations to published scientific literature that looks plausible to other scientists with a basis of knowledge in the subject. You are asking me to change my overt behavior as one Hacker News participant among thousands. Where in the Hacker News guidelines[2] do you find a problem with behavior like mine here? Hacker News seems very tolerant of predictions of the future, and indeed some of the favorite topics here revolve around predictions of the future.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[2] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ef47d35620c1• 12 years ago

I would suggest that they are only 14 years old right now, so none of them have made it to 100 yet. The truth will be know in 86 years, perhaps sooner.

js2• 12 years ago

Re: mildly overweight having better mortality outcomes, see this recent study that was designed to remove the confounding factors of smoking and illness-induced weight loss, and then found excess weight does indeed adversely impact mortality (the study was limited by self-reported weight):

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2014/04/uncovering-tru...

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Beliavsky• 12 years ago

I prefer this conclusion: "Study Suggests Lower Mortality Risk for People Deemed to Be Overweight" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/health/study-suggests-lowe... .

plg• 12 years ago

'cause who really likes _eating_, anyway. A no-brainer to just reduce food. Yeah that'll work.

Lots of things might reduce mortality and prolong lifespan. It's quite another thing to ask whether these things are viable options for modern human beings.

todd8• 12 years ago

In the early 90's my girlfriend was into CR. She was also into supplements. No one that I've ever known took so many vitamins, minerals, herbs, and antioxidants. She ordered them in bulk in powdered form and made a mess in the kitchen mixing them up every day. Of course, now there's evidence that heavy doses of vitamins aren't beneficial and may actually be harmful.

As to the calorie reduction, she was quite successful in controlling her diet. She ordered guar gum in 50 lb sacks (from Tic Gums), mixing it with water to have something in her stomach when she was hungry. She seemed to settle into a routine that I don't think I could have tolerated. She didn't ever look anorexic, but had very very low body fat.

She was very afraid of getting old and this motivated her. I think that without some sort of pharmaceutical breakthrough that controls hunger, the rest of us will not find CR practical.

ciupicri• 12 years ago

Of course, now there's evidence that heavy doses of vitamins aren't beneficial and may actually be harmful.

Could you be more specific, please?

Harj• 12 years ago

There is lots of interesting research on the links between caloric restriction and the ageing process. It's the impact on the insulin and insulin like growth factor (IGF-1) pathways that seems to be important:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867412...

http://kenyonlab.ucsf.edu/Kenyon_2010_Nature_rev.pdf

dfc4• 12 years ago

According to the Nature Comms Open Access guidelines somebody paid $4,800 for this article to be published under a BY-NC-SA license. In general who ends up paying, the authors or the authors' respective institutions?

Open Access fees:[^1]

  (CC BY)    (CC BY-NC-SA)   Region
  -------------------------------------------------
  $5,200     $4,800          (The Americas)
  €3,700     €3,425          (Europe)
  ¥661,500   ¥612,150        (Japan)
  RMB33,100  RMB30,600       (China)
  £3,150     £2,915          (UK and Rest of World)

[^1]: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/open_access/index.html

lsh• 12 years ago

Typically the institutions, although I can't say specifically who paid in this instance.

This is an interesting point and I'll raise it at work: should the sponsor of an article be formally noted, along with the particulars of it's peer review, license, etc?

Also, a shameless plug: http://www.ubiquitypress.com/publish because OA isn't an expensive proposition, it just depends how it is handled and by whom.

Caloric restriction reduces age-related and all-cause mortality in rhesus monkeys

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