I remember that there is this resource called Wikipedia. So I look up Calorie Restriction. I find there's a very detailed research summary there.
On primates, it starts out with this:
"A study on rhesus macaques, funded by the National Institute on Aging, was started in 1989 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This study showed that caloric restriction in rhesus monkeys blunts aging and significantly delays the onset of age related disorders such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and brain atrophy. The monkeys were enrolled in the study at ages of between 7 and 14 years; at the 20 year point, 80% of the calorically restricted monkeys were still alive, compared to only half of the controls...."
The section on negative effects talks mainly about what happens when nutrition is poor, or when calories are too low to sustain life. My favorite: "A calorie restriction diet can cause extreme hunger that may lead to binge eating behaviour." Uh-huh. Every guide on CR I've read counsels taking a gradual approach, to give your body time to adjust, and people on CR diets often report that the feelings of hunger attenuate.
The so-called CRON approach ("Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition") focuses on preventing malnutrition, as you'd expect from the name, and is decidely not "starvation", which is obviously an eventually terminal condition.
There is promising, but inconclusive, evidence for a positive effect with human beings. If it works well for monkeys, yeast, fruit flies, nematodes and mice, it's hard to see why it wouldn't work for human beings. But human beings are exceptional in a number of ways, so I suppose it's possible it doesn't work for us.
I remember that there is this resource called Wikipedia. So I look up Calorie Restriction. I find there's a very detailed research summary there.
On primates, it starts out with this:
"A study on rhesus macaques, funded by the National Institute on Aging, was started in 1989 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This study showed that caloric restriction in rhesus monkeys blunts aging and significantly delays the onset of age related disorders such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and brain atrophy. The monkeys were enrolled in the study at ages of between 7 and 14 years; at the 20 year point, 80% of the calorically restricted monkeys were still alive, compared to only half of the controls...."
The section on negative effects talks mainly about what happens when nutrition is poor, or when calories are too low to sustain life. My favorite: "A calorie restriction diet can cause extreme hunger that may lead to binge eating behaviour." Uh-huh. Every guide on CR I've read counsels taking a gradual approach, to give your body time to adjust, and people on CR diets often report that the feelings of hunger attenuate.
The so-called CRON approach ("Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition") focuses on preventing malnutrition, as you'd expect from the name, and is decidely not "starvation", which is obviously an eventually terminal condition.
There is promising, but inconclusive, evidence for a positive effect with human beings. If it works well for monkeys, yeast, fruit flies, nematodes and mice, it's hard to see why it wouldn't work for human beings. But human beings are exceptional in a number of ways, so I suppose it's possible it doesn't work for us.