Does Eating Less Necessarily Means Extended Life
Feb 06, 2009 No Comments »
In a recent publication of the journal Nutrition the results of one of the studies related to effects of eating less were published. The clinical study concludes that restriction in caloric consumption is beneficial to obese mice only. When the same restriction was applied on leaner mice the effects are negative rather than positive. Raj Sohal, a professor at the School of Pharmacy at University of Southern California, carried out the research along with Michael Forster, of the University of North Texas Health Science Center.
The popular anti-aging strategy i.e. caloric restriction was termed as pointless, frustrating and sometimes dangerous exercise for lean mice and thus for lean humans too.
"Today there are a lot of very healthy people who look like skeletons because they bought into this," said Sohal.
The study considered the caloric consumption and lifespan of twp genetically different strains of mice, C57BL/6, the ‘fat’ strain and DBA/2 the lean ‘strain’. The fat strain that genetically had the ability to double its weight during its adult lifespan did get the benefit of caloric consumption while in the lean strain group nothing like this emerged.
"Our study questions the paradigm that caloric restriction is universally beneficial," Sohal said. "Contrary to what is widely believed, caloric restriction does not extend (the) life span of all strains of mice."
Sohal and other researchers drew a simple but apparently deceptive conclusion where they noted the caloric restriction to be useful in case of only those animals where they ate more than they could burn. The metabolic rate study indicated that in obese animals this was the case always.
"Your energy expenditure and your energy intake should be in balance," Sohal said. "It’s as simple as that. And how do you know that? By gain or loss of weight.
"The whole thing is very commonsensical."
The researchers strongly caution the people with the normal weight against caloric restrictions. On the other hand they strongly recommend that it is better for the obese to cut on calories than to consume those calories and restore to aggressive exercise to burn off those calories.
Posted by admin | Tags: Weight Loss News
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