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Low-Cal Diet Keeps Heart Young
Oct. 28, 2002 -- "Eat less, live longer" has been an often-said mantra among anti-aging experts since the 1930s, when researchers first observed that mice on low-calorie diets seemed to live longer and healthier than those who stuffed themselves silly.
In the latest study, there's new evidence to support that familiar old finding. Using high-tech tools, a team from the University of Wisconsin measured how caloric intake affects the function of thousands of genes in the heart. And once again, they found that less (food) means more (years).
"Based on our finding, it appears that if people reduce their current calorie intake between 20 and 40% -- even starting in middle age -- they may delay the development of heart disease or possibly even prevent it," professor of genetics Tomas Prolla, PhD, tells WebMD.
That's because as hearts age, cells shift their source of energy from the high-energy, slow-burning fat molecules to more low-energy, fast-burning carbohydrates. This leaves older hearts with less energy that gets burned quickly to perform the same work, stressing the heart and setting the stage for heart failure.
But when calories were reduced in mice, the shift in energy sources was seen less frequently then in mice consuming a normal diet. The calorie-restricted mice maintained a slow-burning, high-energy source of fuel. "Simply put, we found that calorie reduction prevented these age-related changes," Prolla says. "So it appears that if you eat a low-calorie diet that is nutritionally balanced, it is likely that the aging process that normally occurs in the heart will be retarded."
The findings support the idea that as the body grows old, it is less able to repair the damage caused by a gradual build-up of toxic by-products also called "free radicals." The study found a decrease in the amount of genetic damage in heart cells in mice that consumed fewer calories.
This new study, which appears in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes as no surprise to Eric Ravussin, MD, an anti-aging researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University. His center is just beginning a similar study on humans for the National Institute on Aging.
"It seems as though it's the amount of calories you eat -- and not just the amount of dietary fat -- that influences these cell changes in the heart," Ravussin tells WebMD. "It has been shown that longer-living animals manage to live longer when most of their energy comes from fat instead of carbohydrates -- and that occurs with calorie restriction.
"Although there have been no studies on humans that measure these cell expressions, we do know that calorie restriction seems to play a big role in longevity," he adds. "People on Okinawa, who typically consume about consume about 20% fewer calories than people in mainland Japan, have the world's highest percentage of people who live to be 100 years old or older."-->
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