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Low-Cal Diet May Slow Heart's Aging
Jan. 17, 2006 -- Curbing calories might help your heart stay young longer, new research shows.
Scientists recently compared the hearts and calories of two groups of people. People in one group ate typical Western diets, totaling about 2,445 daily calories.
The other group included people who willingly ate low-calorie diets and had done so for three to 15 years. They consumed about 1,671 calories per day.
As people age, the heart muscle can get stiffer, which can affect the heart chambers' ability to fill with blood, called diastolic function.
The low-calorie group showed several heart advantages: lower blood pressure, less inflammation, and better diastolic function.
Calorie restriction may slow the heart's aging, write the researchers. They included Timothy Meyer, PhD, and Luigi Fontana, MD, PhD, of Washington University School of Medicine's geriatrics and human nutrition division.
The study appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Cut Calories, Live Longer?
"This is the first report ever to show that calorie restriction with optimal nutrition may delay primary aging in humans," Fontana says in a news release.
"Eating less, if it is a high-quality diet, will improve your health, delay aging, and increase your chance of living a long, healthy, and happy life," he says.
Calorie restriction has been tied to longevity in animals including mice. People have been harder to study, since many people won't curb calories for a long time.
Not all scientists agree that calorie restriction boosts longevity in humans. In August 2005, a team of researchers concluded that the payoff, in terms of human longevity, wasn't worth it.
Fontana and colleagues aren't recommending calorie restriction.
"If you change the quality of your diet by increasing the servings of nutrient-dense food and reducing -- actually, it would be better to slowly eliminate -- all of the servings of 'empty' calorie foods, you improve your chances of living a healthier and longer life," Fontana says.
Heart Check
Meyer and Fontana didn't ask anyone to change their eating habits. Instead, they studied 25 people who had chosen to practice calorie restriction and 25 people who ate typical Western fare.
All participants were nonsmokers with no chronic medical diseases. Their weight hadn't changed in at least six months. None exercised vigorously more than twice weekly.
Participants wrote down what they ate and drank. They also gave blood samples, got their blood pressure checked, and got echocardiograms of their hearts. The echocardiogram gives information about heart chamber size, heart valves, and the heart's filling and pumping ability.
Those practicing calorie restriction consumed less salt and fat and were leaner than those who ate typical Western foods. Here are the two groups' average BMIs ( body mass index):
- Calorie-restriction group: 19.7 (lower end of normal)
- Comparison group: 27 (overweight but not obese)
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Being overweight is a heart disease risk factor, but there may be something more women of all shapes and sizes should worry about.
