Re: Caloric restriction and longevity?

John Edser wrote:


JE:-
The modern American diet is not based on a balanced variety of a range of
hundreds of natural foods in season that can provide a range of different
antioxidants. In Australia the Federal government has just launched a
million dollar advertising Champaign in an attempt to convince people to eat
a minimal variety of fruit and vegetables. So far it has failed. How
incredible is it that western man can put a man on the moon but does not
know (or care) what to eat? What levels of arrogance are required to allow
such an absurdity? Like any other animal system we are supposed to cycle
with our local food sources. How can we when today, they can be 1000's of
miles away?

Enormous but mostly unnecessary and costly over food processing has
eliminated many critical micro nutrients that may not be able to be absorbed
by just taking supplements. Consider common salt (a dietary necessity). For
many 1000's of years salt was mostly evaporated from sea water, packed by
hand into bags and traded over amazingly complex salt trade routes. Hand
harvested evaporated sea salt contains 1000's of micro nutrient products
including iodine. However it is only available today in specialist shops.
The average American remains content to over eat just empty refined table
salt (producing heart disease) along with empty refined sugar (producing
diabetes). These saturate almost all artificial food products that are
available. The over processing of food products has drastically reduced the
variety of foods eaten leaving no back up for chronic deficiency. In short,
our genes cannot deal with the modern diet based on a simple carbohydrate
produced calorific excess concordant with a micro nutrient deficiency.
Stepping on the accelerator and the breaks at the same time will very
quickly clap out any car.

It is my opinion that neuron disease may be a product of substituting just a
mono culture of over refined oils and fats which remain deficient in vitamin
E and omega oils, that also contain significant numbers of damaging
trans-isomers which are mostly just a side product of over processing, for
the many varieties of natural oils and fats we would have eaten in season in
nature. Today these are represented by unrefined natural cold pressed oils
which remain rich in vitamin E and omega oils with almost zero
trans-isomers. It is these that we would have ingested in our more primitive
tribal state when our genome was being selected for.

The famous case of Lorenzo's Oil provides an interesting case:

http://www.myelin.org/USAToday.htm

Evolutionary theory has a lot to offer re: testable WHY's for modern medical
afflictions. A more genera discussion about food and health that is not
difficult to understand is available:

http://www.healingmatters.com/fats.htm
Quote:
"the best way to reduce Cholesterol levels to normal is to cure the
underlying Hyperinsulinemia. This entails repairing the Automatic
Cholesterol Control System which regulates our Cholesterol homeostasis. This
repair process requires stabilizing our blood Insulin and Glucose levels and
restoring our entire endocrine system to proper balance. This follows
automatically when we stop consuming dangerous, damaged fats and oils and
restore other needed nutrition to our diet."

Yep, the knee bone is connected to (and always selected with) the thigh
bone. At least we have made a start. Obesity is now officially classified as
a disease within Australia.


Last I heard, obesity in the U.S. is now a major health crisis.

Dr. Walford participated in the Biosphere 2 project in September 1991.
This project had four men and four women of excellent initial health
living inside a three acre enclosure where the objective was to raise
all required food internally, to recycle solid, liquid and gaseous waste
products, and generally to remain independent of outside support (other
than energy from the sun).

"Although not part of the original plan for living in the Biosphere, the
'Biospherians' adopted what was in effect a calorically restricted diet,
which was largely vegetarian, supplemented by small amounts of fish and
animal meat...The average total calories was consumed per day was about
1800; fat was kept to a maximum of 30 percent of the total calories
consumed...Dr. Walford monitored a number of physiological parameters in
the Biospherians that might be expected to be affected by a restricted
diet. After just 6 months on the Biosphere diet, weight losses ranged
from 10 to 15 percent. Average blood pressures dropped 20 percent,
cholesterol levels dropped by 35 percent, and serum lipids by 31 percent."

--William Clark, _A Means to An End -- The Biological Basis of Aging
and Death_, p. 145

Note that these were people who were in excellent health to begin with,
which means that their blood pressures and cholesterol levels were
normal at the start A drop in blood pressure of 20 percent is therefore
somewhat mind boggling. For a person with a mild hypertensive reading
of 150/100, a drop of this size would take them down to 120/80.

Note also that the American pharmaceutical industry is raking in
billions of dollars in profits every year selling drugs to lower blood
pressure and cholesterol. It's sobering to think that the same effects
could be achieved by people simply controlling the amount of food they
shovel down their pie holes. Perhaps what modern society really needs
are safe and effective appetite suppressant drugs.

Finally, here is a key point:

"One of the first and most important points to emerge from the modern
era of studies with rats and mice is that the single most important
factor in modulating longevity is simply the total amount of calories
taken in at each feeding, and the frequency of feeding. Extensive
investigations of the manipulation of major food groups in the diet --
protein versus carbohydrates versus fats, alone and in various
combinations -- showed very clearly that complicated dietary theories
concerning balances among the various food groups were not relevant to
longevity. The best results were always obtained when animals were
simply fed less of a well-balanced diet, as suggested by McCay over
sixty years ago."

--Clark, _A Means to An End_, p. 134


If one is to enjoy good health and long years, perhaps one should follow
the advice "Keep your pie hole closed as much as possible when in the
vicinity of food."


--dkomo@xxxxxxxx








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