At a restaurant in a future not too distant future, a man and a woman doing on a date. After jitters subside, everything went smoothly.
The man was admitted aged 33 years and throughout most of his lifetime, he has no partner. And though he did not express them, she married and had a family. The woman responded by saying he was only 52 years old and never married, divorced, and had children aged 20 years. The man is not thought-the woman looked about her, or even younger.
That's a dream that wants to be embodied by Julie Mattison of the National Institute on Ageing (NIA), the National Institute of aging in the United States. He envisions a time when age chronologically passed each year but biological age can be set to a different time so that parents are not the same meaning with the meaning of that Word as we understand it now.
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It seems far out of reach, but our society is already trying to step into that direction, thanks to the progress of medicine and improved standards of living healthy. In 2014, for example, Health Interview Survey United States notes that 16% of the population aged between 50 to 64 years old every day experiencing disruptions due to chronic diseases. Thirty years earlier that number reached 23%. This means that, in addition to experiencing life is longer, we also experienced the ' masa ' health — and the second thing is more proven.
Citing the former President's speech and update the United States, John F Kennedy, in a White House Conference on Aging in the first in 1961, in fact, life can be added to age, so it's not just age that added to life.
Calorie restriction
Thus, what we need to do more to extend lifespan and increase our quality of life? The penalty around the world looking for a variety of thought-provoking, but for Mattison, the answer is simple changes in our diet.
They believe that the possibility of the key of old age better reduces the quantity of food that we consume, through an approach called ' calorie restriction '.
This diet is more effective than reducing fatty foods occasionally, namely by means of reducing portion sizes gradually and be careful eating forever. Since the early 1930 's, 30% reduction in the amount of food consumed per day have a relationship with a more active life and longevity for worms, flies, rodents, rats are large and small monkeys.
In the animal world, in other words, calorie restriction proved to be the panacea for the damage to life. And it's possible that it can provide the same benefits to humans.
The thought that people eat affects his health no doubt existed before recorded history that still exists today. However, as is the case in scientific disciplines, the first detailed entry comes from Ancient Greece.
Hippocrates-a physicist who said diseases are natural and not magic-observed that many diseases associated with gluttony. People of Greece the fat tends to die at the age younger than the people of Greece are slim. It is clear and written in the Papyrus paper.
From the Science Center, these ideas later adopted and adapted over the centuries.And at the end of the 15th century, Alvise Cornaro, a weak Aristocrat from the small village near Venice, Italy, inserting the wisdom to her mind and apply it to himself.
If excessive paced life have a negative effect, would refrain from food has a positive? To find the answer, Cornaro, 40-year-old, just eating a 350g (12 oz) of food every day, more or less as much as 1,000 calories if based on estimated recently.He ate bread, panatela-or some sort of long biscuit-gravy, soup, and eggs.
For the flesh, she chose the veal, goat, beef, partridge commonly hunted birds, thrush, and all kinds of poultry are available. He buys fish caught in local streams and rivers. By limiting the number of but not the type of food, Cornaro claimed to have reached the ' perfect health ' until his death more than 40 years later.
Although he changed his birth date when growing older and admitted to 98 years old, believed to be 84 years old when he died. It is a remarkable achievement in the 16th century when the age of 50 or 60 is considered old. In 1591, his grandson published a great book that consists of three volumes after his death with the title Discourses on the Sober Life or Living Sober Discourse containing the food restriction a boost for general audiences and redefining aging itself.
With improved health in times of old, then the House of seniors still have mental capacity in full and will be able to make use of the knowledge that has been acquired over the decades to a good cause, said Carnaro. With his diet, beauty into old age, not young.
Longevity test
Cornaro was an interesting man but his invention should not be treated as a fact by the discipline of any kind. Even though he was honest in saying what is and is not experiencing health problems during nearly half a century--which seems unlikely--it is a case study that does not represent the human being as a whole.
However, since the year 1953 basic research on white rats, food restriction between 30% to 50% indicates an extension, delaying the age of death due to age-related diseases and disorders. Of course, that is true for mice or lab organisms may not apply to humans.
Long-term trials, by following in the footsteps of man since stepping on adulthood until death, rarely do. "I am not of the opinion research longevity in humans as something that could be a program of research that can be funded," said Mattison.
"Even if we start a man at the age of 40 or 50 years, we still have to do additional research, approximately 40 or 50 years."
Moreover, he added, to ensure that factors not related--such as exercise, smoking, mental health, medical care — not to affect the final results of the trials are almost impossible for our species complex from the social side and culturally.
Therefore, in the late 1980 's, two independent long-term trials-one in the NIA and another one at the University of Wisconsin-made to study aging and caloric restriction on Rhesus monkeys. Not only 93% human DNA the same as Primate was, how aging is also the same man with a monkey it.
Slowly, after the middle of the same age as(about 15 years in the Rhesus Monkey), start bending the spine, skin, and muscles begin to slack off, and in the part that is still growing, changing of colors like ginger to gray. The equations are there deeper. In primates, the incidence of this cancer, diabetes, and heart disease increases and often get worse along with the increase of age.
"Primate-Primate it was an incredibly nice model for studying aging," said Rozalyn Anderson, an expert on the science of aging at the University of Wisconsin.
No natural malnutrition
Primates are easily controlled. With food being given in the form of special biscuits, diet for 76 monkeys at the University of Wisconsin and the existing 121 in NIA adjusted by age, body weight and appetite of its. All the monkeys got a full intake of nutrients and minerals that the body is required. The happen is 50% of a group of monkeys who restricted calories, eat 30% less than other groups.
It turns out that monkeys are not subjected to malnutrition or starvation. For example, Sherman, 43-year-old Monkey from the NIA.
According to Julie Mattison of the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) in the United States, since the calorie restricted diets lived the year of 1987, at the age of 16 years, Sherman has yet to show signs of hunger which is usually clearly visible in this species.
Sherman is the Rhesus Macaque is the oldest ever recorded, nearly 20 years older than the average lifetime of that species that live in the cage. When the young monkeys suffering from disease and dying, the monkey Sherman seemed immune from aging. Even when of age reach 30 's years, Sherman should be regarded as an old monkey, but he doesn't look or act like the age is old.
On a different level, the experiment over the monkeys at the NIA also showed the same results. "We found the frequency of diabetes, lower cancer frequency in the group who restricted calories consumption," said Mattison.
The year 2009, trials at the University of Wisconsin published similar results. Not only did the monkeys look very young – have thicker fur, less thinning, and their color brown instead of gray-than the monkeys fed a standard diet. They are also healthier anyway and are free from disease.
Diseases of aging
Cancer, such as a common intestinal adenocarcinoma, reduced more than 50%. Heart disease risk is also reduced 50%. And even though 11 monkey ad libitum or eating, as usual, suffered diabetes and five signs prediabetes, controlling blood sugar looked healthy in all the calories intake restricted monkeys. For the monkeys, diabetes does not become the issue.
Overall, only 13% of the monkeys in the group who restricted calories die due to causes of aging in the past 20 years. In the ad libitum group, 37% of the number of dead or nearly three times the calories intake restricted groups.
In the research update at the University of Wisconsin in 2014, this percentage remains stable.
"We have proved that aging can be manipulated in primates," said Anderson.
"It's like a cover-up because of the obvious, but conceptually this question so important that aging is a reasonable target for clinical intervention and medical care."
In other words, if aging can be delayed, then all diseases related to aging will follow suit.
"Handle a disease once in a while will not prolong the life of a person significantly because they'd died of other causes," he said of Anderson.
"If we cure all cancers, we will not offset the death due to heart disease, dementia, or abnormalities-abnormalities caused by diabetes. Conversely, if we overcome aging, we can compensate for it all at once. "
Reduce feeding monkeys certainly helped, but the restriction of caloric intake is much more difficult to do by humans in the real world. First, our access to high-calorie regular food now is easier than previous times. With the delivery companies such asDeliveroo and UberEats, we no longer need to walk to the restaurant. Second, the increased weight of the usual thing is for some people.
"There is a genetic component to all of this and for some people, it's harder to keep the body slimmer than the others," explains Anderson.
Ideally, the amount and type of food we eat should be adjusted with whom we – like our genetic predisposition to gain weight, how our metabolism with sugar, how do we store fat and other psychological schools that are beyond the scope of scientific instruction at this time and may also be good.
But the trend of overweight can be used as a guide for the selection of life and not as an inevitability. "Personally I have a history of obesity within the family, and I did the calorie restricted and flexible shape," says Susan Roberts, a diet expert at Tufts University in Boston.
"I maintain a body mass index (BMI) at 22, and I have calculated that to sustain the conditions that I must eat 80% of my usual consumption if my BMI 30, as well as the other members of my family."
Stressed by Roberts that it is not difficult: he followed his own weight management program by using a tool called iDiet to help him reduce the portion packed but avoid hunger or avoids pleasure. If that's not possible, he added, he would not be running the calorie restricted.
Roberts not only witness directly the issue of obesity in her family, she is also more familiar than calorie restricted will benefit most people. For more than 10 years, he led a team of scientists in the experiment Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy, which is also known as Valerie.
Metabolism
In that program. for two years, a total of 218 men and women aged between 21 and50 healthy years is divided into two parts. In the first group, they were allowed to eat as usual, while the second group decrease eating up 20%. Both groups undergo medical examinations every six months.
In contrast to research on Rhesus monkeys, examination for more than two years cannot determine whether the reduction in calories reduce or delay the diseases associated with aging. The time is not sufficient to measure it.
But the Calorie trial testing the next best thing: the biological signs early for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
In the blood of people who undergo the restriction of calories, cholesterol ratio between ' good ' and ' evil ' cholesterol increases, while molecules that are associated with the formation of tumor-called tumor necrosis factor-reduced 25%, and the rate of insulin resistance is clear signs of the presence of diabetes – dropped by almost 40% compared to people who consumed a diet of normal. Overall lower blood pressure.
Indeed, some of the positive things that might be due to the reduced weight. Trials conducted Valerie covers people who are fat and those who have a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or less than that figure, and reduce the weight of course increase the welfare of participants that more fat.
"One thing is very clear for a long time is overweight is not good for us," stated Roberts.
Was added by various diseases and disorders that were previously believed to be associated with aging, it now appears among the inhabitants of the fat.
But the latest results show that significant health benefits can be plucked from an already healthy body – i.e. people who aren't underweight or obese. That person has a BMI between 18.5 to 25.
Behind the results of it, evidence of further trials is necessary before a person who had a healthy BMI recommended to reduce your calorie intake.
In the meantime, scientists hope that Rhesus monkeys can help us understand exactly why calorie restriction might have had such impacts.
Supported data collected during almost 30 years of death and life, and tissue and blood samples, from nearly 200 monkeys, research at the NIA and the University of Wisconsin are aimed at searching for bright spots about the restriction of calories as well as looking know how it postpones aging.
With food reduced, whether forced more efficient metabolism? Is there a general molecular regulator of aging button enabled (or switched off) with fewer calories? Or is there a mechanism that is not yet known who lives or the demise of Scotch?
The answers to those questions may still be far from reality.
"If I clone myself 10 times and we are all working hard, I think we still can not break it," said Anderson.
"The biology is very complicated," he added. Efforts need to be done to understand how calorie restriction work and other treatments can be used to get lost a special part of our biology. Aging can be handled directly without the need to restrict calories.
"And I think it is the real golden ticket," says Anderson.
Although a neat explanation of the deficiencies, the restriction of calories is one fixed way promises to improve health and health care how long endure in our lives.
"There's not anything we see makes us think that the restriction of calories is not good for people," said Roberts of the Valerie study.
And in contrast to drug-based treatment, restriction of calories does not cause a variety of side effects.
"Our people (participants) did not feel more hungry, good moods, his sexual function well. We strive to find the bad things and not find it, "said Roberts.
One problem that occurred was little reduction in bone density that is usually associated with weight loss, says Roberts. But as a keep-keep, the volunteers were given an extra supplement in small quantities during the trial period.
Even with promising results like that, "Valerie trial is the first research on this issue, and I think none of us feel assured, ' we would recommend it to everyone in the world," says Roberts.
"But this really is an interesting prospect. I think delaying the emergence of chronic diseases is something that can be supported by everyone and get people interested because nobody wants to go through life with one of these diseases. "