Longevity researcher lives low carb

[Turtle2003]

Finding the Fountain of Youth
Where will UCSF biochemist Cynthia Kenyon's age-bending experiments with worms lead us?
- David Ewing Duncan
Sunday, May 29, 2005


Cynthia Kenyon wants to live to be 150 years old, if she's young and engaged in life. "Who wouldn't?" she asks in a breathless whisper, telling me that humans might be able to live a very long time, if not forever.

Kenyon's long, angular face is framed by straight blond hair parted in the middle. She talks excitedly, waving long, graceful fingers as her words spill out almost too fast to follow about how her lab at the University of California at San Francisco has increased the life span of tiny worms called Caenorhabditis elegans up to six times their normal life span by suppressing a single gene. This regulator gene, she tells me, in combination with other genes, appears to control an entire symphony of genes that direct aging not only in worms, but in similar genetic pathways in flies, mice and, possibly, humans.

This is the equivalent of people living for 400 years, she says, adding that there is more good news coming from her millimeter-long lab animal of choice. Our worms stay young for most of these extended life spans, she says.

"You mean this is a Fountain of Youth gene?"

She nods, delighted that I have made this connection. Kenyon talks with the slightly exaggerated facial expressions of someone telling and receiving juicy gossip -- expressions of "Oh my gosh!" and "No way!" Her voice is soft and light, and she frequently says "cool" and "neat." Yet her enthusiasm is infectious. "Life's too short to not be around nice people," she says, this woman who is delving into the mechanisms of how to make life considerably less short.

As we talk -- and she talks very quickly, as if she won't have time to say everything she wants even if she lives for 400 -- she offers me peanuts. I take a couple of nuts as Kenyon instantly shifts the topic -- she does that often -- and explains to me that she has totally changed her diet, eliminating most sugars, including those found in processed flour. Hence the peanuts. An experiment with her tiny worms is responsible, she says; that experiment proved that sugar switches on a genetic sequence that increases the amount of insulin produced by an organism, which in turn causes the body to demand more sugar. This not only adds flab to the waistline, if worms had a waistline, but also increases damage to cells in the body, speeding up the slow degradation of cells that contributes to aging. "It was a revelation," Kenyon says. She also drinks red wine and green tea, which her lab and others have shown help repair cells and contribute to an increased life span.


For the rest of the article:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/29/CMGD8CH62P1.DTL&type=printable

[TBoneMitch]

Interesting.

Drs Kwasniewski, Ellis, Lutz (who is 94 by the way) and Rosedale, all basically said the same thing: high insulin levels accelerate, among other things, the aging process.

Recall that the «other clan» of longevity researchers, led by the late Roy Walford, espoused a low calorie very low fat near vegetarian diet.
Wonder what the results would be if one coupled low calorie with low carb?

[Dodger]

Recall that the «other clan» of longevity researchers, led by the late Roy Walford, espoused a low calorie very low fat near vegetarian diet.
Wonder what the results would be if one coupled low calorie with low carb?

By reducing calories when on low-fat, you have to reduce carbs as there is nothing else to eliminate. What those reseachers don't understand is that low-calorie is also lower-carbs.

[ItsTheWooo]

By reducing calories when on low-fat, you have to reduce carbs as there is nothing else to eliminate. What those reseachers don't understand is that low-calorie is also lower-carbs.

It can be, but not always.

For those who lose weight, low carb is also usually lower calorie (at least compared to their old diets) since their old diets made them so hungry. But rarely is it so low calorie that it is OBJECTIVELY low, compared to the normal-weight population eating normal diets anyway.

Most people will normalize intake to an adequate level on low carb, naturally, and I think that's good enough. If slowing down metabolism through continuous semi-starvation does have some longevity benefits, it's likely those are canceled out by the health deterioration that would result. If this deterioration of health didn't directly shorten lifespan, it would most certainly shorten quality of life. How does being cold all the time, having trouble breathing, feeling dizzy when standing, osteoporosis, hypoglycemia, and dealing with the physical/psychological stress of hunger for life sound? Not too good a trade for a couple more years (maybe).

Ideally if people just make an effort to avoid carbohydrate and eat natural unprocessed fats, and plenty of antioxidants (from sunlight, fresh air, fresh veggies and fruit in dark, rich colors) they would be doing all they could for their health. Eating low carb is good start but often not enough. Most people do low carb by eating bags of fried pork rinds, fried eggs, fried hamburgers with black char on them most days. That's certainly an improvement over others but more can be done. Charring meats to blackness isn't healthy, it creates tons of free radicals. Same thing goes for frying foods or eating cured/preserved/smoked meats. As least processedi s possible is the best, avoiding sugar/carbs is also best (since high sugar/carb is in effect processed as these foods are not natural and the result of "human ingenuity"... too smart for our own good). Not that people should get hung up on dietary purity or feel guilty for memorial day BBQ but they should know the sort of foods they should be eating most of the time are not these things either...

[PilotGal]

I really enjoyed the article.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to slow ageing down.