Nobody is denying that CRon has shown promising evidence being able to extend maximum human lifespan Whoa. But your own photo and this latest photo of these other CR induced sad distortions of human body composition are compelling evidence that it comes at a gruesome price. It wouldn't be quite so ridiculous if I.F wasn't an equally effective and MUCH more liveable alternative.

For heaven's sake, if you can't stop starving yourself to earn a few extra decades of emaciated life, you could at least stop rejoicing at every new breathtaking gem of C.R evidence gleaned from starving those poor laboratory animals. I for one find it offensive. In case you hadn't noticed
Whoa, this is a Low Carb forum. You can't even get your sunken cheeks around the evolutionary obvious that CR would work even better if it was also low carb. We evolved to eat low carb most of the time. Millions upon millions of years of inviolable evolutionary logic. This forum is compelling confirmation of my own personal experience that low carb opens up breathtaking health possibilities.

That the research community is still hidebound by the same post agricultural revolution 'healthy carb' mindset the human race has been stuck with for ten thousand years is a telling reminder about how limited the intellectual reach of our 'best and brightest' really is.

You claim to also be healthy. Your stats certainly are impressive. What most people here find so underwhelming is that you certainly don't look it.

So by all means keep the CR stuff coming. You're nothing if not a glutton for punishment. And I don't think I'm alone in this forum in being continually astonished that you don't seem to get it that we just don't think the body composition sacrifice you are making would be worth it, even if it WAS the only way to extend maximum human life. There even seems to be a pretty strong current of feeling here that extending maximum human life is a pretty sad obsession anyway. I personally think it's a great idea. But ONLY if you get to look like a well nourished human being while you're extending it. CRonies just look like they've got an eating disorder. Which to all intents and purposes, they have.

I'm sorry to be so blunt Whoa, but from Roy Walford on (and not forgetting those hapless Dutch WWII involuntary CR conscripts Nancy LC just mentioned) CRonies always look like death warmed up. That may not be so important to you. So be it.

I think you're going to be the first member of this forum who almost habitually has their threads moved to the War Zone for just being.... tiresome. It's kind of fun in a way. Oooh look Whoa's just posted some new CR evidence. But um, why does he think any of it's a good reason for actually doing CR? Thinking thinking.... Nope, you only get one life, and doing CR gives you a pretty miserable (long ) life. I wonder if I can explain that in a way he'll understand?
Here we go again.....

Usually those places with the highest birth rates also have much less longevity.

Would fasting on a regular basis (maybe one day out of seven) but otherwise eating a "normal" amount of food to sustain one's weight, give the same benefits of CR lifestyle ?

I can speak from my own experience on that issue since my dad and both of my parents-in-law were in Holland during WWII as well as 2 great aunts and several of my DH's relatives as well; they all suffered through starvation conditions for several years. It's true that most of them lived to be older than average but to the last person, none of them were healthy to the end; many had lingering health issues in the last 10 years of so of their lives or longer. My father is still alive at the age of 94, my FIL lived to 85 and my MIL lived to 83. My FIL developed diabetes, emphysema, high blood pressure and Alzheimers; cause of death: ruptured esophogeal varix. My MIL also had mild diabetes, high blood pressue and died from leukemia. My father is still alive, true, and is quite thin (130 pounds on a 5' 10" frame) but has so little muscle mass that he does not have the strength to walk more than a few steps alone. He gets around mostly in a wheelchair and is largely housebound; I visit him for more than an hour and he needs a nap. He has diverticulosis, mild cardiomegaly with congestive heart failure, kidney cysts and is quite deaf. He's slowly losing his eyesight due to macular degeneration. He has absolutely no resistance to sickness and even less strength with which to fight an illness because of his extreme thinness. He's still very much alert; enough so that he has expressed to me several times the sentiment that it's possible to live too long. Both of my father's sisters still live in Holland; they are older than average as well but they also have their health problems; one has a caretaker in her home and the other may need to go to a nursing home soon.

Neither of my parents, nor their siblings, were particularly healthy either at even a much less age. My Mom is a mere 86 (compared to your relatives) and has quite a lot of the health issues you listed above, COPD, heart valve, can barely walk, low oxygen, blood pressure issues, digestion problems, memory loss and had a much healthier than normal diet most of her life.

As I was looking around today the only thing I could find on the Dutch "Hunger Winter" were a lot of articles about the children that were conceived/born during that period, but I couldn't get to the full text and the abstracts weren't quite enough info to see if that was what I was looking for. Its been too many years since I read about it to remember what the details were.

There's some evidence that Intermittent Fasting might. But it seems kind of sketchy still. Some of us are doing 24 hour fasts every other day, which is just skipping 2 meals every other day. Not terribly hard to do. Doesn't necessarily lead to weight loss, depending on how much you eat. I'm doing it to try to help manage an autoimmune disease, hard to say if it is working yet.

Thank you Nancy for replying to my post, I will look further into Intermittent fasting.

I enjoyed reading the article - I found it very interesting. But if that is an accurate depiction of CR, then it would be completely undoable for me. Eating only one meal a day? Counting exactly 1917 (or whatever would be right for a female) calories everyday? Becoming so hungry that you lick the plate clean in front of guests? It sounds awful. I wonder though, if indeed there are benefits to be had from CR, would they occur on a sliding scale? What if someone just moderates their food intake slightly, say by eating 100 less calories everyday than they would have? Would they be healthier than they otherwise would be? Would they live measurably longer? Or do you only achieve any health benefits when you go below a set caloric point?

Michael and April eat three meals a day... I personally eat around 2 large meals and lots of snacks throughout the day, so I never let myself get hungry. If I do get hungry then I eat, regardless of whether I go a little over my set calorie limit (that is what I believe is a healthy attitude towards CR).



I laughed out when I read this part! lol
I'm not sure many CRers do this, but you must also understand that a lot of the fat from olive oil or whatever you are using tends to stick to the plate.



Yes they do, similar benefits was found recently on a group of people doing CR at a level of 2100k/cal a day and they eat 25% fewer calories than the controls who ate 2800k/cal. They observed less inflammation, less DNA damage, lower body temperature, lower insulin, lower glucose and all the hallmarks of CR.



Yes of course. Whats so amazing is that calories, indepedant of where it comes from seems to have huge implications. So no one has to go a semi-starvation diet, noway would I recommend even my family or friends do that... because I know that what I am dong is experimental. So what I tend to say to my friends is eat healthy but don't over eat... even if you can... don't. Because being slim doesn't have much to do with the benefits of CR. An example is that fat CR'd mice (yes they still stay fat) outlive naturally skinny mice that are not CR'd.



lowering intake of calories by 200-300 from a 2500k/cal diet could induce some benefits, but I don't know to what extent. The japanse eat fewer calories than americans and are the longest lived (but they don't starve themselves), then okinawa eat fewer calories than the rest of japan and live longer still...



I reckon that the average human has the potential to live to their late 80's without any CR at all. Its about living right, not being stressed all the time and avoiding bad things that ruin your health. We know that obesity avoidance has measurable effects, and a very mild CR is what that would be... 8% CR showed changes in rodents. An average male without exercising needs around 2500 calories to maintain a healthy weight, that would be just reducing to 2300 k/cal a day... (that is NOT starvation).



Its a sliding scale up until total starvation, but it gets more risky the lower you go because maximum life span could be increased, but there could be a lot of early deaths for those who don't adapt that well.

Hello Lisa.

When doing experimental work for CR there is a condition that always has to be followed and that is the adult mice CANNOT be put on a starvation diet right away. If the CR is abrupt they will suffer more disease and only few make it to a long life. The rodents to tend to live longer than average but hardly any break any records in max lifespan. So aging wasn't slowed down.

CR related changes in rodents also revert back to normal within a couple weeks of going back to ad lib. Meaning they have the same disease risk as ad lib, even though they were CR'd for a while. CR gene expression changes can take upto a year or longer to take place, and around 2 weeks to revert back... sucks eh?

Good post from Michael that I forwarded in the discussion on IF
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showpost...7&postcount=638

Enjoy



I believe that CR / Low carb will have more benefits than CR / High carb

I've read that over and over about you can't start CR too quickly - but I've always wondered, so I'll ask it now: What if you've been on more than one 'diet' in your life and lost weight too quickly THEN, have you already set yourself up for some kind of doom? If not, why would going on CR at, say, 22 years old FAST and then staying on it for life cause any long-term problems? If that makes any sense?

In other words, a person 'crash diets' 3 times in her life, say at 22, 25 and 28. Then at 30, she decides to CRON - why would diving in too quickly harm her more than her 3 previous 'crash diets' long term? Or should she just forget about CRON because due to those 3 crash diets, she's already doomed to some sort of early demise?

Hey I really can't really get into it now beause im off out ( i just caught your post when I refreshed)

but what happens when they go on a 'crash diet' most adapt really bad, probably have an experience similar to wooo's as with a few CRONies that doen too extreme CR too quickly and had the same experience as her. Usually they end up metabollicaly screwed up, but a few live EXTREME LONG LONG LIVES.
The earlier in your life you go on the crash diet the better you can handle it without screwing up too much. Older people have to take a slow approach.

I have no idea, a few people who done CR feel they lost weight too fast... but there isn't really all that much you can do about it once its done. I know that in rodents, when they are CR'd for a long period then go ad lib, they have a permanent increase in IGF-1 (associated with increase risk of cancer). Rodents almost always die of cancer, so even if aging is still slowed down after many crash diet and then being CR'd, it doesn't matter if aging is slowed down if cancer gets you.

You can abruptly decrease a rodents calories if they are weaning without given them supplements of anything and they still live around 88% longer. I really can't answer your question with much confidence of what the effects of crash diet in humans, but in other animals its not good. Saying that... the studies done with CR and obese/overweight still showed the same beneficial changes and they obtained two important markers of longevity in humans (reduced body temperature and high insulin sensitivity)... So I don't know

Heres the study

Effect of 6-Month Calorie Restriction on Biomarkers of Longevity, Metabolic Adaptation, and Oxidative Stress in Overweight Individuals
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/295/13/1539