Pass the salt

[prog]

From rserocki: Biologists are making progress in isolating why calorie restriction extends animals' lifespans. This is encouraging news.

I thank the CR community for helping to keep life extension in the headlines, making news like this more visible, but their implementation is not one for most people. (Understatement.) My interest in CR stops at being mindful to avoid eating when I'm not actually hungry - which is good, but it isn't even scratching the surface of what its real practitioners do. (Which is, basically, to avoid eating when they are actually hungry.) I admire and support their commitment, and I am sure they're right about all the side benefits of their koo-koo diet (such as out-of-whack hormone generation giving them a feeling of continual elation), but still I think I'll hold out for the pill version.

Comments

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I saw an article a while back in - Science News, maybe? - some publication that said one group studying this effect in mice (or flies?) had discovered that it wasn't the restriction of calories that was actually affecting their critters, it was whether the critters were -smelling- food.

But I don't know if that holds true for nematodes.

[jadelennox]

I am sure they're right about all the side benefits of their koo-koo diet

Really? You are? Why?

Look, over the years, only *one* thing has seemed to be repeatedly true when studied longitudinally: eat a wide variety of foods, preferably some in a form not so far distinguished from how they came out of the ground, and get enough exercise and sleep. Also, everything causes cancer, probably even exercise and sleep. Even "drink lots of water" has come under fire in recent years.

Do what makes you feel healthy. Everything else will be disproved in 10 years, anyway.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I tried to express that in a semi-patronizing way, hence the parenthetical.

What I really meant is that I support them in doing what they like with their bodies and share their confusion at the many people hurling venom at them. But really that's all off-topic.

You core notion of a varied diet, decent exercise and good sleep is quite correct! And I get what you're saying about the "LOOKING AT PURPLE THINGS LINKED WITH HANGNAIL" headlines that will always be with us, but there's a baby in that bathwater. I am not interested in being happy with my lot.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I support their commitment without admiring it. I figure they'll give us some interesting data in a few decades that will tell us something about how humans are adapted to live our already unusually-long lives. It seems to me to be far too much of a long-shot to be a good judgement, but hey, if they want to be human guinea pigs, I say 'Go for it!'. Someone has to take the crazy chances, and either way they will probably teach us something.

It's also worth noting that the gene that's being studied in worms is not truly homologous with the similar gene in humans, so YPMV (your proteins may vary).

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I recently read somewhere (alumni magazine, maybe) about somebody who is looking at tanning, melanin and skin cancer. He points out that recent studies show sunblock doesn't reduce the rate of malignant melanoma, though it does help with basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinoma. He thinks there has to be a better way.

He's looking into the signal that causes skin cells to produce melanin--it apparently does not require the actual melanin-producing cells to be exposed to DNA-damaging UV light directly, contrary to previous thought. He's got a cream which, when put on mice, causes them to develop natural tans.

If/when this stuff is approved for use on humans, it's going to make somebody a trillion quadrillion dollars, and white people will all look different.

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

you dodge the question everytime, but can we talk about your scary man face?

[prog.livejournal.com]

What icon would you rather I use?

[doctor-atomic.livejournal.com]

OMG that is so much better. I'm really getting sick of the scary man.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Cripes it's a general revolt. OK.

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

She's cute, is she single?