Eat Less to Live Longer

How eating less can boost multiple factors for health, and grow your brain

We often ask the question of what we should eat for brain health. But the answer may not be what we should eat, but simply that we should eat less – the benefits seem to be very large and will enable us to live longer. This has also been supported by studies in human beings.

A new rigorous study just published gives more evidence to the concept of caloric restriction as a way to increase longevity – dramatically.

But let’s go back to the beginnings – caloric restriction for longevity is not a new concept. And caloric restriction for losing weight even less so – the good old-fashioned diet. Let's, for a moment, ignore the concept of dieting and just focus on increasing lifespans – but also, I’m sure you are also interested, what it does to your brain.

The first reports came out that reducing the calories that mice would normally need for daily living, massively increased their lifespan. This by up to 50%! That is one heck of a jump in lifespan. This also sounds illogical, after all we certainly know that starvation is a very bad thing. So, this appears to be a bit of a conundrum.

On one hand we know that we need a certain amount of energy for our body to live and regenerate, we know that starvation is bad and obviously, as we tragically see all too often in the news, deadly. On the other hand, it seems that reducing calories of mice in controlled experiments (by up to 35%) can lead to them living dramatically longer.

The first experiments came out in 1986 specifically by Weindruch et al. In this experiment they split mice into 6 different experimental groups, and they ranged from no calorie reduction to various forms of restriction going up to 65% restriction! Of note is that this food was carefully balanced to avoid malnutrition – so making sure that the mice got enough balance in protein, carbohydrate, and fats but also of micronutrients such as vitamins. In this particular experiment those mice that had the most severe calorie restriction also had the longest lives.

What they also saw, and also contributed to the long age, was better tumour patterns i.e. less cancer and higher T-lymphocyte proliferation i.e. better immune system. They ascribed this to more efficient metabolism which this caloric restriction stimulates.

Over the years multiple other studies have followed and with this also arose the concept of intermittent fasting, which had a bit of a fad a number of years go with a different methods becoming well-publicised and also researched: two notable ones are the 5:2 method, with five days of normal eating and 2 days of fasting, and the day on and day off method, with a day eating normally and a day eating only 500 calories.

The question though is: does this apply to other mammals and especially humans - not just mice in laboratories?