Calorie Restriction Cleans Cells (Thursday August 23 2007)

An interesting pitch for the latest research on autophagy and calorie restriction from EurekAlert!: “Cutting calories helps rodents live longer by boosting cells’ ability to recycle damaged parts so they can maintain efficient energy production. … Caloric restriction is a way to extend life in animals. If you give them less food, the stress of this healthy habit actually makes them live longer … How does it work? During the aging process, free radicals - highly reactive byproducts of our cells’ respiration - wreak havoc on our cellular machinery. … younger cells are adept at reducing, recycling and rebuilding. In this process, damaged mitochondria are quickly swallowed up and degraded. The broken down pieces are then recycled and used to build new mitochondria. However, older cells are less adept at this process, so damaged mitochondria tend to accumulate and contribute to aging. … The stress of a low-calorie diet was enough to boost cellular cleaning in the hearts of older rats by 120 percent over levels seen in rats that were allowed to eat what they wanted.”

Here is the link to original article, which I haven’t read but I fell upon this excerpt while perusing the net for information about fasting.  In about a half hour i’ll be approaching the end of one of my first 24 hour fasts.  I stopped eating at 5 yesterday.  Took class in the morning with a cup of coffee.  I felt a little jittery but once my heart rate was up by the end of class my energy level was sky high.  The first time I ever fasted was when I was in Highschool and some of my friends were fasting for a religious purpose and so I thought i’d try it out, simply for the sake of trying it.  First of all during the entire day I was fasting I didnt do much except hang out on the computer, and whenever I stood up I got extremely light headed and dizzy.  However by the end of the fast I found I had lost my appetite completely and didn’t even feel hungry.  I’m not quite sure why this was but it was fascinating.  It’s safe to say I’m healthier now than I was when I was a sophomore in highschool dancing and playing soccer everyday, especially if I can take a class with no food in my stomach (just fyi the lightheadedness stemmed from the fact that my body was dependent on ingesting carbs every few hours for my entire life) and not ever experience lightheadedness but in fact more energy.  I’ve read other articles and testimonies where episodic deprivation of food to your body will help fat loss, if anyone is interested.  I’m fasting mainly for the purpose of the quote mentioned above.  I’m not eating less though because at the end of the fast I plan on eating all of the food I didn’t eat during the day, or at least some of it, depending on how I feel.

Oh and the processes they are measuring in rats also happens in humans….