Little and on time
Eating on schedule, coupled with a low-calorie diet, increased life expectancy
Maria Azarova, Naked Science
According to the researchers, such a diet scheme may not accelerate the loss of extra pounds (although, most likely, it will affect weight loss), but it will bring health benefits and eventually prolong life.
A new study by scientists from the Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Animal Resource Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (USA) has shown that a low-calorie diet combined with eating exclusively at certain hours contributes to longevity in mice. The results of the work are published in the journal Science (Acosta-Rodríguez et al., Circadian alignment of early onset caloric restriction promotes longevity in male C57BL/6J mice).
The authors of many previous studies have concluded that calorie restriction increases the life expectancy of animals — worms, flies, rodents and monkeys. And when people consumed 15 percent fewer calories than usual, this affected what happens to the body during sleep: in the second year, those who ate less high-calorie food, scientists observed a sharp slowdown in metabolic rate at night and a small but significant drop in body temperature at the same time of day. In addition, a blood test of such subjects showed that they had a 20% decrease in the process of cell damage as a result of oxidation — it is considered a key sign of aging.
Nevertheless, the mechanisms by which calorie restrictions prolong life remain poorly understood. It is all the more difficult to systematically investigate such nutrition strategies using the example of people: they cannot stay in the laboratory for years and limit themselves to strictly defined portions of food all their lives.
Therefore, the experimental subjects in the new study, which is a team of Japanese-American neuroscientist and geneticist Joseph S. Takahashi conducted for four years, the mice began again. The animals were in cages with automatic feeders, so it was easy to control their meals. Some rodents were allowed to eat as much as they wanted, while another group had their calorie intake restricted by 30 percent. At the same time, the subjects who were on a diet ate according to different schedules — including at night, when the mice are most active.
"We have shown that a 30 percent calorie restriction is enough to increase life expectancy by ten percent. Nevertheless, the daily fasting interval and the observance of circadian feeding rhythms, acting together, prolonged the life of male mice by 35 percent. These effects did not depend on body weight," the scientists write.
Rodents who received low-calorie food at night, only for two hours (hence, they starved for the remaining 22 hours), lived the longest. By combining such a diet with a schedule diet, it was possible to increase the average life expectancy of the subjects by nine months.
"Aging provokes a widespread increase in the expression of genes associated with inflammation and a decrease in the expression of genes encoding components of metabolic pathways in the liver. Feeding mice at night improved these aging-related changes. Thus, circadian interventions contribute to longevity and open up prospects for further study of the mechanisms of aging," the authors of the study noted.
Time—limited nutrition — interval or intermittent fasting, popular today, according to a certain scheme - may not lead to a decrease in body weight, but positively affect the overall condition of the body. Of course, scientists do not suggest that people eat at night: in our case, meals would be limited to daytime hours.
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