Will Serious CR Beat a Healthy, Obesity-Avoiding Diet & Lifestyle?

[Dean Pomerleau]

Jim,

Your positive personal results are entirely consistent with the science. Adopting a WFPB diet and dropping your BMI to ~21 has dramatically improved your chances of a long and health life relative to your previous diet and body weight. The upshot of the science suggests you'll probably only get marginal additional gains by pushing lower, especially at your age.

Best of luck!

--Dean

[Jim Pearce]

I agree!

[Jim Pearce]

Thank you! For all you've done here!

[Jim Pearce]

Dean, do you know how the average lifespan of the junk food eating CR monkeys compared to the lifespan of the monkeys eating healthy food and not allowed to become obese?

[Dean Pomerleau]

Jim,

Here is a good video comparing the study design and results of the NIA and Wisconsin primate CR studies by researchers from the two organizations, which I hadn't seen before today:

Here is a screen capture showing the mortality curves of the male monkeys from the NIA (top and bottom rows) and UW (middle row). The CR monkeys are in red and the control monkeys are in blue:

If you look in the right hand column (all-cause mortality) and the bottom two rows (UW males vs NIA older-onset males) you can see both the controls and the CR monkeys from NIA had significantly longer median and maximum lifespan than did the CR (or control) male monkeys at UW. The older-onset CR males from NIA didn't appear to live significant longer than NIA old-onset control males, and even in the UW males, the CR monkeys didn't have impressively much longer lifespan relative to controls when looked at from an all-cause mortality perspective.

Interestingly, they did a study where they fed rats with the exact diets given to the monkeys at NIA and UW, in iso-caloric amounts. The rats fed the (crappy) UW diet got much fatter and had worse insulin sensitivity than the rats fed the exact same calories of the NIA diet:

This suggests to me that the high refined sugars and fats in the UW diet was likely pretty toxic, so by eating less of it, the CR monkeys lived longer than controls. When the toxicity of the diet wasn't a factor (i.e. in the NIA study), eating less of the diet didn't give much benefit compared with eating just enough of the (healthier) diet to avoid obesity.

Not surprisingly, you can see from these graphs: 

that the NIA monkeys did indeed weigh less at several time points during the study than the (scrappy-diet eating) UW males. The graph on the right shows that the NIA monkeys weighed 10% less than the average rhesus monkey in captivity and the UW monkeys weighed 10% more than the average rhesus monkey in captivity.

--Dean

[Jim Pearce]

Thanks, Dean! I thought that would be the case but I was curious.

[Jim Pearce]

I have one more thought. Before people assume these studies should just give them a reason to throw away everything they believe and have been doing, consider this.

I'm never going to do severe/hard-core CR, so I'm not advocating for that.

But if many (most?) of the normies surrounding us can be equated to the crap eating control monkeys because they gorge themselves until they're the hippos I see everywhere I look in Walmart...some riding in the little scooters simply because they're too fat to walk..

...then we should enjoy the same lifespan advantage over them that the CR crap eating monkeys had over the ad libitum crap eating control monkeys..and that should be true even without optimum nutrition, not that I'm going to give up the extra advantage my wfpb lifestyle gives me.

The crap eating CR monkeys outlived the crap eating ad libitum monkeys. 

One could argue, well, those monkeys had the best medical care. Not only do most people have just as good medical care, but those practicing optimal nutrition aren't bound to need much medical care for the most part. 

That's why CR is being dropped too hastily. 

And like I said, we have no idea what our true potential lifespan might be. Jean Calment smoked for 97 years. She's just one incredible anomaly.

 

[Gordo]

15 hours ago, Jim Pearce said:

we have no idea what our true potential lifespan might be. Jean Calment smoked for 97 years. She's just one incredible anomaly.

 

I disagree, we have a pretty solid idea that outside of new technology that may come along in the future, the current natural limit to human lifespan is about 120 years (which is oddly mentioned in an ancient book many people revere, haha). 

[Jim Pearce]

We have knowledge we never had before. We'll push beyond 120 easily. Sure, there have been vegans and vegetarians in the past. But they didn't know about AGE's, how breaded/fried foods can cause health problems, and so much more.

Maybe I won't reach 120. But I'll live to see someone reach 125 or 130 and possibly do it without being nearly blind and deaf like Jean Calment was by the time she was 122.

 

[Dean Pomerleau]

Quote

We have knowledge we never had before. We'll push beyond 120 easily. Sure, there have been vegans and vegetarians in the past. But they didn't know about AGE's, how breaded/fried foods can cause health problems, and so much more

I envy your optimism Jim, but sadly diet/lifestyle improvements like avoiding fried foods aren't going to get you or anyone else (except perhaps one in a billion people) to live to 120, let alone 125-130.

From the recent Olshanky paper in Nature Aging:

Our analysis suggests that survival to age 100 years is unlikely to exceed 15% for females and 5% for males, altogether suggesting that, unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, radical human life extension is implausible in this century.

Studies [1][2] have observed that between 100 and 110, a person's risk of dying is around 50% per year. Past 110, it rises to ~70% per year.

If 5% of men eventually live to 100, that means one man out of 20 will become a centenarian. What is the likelihood one of those will live to 110? The answer is 0.5^10, or one in 1024. And the likelihood of one of those living to 120? The answer is 0.3^10, or one in ~170,000. Putting those three low probabilities together, the likelihood of a random man living to 120 is one in 20 * 1024 * 170,000 = one in ~3.5 billion, which coincidently is almost exactly how many men there are on the planet today.

The only way anyone is going to live past 120 is if we figure out and fix the underlying causes of aging.

--Dean

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12627

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8279393/

 

[Jim Pearce]

I won't stop hoping that all these statistics drawing from the massive pool of "normal" people will not apply to people who don't aspire to be "normal."

It's like Dr Greger says regarding heart disease/stroke/heart attacks.

It's "normal" to die of a heart attack in a society where total cholesterol of 200 and up is considered "normal."

10 years ago I was scared of my searing chest pains 24/7 that I had even sitting and watching TV or reading.

I'm about to go out the door now for another hike up the mountain. Much of the next hour a half my heart rate will be over 140. I never have chest pains anymore.

 

[Jim Pearce]

60 became the new 40. 70 became the new 50. Now people are hitting their 80's despite poor lifestyles. 

We will see 100 become the new 80.

[Jim Pearce]

What did all those statistics say 40 years ago? Think about it.

[Jim Pearce]

I'm heading up the road now. Wish it was still hot out. I love the heat.

[Jim Pearce]

Useful tip for people who like to sweat.

Buy Always Discreet pads to put across your forehead under your headband or bandanna!

I like the moderate ones best.

[Jim Pearce]

1 hour ago, Jim Pearce said:

"What did all those statistics say 40 years ago? Think about it."

 

I wonder how long ago those statistics would have been the same for someone's chances of making it to 90. And how long ago they would have been the same for someone's chances of making it to 80.

I believe our statistics will be different than a broad based set of stats that includes generations of people who loved their biscuits & gravy in the morning. 

And even they're living longer.

Their statistics won't be our statistics. 

[Dean Pomerleau]

Jim,

24 minutes ago, Jim Pearce said:

I wonder how long ago those statistics would have been the same for someone's chances of making it to 90. And how long ago they would have been the same for someone's chances of making it to 80.

Please read the Olshanky paper linked to above. It's entire topics was how lifespan gains have been asymptoting over the last few decades in developed countries.

You can pretend that moderate CR and a healthy WFPB diet will greatly extend lifespan over the slobs who eat a standard American diet. But people like the Seventh Day Adventists who have a healthy diet and lifestyle live to ~90, not 110 or 120. See this post and references therein:

 

[Jim Pearce]

I'll read it! Don't think I only want to read stuff that reinforces things I want to believe.

But...you're killin' me! (Lol)

[Jim Pearce]

"You can pretend that moderate CR and a healthy WFPB diet will greatly extend lifespan over the slobs who eat a standard American diet."

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not pretending so much as reading everything i can and hoping to be one of the lucky few and doing everything I can to avoid anything killing me sooner that I could have prevented. 

I have reasonably good odds given that my mom is 83, looks 50, and is very physically active and my grandma would have easily made it past 89 if not for stomach cancer. And neither one of those two were actively trying to maximize their healthspan. I'll be very surprised if my mom doesn't make it to 90.

I know little about my father's side. He died at 53 but my mom says his folks lived to be pretty old. 

[Jim Pearce]

"You can pretend that moderate CR and a healthy WFPB diet will greatly extend lifespan over the slobs who eat a standard American diet."

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not pretending so much as reading everything i can and hoping to be one of the lucky few and doing everything I can to avoid anything killing me sooner that I could have prevented. 

I have reasonably good odds given that my mom is 83, looks 50, and is very physically active and my grandma would have easily made it past 89 if not for stomach cancer. And neither one of those two were actively trying to maximize their healthspan. I'll be very surprised if my mom doesn't make it to 90.

I know little about my father's side. He died at 53 but my mom says his folks lived to be pretty old. 

[Jim Pearce]

Wow. That wasn't any fun at all. I can't understand a lot of the math but I don't have to.

So what are we doing here? Is it just about maximizing our healthspan now?

That's acceptable too. I still doubt I'm going anywhere for another 10 or 15 years. Maybe being more alive in the time we have left is the best we can do.

Bummer, huh? 

But there's a lot of money being spent. Wonder if it will do us any good?

Edited October 15 by Jim Pearce

[Dean Pomerleau]

9 hours ago, Jim Pearce said:

So what are we doing here? Is it just about maximizing our healthspan now?

Pretty much. That and the hope we'll remain healthy enough to take advantage of real life-extension interventions when they might one day become available. 

[Jim Pearce]

I'm hoping for plausible rebuttals to Olshanski's paper. But yeah, I see and agree with your point about Adventists.

But I still think as a group, people following all the newest science and actively trying will live a good deal longer than the average people I see waddling around Walmart. 

Maybe as a most recent, newest subset, their lifestyle will give them a good chance to least live into their 90's.

That would still be a win.

Edited October 15 by Jim Pearce

[Jim Pearce]

Should the Calorie restriction society change its name since the fundamental beliefs of so many members have changed?

Edited October 15 by Jim Pearce

[Jim Pearce]

At least for last night, reading that was not good for me. After reading that, I pigged out.

I didn't eat junk, but I definitely pigged out. 

Wish I hadn't done that...