United States – Various studies have found that restricting calories can help people live a long life, but a new study suggests that this diet plays a more complex role in the aging process.
“There are many reasons why calorie restriction may extend lifespan, and the topic is still being studied,” Waylon Hastings, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher, said in a statement. “One of the fundamental mechanisms by which life is extended relates to cell metabolism.”
Researchers at Penn State followed a group of people on a restricted-calorie diet for two years and noticed that at first, their aging process actually seemed to accelerate. But following the first year, this process slowed down.
Specifically, the researchers looked at telomere length as their measure. Telomeres are repetitive sequences of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes. Chromosomes are the structures inside our cells that contain our genetic information.
Hastings explained to Newsweek: “When energy is consumed within the cell, the waste generated by this process causes oxidative stress that can damage DNA and lead to cell destruction. “When a person’s cells use less energy due to calorie restriction, there is less waste, and the cell does not break down as quickly.”
To renew cells, the DNA must be copied into newer cells. Each strand of woven DNA is covered by what is called a telomere, and every time the DNA replicates to produce new cells, those telomeres become shorter.
Researchers use telomere length to measure biological age. Chronological age, stress and illness can affect telomere length and shorten it more rapidly. But these researchers now believe that the relationship with diet is a bit more complex.
In this study, researchers compared the data of people who followed a calorie-restricted diet with the data of those who did not follow a calorie-restricted diet. After one year, they saw something surprising: telomere length was shrinking faster than the control group. In other words, calorie restriction appears to “accelerate” aging at the cellular level initially. But during the second year things changed.
“We hypothesized that telomere loss would be slower among people who restrict calories,” Idan Shalev, an assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State, who has conducted research in this area for years, said in a statement. “Instead, we found that those who restricted calories lost telomeres more quickly at first and then more slowly following their weight stabilized.”
Shalev added that the results raised many questions. For example, two years may not be enough time to know if the diet actually slows aging. In other words, more research may be needed to definitively say that reducing calories will lead to a longer life.
Source: New York Post
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2024-04-25 17:24:47