"J666" <jeaanon@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C41E300F0000AFB2F0488530@news-server.rgv.rr.com...

   Andy knows what he is talking about. It's the psychological orientation
needed to be able to adhere to a minimal, i.e. starvation level, but well
balanced diet without giving up. It's based on experiments like the below.
   You, however have yet to come across with some data to support your
position. That's why no one's listening to you.

Pastor Frank

Drastic diet may extend human life, study finds
Nov. 15, 2007 Special to World Science

   Eating little may help people live longer, a study has found, of­fer­ing
sup­port for an idea that has tan­ta­lized sci­en­tists for dec­ades.
   Re­search­ers have long known that cut­ting an­i­mals' food supply to
near-starva­t­ion lev­els gives them-for rea­sons still un­clear-long­er
lives and health­i­er old age. Stud­ies have found that in hu­mans, too,
sharply re­duced eat­ing is as­so­ci­at­ed with health­i­er ag­ing, as long
as nu­tri­tion­al ba­lance is main­tained.
   But wheth­er this prac­tice could ac­tu­ally length­en our lives has
re­mained un­cer­tain.
   Some sci­en­tists have ar­gued that it's doubt­ful, be­cause hu­mans
al­ready live un­usu­ally long. Only one small past study in hu­mans
of­fered weak ev­i­dence that peo­ple eat­ing less lived long­er,
ac­cord­ing to its au­thors, who were al­so in­volved in the new re­search.
   The new study is the first to probe the claim by com­par­ing hu­man
popula­t­ions, wrote the Amer­i­can and Jap­a­nese sci­en­tists in a re­port
on their find­ings.
   More­o­ver, they added, it's "the first study that has shown ex­tend­ed
av­er­age and max­i­mum life span in a hu­man popula­t­ion that is
po­ten­tially due to" re­duced eat­ing. The prac­tice is known as ca­lor­ic
re­stric­tion.
   The re­search­ers stud­ied res­i­dents of the Jap­a­nese is­land of
Ok­i­nawa, known through much of the last cent­ury both for ex­cep­tion­ally
long-lived in­hab­i­tants and for very spare, though bal­anced di­et­s. The
in­vest­i­gat­ors said they found ev­i­dence that the two things are at
least par­tially re­lat­ed.
   Al­though that con­clu­sion might seem ob­vi­ous to some-given the past
re­search-the sci­en­tists wrote that to reach it, they had to ac­count for
some fac­tors that had ham­pered sys­tem­at­ic anal­y­sis. For one,
Oki­na­wan di­ets have changed, be­com­ing richer since about the end of the
1960s. Al­so, it was­n't clear how to best as­sess his­tor­i­cal di­e­tary
in­take and com­pare it to that of oth­er popula­t­ions.
   The find­ings, by Brad­ley Will­cox of the Pa­cif­ic Health Re­search
In­sti­tute and John A. Burns School of Med­i­cine in Hon­o­lu­lu and
col­leagues, ap­pear in the No­vem­ber is­sue of the re­search jour­nal
An­nals of the New York Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.
   An­i­mal tests have found that the ex­treme di­et­ing of ca­lor­ic
re­stric­tion en­tails cut­ting some 40 per­cent of calo­ries to get the
strongest life-extending ef­fects. An­i­mals placed on such reg­i­mens live
up to 40 per­cent long­er than nor­mal, as long as the di­et re­mains
nu­tri­tionally bal­anced. (Some sci­en­tists pro­pose-a­gain based mostly
on an­i­mal test­s-that tak­ing a sub­stance called res­ver­a­trol may
rep­li­ca­te ca­lor­ic re­stric­tion's ben­e­fits, with­out the
un­pleas­ant­ness.)
   Will­cox and col­leagues found that at least from the mid-20th cen­tu­ry
through the 1960s, the Oki­na­wan di­et was about 11 per­cent short of what
would nor­mally be rec­om­mended to main­tain body weight. As of 1995, the
av­er­age Oki­na­wan lived about five years long­er than the av­er­age
Amer­i­can, and about 18 months more than the av­er­age Jap­a­nese.
   The is­landers' spar­tan di­ets may have been a leg­a­cy of "pe­ri­odic
crop fail­ures that oc­curred in Oki­na­wa in the early 20th cen­tu­ry and a
long his­to­ry of mar­gin­al food sup­ply," the re­search­ers wrote.
   The study had some weak­nesses, they added; for in­stance, it could­n't
rule out that Oki­na­wans lived long­er be­cause of the types of nu­tri­ents
they ate, rath­er than the amount. None­the­less, the "ten­ta­tive"
find­ings fit with a broad ar­ray of an­i­mal stud­ies, and point to a need
for still more re­search, Will­cox and col­leagues wrote.