I ran across an interesting documentary on PBS recently Eat, Fast and Live Longer with Michael Mosley (watch is soon, free on-line video until 5/10). In a nutshell British journalist Michael Mosley goes about speaking with established researchers at US universities about the benefits of caloric restricted diets and how they can improve overall health and longevity.
One of the key findings in both animal and human studies appears to be that fasting has an impact on hg1 growth hormone. That is when the body is deprived of nutrition for a day or more the body shifts its output of growth hormone and moves to a more self sufficient and self repairing state, in a sense reducing aging and aging related illnesses.
The challenge of course is maintaining a fasting regime beyond the study period. In a culture where fast food and easy access to calories is all around us, voluntarily reduce consumption is a tricky task.
This is not the first program to discuss the benefits of reduced calorie diets, there have been several recent books and programs on this theme including the China Study and Forks over Knives.
The overarching idea that these books and shows make, is that by seriously changing our dietary lifestyle we can have profound effects on our health and longevity. And instinctively it makes sense, looking at our closest animal relative apes and chimpanzees , we see that only when faced with starvation will they consider eating meat, their natural diet is of a vegetarian variety…