Eat less, live longer researchers believe

Press, 14 March 1984, Page 38

Eat less, live longer researchers believe

NZPA-Reuter San Antonio, Texas A team of medical researchers is studying whether people can live longer simply by eating less. “In terms of age-promot-ing, we probably eat too much,” Dr Edward Masoro, chairman of the physiology department at the University of Texas Health Science Centre in San Antonio, told Reuters in an interview. Dr Masoro, who has been conducting his research for nine years, said experiments with laboratory rats had shown that a 40 per cent reduction in food consumption slowed the onset of ageing and increased the life-span up to 50 per cent. The results could not be applied directly to humans as the rats were tested under special laboratory conditions, he said, but a similar food reduction might lengthen the life expectancy of humans. He dismissed as nonsense, however, reports that

people might be able to live to 140 through better nutrition. “We could have a lot more people living to be 100 or 110,” Dr Masoro said, though he pointed that this would not alter man’s maximum life expectancy as some people already live to this age. “It (the maximum human life-span) has remained constant for so long and under such a wide variety of conditions that I’d say it has been pretty well tested,” he said. The purpose of research into longevity was not to find a miracle potion to enable people to live for ever, but to find ways for them to have longer and healthier lives. Results of the “undernutrition without malnutrition” experiments on rats had been promising, Dr Masoro said. “Their immune systems do not deteriorate as quickly and the onset of age-related maladies such as kidney failure, heart disease and cancer is delayed significantly.” Exactly how undernutrition achieved all this was not clear. “Our problem is that nobody knows what the ageing process is. We only use these diseases as markers of the ageing process.” So far, Dr Masoro’s team of eight researchers has been able only to disprove old theories about the connection between nutrition and ageing. One theory held that a reduced food intake slowed the rate of bodily growth, stretching the normal life processes. Another postulated that a reduction in body fat would increase longevity, while a third argued that less food would slow the rate at which the body burned itself out. “It took us more than eight years to show none of these were correct,” he said. “Now we are looking for the needle in the haystack.” In recent months he has directed his efforts to finding a metabolic link between nutrition and ageing, but he admits that he has made little progress so far. Dr Masoro, aged 59, believes the problem will assume political dimensions as more people live longer than ever before and add pressure to an already over-

burdened social security system. If a way is found to slow the ageing process, people will be able to remain active members of society for longer. “We could keep people productive much longer than now,” he said. “It could reach a point where retirement at 65 seems ridiculous, if it isn’t already. Instead of 65, perhaps 85 could become the standard retirement age.”