Caloric Restriction Reverses Aging (As Opposed to Merely Slowing Aging)?

March 29, 2004

The First Age-Reversal Strategy for Senior Citizens? 
    The following transcript, presenting a recent interview with Dr. Stephen Spindler, elicits a story that I had previously missed:  that caloric restriction in very old mice... equivalent to 80+-year-old humans... presents biomarkers that are those of much younger mice. In other words, within a short time... one month or less after beginning late-in-life calorie restriction with mice (equivalent to about 2½ years  or less with human subjects)... the mice were rendered quite a bit younger than they were before they were calorie restricted!
    This kind of prospect could have everyone moving toward calorie restriction.
    I mentioned in yesterday's discussion that mice that lived for 42 months were uncommonly old for mice. Today's transcript reveals that Dr. Spindler used mice that were cross-bred to eliminate the common age-related diseases in mice in order to get the longest-lived mice available to date. Adding three more months to the life spans of the mice would be equivalent in human terms to adding 7.5 years to the maximum human life span.
    I have to say that I haven't seen any changes in the mirror, although a number of parameters, such as lowered blood pressure, freedom from arthritis, and other bloodwork numbers, plus my newly restored ability to easily run several miles at decent speeds, suggests that something good may have happened to me. Of course, if it takes 2½ years, I still have 2 years to go. But we'll see.