The School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis has discovered that people on restricted calorie diets have hearts that function more like people 20 years younger than them.
22 people, with an average age of 51, who ate healthily, but about 30% less calories than normal were measured. Another group of 20 people of about the same age, but ate traditional 'western' diets were also measured.
The researchers found key measures of the heart’s ability to adapt to physical activity,
stress, sleep and other factors that influence the rate at which the
heart pumps blood, doesn’t decline nearly as rapidly in the people who had
significantly restricted their caloric intake for an average of seven
years.
Dr. Luigi Fontana, senior author of the study, said “This is really striking because in studying changes in heart rate
variability, we are looking at a measurement that tells us a lot about
the way the autonomic nervous system affects the heart, and that system is
involved not only in heart function, but in digestion, breathing rate
and many other involuntary actions. We would hypothesize that better
heart rate variability may be a sign that all these other functions are
working better, too.”(sic)
This is one of the first major studies done on humans, there have already been many studies published on animals who are on a calorie restricted (CR) diet. Laboratory animals with a CR intake tend to live 30
percent to 40 percent longer than those that eat standard diets.
Many
humans who practice calorie restriction believe they also will live
significantly longer, but that won’t be known for several more years.
Still, Fontana says much of his research suggests calorie restriction
with optimal nutrition contributes to significant changes in people that
are similar to changes seen in animals.
Stay Healthy!
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