There’s a lot of buzz about a new paper in Nature (yes, I know there’s always buzz about some Nature paper or other), Impact of caloric restriction on health and survival in rhesus monkeys from the NIA study. You’ve probably heard about calorie restriction before. For me the issue I have with it is that people who are very knowledgeable (i.e., researchers who know a great deal abut human physiology, etc.) have given me contradictory assessments of this strategy of life extension. But it’s not totally crazy, there are serious scientists at top-tier universities who practice calorie restriction themselves. This isn’t the final word, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is going to take decades for it to resolve itself for humans specifically (because some people will always be, and perhaps rightly, extrapolating from short-lived organisms to humans when it comes to modulations of lifespan in the laboratory). The New York Times piece had a really strange coda:
Dr. de Cabo, who says he is overweight, advised people that if they want to try a reduced-calorie diet, they should consult a doctor first. If they can handle such a diet, he said, he believes they would be healthier, …