Over the past few years, the National Institutes of Health spent 30 million dollars on a multiple study site program that has been called CALERIE – which stands for Comprehensive Assessment of the Long Terms Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy. What this translates into is “calorie-restricted diet”.

All across the U.S. there are 132 study subjects who have spent the past few years maintaining a calorie-reduced lifestyle. As we discussed in previous blogs, these studies are the outgrowth of rhesus money studies that showed a significant reduction in disease manifestation and aging. The desire to duplicate these findings in humans and see if this “new” approach to disease prevention and longevity would prove as successful in humans as it did in animals.

The results of the first phase of the study outcomes provide us a look into what can be expected by the end of the study. With just a 25% calorie reduction over the course of a 6 month period, the study participants metabolism became more efficient and their insulin sensitivity rose which meant that their body was able to deal with the regulation of blood sugar more effectively which is a critical function in the prevention of diabetes. Other outcomes suggest the diet’s ability to lower hypertension and cholesterol levels as well as improve memory function.

Even the medical researchers who worked on the first phase of the study have been skeptical. John Holloszy, MD from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, says” I didn’t think this would work in humans until I started working with people who had been doing it for years. They are among the healthiest people I’ve ever known.”

It makes perfect common sense that when you reduce the wear and tear on any machine, you have a more efficient function and create a longer life span for that functioning mechanism. It should not surprise any of us that when we take digestive and metabolic stress off our organs we feel better, look better and ARE better!

What benefits might you derive from such an approach to your nutrition? Reducing our food intake by 25% means that we take 1/4 of the food we have on our plate and just don’t eat it – easy enough. But it also means that you begin to substitute more nutritous food for less nutritous food over the long term, which will lead to better health and longer life.

More importantly, however, what this lifestyle can do for each of us is place the control over our health and wellness back where it belongs – into our own hands (and mouths).

With all good wishes,
Georgianna

Copyright 2010 – G. Donadio