As the saying goes, a thousand dollars is hard to buy.
In fact, both experience and scientific experiments tell us that dietary restriction in adulthood can greatly prolong life span and improve the metabolic health of different species. But when did you start to change your diet to reap the benefits of this life?
Recently, Natural Metabolism magazine published a study by Max Planck Institute of Aging Biology in Germany, University of Cologne in Germany, Hamm Institute in Baboulaz, UK and University College London.
This study shows that rats will become healthier if they start to reduce their food intake and keep eating less before they get old.
Scientists have come to the conclusion that healthy behavior must be established early in life in order to improve health and prolong life in old age.
In order to study this problem deeply, the research team led by Professor Linda partridge, director of Max Planck Institute of Aging Biology, conducted an animal study. They put young and old mice on a diet and achieved varying degrees of success.
In this study, the researchers used 800 mice to carry out the experiment of late dietary restriction conversion. The 24-month-old female rats changed from random eating to restricted eating, and vice versa.
If adult mice eat 40% less than the free-eating group, they will live longer and healthier in their old age. Mice in the food restriction group were fed foods rich in vitamins and minerals to prevent malnutrition; Surprisingly, the mortality rate increased greatly from the food restriction group to the random eating; On the other hand, after reducing the food intake for a period of time, if rats are allowed to eat at will, they cannot be protected for a long time, so it is necessary to continuously reduce the food intake to make rats get long-term benefits.
Therefore, reducing food intake must be implemented as soon as possible and continue until the end of their lives, so as to have a final beneficial impact on the health of the elderly.
Professor partridge said: "We should establish healthy behaviors early in life. It may not be so good for your health to start changing your diet in your later years. Health in old age is a lifetime thing. "
Oliver Hahn, the first author of this study and a doctoral student in partridge, studied gene activities in different organs. When the mice were transferred to the restricted diet group, the gene activity in the liver quickly adapted. He observed the "memory effect" in adipose tissue of old animals. Although the mice lost weight, the activity of genes in adipose tissue was similar to that in mice fed randomly. In addition, the fat composition of old mice has not changed as much as that of young mice. RNA sequencing in liver, brown and white adipose tissue (WAT) showed that it was difficult to inhibit the transcription and metabolism of food restriction in adipose tissue, especially in WAT.
This memory effect mainly affects mitochondria, the energy factory of cells, and plays an important role in the aging process. Generally speaking, a decrease in food intake will lead to an increase in the formation of mitochondria in adipose tissue. But this study shows that this is no longer the case when older mice switch to a low-calorie diet. This ability, which cannot be changed at the level of genes and metabolism, may lead to the shortening of animal life. Long-term dietary restriction can prevent pro-inflammatory signals of preadipocytes in the elderly.
Michael Wakelam, co-author of the study and director of the Belkhan Institute, commented: "The experiment of combining the data of lipid metabolism and metabolic pathways with the tissue-specific understanding of gene expression in mice of different ages and diets enables us to clearly prove the importance of nutritional memory in promoting healthy aging."
Paper link:
/articles/s 42255-0 19-0 12 1-0