In search of a way to prolong life, people are ready for a lot. For example, fasting or following a complex eating style that supposedly preserves strength and youth and pushes back old age. While supporters of different directions are conducting loud public debates, scientists are conducting research, the results of which are sometimes unexpected …
Until the 8th century, mass famine was a frequent occurrence in many countries due to crop failures and wars. In the Middle Ages, for every 10–1817 years, there was one famine year with a high mortality rate. Even in modern times, in 1847 and 1935, famine still raged in many parts of Germany. A century later, in 1939-XNUMX, scientists made a paradoxical discovery.
When studying the effect of nutritional deficiency on the lifespan of white rats, it turned out that reducing calories in the diet did not shorten, but prolonged the life of animals. Since then, a lot of research has been done on reducing the caloric content of the diet in experiments on mice, rats and primates. But it has not yet been clarified for sure whether such nutrition can prolong the life of people, especially those who are already underweight.
However, in 1935 it became clear that nutrition affects the lifespan of animals and this can be used to manage longevity. Since then, many different diets have been developed, but their impact on human life expectancy has not yet been proven or disproved, and in some cases it was necessary to make sure that one or another diet, on the contrary, can increase mortality.
Ketogenic diet
Let’s take a look at how some diet choices affect life expectancy. The ketogenic diet is low-carb, high in fat and moderate in protein. With this style of eating, fats become the main source of energy in the body.
Normally, carbohydrates from our diet are converted into glucose in the body. Glucose is important for the nutrition of our brain. But if there are few carbohydrates in food, then fats are converted into fatty acids and, as a result, into ketone bodies.
Ketone bodies are metabolic products that are formed in the liver. These include acetone, acetoacetic acid, β-hydroxybutyrate. Ketone bodies enter the brain and are used as an energy source instead of glucose.
Ketosis – an increased amount of ketone bodies in the blood – reduces the frequency of epileptic seizures. Therefore, initially such a diet was used in the treatment of epilepsy in children.
Despite some health benefits, long-term studies on the safety and longevity of this diet in humans have not been conducted. And the results of a number of studies cast doubt on the benefits of a ketogenic diet.
In 1797, John Rollo reported the reduction of sugar in the urine by treating two diabetic army officers with a low-carbohydrate diet and medication. A low-carbohydrate diet was the standard treatment for diabetes throughout the XNUMXth century.
Although a low-carbohydrate diet can help you lose weight in the short term, a systematic review of studies found that a low-carbohydrate diet is associated with the risk of developing diabetes in the long term.
The very next day of using a low-carbohydrate diet, people experience intestinal dysbiosis – a severe decrease in the number of normobiota and an increase in the number of many opportunistic and pathogenic microorganisms.
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism – eating plant and dairy foods with the rejection of meat. Some vegetarian diet options exclude dairy products. Pescatarianism is the refusal to eat the meat of warm-blooded animals, but the assumption of eating fish and other cold-blooded animals. Veganism is the most strict form of vegetarianism.
The largest and most comprehensive meta-analysis of the health effects of a vegetarian diet is inconclusive about its benefits. Based on conflicting results, overall, vegetarianism does not offer any health or longevity benefits. It is simply associated with a lower risk of dying from certain diseases, but a higher risk of dying from others, such as stroke or vascular dementia.
What Diet Followers Die From
In 2016, a long-term (approximately 20 years) large-scale prospective study was completed, in which 60 people participated. This study compared how each type of diet (vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, moderate and high meat consumption) affects life expectancy and which deadly diseases are associated with each diet.
At the end of the study, 5294 people had died. Notably, no type of diet provided a clear advantage in reducing the risk of mortality.
- Vegetarians were more likely to develop colorectal cancer (colon cancer) compared to meat eaters and those who ate fish.
- Vegetarians were more likely to die from mental disorders and lung cancer than other participants in the study, but less often than others from pancreatic cancer, lymphoma and coronary heart disease.
- Veganism has been associated with more deaths from cerebrovascular accidents, strokes, and respiratory diseases than other eating styles.
- Pescatarians were more likely to die from breast cancer, cerebrovascular accidents, and stroke, but less often from cancer in general and from coronary heart disease.
- Moderate meat-eaters were more likely to die from coronary artery disease and cancer in general, but less likely to die from stroke, cerebrovascular accident, breast cancer, mental and behavioral disorders.
- Excessive meat-eaters were even more likely than moderate meat-eaters to die of coronary artery disease and cancer in general, but less likely than vegetarians to die of stroke, cerebrovascular accident, mental and behavioral disorders.
In general, none of the mentioned eating styles reviewed in this study was associated with a survival advantage.
An excerpt from the book Bonus Years. An individual plan for prolonging youth based on the latest scientific discoveries ”(Veremeenko Dmitry Evgenievich, Fedintsev Alexander Yuryevich, Begmurodova Nigina Shavkatovna. Eksmo, 2021).