A Profile of Valter Longo ' s Work on Fasting and Calorie Restriction

Valter Longo is one of the more recognizable names in calorie restriction research. Beyond the science, his most noteworthy recent achievement has been to figure out how to commercialize the research, pulling in for-profit funding by packaging low-calorie diets as a medical product. This has helped to fund a series of advances in quantifying the effects of reduced calorie intake and fasting in humans, in search of the 80/20 point for optimal benefits, and along the way generating new knowledge of the effects on the immune system and other important areas of cellular metabolism. One of the most interesting outcomes is the accumulation of evidence to suggest that low-calorie diets can be about as effective as fasting in our species, at least in the near term. As an aside, the tale of Longo's early work on the biochemistry of aging, provided in the article here, is illustrative of the degree to which the field was held back, both internally and by the rest of the research community. Aging research was a backwater, disrespected, lacking in funding. We could be ten to twenty years further ahead in treating aging as a medical condition than we are today, had the study of aging been taken as seriously as was the study of age-related diseases over the past fifty years. It is just one more example of the irrationality of the human condition that people are so enthused about research to treat heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and so on, but reject outright work on the root cau...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs