By His Grace and Blessings. I write..
Ageing, Longevity and Magical Interventions: Calorie Restriction
In recent times, Ageing is considered to be the most important cause for mortality. Over thousands of years, the process of ageing has been accepted as fait-accompli and as a natural limitation imposed by body design. However, modern research has proved that rate of ageing is very much a malleable process that can be manipulated.
In 2013, WHO declared Ageing as the biggest problem faced by our generations. The declaration of Ageing as a Health issue in 2018 by WHO, has brought this process in the ambit of clinical interventions. It has been established that if ageing can be delayed, all of the diseases associated with it will follow suit. So, if you cured all cancers, you wouldn’t offset death due to cardiovascular diseases, or dementia or diabetics associated disorders. In case we can find some cure for ageing, we can offset all these diseases associated with it.
The concept of ageing, the interventions that can delay ageing and the specific mechanism through which these interventions work on bodily cells will be the subject matter of this series of blogs. Calorie restrictions as an anti-ageing mechanism is discussed first.
What is Ageing?
Wikipedia defines “Ageing as a collection of cumulative changes to the molecular and cellular structures, which result in essential metabolic processes, but which also, once they progress enough, increasingly disrupt that metabolism, resulting into pathology or death”.
According to Harvard Professor, David Sinclair, ageing is simply a loss of epigenetic information. According to him, epigenetic is the term for any process or structure that governs the way the genetic information is packaged. The analogy can be of a CD and a CD player, where our genes are like CD while epigenetic is the CD player. The genes are just storehouse of information, their expression depends upon the epigenetic. So, according to Sinclair, ageing occurs when epigenetic drivers are unable to properly read and interpret the information stored in our genes. He argues that ageing is just like a scratched CD which our CD players (epigenetics) are unable to read. By polishing scratches on the CD, we can play it on CD player. Similarly, if we can somehow restore the ability of our epigenetics to properly read information stored in our genes, we can reverse ageing.
Robert Sapolsky in his book “Behave”, argues that Epigenetics change constantly under the influence of outside environment. Our foods, levels of stress, environmental pollution, life experiences etc play an important role in our epigenetics and thus in regulation of our genes. He gives example of a child who has a loving and caring childhood . The stress genes in this child will secret lesser cortisol when he grows up as an adult. This trait will then be passed on to future generations, not through genes but through environmental experiences dependent changes in the regulation of genes. According to Sapolsky, environment regulates the genes. Genes by themselves don’t regulate anything. Different environment regulates the same gene in different manner.
Ageing factors:
- Environment- harmful chemicals or radiation damage to our cells leading to faulty mutations and thus impairing ability of body to grow properly and thus causing ageing. It impairs our epigenetic abilities to properly read the genetic information.
- Metabolism- cells produce waste (free radicals) as they burn energy. Waste deposition disrupts biological processes and organism is not able to cope with it. It is called “Autophagy” as discovered by Dr Yoshinori Ohsumi, the 2016 Noble Laurate for his work on autophagy.
- Regenerating Organs- each cell has a bundle of DNA at its ends, called Telomeres (discussed in my earlier Blogs) which eventually get shorter and shorter and cells loses its ability to divide and dies with wear and tear. It makes us prone to many age-related diseases. Remember the story of ageing is the story of our parts. According to Felix Silverstone, “no single, common mechanism to the process of ageing exists. We just fall apart.”
Interventions to Ageing:
Ageing is the ultimate disease that can be cured. The issue of ageing has gained so much importance that during last decade, 3 noble prizes have gone to scientists working on interventions to ageing. During last few years, a whole new industry has emerged around ageing reversal. The research has identified a multiple set of factors that can enhance longevity or even differently time our biological clocks.
One of the interventions with credible results is calorie restrictions. It has been proved through research that permanently cutting the daily calories can have profound impact on longevity and health-spans. Experience of Blue Zones is a living proof of this. Genome integrity through calorie restrictions is a common feature in the centenarians of Blue Zones.
Since 1930’s, a 30% reduction in the amount of food consumed per day has been linked to longer, more active life in worms, flies, rats, monkeys. It has also been established through research that long-term calorie restriction in humans induces drastic metabolic and molecular changes that resemble those of younger people.
Mark Twain once said, “a little starvation, can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and best doctors”.
To be continued…..
By His Grace and Blessings, I write…
Dr. Seema Chaudhary