Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?
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Caloric Restriction with Optimal Nutrition
Yesterday, we asked you “What is your opinion of caloric restriction as a health practice?” and got the above-depicted, below-described spread of responses:
- 48% said “It is a robust, scientifically proven way to live longer and healthier”
- 23% said “It may help us to live longer, but at the cost of enjoying it fully”
- 17% said “It’s a dangerous fad that makes people weak, tired, sick, and unhealthy”
- 12% said “Counting calories is irrelevant to good health; the body compensates”
So… What does the science say?
A note on terms, first
“Caloric restriction” (henceforth: CR), as a term, sees scientific use to mean anything from a 25% reduction to a 50% reduction, compared to metabolic base rate.
This can also be expressed the other way around, “dropping to 60% of the metabolic base rate” (i.e., a 40% reduction).
Here we don’t have the space to go into much depth, so our policy will be: if research papers consider it CR, then so will we.
A quick spoiler, first
The above statements about CR are all to at least some degree True in one way or another.
However, there are very important distinctions, so let’s press on…
CR is a robust, scientifically proven way to live longer and healthier: True or False?
True! This has been well-studied and well-documented. There’s more science for this than we could possibly list here, but here’s a good starting point:
❝Calorie restriction (CR), a nutritional intervention of reduced energy intake but with adequate nutrition, has been shown to extend healthspan and lifespan in rodent and primate models.
Accumulating data from observational and randomized clinical trials indicate that CR in humans results in some of the same metabolic and molecular adaptations that have been shown to improve health and retard the accumulation of molecular damage in animal models of longevity.
In particular, moderate CR in humans ameliorates multiple metabolic and hormonal factors that are implicated in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer, the leading causes of morbidity, disability and mortality❞
Source: Ageing Research Reviews | Calorie restriction in humans: an update
See also: Caloric restriction in humans reveals immunometabolic regulators of health span
We could devote a whole article (or a whole book, really) to this, but the super-short version is that it lowers the metabolic “tax” on the body and allows the body to function better for longer.
CR may help us to live longer, but at the cost of enjoying it fully: True or False?
True or False, contingently, depending on what’s important to you. And that depends on psychology as much as physiology, but it’s worth noting that there is often a selection bias in the research papers; people ill-suited to CR drop out of the studies and are not counted in the final data.
Also, relevant for a lot of our readers, most (human-based) studies recruit people over 18 and under 60. So while it is reasonable to assume the same benefits will be carried over that age, there is not nearly as much data for it.
Studies into CR and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) have been promising, and/but have caveats:
❝In non-obese adults, CR had some positive effects and no negative effects on HRQoL.❞
❝We do not know what degree of CR is needed to achieve improvements in HRQoL, but we do know it requires an extraordinary amount of support.
Therefore, the incentive to offer this intervention to a low-risk, normal or overweight individual is lacking and likely not sustainable in practice.❞
CR a dangerous fad that makes people weak, tired, sick, and unhealthy: True or False?
True if it is undertaken improperly, and/or without sufficient support. Many people will try CR and forget that the idea is to reduce metabolic load while still getting good nutrition, and focus solely on the calorie-counting.
So for example, if a person “saves” their calories for the day to have a night out in a bar where they drink their calories as alcohol, then this is going to be abysmal for their health.
That’s an extreme example, but lesser versions are seen a lot. If you save your calories for a pizza instead of a night of alcoholic drinks, then it’s not quite so woeful, but for example the nutrition-to-calorie ratio of pizza is typically not great. Multiply that by doing it as often as not, and yes, someone’s health is going to be in ruins quite soon.
Counting calories is irrelevant to good health; the body compensates: True or False?
True if by “good health” you mean weight loss—which is rarely, if ever, what we mean by “good health” here at 10almonds (unless we clarify such), but it’s a very common association and indeed, for some people it’s a health goal. You cannot sustainably and healthily lose weight by CR alone, especially if you’re not getting optimal nutrition.
Your body will notice that you are starving, and try to save you by storing as much fat as it can, amongst other measures that will similarly backfire (cortisol running high, energy running low, etc).
For short term weight loss though, yes, it’ll work. At a cost. That we don’t recommend.
❝By itself, decreasing calorie intake will have a limited short-term influence.❞
Source: Reducing Calorie Intake May Not Help You Lose Body Weight
See also…
❝Caloric restriction is a commonly recommended weight-loss method, yet it may result in short-term weight loss and subsequent weight regain, known as “weight cycling”, which has recently been shown to be associated with both poor sleep and worse cardiovascular health❞
Source: Dieting Behavior Characterized by Caloric Restriction
In summary…
Caloric restriction is a well-studied area of health science. We know:
- Practised well, it can extend not only lifespan, but also healthspan
- Practised well, it can improve mood, energy, sexual function, and the other things people fear losing
- Practised badly, it can be ruinous to the health—it is critical to practise caloric restriction with optimal nutrition.
- Practised badly, it can lead to unhealthy weight loss and weight regain
One final note…
If you’ve tried CR and hated it, and you practised it well (e.g., with optimal nutrition), then we recommend just not doing it.
You could also try intermittent fasting instead, for similar potential benefits. If that doesn’t work out either, then don’t do that either!
Sometimes, we’re just weird. It can often be because of a genetic or epigenetic quirk. There are usually workarounds, and/but not everything that’s right for most people will be right for all of us.
Take care!
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The Miracle of Flexibility – by Miranda Esmonde-White
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We’ve reviewed books about stretching before, so what makes this one different?
Mostly, it’s that this one takes a holistic approach, making the argument for looking after all parts of flexibility (even parts that might seem useless) because if one bit of us isn’t flexible, the others will start to suffer in compensation because of how that affects our posture, or movement, or in many cases our lack of movement.
Esmonde-White’s “flexibility, from your toes to your shoulders” approach is very consistent with her background as a professional ballet dancer, and now she brings it into her profession as a coach.
The book’s not just about stretching, though. It looks at problems and what can go wrong with posture and the body’s “musculoskeletal trifecta”, and also shares daily training routines that are tailored for specific sporting interests, and/or for those with specific chronic conditions and/or chronic pain. Working around what needs to be worked around, but also looking at strengthening what can be strengthened and fixing what can be fixed along the way.
Bottom line: if your flexibility needs an overhaul, this book is a very good “one-stop shop” for that.
Click here to check out The Miracle Of Flexibility, and discover what you can do!
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Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)
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Cortisol, or “the stress hormone” to its friends, is produced by your adrenal glands, and is generally considered “not fun”.
It does serve a purpose, of course, just like almost everything else our body does. It serves as part of the “fight or flight” response, for example, and helps you to wake up in the morning.
While you do need some cortisol (and a small percentage of people have too little), most of us have too much.
Why? Simply put, modern life is not what 200,000* years of human evolution prepared us for:
- Agriculture (which allowed us to settle down and cease being nomadic) happened during the last 6% of those 200,000 years.
- The Industrial Revolution and the onset of modern capitalism happened during only during the last 0.1% of those 200,000 years.
*the 200,000 years figure is conservative and doesn’t take into account the 200,000,000 years of pre-hominid mammalian evolution. Doing so, on the basis of the mammalian brain & physiology being what’s important here, means our modern stressors have been around for <0.0001% of the time we have.
So guess what, our bodies haven’t caught up. As far as our bodies are concerned, we are supposed to be enjoying the sunshine of grassy plains and the shade of woodland while eating fruit.
- When the alarm clock goes off, our body panics and prepares us to either flee or help fight the predator, because why else would we have been woken so?
- When we have a pressing deadline for work, our brain processes this as “if we don’t do this, we will literally starve and die”.
- When people are upset or angry with us, there’s a part of our brain that fears exile from the tribe and resultant death.
…and so on.
Health Risks of High Cortisol
The long-term stressors are the biggest issue for health. Unless you have a heart condition or other relevant health problem, almost anyone can weather a brief unpleasant surprise. But if something persists? That prompts the body to try to protect you, bless it. The body’s attempts backfire, because…
- One way it does this by making sure to save as much food as possible in the form of body fat
- It’ll also increase your appetite, to make sure you eat anything you can while you still can
- It additionally tries to protect you by keeping you on the brink of fight-or-flight readiness, e.g:
- High blood pressure
- High blood sugar levels
- Rapid mood changes—gotta be able to do those heel-turns as necessary and react quickly to any possible threat!
Suffice it to say, these things are not good for your long-term health.
That’s the “Why”—now here’s the “How”:
Lowering your cortisol levels mostly means lowering your stress and/or lowering your stress response. We previously gave some powerful tools for lowering anxiety, which for these purposes amounts to the same thing.
However, we can also make nutritional and lifestyle changes that will reduce our cortisol levels, for example:
- Reduce (ideally: eliminate from your lifestyle) caffeine
- Reduce (ideally: eliminate from your lifestyle) alcohol
- Yes, really. While many understandably turn to alcohol specifically to help manage stress, it only makes it worse long-term.
- Additionally, alcohol directly stimulates cortisol production, counterintuitive as that may be.
Read: Alcohol, Aging, and the Stress Response ← full article (with 37 sources of its own) from the NYMC covering how alcohol stimulates cortisol production and what that means for us
As well as reductions/eliminations, are some things you can add into your lifestyle that will help!
We’ve written previously about some:
Read: Ashwagandha / Read: L-Theanine / Read: CBD Oil
Other things include, no surprises here:
- The Mediterranean diet (nutritious and delicious): https://10almonds.com/mediterranean-diet
- Get 7–9 hours (good quality!) sleep per night: https://10almonds.com/time-pillow-talk
- Get regular exercise (the regularity matters most!): https://10almonds.com/keep-on-keeping-on
Progressive Relaxation
We’ll give this one its own section because we’ve not talked about it before. Maybe you’re familiar. If not, then in a nutshell: progressive relaxation means progressively tensing and then relaxing each part of your body in turn.
Why does this work? Part of it is just a physical trick involving biofeedback and the natural function of muscles to contract and relax in turn, but the other part is even cleverer:
It basically tricks the most primitive part of your brain, the limbic system, into thinking you had a fight and won, telling it “thank you very much for the cortisol but we don’t need it anymore”.
Take a Hike! Or a Stroll… You Do You!
Last but not least: go connect with your roots. Spend time in the park, or at least the garden. Have a picnic, if the weather suits. Go somewhere you can spend time around leafy green things under a blue sky (we realize the blue sky may be subject to availability in some locations, but do what you can!).
Remember also: just as your body’s responses will be tricked by the alarm clock or the housework, they will also be easily tricked by blue and green stuff around you. If a sunny garden isn’t available in your location, a picture of one as your desktop background is the next best thing.
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Beat Osteoporosis with Exercise – by Dr. Karl Knopf
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
There are a lot of books about beating osteoporosis, and yet when it comes to osteoporosis exercises, it took us some work to find a good one. But, this one’s it!
A lot of books give general principles and a few sample exercises. This one, in contrast, gives:
- An overview of osteopenia and osteoporosis, first
- A brief overview of non-exercise osteoporosis considerations
- Principles for exercising a) to reduce one’s risk of osteoporosis b) if one has osteoporosis
- Clear explanations of about 150 exercises that fit both categories
This last item’s important, because a lot of popular advice is exercises that are only good for one or the other (given that a lot of things that strengthen a healthy person’s bones can break the bones of someone with osteoporosis), so having 150 exercises that are safe and effective in both cases, is a real boon.
That doesn’t mean you have to do all 150! If you want to, great. But even just picking and choosing and putting together a little program is good.
Bottom line: if you’d like a comprehensive guide to exercise to keep you strong in the face of osteoporosis, this is a great one.
Click here to check out Beat Osteoporosis With Exercise, and stay strong!
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Spiked Acupressure Mat: Trial & Report
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Are you ready for the least comfortable bed? The reviews are in, and…
Let’s get straight to the point
“Laura Try” tries out health things and reports on her findings. And in this case…
- She noted up front that the claims for this are to improve relaxation, alleviate muscle pain, and improve sleep.
- It also is said to help with myofascial release specifically, which can improve flexibility and mobility (as well as contributing to the alleviation of muscle pain previously mentioned)
- She did not enjoy it at first! Shocking nobody, it was uncomfortable and even somewhat painful. However, after a while, it became less painful and more comfortable—except for trying standing on it, which still hurt (this writer has one too, and I often stand on it at my desk, whenever I feel my feet need a little excitement—it’s probably good for the circulation, but that is just a hypothesis)
- Soon, it became relaxing. Writer’s note: that raised hemicylindrical pillow she’s using? Try putting it under your neck instead, to stimulate the vagus nerve.
- While it is best use on bare skin, the effect can be softened by wearing a thin later of clothing between you and the mat.
- She got hers for £71 GBP (this writer got hers for a fraction of that price from Aldi—and here’s an example product on Amazon, at a more mid-range price)
For more details on all of the above and a blow-by-blow account, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Fascia: Why (And How) You Should Take Care Of Yours
Take care!
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Is ADHD Being Over-Diagnosed For Cash?
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Is ADHD Being Systematically Overdiagnosed?
The BBC’s investigative “Panorama” program all so recently did a documentary in which one of their journalists—who does not have ADHD—went to three private clinics and got an ADHD diagnosis from each of them:
- The BBC documentary: Private ADHD Clinics Exposed (28 mins)
- Their “5 Minutes” version: ADHD Undercover: How I Was Misdiagnosed (6 mins)
So… Is it really a case of show up, pay up, and get a shiny new diagnosis?
The BBC Panorama producers cherry-picked 3 private providers, and during those clinical assessments, their journalist provided answers that would certainly lead to a diagnosis.
This was contrasted against a three-hour assessment with an NHS psychiatrist—something that rarely happens in the NHS. Which prompts the question…
How did he walk into a 3-hour psychiatrist assessment, when most people have to wait in long waiting lists for a much more cursory appointment first with assorted gatekeepers, before going on another long waiting list, for an also-much-shorter appointment with a psychiatrist?
That would be because the NHS psychiatrist was given advance notification that this was part of an investigation and would be filmed (the private clinics were not gifted the same transparency)
So, maybe just a tad unequal treatment!
In case you’re wondering, here’s what that very NHS psychiatrist had to say on the topic:
Is it really too easy to be diagnosed with ADHD?
(we’ll give you a hint—remember Betteridge’s Law!)
❝Since the documentary aired, I have heard from people concerned that GPs could now be more likely to question legitimate diagnoses.
But as an NHS psychiatrist it is clear to me that the root of this issue is not overdiagnosis.
Instead, we are facing the combined challenges of remedying decades of underdiagnosis and NHS services that were set up when there was little awareness of ADHD.❞
~ Dr. Mike Smith, Psychiatrist
The ADHD foundation, meanwhile, has issued its own response, saying:
❝We are disappointed that BBC Panorama has opted to broadcast a poorly researched, sensationalist piece of television journalism.❞
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Voluntary assisted dying is different to suicide. But federal laws conflate them and restrict access to telehealth
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Voluntary assisted dying is now lawful in every Australian state and will soon begin in the Australian Capital Territory.
However, it’s illegal to discuss it via telehealth. That means people who live in rural and remote areas, or those who can’t physically go to see a doctor, may not be able to access the scheme.
A federal private members bill, introduced to parliament last week, aims to change this. So what’s proposed and why is it needed?
What’s wrong with the current laws?
Voluntary assisted dying doesn’t meet the definition of suicide under state laws.
But the Commonwealth Criminal Code prohibits the discussion or dissemination of suicide-related material electronically.
This opens doctors to the risk of criminal prosecution if they discuss voluntary assisted dying via telehealth.
Successive Commonwealth attorneys-general have failed to address the conflict between federal and state laws, despite persistent calls from state attorneys-general for necessary clarity.
This eventually led to voluntary assistant dying doctor Nicholas Carr calling on the Federal Court of Australia to resolve this conflict. Carr sought a declaration to exclude voluntary assisted dying from the definition of suicide under the Criminal Code.
In November, the court declared voluntary assisted dying was considered suicide for the purpose of the Criminal Code. This meant doctors across Australia were prohibited from using telehealth services for voluntary assisted dying consultations.
Last week, independent federal MP Kate Chaney introduced a private members bill to create an exemption for voluntary assisted dying by excluding it as suicide for the purpose of the Criminal Code. Here’s why it’s needed.
Not all patients can physically see a doctor
Defining voluntary assisted dying as suicide in the Criminal Code disproportionately impacts people living in regional and remote areas. People in the country rely on the use of “carriage services”, such as phone and video consultations, to avoid travelling long distances to consult their doctor.
Other people with terminal illnesses, whether in regional or urban areas, may be suffering intolerably and unable to physically attend appointments with doctors.
The prohibition against telehealth goes against the principles of voluntary assisted dying, which are to minimise suffering, maximise quality of life and promote autonomy.
Doctors don’t want to be involved in ‘suicide’
Equating voluntary assisted dying with suicide has a direct impact on doctors, who fear criminal prosecution due to the prohibition against using telehealth.
Some doctors may decide not to help patients who choose voluntary assisted dying, leaving patients in a state of limbo.
The number of doctors actively participating in voluntary assisted dying is already low. The majority of doctors are located in metropolitan areas or major regional centres, leaving some locations with very few doctors participating in voluntary assisted dying.
It misclassifies deaths
In state law, people dying under voluntary assisted dying have the cause of their death registered as “the disease, illness or medical condition that was the grounds for a person to access voluntary assisted dying”, while the manner of dying is recorded as voluntary assisted dying.
In contrast, only coroners in each state and territory can make a finding of suicide as a cause of death.
In 2017, voluntary assisted dying was defined in the Coroners Act 2008 (Vic) as not a reportable death, and thus not suicide.
The language of suicide is inappropriate for explaining how people make a decision to die with dignity under the lawful practice of voluntary assisted dying.
There is ongoing taboo and stigma attached to suicide. People who opt for and are lawfully eligible to access voluntary assisted dying should not be tainted with the taboo that currently surrounds suicide.
So what is the solution?
The only way to remedy this problem is for the federal government to create an exemption in the Criminal Code to allow telehealth appointments to discuss voluntary assisted dying.
Chaney’s private member’s bill is yet to be debated in federal parliament.
If it’s unsuccessful, the Commonwealth attorney-general should pass regulations to exempt voluntary assisted dying as suicide.
A cooperative approach to resolve this conflict of laws is necessary to ensure doctors don’t risk prosecution for assisting eligible people to access voluntary assisted dying, regional and remote patients have access to voluntary assisted dying, families don’t suffer consequences for the erroneous classification of voluntary assisted dying as suicide, and people accessing voluntary assisted dying are not shrouded with the taboo of suicide when accessing a lawful practice to die with dignity.
Failure to change this will cause unnecessary suffering for patients and doctors alike.
Michaela Estelle Okninski, Lecturer of Law, University of Adelaide; Marc Trabsky, Associate professor, La Trobe University, and Neera Bhatia, Associate Professor in Law, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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