Can Caloric Restriction Help You Lose Weight And Live Longer?

The Theories of Caloric Restriction and Aggressive Supplementation

Do shortcuts exist to a longer life?

There are many people that believe that there are. One older couple feels that they have realized the key to longevity and are dedicating their lives to testing the hypothesis. Paul McGlothin, age 60, and Meredith Averill, age 61, have been following a strict caloric restriction regimen over the last fourteen years to prove that the technique produces enhanced life expectancy.

What is Caloric Restriction?

Caloric Restriction is a form of diet in which an individual consumes a lower than an average number of calories in an attempt to increase overall health and life expectancy. It is based on the assumption that as long as we meet basic physiological needs through the human diet, the fewer calories we eat per day, the longer that we will live as a direct result.

There is a significant amount of evidence that correlates caloric restriction and life extension in animals, but studies are just beginning to examine this phenomenon and how it may relate to human beings. McGlothin and Averill are the inspiration for one of these human studies and are also active participants in one of those studies.

Washington University Researchers are monitoring the couple to investigate the potential benefits of caloric restriction in humans. This study is one of the first three of its kind ever conducted.

To maximize the effectiveness of their diet, they only consume certain foods which are loaded with nutrition while also being low in caloric content. These diets consist primarily of fruits, vegetables, and greensand proteins are consumed relatively sparingly. They and other participants in this study keep track of the food they consume. The couple has shown that they consume around nine percent of their calories from protein, thirty-two percent from fat, and fifty-nine percent from carbohydrates.

During every possible meal, the participants in this study weigh the food they consume and maintain detailed digital records of the calories and nutrition they eat and drink. Participants log into a computer program called the Cron-O-Meter to post their daily results. McGlothin consumes around 1,900 calories daily, and Averill eats around 1,500 calories.

These amounts are around 1/3 less than the average American male and female consume. Although the couple is noticeably thinner than average, they maintain BMIs of 18, which are considered normal for men and women their age.

McGlothin and Averill are convinced that the benefits of their monitored diet plan are astounding. The couple has authored a book titled The Caloric-Reduction Way to express to the public their lifestyle tips and dietary choices to spread their life-changing knowledge to a broader audience.

Averill has been told by doctors that her heart and cardiovascular system are structured like a woman many decades younger than herself. Her husband says that caloric restriction, as it is engaged in by him and his wife, produces incredibly positive effects on all manners of physical function.

McGlothin is sixty years old and says that he has perfect vision. In addition to this, he has performed exceedingly well on cognitive tests, and his scores have actually improved as he enters his sixties when among most people, the opposite occurs, and the mental faculties slowly begin to deteriorate. He laments that his old chess buddies just don't have the ability to keep up any longer.

Caloric Restriction in the Animal Kingdom

Gerontologist Robert Butler was a psychologist profoundly concerned with gerontology and reducing the suffering and pain caused by aging. He coined the term Ageism to highlight the unfair treatment of the elderly by the generations that proceed with them.

The concept of ageism, Butler believed, was the reason why a scientific understanding of the latter part of the aging process was so understudied and thus misunderstood.

Butler is also well-known for spearheading the belief that senility is not an inevitability of the aging process, thus opening the door for Anti-Aging and Longevity science. Butler was the founder of the International Center for Longevity and was an essential force in the group until his death in 2010 of leukemia at the age of 83.

Doctor Butler says that caloric restriction has produced the ultimate effect of life expectancy extension in nearly every animal ever studied. It has been shown that a thirty percent reduction in caloric intake has been connected to a thirty percent longer life. Butler understands that there are usually certain limits when attempting to relate animal research studies to humans because animal and human physiology can be pretty different.

However, this case produces more robust evidence because the same results are being produced throughout the animal kingdom. Although we are likely to differ from a single animal, Butler strongly believes we are much less likely to differ significantly from all animals as a group.

A recent study with monkeys provides the most substantial evidence that humans can benefit from caloric restriction. Caloric restriction has produced evidence that monkeys who are put on this diet live healthier lives.

Butler does admit that there are a couple of drawbacks, however. Caloric Restriction has the potential to lead to both decreased libido and overall energy. Also, there is the issue of compliance.

Many people simply don't have the willpower or patience for a restricted-calorie diet. For these individuals, however, a chemical being researched known as resveratrol may be able to reduce the desire to over-consume food and thus make living by a more restrictive diet a more straightforward proposition.

Supplements and Nutrition

Of course, there are other strategies used to enhance longevity as well. Doctor Grossman is the executive director of Denver's Grossman Wellness Center. He believes that the key to a longer life is to engage in a long-term regimen that includes a healthy and nutritious diet, anaerobic strength training, cardiovascular exercise, and meditation or other forms of stress reduction. Dr. Grossman emphasizes prevention and begins his patient's initial treatments with a two-day battery of complete medical testing.

Dr. Grossman's team runs a comprehensive testing program to unearth underlying hereditary diseases and predispositions that have the potential to affect longevity. In addition, the doctor works with his patients to diagnose underlying health disorders and build a profile of the hereditary history of the family disease.

Dr. Grossman uses all of the information provided to him through testing and uses the results to provide medications and supplements that work to optimize the health of his patients.

Grossman has teamed up with a man named Ray Kurzweil to co-author a book about the future of longevity and Anti-Aging, titled The Fantastic Voyage. Kurzweil is sixty years old and is a highly regarded inventor and scientist. He has received the National Medal of Technology from the list of prestigious recognitions.

Kurzweil currently serves in a top-level technological position with Google, attempting to create programs that enhance computer learning capability and speech recognition.

Kurzweil and Grossman believe that living a healthy lifestyle can only do so much to enhance the lifespan and that the aggressive use of supplements is an essential step in slowing down the process of aging and living a healthy lifestyle.

Kurzweil aggressively utilizes nutritional supplementation. At one time in his life, he claims that he utilized over 250 supplements to attempt to optimize his own health. Today, he has whittled that number down to 150. He is confident that without this aggressive use of medical supplementation, he would not be as healthy as he is today. Mr. Kurzweil undergoes a regular hormone profile every three months to monitor his nutrient levels.

Using this testing as a guideline, he engages in this extreme form of supplementation to maximize his nutritional intake. In addition to this supplementation, he drinks ten cups of green tea and ten glasses of alkaline water daily.

He claims that his body's hormone and nutrient levels are the equivalents of a man twenty years younger than himself. He urges that this sort of supplementation should only be done with regular monitoring so that an individual can adjust to changing physiological conditions within the body.

Most of the supplements and nutrients that Kurzweil uses will be pretty familiar to you because they are essential to every diet, such as the common minerals and vitamins.

Many others, however, are much more obscure, such as phosphatidylcholine, which the inventor claims have the ability to maintain cell membranes and prevent them from aging.

Phosphatidylcholine is a phospholipid that is contained within every cell membrane of the human body. Studies have shown that this phospholipid is likely beneficial to the liver, but there is little evidence for Kurzweil's use of the substance.

A Counterargument

Although Kurzweil is incredibly confident in his endeavor, there are certainly detractors, such as University of Chicago School of Public Health Professor Jay Olshanksy. Professor Olshanksy feels that the overuse of supplements is a waste of both money and time.

He feels that for most individuals who utilize this sort of aggressive supplementation, there is minimal benefit outside of placebo, and the majority of the supposed nutrients consumed are simply eliminated during urination and never make their way effectively to the bloodstream.

Three things that everyone agrees on are that everyone should eat healthily, engage in exercise, and take measures to alleviate stress. Although a lot of evidence suggests that methods such as supplementation and caloric restriction can positively affect life expectancy, it will be a long while before enough evidence accrues that we know for sure.

How does all this relate to the Conscious Evolution Institute?

The paths of both Paul McGlothin and his wife and Ray Kurzweil converge in many ways in our Hormone Replacement Therapy Treatment Plan. We do believe in the use of caloric restriction. The caloric intake of Mr. McGlothin and his wife is what we believe is ideal for both sexes. Although Paul and his wife may be in good health for their age, to look at them, one can still see that time is taking its toll upon them. We feel that if they combined their unique diet with Hormone Supplementation, they would benefit much more.

We also believe that supplements and proper nutrition are vital to a healthy body and healthy hormones, as does Mr. Kurzweil. We believe that Mr. Kurzweil almost certainly over-utilizes many supplements, however.

Just think of the expense of taking 150 separate supplements simultaneously. He has also been accused of using many supplements that have been proven ineffective by the scientific community. We at the Conscious Evolution Institute are forward-thinking and attempt to stay ahead of the curve while remaining grounded in legitimate medical science.

Even though we may view Mr. Kurzweil with a tinge of skepticism, we recognize that in doing so much, he is likely making many of the correct decisions as well. We do not share the pessimism of Aging researchers such as Olshansky, who cannot foresee the fantastic changes in Longevity medicine just over the horizon.

By constantly researching new therapies yet remaining grounded in a base of traditional medical theory, we can pick and choose the most effective breakthrough anti-aging theories before they become standard techniques.

The Best of Both Worlds

Our form of Longevity Therapy centers on hormone restoration and optimization rather than total nutrient overload. There is a very high likelihood that Mr. Kurzweil's therapy is quite successful, but we also believe that he is likely to spend a lot of money on supplements that do not work well and more money on others that don't work at all.

Ray Kurzweil is a wealthy and wildly successful inventor, so he has the discretionary income to make significant changes to maximize his health.

The process at the Conscious Evolution Institute is streamlined, and most of the cost comes from purchasing Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy, not raiding the local General Nutrition Center. Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone HRT have decades of research showing numerous benefits of hormone replacement.

We urge you to take the theories presented in this article to heart but take them with a grain of salt as well.

We are confident that if you research the impressive benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy, you will be convinced that it provides the best opportunity to maintain health and vitality, especially HGH and Testosterone Treatments combined with proper nutrition and intelligent lifestyle choices.

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