When we hear the word “starving”, it brings about a vision of people in third world countries and the suffering from a lack of the distribution of food all over the globe. It certainly isn’t a word that denotes health in most people’s minds. However, a controversial study suggests that restricting how much you eat, just short of that starving feeling, could greatly lengthen the life span of over 20 different species including primates. This research comes at a time when many organizations in the world are trying to provide many species with more food, including people living in poverty. So let’s examine some of the reasoning around this research and determine for each of us just how credible it may be.
The research states that one of the conclusions is that though we have been told to watch we eat, it may also be about how much we eat. So it’s not just the chocolate covered peanuts that might get us in control but whether or not we ate a small handful or the whole box, the same with broccoli. You may be saying, that we already know that we must watch our calorie content to be healthy and lose weight, but the research also says that not only does eating too much of any food affect the aging process but even smelling food can affect the length of our lives. Shocking indeed, that the joy many of us get from just smelling our favorite cheesecake repeatedly, may affect how healthily we age.
Research from the Florida Atlantic University is still not certain how this process works. New research published in the PLOS Genetics says that because eating too much can cause food to eat you, or more specifically, eat your cells, plays a huge role in how well you age. There are numerous reasons why restricting how much you eat or smell food, can add to a healthy process of aging; one reason is that it appears that a restrictive diet seems to balance the metabolism and positively affect and repair the body on a cellular level. Through these studies, FAU and other involved researchers on this project, desire to create treatment for obesity and cancer, according to what they have learned about cell destruction and repair.
The research on healthy living, and healthy aging can be quite confusing to the layman. However, if we summarize FAU’s research, it states that it appears, (because no research is certain), that cutting down on how much you eat during the day , including how much you smell food, can extend your life and help you to avoid many of the diseases and illnesses that come with the aging process.