Starvation can prolong life

Please explain.

Was the unstarved group given unlimited access to food? If so, the results are meaningless because mice probably don't know how to restrain themselves from overeating.

Was the food they were being fed containing certain substances which could stress the body when taken with a healthy proportion of food?

Does a logical scientific explanation for this prolonged lifespan exist, or is it an unexplainable side-effect?

Can it be shown that the factors resulting in prolonged life in mice would also be present in humans?

A statement like this can't be taken without any merit while any of these questions remain unanswered!

It's my impression that many, many experiments show that caloric restriction extends life span. My recollection is that they think they know why, but darned if I can remember what the reasons were. It seems like a hard way to go. I'd rather consume antioxidants (See the ORAC measurements at Tufts University), and I am also following with great interest the human testing now underway of Alteon's crosslink breaker, ALT-711.

Fasting would be a better word. Starvation is contradictory.

I'm in pretty good shape, then.

Ironically....

I was invited to a conference today where a new theory on aging was proposed, and this very experiment involving mice was mentioned.

According to the presenter, the experiments (which were conducted some time ago and are not recent findings) showed a linear relationship with starving the mice...down to VERY low levels of food...in a number of studies.

Aging is not something that must necessarily happen in a species -- this has been proven. So a lot of people are wondering why we age.

There are a number of theories out there...the titles and specifics of which I do not recall (I'm not a biologist myself) but let me see if I can remember--

1 - that the genes for aging are inexplicably linked to fertility. studies in the laboratory have shown that when longevity is selected for, a species will have a sudden decline in fertility...but after a few generations fertility actually increases with longevity. very interesting.

2 -- that genes which are beneficial to reproduction in the early life cycle are also linked to aging, resulting in them being selected for

the human body does contain unexpressed enxymes which could prevent aging...this could be viewed as strong evidence suggesting that the aging process is a genetic advantage which is selected for

one might wonder why it wouldn't be more advantageous to have old people keep having babies...but as I see it, organisms from the older generation will have less evolved genomes, and so it would slow down the rate of natural selection to keep introducing babies from a "latter" state of development...in other words, there can be faster evolution if babies are made in the early stages of an organisms life cycle.

The "Breatharians" have been saying this for years..... http://www.rickross.com/groups/breat.html

Of course, a lot of people think they're lying.

I think the Free Radical Theory of Aging has been pretty well accepted for a few decades now, that aging is the result of various sources of degradation, error, and damage of which damage to the body by inappropriate chemical reaction, particularly with free radicals, is the heavy hitter. 99% of the books I've read take this as a given. There is also some attention to telomeres, but that is very much a minority area of investigation.

To me, it's all telomeres. But I'm crazy.