Longevity and Diet
Fasting may improve lifespan
Aging has always been considered an inevitable process. But the discovery that the aging process itself could be ‘hacked’ has led to the concept of ‘health span’ as opposed to merely ‘lifespan’. A long life is not necessarily marred by disability and death and specific dietary interventions in particular may promote healthy long life.
However, much of this data results from animal data as it is difficult to experiment on live humans. The table below illustrates the results from dietary, exercise, genetic and drug interventions and their main mechanism of action. Pay particular attention to the column ‘Main Mechanism of Action’. This is the best guess as to how all these different interventions may increase lifespan.
Did you notice something rather striking? Almost all of the interventions work through the same pathway — decreased nutrient sensing — which also includes decreased growth factor signalling and increased autophagy. As you may recall from our previous post on mTOR, the main 3 nutrient sensors of the human body, which is similar to most animals are
- mTOR
- AMPK
