The New American Dream: Limit Calories to Prolong Life
Vyacheslav Vukolov, K2Capital columnist
More and more Americans are thinking not about how to make money, but how to prolong life. And they choose for this the path that was previously considered the lot of stingy Europeans.
They begin to reduce the size of their dishes. The idea of lengthening life by reducing food consumption, repeatedly proven on animals, is beginning to take hold of the broad masses of the country, which ranks first in the world in terms of the proportion of obese people.
In the vanguard of this movement, ABC TV reports, there is a married couple who embarked on the path of a sharp reduction in the calorie content of food as much as 14 years ago. Since then, 61-year-old Meredith Averill and her husband, 60-year-old Paul McGlothin, have been carefully counting calories every day, keeping records of them, regularly checking various parameters of their condition and passing tests. The bulk of the highly nutritious but low-calorie foods consumed by them are vegetables, fruits and beans.
Every time before sitting down at the table, they carefully weigh their food, calculate its nutritional value and calorie content and enter all these data into their laptop. Meredith eats about 1,500 calories a day, and Paul eats about 1,900. This is 30% less than the average Americans consume.
"In almost all animal species, this method significantly increases life expectancy," says Robert N.Butler, a well–known American gerontologist, president of the International Center for Longevity. "If you reduce your calorie intake by 30%, you extend your life by the same amount."
Meredith and Paul claim that the results of their 14-year abstinence are simply amazing. "My heart and blood vessels look decades younger," says Meredith. The gender is more detailed: "Thanks to this reduction in calories, my condition differs from the usual one for my age, like day and night. I am 60 years old, but I have 100% vision and in 14 years I have improved the results of my IQ tests by 30%. It's usually just the opposite."
The head of the Denver Health Center (Grossman Wellness Center) Dr. Terry Grossman (Terry Grossman) adheres to a more comprehensive approach. He considers it necessary to adhere to a systematic plan that includes strength training, a healthy diet and meditation with an emphasis on disease prevention. Therefore, he starts with comprehensive analyses lasting for two days.
"Within a few days, we conduct a certain set of tests that reveal a genetic predisposition to diseases, the presence of negative factors in the environment and family histories of diseases." According to the results, biologically active additives or medicines for the prevention or treatment of these diseases are determined.
60-year-old scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil joined forces with Grossman to write a book about slowing down aging called "The Fantastic Voyage" (Fantastic Journey). They write that in addition to a healthy lifestyle, to slow down the aging process, it is necessary to follow an individual plan for taking dietary supplements.
The winner of the National Medal for Achievements in Technology and other prestigious scientific prizes Kerzwell says: "I take 150 different scientifically based supplements. I have the hormonal background of a 40-year-old now. If I hadn't taken these supplements, things would have been different. This is confirmed by the blood tests that I regularly take. So it's not a flight without an instrument panel."
What exactly does he mean? Some supplements are known to everyone. These are the main vitamins and minerals. The same as phosphatidylcholine are practically unknown, but Kerzwell claims that this substance really slows down the aging of cell membranes.
However, there are also skeptics, like Jay Olshanksy, a professor at the Chicago Institute of Public Health (Chicago School of Public Health), who considers the use of most dietary supplements a waste of time and money. According to him, "all that the vast majority of people who take dietary supplements get is very, very expensive urine. And that's it!"
Anyway, today most American experts agree that everyone should do physical exercises, reduce stress loads and eat less. After all, the results of experiments with calorie restriction and dietary supplements will have to wait for several more decades.
Meanwhile, according to official statistics, the current mortgage crisis and the unstoppable rise in energy prices have already forced wasteful Americans to reduce gasoline consumption by switching to more compact and fuel-efficient cars and by reducing travel. We can be sure that the continued rapid rise in food prices will prove to be a more effective tool for improving the American way of life than thousands of popular science books and TV shows. The invisible hand of the market!
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru03.07.2008