According to a recent study, adopting a low-calorie diet may have an equivalent effect on one’s health to giving up smoking in terms of slowing the process of aging. Consuming fewer calories, according to Columbia University experts, slows the process of aging by 2-3%. Like quitting smoking, this results in a 10%-15% reduction in a person’s likelihood of passing away before their natural death.
Individuals in the study were required to follow a prescribed diet
Around 220 healthy, non-obese women and men from 3 locations throughout the United States participated in the research. Some participants were placed on a 25% calorie-restricted diet as a portion of the CALERIE intervention, whereas the rest continued to eat normally. For two years, every person was required to follow the prescribed diet.
By analyzing their blood DNA methylation through the DunedinPACE algorithm, the researchers calculated their rate of aging. Before individuals began their diet and again after twelve and twenty-four months, researchers took blood samples.
Columbia Mailman School and Columbia’s Butler Aging Center scientists Daniel Belsky said that humans have a long life, and it is not practical to monitor them to see differences in survival and aging-related disease. As a result, researchers depend on biomarkers created to measure the progress and pace of biological aging over the study duration.
Researchers evaluated methylated DNA from white blood cells
The group examined DNA taken out of white blood cells that had been methylated. These marks, which function as chemical markers on the DNA strand to control the expression of genes, are associated with changes with aging. The researchers initially concentrated on three DNA methylation information readings called “epigenetic clocks.”
The GrimAge and PhenoAge clocks, the first two, calculate actual age, or the age in years when a person’s physiology would appear “normal.” They can quantify the amount of aging a person experiences.
The DunedinPACE algorithm, also called a “speedometer,” is used in the third measure to calculate the rate of biological decline and aging. But, again, treatment had no impacts on other epigenetic clocks, as opposed to the outcomes for DunedinPace.