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b_b  ·  3120 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Five Nobel Prize Winners Back Longevity Pill

I don't personally take any supplements, and I don't know of any that sound attractive to me.

Based on my knowledge of paleo diet, I can't say that I'm a huge fan, but I'm not a huge fan of most diets. I think that we're better off when we eat things that are not made in industrial factories, and this requirement can be satisfied by many foods, paleo or otherwise (and I completely agree that the name is ridiculous; there's nothing caveman-like about a perfectly marbled ribeye, but that's neither here nor there). I don't always adhere to my own rule, but I do it to the extent that I can.

That's pretty extreme eating once per day. If I wanted to cut down on my food, I'd probably cut the size of each meal. I get shaky hands if I don't eat enough. I tried to do one of those 72 hour fasts in the fashion of katakowsj or mike, and I failed after 30 hours. I developed a headache that was intense and seemingly getting stronger with every second. (Withdrawal, maybe?!)

The data on calorie restriction in humans is unconvincing either way, but in my personal opinion I think it's because it's just too difficult to get reliable data. So far as I'm aware, no one has found an organism that doesn't respond to it in lab settings. It seems unreasonable that humans would be an exception. Not impossible, but not likely. The data that exist on mice and worms are very clear, and if a mechanism is preserved across those models (which diverged at the beginning of the Cambrian), then it's probably fairly important, so why would it have disappeared since rodents and humans diverged (don't know when off the top of my head, but very recently compared to that split)? This isn't a rock solid argument, or course, but it's a solid hunch, especially when we know that calorie restriction in humans does things like make chemo more survivable, has positive immune system effects, etc.