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Would You Like To Live Longer? Would you like to live longer? Then don't eat so much! That seems to be the direction in which research going back as far as the 1930's is pointing. It's that long ago that scientists discovered that restricting the calorie intake of laboratory animals - mice and rats - extended their life span by 30%-40%. Feed a rat 30% less and it would live 30% longer than if it was allowed an unrestricted diet provided its ration - no pun intended - contained all the necessary nutrients. Today, 80% of adult Americans are overweight. 33% of them can be considered obese. And the fact is, the fatter we get, the sooner we die. Why? Because overeating damages cells causing them to age faster than normal. People who are overweight are more susceptible to cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and diabetes. Eating fewer calories slows down these diseases of aging. While a restricted calorie diet has not yet been scientifically proven to extend human life - the rat race and its effect on what and how we eat may be killing us but we're not lab animals on which the necessary experiments can easily be tried - Dr. George Roth of the National Institute on Aging has found that long-lived men have lower skin temperatures, lower levels of insulin, and a slower decline in DHEA levels than others. Not surprisingly, lower temperatures and insulin levels and a slower decline in DHEA are also characteristic of lab animals on calorie restricted diets. We may not have scientific evidence that eating less will prolong human life, but Dr. Roy Walford has put together an anti-aging diet that cuts calories by about 25% per day, from 2000 down to around 1500. His reason for doing this: to increase life expectancy to 120 years. Calorie restriction is not for everyone but with so many Americans overweight, most of us can increase our life expectancy by simply bringing our calorie count down to a more normal level. This is something we can easily do by eating better foods and giving ourselves the added nutrients we need by taking food supplements. Just eating the wrong foods can lead to overeating! How? In fulfilling our biological needs for certain nutrients, we may be scavenging for what's necessary so that eating becomes a viscous cycle because what we're eating never gives us what we really need. As an example, we may crave salty junk snacks because our body craves certain minerals that aren't being supplied in our diet. We may eat these to no end but they will never give us what we need. They are empty callories adding to our weight. If this is true, to break the cycle, our first step would be to eat nutritious foods. Our second step would be to supplement with the necessary vitamins, minerals, and amino acids to be sure we were getting everything we needed for good health. Weight is pretty much a choice. For most Americans it has become an unconsciouis choice determined by cravings and habits. Lawrence Stepanowicz, ND --------------- Reprinted from Practical Health. For a free subscription and a free copy of "Lessons From The Miracle Doctors" visit http://practicalhealth.net Copyright Lawrence Stepanowicz, ND