Transcript
chrisyzen: in this segment of myths and fallacies on the how to actually live longer podcast with your host christian you're enough we're gonna talk about calorie restriction increases lifespan i'm sure you've seen that plastered all over and is it a myth is it a fallacy yeah i mean if we're trying to if we're trying to
chrisyzen: translated to human beings it it is absolutely like a fallacy because where has this ah where is the evidence coming from and a lot most of it is from animal pretty much all of it is from animal studies and most of it is um in like rats stuff right now there there's been a couple of uh resource monkey studies they were pretty long and we'll cut cover them in the in a little while but let's start where we should start so first of all you may not know what a lab rat or a lab anything any animal they are almost all of them eat pretty much the exact same kind of diet and what does that diet contain so I'm just ah if you go to lab diet .com
chrisyzen: laboratory road and diet 5001 product sheet so go to features and benefits let's see features features and benefits okay standardized that's super important for science you know it has to be standardized otherwise too many variables you don't know what you're you don't know what what's causing things to go up down markers whatever So standardization is good for science, but really bad for the animal's health. um First of all, these animals are not eating what they normally eat in the wild. that's already That already invalidates all of that research really to to an extent.
chrisyzen: But let's look at the ingredients. Okay. In order, sort of sort of in ascending order, descending order. So most most to least. So we start with ground corn. Okay. That's the first one. The howd soybean meal. That's the second ingredient. So a lot of that.
chrisyzen: Dried plain beet pulp. Sounds delicious. Fish meal. Hand me the puking but bucket. Ground oats. Okay. Dehydrated alfalfa meal. Brewers dry yeast. Cane molasses. Wheat germ. Dried whey. Porcine animal fat preserved with BHA in citric acid. Porcine meat. Oh wow, there's meat.
chrisyzen: and bone meal, okay, those ah wheat, midlings, salt, and then we get onto like a bunch of like calcium carbonate, chalk, you know, call it calciferro, vitamin A acetate, and then there's a bunch of synthetic vitamins.
chrisyzen: ah and generally fairly low forms of the minerals, not not all of them, but some of them are pretty like really low quality, like the calcium carbonate that's chalk, you know literally the chalk you write on a blackboard with, just as an example.
chrisyzen: So here's the thing, when you have an animal eating this toxic slop, as I call it in my book, ah where how to actually live longer, volume one. So this toxic slop, right? You you have an animal eating that. Now you have, that's the control group.
chrisyzen: a lot of the research those animals eat ad libitum so they eat as much as they want so that's the control group keep in mind now already that's a problem because in in many cases those animals overeat get fat and then they become metabolically less healthy right that causes metabolic derangements starting with like insulin insulin resistance that can progress to diabetes and there's a lot of um ah ah surrounding insulin resistance, there's a lot of sort of ancillary things like you know high highpe blood pressure and cardiovascular disease and all sorts of complex health complications from being overweight um and and don't forget eating more toxic slop.
chrisyzen: more poison now the experimental group that might cut their calories by 20 30 40 percent whatever the case may be now or they might fast them they might do intermittent fasting they might do um you know prolonged fasting right so do you think as an intelligent rational person that you are do you think an animal that gets fat on toxic slop is going to do better or worse than an animal that they restrict eating the toxic slop by a certain percentage of calories or they make it take breaks from the toxic slop poison for let's say for a few days or you know for several or for like an intermittent fasting type regime and I think logically we could probably deduce
chrisyzen: that the animals eating less toxic slop are going to do better, right? And this was actually somewhat somewhat corroborated by those two two of those, um I think those three recent monkey studies, but those two them that I'm thinking of, so one of them one of them found a statistically significant increase in lifespan in the a calorie restricted group.
chrisyzen: And the ad libitum group, so this is massive flow in like a 30 year study, they ad libitum group, those monkeys didn't do as well, but they were eating as much as they want of the toxic slop. But what's interesting in that study that the monkey that lived the longest was from the ad libitum group, from the control group, not from the experimental calorie restricted group. That monkey lived to like the age of 40. She had developed diabetes at some point.
chrisyzen: I think like when she was around 20 something, 23 or 26. And so she was on insulin, on insulin injections. And my sort of theory is that the insulin maybe helped her live longer, even though it's so vilified nowadays, it's probably helped her live longer because um it it would lower lower it lowers cortisol. Like when insulin goes up, cortisol goes down. So the kind of her sea salt type thing.
chrisyzen: So maybe that sort of slowed down the degeneration that cortisol would ah you know cause over years and years. So that's kind of my sort of working theory why that monkey lived the longest. But here's the thing. There's another similar study. And they you so in that first study I just mentioned, they they were eating the standard chow, lab chow.
chrisyzen: with all these gross ingredients, the disgusting soybean hulls and meal, it just makes me makes me want to puke up my coffee. But um the other study, they use the more natural diet And you know what? They actually did not find any sort of meaningful statistically significant difference in lifespan extension from the calorie restricted group and you know the the regular group. And they were eating a more normal diet. So calorie restriction increases lifespan very reliably in those
chrisyzen: Rodent models. Yeah. Yes But when you look at how that that research is done and you look at what those animals are reading and the fact that a lot of the time those animals are The control groups are just eating as much as they want. There's they're not being limited to whatever cal Calorie level they deem sufficient Then they get fat they get sick because they're they're overweight and they're eating more toxic slop and that All of those kind of things that I just mentioned there, that essentially invalidates that entire whole body of research for the most part, at least as it pertains to human beings.
chrisyzen: So um at least what I'm like just kind of trying to see what what can we glean for humans in terms of this what can we glean is first of all don't overeat and if you have a bad diet yes taking eating less of that restricting that is good because you're eating less carbs less Doritos and donuts and seed oils and taking breaks from that will help But here is the beautiful part. If you are ah ah self-repon a -responsible adult that has made health their health their number one priority, which is probably the case if you're listening to my podcast, then we just have to do what a reasonable, intelligent, self -responsible, motivated adult would do. And you know what that is? Buy high quality, nutritious,
chrisyzen: Ideally, organic grass -fed food and eat that. And when you eat normal, high -quality organic food, you tend to overeat less because you know like a bag I used to be able to eat a big bag of Doritos, no problem. And I'd be like, do we have more? right Because those a lot of the the processed food is designed that way. But when you eat like steak or you know even vegetables, which I'm not a fan of, obviously, you know that.
chrisyzen: um but fruit vegetables honey I like I i just cannot over eat that stuff enough on a on a chronic basis ah like like the other stuff like the the pizzas and the other stuff right so moral of the story is eat clean organic food for the most part ideally make it yourself so you doesn't you know what's in it And that is really all you need to do. You don't have to starve yourself. You don't have to do intermittent fasting. You don't have to do calorie restriction. um Just, oh my God, who would have thunk it, right? Who would have thunk it? Just eat the cleanest food that you can source, the highest quality food that you can source. That is the moral of the story. No need to suffer through caloric restriction to increase your lifespan because that research is
chrisyzen: basically invalidated by the by the garbage that those animals are fed right that is that is it that is it i think i want it here uh thanks for tuning into the podcast or watching this on instagram follow me on instagram if you don't already christian jordanov and if you're on instagram follow me on the podcast how to actually live longer in your podcast player Thanks for watching or listening and I'll see you on the next next episode.
