Less Is More? Is Hunger The Key To Longevity + A Healthy Life?

hunger longevity grandfather clock face with light dots

Photo: Ella de Kross, Unsplash

Does The Road Of Less Excess Lead To The Palace Of Life-Extension?:

So if the magazine, “Mens Health” re-hashes a headline onto every cover saying, “How [celebrity dude] Got Six-Pack Abs And You Can Too!”,

Then every other health magazine has a recurring cover of the Yoga/Salads/Actress/Fabletics horsewomen of the Apocalypse.

But if you look around a little bit, all kinds of interesting work is showing health & wellness is about a lot more than AG1 and Instagram protein ads.

A few of the most interesting ones have shown that we’re all full of trillions of little clocks.

In a weird irony, the seemingly-endless search for non-Ozempic-based weight loss collided with that fact and may be getting us a lot closer to the fountain of youth…

The Short Answer:

Previous research has identified many kinds of “clocks” in our bodies.
A few programs have tried to reverse aging by targeting them.
Intermittent Fasting is a popular one that does it.
A U. Michigan team picked up on the idea of hunger and tested it.
By exciting the hunger circuit in the brain to fire, they extended the lives of test insects.
The results were confirmed two ways.
Hunger also changed the genetic expression of the test insects.
Through some miracle of biochemistry they both ate more and lived longer.
That plan might not work for humans.
But using one that includes a hunger component like intermittent-fasting and some calorie-restriction might have similar results.
That formula was confirmed in other research as well.
Calorie restriction not only increases lifespan but slows & may reverse brain-aging.
Other studies in both temperature & oxygen reduction show similar results on longevity and brain aging.
These are roughly equivalent to living in colder temperatures, at high-altitudes, with a slightly-lower body temperature.
With all the problems of fat storage and modern calorie excess, its encouraging to think there are other mechanisms that can work greatly in our favor.

Read on to find out the details…

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Intermittent-Fasting Is Already A Great Start:

To that end, we previously discussed how Intermittent Fasting just might be the holy grail for this.

You put yourself on this timed-eating schedule and BOOM!

All the little clocks that Satchin Panda’s team dealt with go to work one way or another.

And you lose weight and get healthier in the process just like the mice in the studies.

All by changing your relationship to time a little bit.

The Michigan Team Picks Up An Interesting Thread:

A recent set of work by a team at U. Mich picks up an interesting thread that might be teased out of that work.

Because most of the people who start Intermittent Fasting will tell you one thing about the first 3-5 days.

The hunger pangs that result from resetting the eating schedule are impressive.

So at the beginning, you will really have to contend with them to keep yourself on the program.

Intermittent Fasting Hacks The Hunger Circuit, Too:

Hint: Ice water works great!

But that’s where the thread gets picked up.

Because your body will be in some kind of “hunger” mode for around 8 hours of the day.

As the last meal of the day might take 6+ hours to fully-process.

But since we’re built to store fat and survive famines…

We’re actually built to be hungry a fair bit of the time.

Chasing Down The Mysterious Mechanisms Of Hunger:

Coincidentally enough, the U. Mich team decided to create hunger in test subjects to see what it does.

One group was given a snack low in something called BCAAs, the other higher.

Then something weird happened, because the fruit flies in-question were then allowed to eat as much as they wanted of either yeast or sugar.

The flies that had eaten the low-BCAA snack first ate way more yeast, which is a strong indication of need-based hunger.

Sort-of like the opposite of mindless-snacking when people watch TV.

Still weirder, the flies that started with the low-BCAA snack didn’t consume fewer total calories.

They ate more.

Oh yeah, and also? They lived longer, too.

-BOOM!

Don’t Focus On BCAAs, Change Your Eating Window:

Now the point of the lesson here is not for people overeat or go out evaluating how many BCAAs there are in their diets.

Even though Dr. David Sinclair did recommend against the BCAA supplement powders in an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.

The real point is that starting the fruit flies out on the one snack, the researchers really turned-on their sense of hunger.

And by incorporating a diet plan that has a “hunger phase” in it and not eating at all hours,

There is a chance that you too could live longer!

To confirm the first results another way, the team then used some fancy lighting called “optogenetics” to influence the fruit flies directly in their tiny brains.

With this specific light shone on them, the little guys ate twice as much food as normal unlit ones.

But somehow again, they lived significantly longer!-BOOM!

Enough Hunger Will Actually Change Your Genetic Expression!:

Then the team went on to find out how that worked.

They mapped out how the DNA of the flies was expressed under different conditions.

Because depending on them, different parts of the code will be run and other bits won’t.

What they found was that in the presence or absence of specific things in the diet,

The genetic expression of the flies changed, which altered their hunger-state, feeding behavior and miraculously, their lifespan!

-Kinda makes you think twice about what all the UPFs, weird oils, fast carbs, and food additives are doing to you, right?

Calorie-Restriction Is The Original Hunger-Hacking Trick!:

But wait, it gets even better.

Because before the miracle of Intermittent Fasting came out, there was another plan called Calorie Restriction.

And other than Intermittent-Fasting, it is one of the few dietary transmogrifications that is shown to increase lifespan!

Before you even say it, the answer is Yes.

Doing intermittent-fasting paired with calorie-restriction increases lifespan even more than either separately.

And as you might imagine, if you’re eating less than just the calories required to maintain your current weight,

You are going to become familiarized with HUNGER!

-Just like the fruit flies with the brains that have been tricked with snacks or light!

Calorie-Restriction Also Keeps Your Brain Young:

The benefits don’t stop there either!

Because not only does calorie-restriction extend lifespan,

It also slows aging of the brain in just about every dimension through another set of tiny mechanisms centered around something called CREB-1.

Again, lots of little clocks!

Other research picks up the theme of getting a little bit less, too.

Less Of Other Things Turns Out To Be Helpful, Too:

For example one study suggests that small amounts of hypoxia associated with living at high altitudes improves metabolism and reduces metabolic disease, diabetes, and some types of heart disease!

Another one showed that at Everest Base Camp levels, lab mice lived 50% longer than normal!

And if you think you love the heat and the beach, you might want to think again!

Reducing your temperature is associated with a longer lifespan also.

Reducing Temperature Also Turns On Life-Extending Mechanisms:

Previous studies have shown that slight decreases in body temperature have extended the lifespans of flies, worms, fish, and mice.

In the case of the mice, the extension in lifespan was significant with a drop of 0.5 degrees C.

Although human body temperature has been dropping 0.03 degrees C per decade since the 1890s,

Another piece of recent work shows that lower temperatures do something like the zombie-cell cleanup associated with intermittent fasting.

Toxic Protein Cleanup Accelerated By Just A Little Chill:

Researchers at the University of Cologne found that in certain test animals, slightly lower temperatures increased rates of toxic-protein cleanup.

These kinds of proteins are a problem in degenerative diseases like Lou Gehrig’s, Huntington’s, and perhaps a few others like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

So even though the team might find a way to make this happen at normal temperatures later, the message is clear.

Even a reduction in ambient and body temperature is enough to increase the activity of some very helpful mechanisms we barely even knew about!

If We Reduce Some Inputs, Our Bodies Can Do Some Really Cool Things:

In a really interesting reversal of the problem we all have of our bodies being designed to store fat,

It turns out getting a little bit less than you think you need can help us use previously-hidden mechanisms to hack our health and lifespan in many ways.

I guess the old Chinese proverb, “Eat until you are seven-tenths full and save the other three-tenths for hunger…” is a really good idea!

See you a few decades at the Park City 100+ Club!