Fight Aging!

The CR Society conference took place last week, and by all counts it was a successful event. The CR blogs commented from the convention and afterwards. Here are another couple of entries. Those blogs are mostly food- and lifestyle-focused; very useful for practitioners and newcomers, but somewhat light on convention details.

You'll find the details, including some lengthy convention reports, by searching the archives of the CR Society mailing list. I can't link directly, unfortunately - it would be nice on a number of levels if the society administrators would liberate the list archives from that onerous login requirement.

I have it on good authority that we'll be seeing presentations and transcribed reports from the convention in a more accessible form fairly soon. I'll link to them when they are up.

While I'm on the subject, it's worth noting that Brian Delaney - CR Society president - has collaborated with Lisa Walford on a new calorie restriction book aimed at newcomers.

At last, here's a book that synthesizes the increasingly popular CR (Calorie Restriction) diet for the layperson. CR is not a diet primarily about weight loss, although readers will lose weight. CR is about eating highly nutritious foods in smaller quantities to extend your healthy years. Here's the concept: eat less, but choose foods more carefully. This will "upregulate" your metabolism; in other words, what goes in will be used more economically. Dieters will feel better and function better - and the big bonus: the CR diet slows aging. CR lengthens the periods of youth and middle age and substantially reduces the risk of virtually all the diseases of aging. Lisa Walford and Brian Delaney, two longtime CR practitioners, will take you on a handheld stroll through the process, including an introduction to CR, how to do it, some of the key issues in the current dialogue, and the skinny on superfoods.

I'm not sure we can claim the stronger scientific sense of the word "proven" on "slows aging in humans" yet, but we're close to being able to say something like this based on recent research. There is certainly a strong presumption amongst respectable researchers that CR should slow aging in humans, just as it does in all other species science has tested. Regardless, I don't see anyone jumping up to dispute the greatly reduced risk of age-related disease or other health benefits provided by CR at this point; that's pretty much in the bag thanks to the CALERIE study.