Lighter side views of CR people.

[Guest guest]

Hi All, See the attached/below for the lighter side view of CR and its

scientists.

Cheers, Al.

............Another optimist is Dr. Roy L. Walford, a pathologist and

researcher at U.C.L.A. who served as the team physician during the

Biosphere 2 project, in which a squad of humans lived for two years

inside a sealed-off indoor ecosystem. Walford's baby is calorie

restriction. This sounds strange, but it's based on a long-recognized

fact: reducing calorie intake in lab mice extends their lives

dramatically, and it's the only technique proven to do so in a

mammal. Whether it works for people is still an open question - data

released in 1997 indicates that it works in lower primates - but

Walford is a believer. He told me that the de facto calorie restriction

practiced inside Biosphere 2 (the Biospherians weren't able to grow

enough food in there, so they fasted involuntarily) resulted in a

range of quantifiable benefits, like dramatically decreased cholesterol

levels.

Some of Walford's colleagues think he's gone off the deep end

with his extrapolations, but at 73, he was still practicing the gospel,

living on an 1,800-calorie-a-day diet, as opposed to the

recommended 2,000 to 2,500 for adults. He insisted that a person

who started calorie-restricting at 18 would have a chance of living to

160...........

At the end of my visit, Kent introduced me to Dr. R.

Spindler, a professor in the department of biochemistry at the

University of California at Riverside. Spindler was hired to help

direct the Life Span Project's rodent research on the effects of

supplements. He's also an old hand at researching calorie restriction,

which for decades has been known to extend the life of lab mice.

(The mystery is how.) A dapper, compact man who practices a mild

calorie-restriction regimen himself, Spindler offered to show me his

lab at Riverside, so I followed him over.

En route, I sorted my thoughts on all this stuff. Larry and Herb

and Durk and Sandy seemed harmless enough, but obviously, I had

to be against the dog-slaying. Calorie restriction seemed O.K., but I

did have to wonder if that would be a desirable way to " live " just to

tack on a few more years. A typical platoon of calorie-restricted

mice eat about 40 percent less than their unrestricted counterparts.

Put in terms I could understand, that comes out to about 100 percent

fewer trips to New Orleans. The idea of living life as an extended

pursed-lip tightrope act seemed too rational to be much fun.

Put another way, it seemed too " Houyhnhnm. " Say what you will

about the superior moral virtues of the horse people in Gulliver's

Travels, but admit this: they were awfully boring. Little wonder that

no one mourned when they died. They probably couldn't tell the

difference. The s weren't proper role models, either - they

were too animalistic, nasty, and ignorant - but at least they knew how

to have a good time, even if their primary amusements were

howling, fornicating, and defecating.

Inside his lab, Spindler introduced me to his wife and lab pardner,

Patti Mote, a kindly woman who loaned me a white coat. We walked

upstairs to a small room where the racks of mice are kept. Against

one wall was a rack of individually caged, calorie-restricted mice;

against the other, the so-called " ad libs, " furry fatties who could eat

whatever and whenever they wanted. With dramatic consistency, I

was told, the fatties were unhealthier and died sooner. I leaned in to

study them closely. They looked sluggish, lazy, and swollen, like

little fur-covered sausages with hangovers. By contrast the dieters

were alert, pert, and active. Even though I'm a naturally too-skinny

guy myself, I felt no kinship bond with the fit-and-slim mice, who

struck me as too smug and Houyhnhnm-like to love. I liked the

fatties. The s.

The Spindlers grabbed a Houyhnhnm mouse and a mouse

and showed me " the dowel test, " a measure of mouse dexterity. They

laid a long wooden dowel over a dry sink, creating a sort of Dowel

Bridge over Sink Canyon. They put a dieter on the dowel and slowly

turned it. It kept its balance, no problem. Then they put a

through the same paces. The hapless tub clutched and blobbed and

quickly fell. But ... was I imagining it? He seemed to be smiling as he

tumbled.

" He fell off without me even rolling the dowel, " Spindler observed

dispassionately..........

Walford, the staff M.D. inside the Biosphere 2 bubble, is a

longtime life-extension researcher, focusing on calorie restriction.

http://www.walford.com/index.htm