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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Could somebody summarize this into a diet description that anybody could understand?

This paper summarizes a variety of promising research instead of specific diets. The first two sentences of the conclusion summarize it fairly well:

Recent and accumulating work in unicellular and invertebrate model organisms, rodents, monkeys, and humans indicates that diet has a much more pervasive and prominent role than previously thought in modulating mechanisms of aging and its associated diseases. More work is needed to understand the interactions among calorie intake, meal frequency and timing, single-nutrient modifications, the microbiome, and nutritional history in modulating the key mechanisms that maintain cellular, tissue, and organ function during aging

The reddit TLDR is "More research is needed".

This paper seems to be a hodgepodge of anything that might have potential to extend life, but mostly calorie restriction. My take is that I'd rather not eat only 1,000 calories a day for the hope of living 2-5 years longer. Its just not worth it to me, especially when you understand the typical quality of life during those last couple years.

Interesting how there's so little discussion nowadays about dying with dignity, but tons of spilled ink about living longer. Quality of life is often dismissed totally or just seen is irrelevant to the research.

I find the teen and twenty-something crowd being big on this, but the 40 and over crowd being pretty lukewarm toward life extension. I imagine the latter crowd have seen their own parents and other close relatives reach end of life and pass away, and want nothing to do with extending those last few years.

It seems that dietary restriction can also improve quality of the final years. From the paper: '[Dietary restriction] can produce substantial benefits with, for instance, 30% of DR animals dying at old ages without gross pathological lesions, compared with only 6% of ad-libitum-fed controls'

Lesions are one thing but cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, bone loss, hip replacements, limited mobility, limited cognition, limited memory, limited hearing/sight, chronic pain, etc are whole other things.

Lesion means any tissue damage at any scale in this context.

Intermittent fasting isn't necessarily the same as calorie restriction. It's pretty tolerable if you eat a normal amount of calories, but contained within a 4-6 hour window at night.

I think 'life extension' is not the right way to view it, since living longer is not worth it if you aren't healthy and happy while doing so.

So very, very, very true. And those last years, 80+, let's say, there is the physical state that often has doubtful dignity.. Also the social state, elderly are often isolated and alone and see hopefully their kids once a week, if they're lucky.

I'm bookmarking your comment for later reference.

I'd personally like to avoid the extreme surgeries (e.g., bypass, joint replacement), the terrible cancers, diabetes, etc. I'm certainly willing to modify my diet and exercise to help avoid such things.

An extra few years, lying in bed, unable to interact w/ the world? Not so interesting.

No.

The desire to translate all nutritional research into diet advice is what leads to fad diets and horrific misunderstanding of what science knows and doesn't know about nutrition and metabolic pathways.

And the desire to continue studying until "we're sure" is what leads to the current obesity epidemic and kids still being taught the ridiculous food pyramid in 2015.

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