Dietary changes can improve health during aging

However, studies in rats have shown that lifelong calorie restriction is necessary to achieve these effects, and that the health benefits disappear once a return to a normal diet is achieved. Now a group of scientists from Babraham Institute, University of Cambridge (UK) Found an alternative link between diet and aging that may lead to better health throughout the life cycle based on studies with yeast.

Dr. John Housley and his team have shown that it is possible to achieve a Healthy aging by introducing changes in diet No need for restrictionsIt is possible to improve the diet, and that poor health is not an inevitable part of the aging process. Their findings have been published in PLoS Biology.

Yeasts are a good model organism to study aging because they share much of the cellular machinery found in animals and humans. This avenue of yeast research is helping to find a way to improve healthy aging through dieting that is easier to implement than strict and sustainable calorie restriction, although more research is needed.

Instead of growing the yeast on its usual high-glucose diet, the researchers said They changed their diet to galactose They found that many of the molecular changes that normally occur during aging did not occur. Cells cultured with galactose remained as viable as young cells, even late in life, although they did not live longer, showing that The period of ill health towards the end of life has decreased significantly.

“The most important thing is that a change in diet only works when the cells are young, and in fact, diet has little effect on old yeast. It is difficult to translate what youth means between yeast and humans, but all these studies point in the same direction: for “Live a long, healthy life. Eating a healthy diet from an early age makes a difference.”