Calories Restriction and Health - Thesis Example

Fasting prior to chemotherapy enhances the effect of the chemotherapeutic agent on the tumor and reduces the toxic side effects of the chemotherapeutic agent on the patient. However, before this benefit of calorie restriction could be used in human beings more studies are required to reinforce the findings of the twin benefits of calorie restriction. 1. Introduction 1.1. Calories Restriction Over the last seven decades evidence from insect and animal studies has pointed to the restriction of calorie intake resulting in an increase in life span.

These findings have led to an interest in developing a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of calorie restriction that bestow the health-directed benefits and translating these benefits to human beings, as a means of overcoming life-threatening diseases and conditions for a better quality of life and increase in life spans (Koubova & Gurante, 2003). . of pressure is considered to be biomarkers for aging since there is a correlation between these markers and those diseases normally associated with advancing age or aging itself.

Calorie restriction studies in animals have shown to reduce these biomarkers associated with aging and hence the holding out of the promise for the use of calorie restriction with the therapeutic potential to improve the treatment of diseases and conditions associated with aging to increase life span in humans (Brown, 2008). The modern interest in calorie restriction can be traced back to the 1930s and the research of the nutritionist Clive McKay. McKay and his team conducting cancer research discovered that severe calorie restriction up to 60% ad Librium levels resulted in a measurable increase in life span in rats.

This interesting finding remained in cold storage for nearly three decades, as the findings were not found to be relevant to cancer research as such. Michael Ross took up this thread of investigation in the 1960s using Sprague-Dawley rats, to study the incidence of tumors and their age relation. The results of increased life span in rats caused by calorie restriction sparked interest among gerontologists and gerontology research. In the 1970s two groups of research investigation on calories started, one under Roy Walford at UCLA and the other led by Edward Masoro and B.P. Yu at the University of Texas (Sprott & Austad, 2006).

Walford and his team, with particular emphasis on Richard Weindruch, focused on the impact of calorie restriction on different models that ranged from mice to rhesus monkeys to humans. Some of these investigations continue even today and have led to the general acceptance that calorie restriction has turned out to be the only intervention that results in a life span.