Spark

by John J. Ratey

DIET: EAT LIGHT, EAT RIGHT The one proven way to live longer is to consume fewer calories—at least if you’re a lab rat. In experiments in which rodents eat 30 percent fewer calories, they live up to 40 percent longer than animals allowed to eat as much as they want. “Our control group is really overfed and underexercised,” says neuroscientist Mark Mattson, pointing out that group is “a good match for a lot of the American population.” A study in monkeys that began eighteen years ago in the experimental gerontology lab at the National Institute on Aging suggests the same holds true in primates. And one human trial showed that asthma patients on a restricted diet for two months—three meals one day and only five hundred calories the next—had fewer markers of oxidative stress and inflammation in their blood (and their asthma symptoms improved). This finding supports the theory that imposing mild stress on the cells—in this case depriving them of fuel—makes them more resilient to future challenges and reduces free radicals. “It’s kind of like exercising for an hour every day,” Mattson says. “It’s a mild stress, but as long as there’s a recovery period, it’s good.” He is cautious about telling people to skip meals, but that’s what he does: no breakfast, a salad for lunch, and a normal dinner, for a total of about two thousand calories. It’s likely that people of normal weight wouldn’t benefit as much, and anyone over fifty should be careful about malnourishment because they’re l...