Peter wrote:

>Douglas, I have not yet checked out any of the sources on calorie
>restriction you have sent my way, but I am critical of the
> rodent studies which, according to my sources, are comparing calorie
>restricted rodents in captivity on unnatural, probably cooked
> diets with overfed rodents also in captivity and on bad diets.
> Nobody has done calorie restriction studies comparing colorie
> restrictive captive rodents on various diets with free rodents roaming around in
> their natural environment on their natural raw diets. This might be
>tricky to do, but until we know for sure know how old rodents get in
> their natural environment, all we know is that rodents who eat
> smaller amounts of unnatural foods live longer than rodents who eat
> larger amounts unnatural foods.

I agree with this completely, & made these points many times on the
CR list.  But whether the diet is cooked or raw I don't think there
can be much doubt that the less calories and the less exercise the
longer the life.  Granted that all these experiments need to be
redone using raw foods, I would be shocked if the conclusions are
any different.

>Also, I find you overly focused on biomarkers as temperature
> & heart rate, but there are many other indicators for how long
> we will live such as lung capacity, kidney filtration rate, ratio of b
>lood lipids, glucose levels, strength of immune system, nerve
> conductivity, muscle strength, hormon & enzyme levels etc.

I'm only focused on temp., which is probably about the best way to
get a quick grasp of the success or failure of a life-extension
regimen, as is the cancer incidence.  Bob Avery is the one who is
focused also on pulse rate, but I believe temp. & pulse will track
each other fairly closely.  The other markers you list of course
have well-known correlations with age, but the sorts of things Bob &
I are talking about are quick, cheap ways to monitor how well
changes in your diet or whatever are impacting your aging rate.
Lots of work has been done on CR's impact on glucose levels in
particular, but I believe that most of those you mentioned have been
scrutinized.

> I am curious to know if you or anyone else on calorie restictive
>diets have undergoneany comprehensive panels of biomarker testing
>to establish your actual, biological age.

I haven't, but are sure some have.  Be aware that I don't subscribe
to a notion of either biological age or lifespan.  I believe that
there are PROBABILITIES that if you do this or that your life will
be X number of years long, but that is about as far as I would go.
There are just too many individual variables for these sorts of
things to apply to anything other than average people, not
individuals.  There is a great deal of confusion about death.
People do not die of old age.  They die of disease, the failure of
organs, trauma or a breakdown of a metabolic pathway.  I have seen
person after person die "young," looking far younger than their
chronological ages.  I lost an uncle 6 weeks ago to cancer at age
84.  But he was a very youthful 84: smooth skin, active golfer &
could easily have passed for 65.  He did not die of old age, he died
of a specific disease, which, if he had avoided it, he would have
doubtless gone on for many more years until some other disease or
whatever got him.

BTW, anybody eating raw or mostly raw is by default on a calorically
restricted diet when compared to conventional eating.  I personally
think raw will probably be at least as effective as a severe CR
regime (generally considered to be a restriction of about 30-40% of
ad libitum calories), & possibly much more effective in increasing
the probabilities of living beyond normal lifespans.  Raw combined
with CR should really be a powerful life extender.

--Doug Schwartz
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