Stefan:
> But, hell, who says, w h e n a cell divides???
> If my memory serves me right, one reason for dividing is oxidative
> stress. Another might be a virus, intruding in the cell.
> Now, if there is no reason to divide, the cell w o n ' t do it!
Sure. The more stress you put on your body, the more quickly it ages.
The most obvious example that everyone has experienced is at the
beginning of the summer, as your skin is "attacked" by solar radiations,
a few layers grow rapidly. And at the same time, your skin ages.
BTW, you have seen the picture of G. C. Burger, after 33 years raw:
his skin looks exactly as the skin of a man of his age [and my uncle,
who eats 90% cooked and has the same age, has a smoother skin]. I can
hear your argument coming "but at the 10th generation..."; however,
if the 10th generation instincto lived 1000 years, I would expect SOME
improvement for someone who has practiced 33 years!
In the same way, when your body is injured, the process of tissue repair
require cell divisions (and thus, your body ages).
Red blood cells are renewed every 120 days on average. It seems very
dubious to me that with raw food they would be renewed every 1200 days.
White cells need to divide when your immunological system has to
fend off infections, viruses, etc. AIDS patients typically have white
cells that age very quickly. Of course, if you eat raw, maybe your
immune system is more efficient and doesn't have to fight against denatured
molecules or whatever, but unless you live in an absolutely sterilized
environment, you WILL need an immunological system.
Intestine cells also need to be replaced. If you want to avoid stress, then
you will have to stop eating...
Maybe eating raw can help to limit cell division, because, as you
are healthier, and your organs, circulation, etc function correctly,
there is no need for extra effort from the cells, there is no extra
damage. But on the other hand, there have been many healthy people
living on earth until late age, who nevertheless died before 120.
Maybe [and that's my personal comment] calorie restriction can increase
maximum lifespan, because as metabolism slows down, cells divide less
quickly. Or, perhaps, as the body contains less cells (emaciation),
there are less cells to renew per unit of time. But all of that
can only have a limited effect, far from a tenfold multiplication.
Nature doesn't care about keeping you alive once you have reproduced
and raised your children. On the evolutionary point of view, living
120 or 1200 years don't make any difference. I admit that it's not
a powerful argument, though.
>Recent scientific findings suggest, that the a v e r a g e life-
>span of humans in paleolithic times was more than 100 years and this
>without hygiene, medicine, dental care,...
>I don't know if these results are already commonly accepted but if
>they are true...
There is a great deal of uncertainty about that. The figures that
Ward Nicholson gave were very different.
I think, as I mentioned in a previous post, that observing current
hunter-gatherer societies can give a good idea on the subject. And
it is clear that no human population in the world has a life
expectancy as high as in industrialized countries.
As for animals, no mammal I know lives more than about 1 century.
If we consider than the length of life is proportional to the period
prior to adulthood (which is 18 years for humans), and we observe
chimpanzees and other close apes, we see that humans cannot expect much
more than 120 years.
Best wishes,
Jean-Louis
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