Nieft / Secola <[log in to unmask]>
>Was it here or the CR-list (or both) where I read details about your
>cat? Anyway, you mentioned it was more like a kitten, very
> smallish,underdeveloped for its age. Do you think it would be
> successful reproducing?

I suspect she would.  All I know about her sex life is that I had to
get the little suckers cut out when she reached puberty because she
was driving me nuts with her wails, etc. whenever she was going
through her cycle.  I'm not sure on this, but I believe it is obsese
individuals who have decreased reproductive rates.  CR only means
that you are deprived of calories, & the idea is to get CRAN
(Caloric Restriction with Adequate Nutrition) which is defined as
sufficient nutrients so as not to be deficient in any of the
essentials (whatever that means).


>Is there a limit to what you consider good health even if
>there is life extension? If a cat (or a human) was so
> underdeveloped (say from a CR diet from birth) that it couldn't
>reproduce succesfully would it still be considered healthy?

The only yardstick I would go by is the impact on total lifespan, &
the data is that CR works best when started prior to puberty.  I
don't know what this does to the ability to reproduce, suspect that
its impact would not be negative.  [The idea is simply to reach
maturity & then maintain your body on the absolute minimum # of
calories you can get by on.  Bob Avery posted to the CR list an
experiment by a Japanese researcher & his wife (who was
breastfeeding at the time) who tried living on a "prison camp" raw
diet (around 6-700 cal/day I think) & her flow of milk increased
with this regimen.  The body gets super efficient when not
overburdened with superfluous calories.]  Remember that we are
dealing with something vital to population control here, in that
when the food supply is restricted the period between births should
lengthen to accomodate for this.  And that when food is plentiful
the aging rate should accelerate to limit the population naturally.
This is a little contradictory to what I wrote above.  To my
knowledge male humans rapdily lose libido when severly calorically
restricted, but females do not (Soltzeinetzen -sp?- has some stuff
on this in his gulag memoirs).  I'm not sure why evolution has
decreed that females should adopt the opposite way of coping with
food scarcity from men.  Certainly human mating is possible without
the aquiesence of the female (i.e., rape), but without the willing
participation of the male it is no way Jose.  Maybe the idea is that
the woman is designed to carry the slowly maturing embryo through
the famine season until it is born months hence in a better
nutritional environment.

>(Yes, I catch the irony with our own reproductive problems :))

I don't have time right now, but I've been thinking about this &
have some interesting suggestions I'll post sooner or later.

>I respect your preference for life extension as a goal, but
> what other prerequisites have you for your idea of health? How
>might you fill in the following blank: Life extension at the exspense of _____
> would be inappropriate for me.

The negatives are not really negatives, & when you do CR you feel
great anyhow usually.  There are periods when you can get depressed
and/or lethargic, but no big deal.  [Too many calories can have the
ssame effects.]  Skinnyness is a result, but not all that big a deal
if you just learn to dress loosely :^)  The larger point is that
anything which will extend life will by definition also delay the
onset of the age-related diseases, so CR (or any other life
extension technique) will only add to health.

--Doug Schwartz
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