To function properly, a woman’s body needs around 1800 Kcal per day. And if we have intense daily physical activity (1 hour of sport per day, at least), this number can quickly reach 2000 Kcal, or even 2500 Kcal. That, of course, is the theory: in practice, we unfortunately tend to explode the limits …
Yet, according to a new study conducted jointly by the University of Wisconsin-Madison (in the United States) and the National Institutes on Aging (ditto), reducing our daily calorie intake could allow us to live longer: in fact, we could even gain up to 18 years of extra life!
In children, it does not work
To come to this conclusion, American scientists worked with 200 rhesus macaques: if these monkeys do not have the same life expectancy than humans (in them, it is divided by about 3), their cells age in the same way as ours. In addition, they can suffer from the same diseases as humans – diabetes, cancer and dementia, in particular – and, more impressively, they also earn White hair over the years !
Results ? Researchers have found that by reducing the daily calorie intake of animals by around 30% for several weeks, the risk of developing age-related diseases (cardiovascular disorders, diabetes …) was reduced by around 40%. This “good habit” also had an impact on life expectancy: males lived about 2 years longer, and females could reach a life expectancy of + 6 years compared to the average. Still according to the researchers, in “human age”, this would correspond to an extended life expectancy of 18 years …
“We believe that the results obtained on monkeys are quite transferable to humans,” explains Dr. Julie Mattison of the National Institute on Aging. On the other hand, we found that this phenomenon only applied to adults: reducing the daily calorie intake of children does not increase their life expectancy and can even be harmful to their health. In short, there’s no question of doing anything with the contents of your plate …
