It takes some lifestyle tweaking, but in the end is a simple approach.
Just about everyone wants to be at the top of their game. Whether your thing is reading, parenting, selling stocks, getting people to donate money or playing basketball, ruling the roost gives cause to celebrate.
When it comes to your health, it’s the same. Proper eating, exercising and resting top the list as performance enhancers, and now scientists have added another: eating little.
Of course, we’re not calling on readers to applaud an eating disorder. But scientists from the University of São Paulo in Brazil have found that eating fewer calories helps to protect you from developing diseases.
“Obese individuals are much more likely to have age-related diseases,” said Alicia Kowaltowski, a professor at the USP Chemistry Institute (IQ-USP.
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“This includes neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, proliferative diseases like cancer, and metabolic diseases themselves, such as Type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, heart attack and CVA. Obese people have a higher incidence of all of these,” she added.
The study found that the number of calories a person eats directly influences the performance of different cells.
One of the group’s experiments on mice showed that a low-calorie diet can go so far as to protect the brain from cell death, which is associated with diseases like dementia.
Best practice? Always consult your doctor before adjusting your diet, to ensure healthy eating.
