Overeating is the most under-rated problems in our day to day life. All we do to tackle that one extra chapati or an extra dessert is a few minutes of extra cardio or a ‘pudinhara ki goli’. But you never know how badly overeating can affect your body. In fact, eating too much cuts a few years from your life.
According to a recent study published in the journal Cell, researchers from US and China studied the effects of a calorie-restricted diet on body cells in rats. As per the researchers, eating calorie-restricted food helps in reducing the levels of inflammation throughout the body and delays the onset of age-related diseases, reports Daily Mail.
“Eating less food helps in reducing the aging of cells in the body. We already knew that calorie restriction increases life span, but now we’ve shown all the changes that occur at a single-cell level to cause that,” said study senior author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute in the US.
“This gives us targets that we may eventually be able to act on with drugs to treat aging in humans,” he added.
The researchers studied and controlled the diet of animals in the age group of 18-27 which represents that of a human in the age group 50-70 years. They isolated and analyzed a total of 1,68,703 cells from 40 cell types in the 56 rats ranging from fat tissues to that of the liver, kidney, aorta, skin, bone marrow, brain, and muscle. They analyzed the changes in the cells from the beginning to the end of the research, reports India Today.
The researchers used single-cell genetic-sequencing technology in the method to measure the activity levels of genes. The overall composition of cell types within tissues was also studied. Then, conclusions were derived based upon the comparison between the old and young mice on each diet.
The study showed that the cells and tissues of old rats were similar to those of the young rats. Overall, 57% of the age-related changes in cell composition for those rats who were on a normal diet were not seen on the ones who followed calorie-restricted diet, the study said.
“This approach not only told us the effect of calorie restriction on these cell types but also provided the most complete and detailed study of what happens at a single-cell level during aging,” said study researcher Guang-Hui Liu from Chinese Academy of Sciences in China.
As per the study, some of the cells and genes most affected by the diet-related to immunity, inflammation, and lipid metabolism.
“In brown adipose tissue–one type of fat tissue–a calorie-restricted diet reverted the expression levels of many anti-inflammatory genes to those seen in young animals,” the research said.
In short, if you eat less you will live longer. Period!