Dietary restriction of isoleucine increases healthspan and lifespan in mice | Hacker News Reader

Dietary restriction of isoleucine increases healthspan and lifespan in mice

cell.com

45 pointsbirriel18 comments

I'm generally bearish on calorie/protein restriction increasing healthspan/lifespan in humans. I question how applicable these sterile mice studies are to people who live in the real world who get infections, hip fractures, etc.

https://peterattiamd.com/calorie-restriction-part-iia-monkey...

To grossly simplify the above article about monkeys, we have a 2x2 matrix: diet quality and calorie restriction (CR).

    Good Diet + No CR = 29.10 years median lifespan
    Good Diet +    CR = 28.48 years median lifespan
    Shit Diet + No CR = 25.91 years median lifespan
    Shit Diet +    CR = 28.32 years median lifespan

So yeah, if you're gonna eat a crap diet CR will help you. But how about you don't eat crap and go out and exercise?

Not sure about CR but prolonged fasts (3 days or so) promotes cell autophagy eg forcing your body to eat dead/old cells and increases HGH secretion.

Bad diet and no CR vs CR seems explainable by using calories as a proxy for total number of toxins consumed.

I really doubt these low protein diets have any capacity to extend lifespan and healthspan in humans.

The amount of wear and tear on a human body, especially voluntary wear through exercise, simply requires ample nutrients for adequate recovery – and that means amino acids.

> The amount of wear and tear on a human body, especially voluntary wear through exercise, simply requires ample nutrients for adequate recovery – and that means amino acids.

Aren't branched-chain amino acids a subset of amino acids, of which we only require a relatively small amount as essential?

My memory may be failing me here, but ISTR the "Sugar: the bitter truth" dude Robert Lustig mentioning BCAA as something problematic WRT cancer and corn-fed beef, as cause to consume grass-fed instead.

Disclaimer: I know nothing.

Edit: it seems I'm not senile yet, the talk I'm recalling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNU72dny2s&t=1530s

That's not what I took away from "Exercised", from "Burn", or even "Comfort Crisis". Yes, nutrients are required to recover but it's not as much as we're typically led to believe.

Inflammation (read: the mitigation of) also plays a significant role in health.

And, of course, there's the gut and gut microbes.

We survived and evolved and that was more than a story about amino acids. Or at least that's my current interpretation of the process to date.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/exercised/home

https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Research-Really-Calories-Healthy...

https://eastermichael.com/book/

Leucine and Isoleucine are both branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) that are found in cheese, eggs, most meats, seeds, and nuts. These foods are common in the western adult human diet, and may be more prevalent in certain protein-rich diets.

The article takes a favorable view of low protein diets, and cites other studies supporting the general idea that metabolic and longevity improvements are correlated with protein restriction. This particular study’s experimental subjects are mice and not humans.

Is this an ai summarization?

So keto is bad!

I need to see the methods but the paywall is there, so...I guess I cannot confirm. but did they just restrict the protein, or reduce foods with that protein present....and if so was it proportional to the proteins availability and bioavailability

Isoleucine : I don't even know what it is.

I hate papers written assuming that readers would just be other PhDs. If a normal person like me wants to try to understand something, please tell me, in the summary:

1) What's Isoleucine [0]

2) How to restrict it with a diet

[0]: https://www.news-medical.net/life-sciences/What-are-Leucine-...

You hate that a paper written for specialists in Cell Metabolism assumes specialist knowledge?

You can ask ChatGPT to explain it.

I'd be surprised if anyone that regularly reads from cell doesn't know what isoleucine is

Or someone who took high school biology.

Hey hope this helps. I'm a normal person who wanted to understand all of this and I sincerely put in the work to be able to read these papers as if I had formal training. I try not to act like I know anything, but I certainly know what isoleucine is and you can too.

https://aklectures.com/subject/biochemistry/introduction-to-...

This entire biochem series was worth watching. If you look up every word you don't know, things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoleucine are not as impenetrable as you might think.

Words, they're all worth putting in the work to understand. At least from my perspective :)

> I hate papers written assuming that readers would just be other PhDs.

You hate the papers themselves or the fact that they are posted here? Should professionals not have academic journals by which to communicate their findings?

ad.1) One of the 20 basic aminoacids, which proteins are made of.

ad.2) Short of eating processed, hydrolyzed amino sludges; probably general protein restriction, which IMHO isn't very advisable.

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