[Note: Resveratrol (red wine, Longevinex, etc.) is a mimetic (e.g.
mirrors, recreates, etc.) the effects of Caloric Restriction (e.g. 20-30-40%
restriction of calories, by choice, etc.) to about 90-95% of the same
genes. I hit this from all sides, as earlier mentioned, with both Longevinex
and Red Wine (a bottle a day, like the French.)

Slow down America.

--Stuart

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22977

Caloric Restriction Slows Aging in Monkeys
The diet delays or prevents diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and brain
atrophy.
By Katherine Bourzac
THURSDAY, JULY 09, 2009

A 20-year study involving rhesus monkeys has provided the first strong
evidence that caloric restriction slows the aging process in primates.

A diet that's nutritionally adequate but provides 30 percent fewer
calories than normal has been shown to extend life span and delay the
onset of age-related diseases in other animals, including flies, worms,
and rodents. But because studies on primates take much longer, the
benefits had not yet been demonstrated to extend to them. Now
researchers at the National Primate Research Center at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison report that in rhesus monkeys, caloric restriction
begun in adulthood reduces risk of the most common age-related
conditions--diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and brain atrophy--by a third.

"With these results, we have become convinced that aging retardation is
happening," says Richard Weindruch, a professor of medicine at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, who began the study in 1989. The
research involved 76 monkeys, half of them on the extreme diet. By now,
the 33 surviving monkeys have reached old age. Thirty-seven percent of
the monkeys on a normal diet have died of age-related diseases, compared
with just 13 percent of the monkeys on the restricted diet. It's still
unknown whether caloric restriction extends the animals' life span, but
the results published today in the journal Science detail the benefits
of the diet in preventing the most common such diseases.

The strongest evidence from the study concerns metabolic disorders.
While five of the monkeys on a normal diet became diabetic and 11 were
prediabetic (having blood glucose levels higher than normal), monkeys on
the restricted diet were completely free of the disease. The incidence
of both cardiovascular disease and tumors was reduced by 50 percent in
the diet group. And magnetic resonance imaging showed that caloric
restriction preserved gray-matter volume in the brain as the monkeys
aged. In general, the dieting group appeared to be biologically younger:
age-related diseases, if they developed, occurred later in life.

The work is significant because rhesus monkeys are more closely related
to humans than other animals used so far in studies of caloric
restriction. "Monkeys are so closely related to us; it's a much easier
jump that this is likely to work in humans," says Ricki Colman, a lead
researcher on the study. The Wisconsin researchers also took pains to
make the study as applicable to humans as possible. "We treat each
animal as an individual patient," Colman says. The animals receive
physical exams every six months, along with full dental care and medical
interventions as needed. "We treat the diabetes with insulin, and when
we identify tumors we remove them," she explains.

Of course, as Colman points out, "it's not a realistic goal for humans
to practice caloric restriction." The ultimate goal of the study, she
says, is to better understand the underlying mechanisms of aging in
order to learn how people can live healthier, longer lives: "It's
something we use to understand the aging process better."

There is some evidence that caloric restriction has metabolic and
cardiovascular benefits in humans, but data from monkeys are important
because these studies are difficult to perform in people, especially
over the long term. "Human data are still sketchy--it's difficult to get
controlled experiments in humans," says Leonard Guarente, a professor of
biology at MIT. Even in monkeys, he says, "these are very difficult and
long-, long-term studies to do."

Two big questions remain, the researchers say. First, does caloric
restriction extend life span in the primates? "Meaningful
maximum-life-span data are probably 15 years away," says Weindruch. The
monkeys in the Wisconsin study fall into two age groups; the average age
of the oldest group is 29, which is very old considering that these
animals, on average, live to about 25 in captivity. However, the longest
a rhesus monkey has been known to live is 40 years. "If the last of the
monkeys on caloric restriction die at the same time as the last control
monkeys, it means there is only a delay of the onset of disease, but not
an extension of life span," says Luigi Fontana, a research professor at
the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who is leading
a study of the diet in people.

The other unresolved question is how caloric restriction actually works
in the monkeys. Now that they have strong evidence of the diet's
benefits, Weindruch says, his group will establish another group of
animals to study the underlying mechanisms.CarC