No More Monkey Business!

OK, scientists!  Do you think you could get your act together?  I was eating my heart-healthy, high-fiber English muffin this morning and reading the paper when yet another medical study caught my eye.  For some years now, scientists have been noticing that rats and monkeys who eat less calories than normal (think 30 to 40 percent) might live longer than those who don't.  Reports have also erupted now and again that eating a semi-starvation diet will extend your lifespan.

Now let me get this straight.  Can you hear the wheels turning in my head?  If I voluntarily semi-starve myself, I might have longer to live being hungry?  Let's say I go with Option No. 2?  If the range given in THAT study is 30-40%, I'd definitely head towards the 30% side of things.  Now they didn't seem to stipulate in the article what KIND of things you had to give up to constitute that 30-40%.  Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if I gave up things like salads and vegetables to come up with that 30%.  Could I EVEN come up with 30% of my total intake if I gave up such things?  Shoot!  I doubt I'd even be able to scrape up a measly 5% to give up on those terms.

Skimming back through the article I see the monkeys that were tracked for over twenty years on a restricted calorie diet didn't squeeze out any more years than their well-fed peers.  However, they DID appear to more successfully ward off cancer.  Now THAT could make a person sit up and take more notice.

The article goes on to say that scientists aren't really sure why the monkeys on a calorie-restricted diet didn't live longer than the other monkeys but that they aren't giving up investigating because (get this) the "younger" monkeys are still alive.  Duh, ya think?  They DO think, though, that they probably won't find any "edge" on extending lifespan when all is said and done........unless they DO, which is always possible.  Okey dokey!  And maybe it's possible that I'll give up my sugar addiction and start eating totally healthy......unless I don't, but I'm not totally ruling that out. (See, I can do "scientist speak", too.)

On an entirely different note but yet, still staying somewhat on the topic of longevity, the paper also had an article yesterday about a 100-year-old driver who thought he was backing out of a parking spot and ended up backing into a street and up onto a sidewalk and into a group of folks waiting to buy food from a vendor.
I was reading this to the Commander.

"Oh, my goodness, this guy is actually turning 101 in September, " I continued.

"Introduce him to your mother," the Commander suggested.  "She's a spring chicken in comparison."

Mom turns 99 in September and she never met a dessert that she didn't enjoy wholeheartedly.