Even if caloric restriction is not connected to longevity, you should still keep at it

It’s one of the the greatest success stories in nutrition science. Caloric restriction is a much studied phenomenon that is said to lead to longevity and good health. This has been tested time and time again in mice and other creatures. Caloric restriction, or CR, was known even in the medieval times when people thought it could kill tumors. Modern science was aware of it in the 19th century and the modern CR research was institutionalized in the 1960’s. The boom of the “Longevity Diet” began in 2004 when the researchers at Washington universtity at St. Louis confirmed in a long term study on mice, that caloric restriction does indeed increase health and lifespan. The mechanism of why this is, was not discovered.

Up to today, we were all amazed. Now, after the latest research report in Nature, it seems we are back at square one, exactly where the legendary Gilgamesh left us three thousand years since. Well, it’s worth noting that the latest research is still to be debated within the science community and the new findings offer loads of questions about the mechanisms of aging.

Longevity and (radical) life extension is an integral part of the Transhuman worldview. In the 21st century especially such figures like Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurtzweil have been the prominent proponents of life extension. As modern medicine pushes the barriers of molecular and DNA research even further, life extension or even relative immortality seems to be looming just behind the horizon. However, the effects of caloric restriction has been the only confirmed way to keep the body in good shape in comparison to a non-CR diet. Even the well known BBC Horizon series produced an hour long documentary about the topic.

The argument for CR for the past decades has been this: if the body receives 10-40 percent less calories than is required, it will remain in good health for a longer period of time. Research conducted on mice and primates seems to give strong backing to the speculation that it applies to humans as well. So far long term research on humans has not been possible, since such research projects have been around only for a few decades – and the human quinea pigs are still thriving.

However, the new findings from a 25 year experiment with rhesus monkeys that were fed 30 percent less calories than the control group seems to cast doubts on the caloric restriction basic premise. The indication is, that the “eat lesser calories” does not switch the body to a longevity mode but the key factors in longevity would be more about the genes and the quality of calories consumed. And if you read this carefully, it implies only that the amount of calories consumed does not correlate with longevity. What the research seems to imply is that caloric restriction is connected with longevity on a less utopian way: if you have a high quality diet with little or no “bad substances”, you will lose weight and you don’t put too much strain on your body.

Good news for those who are on CR and for those who are not. It would, in my opinion as a layman, justify two things. First, people who are not on a CR regime could benefit much for having a CR-type diet, and that could be much easier to accomplish than a rigorous CR program. Second, people on a severe CR program, such as eating only 60 percent of the calories needed, can now shift to a more modest CR and begin consuming 80 or even 100 percent the calories needed. The key point in the research seems to be that what you eat affects your health.

Sounds trivial doesn’t it?

Well, it is. If you look up your national eating recommendations, you will likely get similar instructions. We all know what eating healthy means and I am not in a position to give any advice.

Now, the challenge that this research poses is mostly about genes. If your genetic makeup is a major player in your expected lifespan, you should try to even the odds with good nutrition and at least modest exercise. There really is no reason what so ever to allow your body to deteriorate because of fatty foods and sugery substances. Laissez faire eating means you are letting go of your self control and your life. If you are one of the lucky ones who come from a family saturated with 100 year old’s there is even a greater incentive for a healthier diet. Wouldn’t it be great to live for a century and remain in relative health?

Those extra decades also increase your change of being able to use future medical technologies to combat aging and increase well being even beyond that 100 year marker. This is of course highly speculative but looking at the medical progress we as a humanity have had in the past 100 years, it would seem like a safe bet.

By getting your self in shape and being aware of all the possibilities in life, there are many more pressing matters on earth you should focus on. Between healthy lunches you could try to figure out who our species is going to survive with nature going down the drain and increasing economic instability is threatening the very institutions our society (and medical science) is grounded on. By adopting a healthy and life centered worldview, you are more likely to be an answer to the collective problems we face every day. Now, if you really are in this for the long haul, you might consider getting in step with life and humanity by joining a new movement. Here is the Facebook group for the International Longevity Party. Join. Do it now. We need people just like you – and your friends too.

What exactly am I struggling with?

It seems I just needed a brake. There were several things in my life I needed to get done and leave behind before I could really focus on my research and my work. Yesterday I took all of my materials and went through them very carefully. Happily I realized that most of the difficult stuff is done and now it’s just about writing the thing. When I started out with an initial question like “has transhumanism created new social relations”, I really had only a hunch on what I was going to do.

What are social relations, I asked myself first. Since I have been studying Touraine, I had an general understanding of what I was going to do. Touraine understands social relations within society as a key part of subjective positions between “classes”. By classes he means the ruling class and the popular classes. All though Touraine emerged from a Marxist tradition of European (on precisely French) sociology, he quickly parted form that (and from the Communist party as well).

With class Touraine refers to “people” who are in control and the other “people” who are subjugated by this system. In Touraines system there are three components to a society understood as social relations: the state apparatus, the elite (ruling class) and the pupular classes (the subjugated). For Touraine the State is like a structure that delegates power and therefore the controlling of “the state” is important in order to control society.

That needs some explaining. For Touraine world history is a history of struggle between historical actors. Historical actors are in sense “true actors”. It takes a bit more than just a strike by the local factory or a street protest. A historical actor is only a true actor, if it can define it’s goals in the context of the whole of society. (As a separate note, I think this is what Touraine means when he speaks of ‘totality’). The understanding of the whole of society means that the tension between the elite and the popular classes have a context in the “culture” of society.

A historical actor understands the cultural orientations of society and therefore he or she is able to focus the struggle against the elite. A subjugated person is not aware of the “whole” and therefore is only a reactionary. Say, there is a strike at the local factory where the workers “attack” the bosses at the company, when the real problem is actually in a much wider system of slave capitalism. Note, that this example does not express my opinions about capitalism in the real world.

So, a historical actor that has the understanding of the “whole” can become a true social movement. Touraine claims that social movements are at the heart of society and they are the only driving force in history. The elite is just one “movement”, but Touraine is a bit confusing about that point.

Anyway, the social movement (like the workers movement Touraine researched himself) is struggling to control a) the status quo of cultural relations and b) the state apparatus c) history.

I am not going into detail with these, but Touraine generalizes this to any social movement. Here is where we finally come to Transhumanism.

If Transhumanism is a social movement, it should have some of the features Touraine gives to social movements. Well, I argue, that transhumanism is “struggling” to a) control the status quo understanding of science and technology, b) the “state” (political, institutional and economical element of S&T) and c) history. The history part here is a complicated one and the reader should get familiar with the way Touraine uses the word.

My first article is about arguing this. I am using the articles in the Journal of evolution and technology (JET) as my research data to see if the “meta-level” handling of the subject can be defined in Touraine’s terms. If so, then I suppose there is a strong argument about how Transhumanism (in the way JET articles can be read to define it) is in fact creating new kinds of social relations between people: between doctor and patient, between a politician and voter, etc.

And that would mean that it actually is propagating new cultural relations. Perhaps the debates in ethics and politics can be read as a manifestation of this “shift”.

The analysis I am going to use is all about analyzing how scientific knowledge is formed and how it is commonly understood. This is also called the Common Understanding of Science -problem.

Please take a minute to think about this

What do you think, are the following categories wise if I try to sort out my research data (a collection of written texts about transhumanism) with the following categories. This is not yet the analysis phase of the research, merely a way to categorize the material. I am trying to create some crude categories that help me to differentiate various ways of looking at human-technology relation in transhumanism.

1. Performative

– Technology has a function.

– Tools, enhancements, etc.

2. Cognitive

– Technology affects thinking and/or is somehow experienced by the subject

– Mental abilities, communication, spirituality

3. Esthetical

– Technology makes things “better”.

– Human perfection (body), rationality

4. Philosophical

– Technology defines categories

– Societal aims, things deemed good or bad.

 

The list has a lot of contradictions etc., but do you think it would be useful in finding very crude categories. After I get this going, I’ll start getting results. And of course, you will be the first to know 🙂