How to Live Longer
My friend and I were eating at Fresh last night on Yonge and Spadina and then walked over to the Starbucks in Yorkville. I brought along my MacLean’s Magazine to read on the subway and I showed her the cover story featuring Michael Rae (Rogers Media has opted not to put all of their content on line so I am linking to a search.) We stretched the magazine across the chairs and read the article avidly.
The story? Michael, who is six feet tall and weighs 115 lbs, is trying to live to 110 by reducing his calorie intake dramatically. He follows a strict regimen called the Calorie Restriction (CR) diet – he has been following it for almost nine years. He says that the more you reduce your calories, the more you increase your lifespan. For example, if you reduce your calories by 10%, you will get a 10% increase in average maximum lifespan. According to the article, studies spanning 70 years have shown that rats, mice, fish, yeast and rhesus monkeys have shown up to a 50% increase in life-spans from dramatic reductions in calories. So why not try it on humans?
My friend and I looked at the gaunt pictures of Michael – he looks like an anorexic person. She used to be in Social Work and thinks that he has a condition similar to anorexia, where instead of obsessing about being beautiful, he is obsessing over not dying. He is letting a fear dictate what he does with large amount of his hours on earth. I wondered… if you are living such a restrictive life, are you truly living life to the fullest? If you spend all of your life delaying the immediate gratification of food – are you really living? What happened to being in the moment?
Another article about increasing life-span was posted on the New York Times earlier this week called The Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School. They found that staying in school for a longer period of time increases your lifespan. One economist concluded that going to school for one more year could increase your life-span by one-and-a-half years. James Smith, a health economist at RAND says that the education piece teaches you to delay gratification:
“Most of adherence is unpleasant,” Dr. Smith says. “You have to be willing to do something that is not pleasant now and you have to stay with it and think about the future.”
He deplores the dictums to live in the moment or to live for today. That advice, Dr. Smith says, is “the worst thing for your health.”
Wow. Like Michael, James seems to think that longevity is all about not being happy today. What about the geeky folks who like getting educated? What about the people who enroll in endless degrees to avoid the real world? Is it still delaying gratification in that case? Fortunately, according to the article other important factors to a long life are: wealth, health and nutrition in early life and a strong social network. Some of those actually seem enjoyable. To me there is definitely a balance between being as healthy as possible and living a happy life in the moment.
If there is such a thing as "winning" in life, I don’t think that it is scored by living to 110 compared to 86.
The idea about living in the moment is a tricky one. To be successful at most things you need to delay gratification so when you make the comment about being happy in the moment you are judging his values–you’re saying that you don’t think the trade off is worth it. Well… that may be the argument obese people say to people who work out moderately and watch what they eat. It’s all on a continuum.
You are right – to me his behavior is too extreme. Delaying death is a long-term commitment to say the least. Of course what he does with his life is his choice – but he is an advocate for this lifestyle which makes him vulnarable up to a certain level of scrutiny.