Michael Rose on the diet that maximizes healthspan — and lifespan. As I see it, if you don’t have your health and you live long…it’s Hobbesian with a twist: Nasty, brutish, and endless.
First, he lays out the opposing viewpoints.
Important thing to remember to understand slides for this talk: “x” is chronological age.
In 1992, this Hamiltonian theory…and then the curveball it gets thrown, next slide.
In fruitfly data, aging stopped. Nobody believed this. But data turned out to be sound. The notion he has is that aging (decline we go thru) eventually stops. Plateaus. So we are no longer going to shit — we’re not exponentially worsening w/ age, as gerontologists have believed.
Yes, he’s saying aging eventually comes to a stop - and looks to how we can stop it earlier and better.
Three phases of adaptation…late in life, aging stops declining.
Forgot to say - this is @HumBehEvoSoc #HBES2023 Michael Rose’s research.
He said not about free radicals or oxidation or anything…I have to ask about that because I’m unclear on how that could not matter, esp. vis a vis our lunch convo yesterday.
These are from fruit flies in his lab.
The “ancestral” diet of flies is the red line in the second slide.
This suggests ancestral diet is a “evolutionary freezer” in terms of continuing to age.
Apple-fed cohorts in red.
It’s not about the contents of the diets but about the adaptation to them.
Conclusions…from Michael Rose… #HBES2023
Which he says likely understate benefits.of paleo diet.
Standard American diet gets you to plateau in aging at 105. Aging stops at that point. But data from 1939, pre seed oils in European diet, aging stops earlier.
“Conceptual breakthroughs in the evolutionary biology of aging”—Rose’s student’s upcoming book that explains how they found flies that survived longer had MORE free radical damage. (I asked about his “oxidation” and free radicals not mattering remark.) #HBES2023 Michael Rose
Upshot of all of this — suggests we should eat an ancestral-type diet, avoiding seed oils and other evolutionary novel “foods.” (Quotes re: seed oils.)
Refs from Michael Rose #HBES2023 talk on stopping aging (getting aging to plateau earlier).
He says you have to elucidate this with math - which is his work domain - because it violates our verbal intuition (on aging).
The point isn’t exactly eating what Grok the hunter-gatherer ate, but not eating evolutionarily novel foods like seed oil & packaged, processed “foods.” I consider in this, however, how many fruits are hybrids & sugary beyond what ancestral fruits would’ve been & am also aware(1
That ancestral humans didn’t just eat muscle meat but liver, tongue, etc. PS Tongue - lingua - is served in classic Mexican LA strip mall restaurants, and OMG…it’s delicious!
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