OT: Longevity

[Gandalf Parker]

On any scale, any extreme is bad. Every action is somewhere on the scale from something else. Everything that is good for you is also bad for you. Too much AND too little of darkness, sunlight, food, water, oxygen, even vitamin C, can kill you. Man did not just develop the ability to thrive with variety. He developed requiring it.

[QuarianRex]

One thing that I picked up in neuro-psych class was that if you severely restrict carb intake (as in Atkins is a bread munching fool) for the first (human equivalent) six years of life you will double the life span of the animal. This seems to be pretty uniersal among mammals (experiments have been done with rats, dogs, etc.).

Why haven't you seen this with people yet? Two reasons. One, you have to essentially starve your kids till their seventh birthday (just to be safe). Few parents are willing to see their kids be hungry. What about poor countries where people are always hungry? That leads to the second reason. If the strict diet is broken, even once or twice, the efect is ruined. Even in the poorest of countries there are there are the occasional moments of plenty, and children tend to get as much as the parents can scrounge together.

Intersting, don't you think?