30 Percent Fewer Calories Keeps Heart 20 Years Younger

It’s true. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have found that people who restrict their caloric intake have hearts that function like those in people 20 years younger. A Wash U news release reports that the researchers measured heart rate variability, one measure of a heart’s health, and one that declines as we age, in 22 practitioners of calorie restriction, who ate healthy diets but consumed 30 percent fewer calories than normal for an average of seven years. Their average age was just over 51. For comparison purposes, researchers also studied 20 other people of about the same age who ate standard Western diets. Heart rates were significantly lower in the calorie restricted group, and their heart rate variability was significantly higher. “This is really striking because in studying changes in heart rate variability, we are looking at a measurement that tells us a lot about the way the autonomic nervous system affects the heart,” says Luigi Fontana, MD, PhD, the study’s senior author. “And that system is involved not only in heart function, but in digestion, breathing rate and many other involuntary actions. We would hypothesize that better heart rate variability may be a sign that all these other functions are working better, too.” Read more from Wash U.  Read a summary of the study here.