Going a little hungry is healthy

SWS reports that some 2.9 million Filipino families or 16.9 percent of a projected base of 17.4 million households experienced hunger in the past three months. That’s a real shame, not just for Ate Glue but for our society. If only the respondents were going hungry out of choice, rather than out of poverty, it wouldn’t be so bad. Latest reports from American health experts seem to indicate that going a little hungry is healthy, based on studies of laboratory mice, rhesus monkeys and even worms.

This is not to say that what is good for mice, monkeys and worms are necessarily good for humans. Nor would it be right to say that because the poor amongst us live like mice in crowded shantytowns or urban sidewalks, going a little hungry will also be good for their health. In fact, the Christian conscience in all of us who are overfed should be bothered by the results of this SWS survey.

According to SWS, there is an increase of more than 800,000 households experiencing severe hunger in September compared to June. Families who reported having gone hungry "often" or "always" went up by 4.6 percent in September from 3.4 percent in June. Those who experienced moderate hunger, or those who reported that they experienced hunger "only once" or "a few times" in the last three months, rose to 12.3 percent, or 2.1 million households, from 10.1 percent in the previous quarter.

If I were Ate Glue, I would say this hunger problem in our midst is not just a government concern. It should move everyone of us into action, or at the very least, eat less so that the money we can save from paying personal trainers and gym fees could be contributed to Caritas instead, for feeding the really hungry. I personally know that’s easier said than done. But it is one of those things we must try to do for our own good.

A little hunger for those of us, who don’t have to worry about our next meal, is really good for our health… may even make us live longer. The New York Times reports that over the last year, calorie-restricted diets have been shown in various animals to have significant health benefits. Researchers studying effects of dietary calorie restriction on humans went so far as to claim that this may even be more effective than exercise at preventing age-related diseases.

Recent tests show that the animals on restricted diets, including rhesus monkeys at the primate research center, are in indisputably better health as they near old age than other normally fed lab mates. The findings are not really that new, as it turns out. In 1935, the NYT reports, Dr. Clive McCay, a nutritionist at Cornell University, discovered that mice fed 30-percent fewer calories lived about 40 percent longer than their free-grazing laboratory mates. The dieting mice were also more physically active and far less prone to the diseases of advanced age.

Dr. McCay’s experiment has been successfully duplicated in a variety of species. In almost every instance, the NYTimes reports, the subjects on low-calorie diets not only lived longer, but they are also more resistant to age-related ailments of aging such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease ( e.g. Alzheimer’s). This is possibly because they don’t have the clogged arteries, sluggish endocrine systems, and other problems that conspire to slow down creatures that eat normally.

But how does this work on humans? The NYT article relates the experience of Mike Linksvayer, a 36-year-old chief technology officer at a San Francisco nonprofit group, who embarked on just such a diet six years ago. On an average day, he eats an apple or some cereal for breakfast, followed by a small vegan dish at lunch. Dinner is whatever his wife has cooked, excluding bread, rice, sugar and whatever else Mr. Linksvayer deems unhealthy (this often includes the entrée). On weekends, he occasionally fasts.

Mr. Linksvayer, six feet tall and 135 pounds, estimated that he gets by on about 2,000 to 2,100 calories a day, a low number for men of his age and activity level, and his blood pressure is a remarkably low 112 over 63. He said he has never been in better health. "I don’t really get sick," he said. "Mostly I do the diet to be healthier, but if it helps me live longer, hey, I’ll take that, too."

Researchers at Louisiana State University reported in April in The Journal of the American Medical Association that "patients on an experimental low-calorie diet had lower insulin levels and body temperatures, both possible markers of longevity, and fewer signs of the chromosomal damage typically associated with aging."

What’s the explanation for all these? According to the NYT, "experts theorize that limited access to energy alarms the body, so to speak, activating a cascade of biochemical signals that tell each cell to direct energy away from reproductive functions, toward repair and maintenance. The calorie-restricted organism is stronger, according to this hypothesis, because individual cells are more efficiently repairing mutations, using energy, defending themselves and mopping up harmful byproducts like free radicals."

"The stressed cell is really pulling out all the stops" to preserve itself, Dr. Cynthia Kenyon, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco told the NYTimes. "This system could have evolved as a way of letting animals take a timeout from reproduction when times are harsh."

But is the diet practical? Probably not for an extended period. One of the researchers tried to go without food for a day because he was curious about what the lab mice experienced. He admits he couldn’t even function at the end of the day. Even researchers who believe calorie restriction can extend life in humans concede that few are likely to stick to such a restrained diet over a long period.

Another article on the same subject, this time in New York Magazine, reports that "when you fast for 17 hours at a low glucose rate, brain-derived neurotrophic factor is released, which is a chemical which creates optimism. Maybe that’s why despite the increase in the number of people forced to go hungry around here, as SWS reports, they haven’t taken up arms against society. They remain optimistic. Deliriously so!

"It’s no secret," the New York Magazine article declares, "From mystics to anorexics, people who go for long periods without eating often report feeling more awake and energetic, even euphoric." Maybe that’s the secret of Toting Bunye’s never-say-die kind of optimism. Maybe, he’s been on this calorie restricted diet. He looks it too. Explains the delusion about how great things are going.

The New York Magazine article concedes this kind of diet is nice for a while, but the calorie-restricted can get too much of it. One female practitioner of it reports often going long stretches between meals but eventually decided something was a little off. "It makes you feel like you’re on drugs; I got too euphoric, thinking you’re in love when you’re not." She switched to a more consistent, balanced eating schedule, came back down to Earth, and that, she says with a shrug, was that.

So, for all you guys looking for the next big fad diet out there after South Beach, its calorie restriction, or in simple terms, going a little more hungry. It is a diet whose central, radical premise is that the less you eat, the longer you’ll live. But remember to contribute money saved on food, personal trainer and gym fees to Caritas to unburden your conscience as well and make yourself feel even better. If enough of our society’s fat cats go into it, the results of the next SWS survey may be skewed and misleading when they ask the question, how many times have you gone hungry in the past month?

Latex

Two women readers sent this one, one a dentist.

As the dentist came into the room of his next patient, an elderly lady, he noticed she was looking very nervous so he decided to tell her a little joke as he put on his gloves.

"Do you know how they make these gloves?" he asked.

"No, I don’t," she replied.

"Well," he spoofed, "there’s a building in China with a big tank of latex, and workers of all hand sizes walk up to the tank, dip in their hands, let them dry, and then peel off the gloves and throw them into boxes of the right size."

She didn’t crack a smile.

"Oh, well, I tried," he thought.

But about five minutes later, during a delicate portion of the dental procedure, she burst out laughing.

"What is so funny?" he asked.

"I was just picturing how condoms are made!" she said.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]