Sidebar: For More Information - Caloric Restriction's Benefits
Today, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) supports CR research in both rodents and primates to the tune of $3 million per year. Much of the rodent work is directed at discovering the mechanism that underlies CR, while the primate studies are showing that CR lowers blood sugar, eliminates diabetes, lowers cholesterol, and reduces blood pressure in genetically susceptible animals. This confirms previous findings in rodent studies and is leading some researchers to believe that eventually CR will be a means of extending maximum life span and retarding chronic disease in humans.
DEFINED FOCUS: "As an institute, our underlying interest is to understand the mechanism, not to produce longer-lived individuals," says NIA's Richard Sprott Before NIA's involvement, "CR research was a semi-joke" because studies were often poorly controlled, contends NIA associate director Richard Sprott. Investigators used different strains of rats on different ...
