For nearly three decades, Dr. Roy Walford has lived in a red-brick industrial building a half-block from the daily carnival and weekend hucksters of Venice Beach.
And for much of that time, Walford, a UCLA professor who pioneered the concept of a severely calorie-restrictive diet as a path to human longevity, was commonly viewed as a bit of an oddball, even in a neighborhood known for eccentric behavior. His unconventional lifestyle, be it studying with yoga masters in India or living for two years as the chief physician at the Biosphere 2 experiment, did little to enhance his image as a serious scientist.
"I think at UCLA, Roy was regarded as the bald guy doing the aging work," said Rick Weindruch, who was mentored by Walford and now runs a gerontology lab at the University of Wisconsin. "He wasn't very mainstream."
Although his notions of living to 120 years aren't mainstream yet, Walford's groundbreaking gerontological research linking a calorie-restrictive diet to prolonged life in laboratory animals has been gaining wider acceptance. Now many scientists believe that Walford has been onto something all along, though many years of study will be needed to test his anti-aging theories in humans.
The colorful 78-year-old author of "Maximum Life Span" and other books may never know for sure whether his theories passed muster in human clinical trials. He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease two years ago.
"If there's no cure for the disease, I certainly won't reach 120," said Walford. "I probably won't reach 90."
Lou Gehrig's disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a fatal affliction of the nervous system that eventually causes patients to lose their ability to move, to swallow and eventually to breathe. Patients typically live two to five years after diagnosis, although roughly 10% survive another decade or more.
Walford, whose mind is as sharp as ever, is prepared for the next question -- should the disease claim him within a decade, does that somehow discredit his life's work? Absolutely not, he replied, it would be like conducting an experiment on a single mouse.
In fact, he believes it's his spartan diet that has slowed the progression of ALS within his body. That's why his low-calorie, nutrient-rich diet, despite the diagnosis, remains largely as it has for the last two decades when he originally took it up. He still eats mostly vegetables, some fruits, some whole grains and a little bit of meat.
