Better Diet Helps Even Late in Life, Study Shows

It may never be too late to extend life through sensible eating. A UC Riverside study shows that a strict, low-calorie diet increased the life span of aged mice by more than 40%.

Many studies have shown that starting young mice on a restricted-calorie diet helps them live for months longer than lab animals fed a standard diet. But the new research shows that even 19-month-old mice, about the human equivalent of 60 to 65 years, can have a longer life when eating fewer calories.

Stephen R. Spindler of UC Riverside and his colleagues reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that restricting calories for old mice had an immediate benefit in slowing the aging process and that the animals lived up to six months longer than litter mates fed the standard diet.