I give more weight than you do to the variety of species in which calorie restriction has shown benefits.
It does seem quite possible that calorie restriction does worse in high disease environments. But humans in the developed world are exposed to a good deal less infectious disease than what we’re evolved for. That suggests that it might be healthy to weaken our immune system slightly (but there’s almost certainly an age past which that ceases to be true).
Still, I’m not at all tempted to do continuous calorie restriction. I currently do one or two days per week of limiting myself to <1000 calories, and eat until I feel full on most other days. I completely stopped calorie restriction for about three weeks near the start of the pandemic, due to increased concerns about immune system risks.
The metformin studies are downplaying some possibly important selection effects. I don’t see a need to hypothesize tricks beyond that.
Both the diabetic group and the non-diabetic group had some undiagnosed health problems. For some unknown fraction of diabetics, those health problems caused them to be excluded because doctors saw that their poor health called for a switch from metformin to a more drastic treatment. It’s unclear how a study could produce comparable selection effects in non-diabetics.
I give more weight than you do to the variety of species in which calorie restriction has shown benefits.
It does seem quite possible that calorie restriction does worse in high disease environments. But humans in the developed world are exposed to a good deal less infectious disease than what we’re evolved for. That suggests that it might be healthy to weaken our immune system slightly (but there’s almost certainly an age past which that ceases to be true).
Still, I’m not at all tempted to do continuous calorie restriction. I currently do one or two days per week of limiting myself to <1000 calories, and eat until I feel full on most other days. I completely stopped calorie restriction for about three weeks near the start of the pandemic, due to increased concerns about immune system risks.
The metformin studies are downplaying some possibly important selection effects. I don’t see a need to hypothesize tricks beyond that.
Both the diabetic group and the non-diabetic group had some undiagnosed health problems. For some unknown fraction of diabetics, those health problems caused them to be excluded because doctors saw that their poor health called for a switch from metformin to a more drastic treatment. It’s unclear how a study could produce comparable selection effects in non-diabetics.