Rat rehabilitation...final installment
Harmonious living, punctuated by the occasional squabble over choice pieces of chicken, has once again descended upon rat-dom. This has been occasioned, I suspect, by the uniting persistent, if erroneous, belief that they are permanently placed upon survival rations.
They aren’t, but in an effort to prevent the appearance of three tailed, walking footballs, they are given a set amount of food a day. Plus treats.
However, it would be no bad thing if I did slash their daily intake..
It has been known since the late nineteenth century that near starvation diets increase the lifespan of animals. The firstly widely disseminated work in question involved rats (as the test subjects, rather than the food source!). In this instance, animals’ lifespans were increased by almost fifty percent.
Simplistically, this is because of the paradox of oxygen. It is essential to life...
...and toxic.
To cut a very long, rather complicated and still heatedly contentious (in areas) story short, decreasing your metabolism, through persistently severely limiting your calorific inputs, will increase your lifespan. Theoretically, this increase should be significant, rather than, say, just half an hour. Human data is in short supply (unsurprisingly!), although I do remember catching the tail end of a t.v. programme, a few years ago, documenting a society that preaches near starvation diets specifically as a path to longer lifespans and (I think) ‘enlightenment’. I’d Google it, but I’m at home with no net access. If you find anything interesting, feel free to email me the link. I’d look myself, but tomorrow I’ll be immersed (I hoping not literally, but since I can be so clumsy I’m not that optimistic) in sperm...
...and eggs… of oysters.
(What were *you* thinking?!)
Anyway, that’s another story. To get back on track, those of you who have seen me in the flesh will gather that a particularly long life is patently not high on my list of priorities. I’ve had a summer job working in an old folks home…
…I know what’s coming…
…and I don’t wish to be there to see it!
As the old joke goes:
Evangelical non-smoker: Do you not know that every cigarette takes five minutes off your life?
Committed smoker: Yeah. But they’re the minutes at the end.
They aren’t, but in an effort to prevent the appearance of three tailed, walking footballs, they are given a set amount of food a day. Plus treats.
However, it would be no bad thing if I did slash their daily intake..
It has been known since the late nineteenth century that near starvation diets increase the lifespan of animals. The firstly widely disseminated work in question involved rats (as the test subjects, rather than the food source!). In this instance, animals’ lifespans were increased by almost fifty percent.
Simplistically, this is because of the paradox of oxygen. It is essential to life...
...and toxic.
To cut a very long, rather complicated and still heatedly contentious (in areas) story short, decreasing your metabolism, through persistently severely limiting your calorific inputs, will increase your lifespan. Theoretically, this increase should be significant, rather than, say, just half an hour. Human data is in short supply (unsurprisingly!), although I do remember catching the tail end of a t.v. programme, a few years ago, documenting a society that preaches near starvation diets specifically as a path to longer lifespans and (I think) ‘enlightenment’. I’d Google it, but I’m at home with no net access. If you find anything interesting, feel free to email me the link. I’d look myself, but tomorrow I’ll be immersed (I hoping not literally, but since I can be so clumsy I’m not that optimistic) in sperm...
...and eggs… of oysters.
(What were *you* thinking?!)
Anyway, that’s another story. To get back on track, those of you who have seen me in the flesh will gather that a particularly long life is patently not high on my list of priorities. I’ve had a summer job working in an old folks home…
…I know what’s coming…
…and I don’t wish to be there to see it!
As the old joke goes:
Evangelical non-smoker: Do you not know that every cigarette takes five minutes off your life?
Committed smoker: Yeah. But they’re the minutes at the end.