{"id":9107,"date":"2024-03-25T04:54:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T04:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/25\/to-live-past-100-mangia-a-lot-less-italian-experts-ideas-on-aging\/"},"modified":"2024-03-25T04:54:49","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T04:54:49","slug":"to-live-past-100-mangia-a-lot-less-italian-experts-ideas-on-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/25\/to-live-past-100-mangia-a-lot-less-italian-experts-ideas-on-aging\/","title":{"rendered":"To Live Past 100, Mangia a Lot Less: Italian Expert\u2019s Ideas on Aging"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/03\/20\/multimedia\/00longo-italy-profile-01-zqbl\/00longo-italy-profile-01-zqbl-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"To Live Past 100, Mangia a Lot Less: Italian Expert\u2019s Ideas on Aging\" title=\"To Live Past 100, Mangia a Lot Less: Italian Expert\u2019s Ideas on Aging\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Most members of the band subscribed to a live-fast-die-young lifestyle. But as they partook in the drinking and drugging endemic to the 1990s grunge scene after shows at the Whiskey a Go Go, Roxy and other West Coast clubs, the band\u2019s guitarist, Valter Longo, a nutrition-obsessed Italian Ph.D. student, wrestled with a lifelong addiction to longevity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Now, decades after Dr. Longo dropped his grunge-era band, DOT, for a career in biochemistry, the Italian professor stands with his floppy rocker hair and lab coat at the nexus of Italy\u2019s eating and aging obsessions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cFor studying aging, Italy is just incredible,\u201d said Dr. Longo, a youthful 56, at the lab he runs at a cancer institute in Milan, where he will speak at an aging conference later this month. Italy has one of the world\u2019s oldest populations, including <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/07\/13\/world\/europe\/italy-sardinia-perdasdefogu-seulo-longevity.html\" title=\"\">multiple pockets of centenarians<\/a> who tantalize researchers searching for the fountain of youth. \u201cIt\u2019s nirvana.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Longo, who is also a professor of gerontology and director of the U.S.C. Longevity Institute in California, has long advocated longer and better living through eating Lite Italian, one of a global explosion of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/www.nytimes.com\/books\/98\/02\/08\/home\/boyle-wellville.html?_r=1&amp;oref=slogin\" title=\"\">Road to Perpetual Wellville<\/a> theories about how to stay young in a field that is itself still in its adolescence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In addition to identifying genes that regulate aging, he has created a plant and nut-based diet with supplements and kale crackers that mimics fasting to, he argues, allow cells to shed harmful baggage and rejuvenate, without the down side of actually starving. He has patented and sold his ProLon diet kits; published best-selling books (\u201cThe Longevity Diet\u201d); and been called an influential \u201c<a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/collection\/health-care-50\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Fasting Evangelist<\/a>\u201d by Time magazine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last month, he published a new <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-024-45260-9\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> based on clinical trials of hundreds of older people \u2014 including in the Calabria town from which his family hails \u2014 that he said suggests that periodic cycles of his own faux-fasting approach could reduce biological age and stave off illnesses associated with aging.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His private foundation, also based in Milan, tailors diets for cancer patients, but also consults for Italian companies and schools, promoting a Mediterranean diet that is actually foreign to most Italians today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAlmost nobody in Italy eats the Mediterranean diet,\u201d said Dr. Longo, who has a breezy California manner and Italian accent. He added that many Italian children, especially in the country\u2019s south, are obese, bloated on what he calls the poisonous five Ps \u2014 pizza, pasta, protein, potatoes and pane (or bread).<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the foundation recently, the resident nutritionist, Dr. Romina Cervigni, sat amid pictures on the wall showing Dr. Longo playing guitar with centenarians, and shelves of his longevity diet books, translated into many languages and filled with recipes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s very similar to the original Mediterranean diet, not the present one,\u201d she said, pointing at photographs on the wall of a bowl of ancient legumes similar to the chickpea, and of a Calabrian green bean pod prized by Dr. Longo. \u201cHis favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Longo, who has split his time between California and Italy for the past decade, once occupied a niche field. But in recent years, Silicon Valley billionaires who hope to be forever young have funded secretive labs. Wellness articles have conquered newspaper home pages and Fountains-of-Youth workout and diet ads featuring insanely fit middle-aged people teem on the social media feeds of not insanely fit middle-aged people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But even as concepts like longevity, intermittent fasting and biological age \u2014 you\u2019re only as old as your cells feel! \u2014 have gained momentum, governments like Italy\u2019s are fretting over a creakier future in which booming populations of old people drain resources from the dwindling young.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">And yet many scientists, nutritionists and longevity fanatics the world over continue to stare longingly toward Italy, seeking in its deep pockets of centenarians <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/10\/20\/world\/what-in-the-world\/rosemary-and-time-does-this-italian-hamlet-have-a-recipe-for-long-life.html\" title=\"\">a secret ingredient<\/a> to long life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">\u201c<\/strong>Probably they kept breeding between cousins and relatives<em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\">,\u201d <\/em>Dr. Longo offered, referring to the sometimes close relations in little Italian hill towns. \u201cAt some point, we suspect it sort of generated the super-longevity genome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The genetic drawbacks of incest,<span class=\"css-8l6xbc evw5hdy0\">  <\/span>he hypothesized, slowly vanished because those mutations either killed their carriers before they could reproduce or because the town noticed a monstrous ailment \u2014 like early onset Alzheimer\u2019s \u2014 in a particular family line and steered clear. \u201cYou\u2019re in a little town, you\u2019re probably going to get tagged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Longo wonders whether Italy\u2019s centenarians had been protected from later disease by a starvation period and old-fashioned Mediterranean diet early in life, during rural Italy\u2019s abject war-era poverty. Then a boost of proteins and fats and modern medicine after Italy\u2019s postwar economic miracle protected them from frailty as they got older and kept them alive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It could, he said, be a \u201chistorical coincidence that you\u2019ll never see again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The mysteries of aging seized Dr. Longo at a young age.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He grew up in the northeastern port of Genoa but visited his grandparents back in Molochio, Calabria, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/magazine\/article\/longevity\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a town known for its centenarians<\/a>, every summer. When he was 5, he stood in a room as his grandfather, in his 70s, died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cProbably something very much preventable,\u201d Dr. Longo said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At age 16, he moved to Chicago to live with relatives and couldn\u2019t help notice that his middle-aged aunts and uncles fed on the \u201cChicago diet\u201d of sausages and sugary drinks suffered diabetes and cardiovascular disease that their relatives back in Calabria did not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThis was like the \u201980s,\u201d he said, \u201cjust like the nightmare diet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While in Chicago, he often went downtown to plug in his guitar at any blues club that would let him play. He enrolled in the renowned jazz guitar program at the University of North Texas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cEven worse,\u201d he said. \u201cTex-Mex.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He ultimately ran afoul of the music program when he refused to direct the marching band, so he shifted his focus to his other passion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAging,\u201d he said, \u201cit was in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He eventually earned his Ph.D in biochemistry at U.C.L.A. and did his postdoctoral training in the neurobiology of aging at U.S.C. He overcame early skepticism about the field to publish in top journals and became a zealous evangelizer for the age-reversing effects of his diet. About 10 years ago, eager to be closer to his aging parents in Genoa, he took a second job at the IFOM oncology institute in Milan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He found a fount of inspiration in the pescatarian-heavy diet around Genoa and all the legumes down in Calabria.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cGenes and nutrition,\u201d he said of Italy as an aging lab, \u201cit\u2019s just unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But he also found the modern Italian diet \u2014 the cured meats, layers of lasagna and fried vegetables the world hungered for \u2014 horrendous and a source of disease. And like other Italian aging researchers who are seeking the cause for aging in inflammation or hoping to zap senescent cells with targeted drugs, he said Italy\u2019s lack of investment in research was a disgrace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cItaly\u2019s got such incredible history and a wealth of information about aging,\u201d he said. \u201cBut spends virtually nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Back at his lab \u2014 where colleagues prepared the fasting-mimicking diet \u201cbroth mix\u201d for mice \u2014 he passed a photograph on a shelf depicting a broken wall and reading, \u201cWe\u2019re slowly falling apart.\u201d He talked about how he and others had identified an important regulator of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/11292860\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">aging in yeast<\/a>, and how he has investigated whether the same pathway was at work in all organisms. He said his research benefited from his past life of musical improvisation, because it opened his mind to unexpected possibilities, including using his diet to starve cells afflicted with cancer and other diseases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Longo said he thinks of his mission as extending youth and health, not simply putting more years on the clock, a goal he said could lead to a \u201cscary world,\u201d in which only the rich could afford to live for centuries, potentially forcing caps on having children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A more likely short-term scenario, he said, was division between two populations. The first would live as we do now and reach about 80 or longer through medical advancements. But Italians would be saddled with long \u2014 and, given the drop in the birthrate, potentially lonely \u2014 years burdened by horrible diseases. The other population would follow fasting diets and scientific breakthroughs and live to 100 and perhaps 110 in relative good health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A practitioner of what he preaches, Dr. Longo envisioned himself in the latter category.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI want to live to 120, 130. It really makes you paranoid now because everybody\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah, of course you got at least to get to 100,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t realize how hard it is to get to 100.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most members of the band subscribed to a live-fast-die-young lifestyle. But as they partook in the drinking and drugging endemic to the 1990s grunge scene after shows at the Whiskey a Go Go, Roxy and other West Coast clubs, the band\u2019s guitarist, Valter Longo, a nutrition-obsessed Italian Ph.D. student, wrestled with a lifelong addiction to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/03\/20\/multimedia\/00longo-italy-profile-01-zqbl\/00longo-italy-profile-01-zqbl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1112,6236,13992,3832,1767,3416,13991],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9109,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107\/revisions\/9109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}