Researchers at Columbia University analyzed blood samples from the CALERIE trial, in which healthy adults had tried to cut their calorie intake by 25 percent for two years, to see whether a DNA-based clock of biological aging moved any slower.
Participants only managed an average calorie reduction of about 12 percent, well short of the 25 percent target, yet even that smaller cut reduced the pace of biological aging, measured by the DunedinPACE clock, by 2 to 3 percent relative to a control group, though other DNA clocks, such as GrimAge, showed no significant change.
A 2 to 3 percent slowdown sounds modest, but applied consistently over a lifetime it is comparable in scale to effects linked to lower mortality risk in other studies of the same clock. The trial ran for only two years in adults who were not obese, so it cannot say whether a larger calorie cut would slow aging further, or whether the benefit persists once normal eating resumes.
Read the original study
Waziry et al., Nature Aging, 2023 · doi.org/10.1038/s43587-022-00357-y
A partial diet still left a mark.
Source
- Waziry, R., Ryan, C. P., Corcoran, D. L., Huffman, K. M., Kobor, M. S., Kothari, M., Graf, G. H., Kraus, V. B., Kraus, W. E., Lin, D. T. S., Pieper, C. F., Ramaker, M. E., Bhapkar, M., Das, S. K., Ferrucci, L., Hastings, W. J., Kebbe, M., Parker, D. C., Racette, S. B., . . . Belsky, D. W. (2023). Effect of long-term caloric restriction on DNA methylation measures of biological aging in healthy adults from the CALERIE trial. Nature Aging, 3(3), 248–257. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-022-00357-y