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Eat to Live

A meager diet may give you health and long life, but it’s not much fun — and it might not even be necessary. We may be able to hang on to most of that youthful vigor even if we don’t start to diet until old age.

Stephen Spindler and his colleagues from the University of California at Riverside have found that some of an elderly mouse’s liver genes can be made to behave as they did when the mouse was young simply by limiting its food for four weeks. The genetic rejuvenation won’t reverse other damage caused by time for the mouse, but could help its liver metabolize drugs or get rid of toxins.

Spindler’s team fed three mice a normal diet for their whole lives, and fed another three on half-rations3. Three more mice were switched from the normal diet to half-feed3 for a month when they were 34 months old — equivalent to about 70 human years.

The researchers checked the activity of 11,000 genes from the mouse livers, and found that 46 changed with age in the normally fed mice. The changes were associated with things like inflammation and free radical production一 probably bad news for mouse health. In the mice that had dieted all their lives,27 of those 46 genes continued to behave like young genes. But the most surprising finding was that the mice that only started dieting in old age also benefited from 70 per cent of these gene changes.

"This is the first indication that these effects kick in pretty quickly,” says Huber Warner from the National Institute on Aging near Washington D. C.

No one yet knows if calorie restriction works in people as it does in mice, but Spindler is hopeful. “There’s attracting and tempting evidence out there that it will work,” he says.

If it does work in people,there might be good reasons for rejuvenating the liver. As we get older, our bodies are less efficient at metabolizing drugs, for example. A brief period of time of dieting, says Spindler, could be enough to make sure a drug is effective.

But Spindler isn’t sure the trade-off is worth it. “The mice get less disease, they live longer, but they’re hungry,” he says. “Even seeing what a diet does, it’s still hard to go to a restaurant and say: ‘I can only eat half of that,. ”

Spindler hopes we soon won’t need to diet at all. His company, Lifespan Genetics in California, is looking for drugs that have the effects of calorie restriction.

詞匯：

meager adj.不足的

youthful adj.有青春活力的

vigor n.精力，活力

metabolize vt. 使(一種物質)進入新陳代謝過程

genetic adj.基因的

rejuvenation n.恢復活力，返老還童

注釋：

1. hang on to ：繼續(xù)保留。例如：You should hang on to that painting 一 it might be worth a lot of money one day.你應該繼續(xù)保留那幅畫-----或許有一天它會值很多錢。

2. The genetic rejuvenation won’t reverse other damage caused by time for the mouse, but could help its liver metabolize drugs or get rid of toxins：老鼠的肝部基因恢復活力不會逆轉老鼠在其他方面的老化，但卻有助于肝臟代謝藥物或除去毒素。other damage caused by time歲月造成的莫他方面的破壞，即“其他方面的老化”。metabolize drugs：代謝藥物，即“使藥物參與新陳代謝以提高藥效”。get rid of：擺脫，除去。

3. half-ration和half-feed都是指“老鼠飼料正常定量(normal diet)的一半”。

4. free radical production:指體內(nèi)自由基的產(chǎn)生(形成)。

5. kick in：意為“開始起作用”。 如：We’re still waiting for the air conditioning to kick in.我們還在等著空調(diào)開始起作用。

6. be worth it：意為“值得，有益”。如：They are expensive, but they are worth it.那些東西很貴，但劃得來。

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