Growing Older Faster Than You Want To? Reduce Your Meat Consumption
We grow old because of the mechanism target of rapamycin (mTOR) enzyme.[1] Meat feeds the mTOR enzyme leading to hastened aging.[2] Reduce meat consumption and you slow the aging process of your cells.
A one point science indicated that excessive calorie consumption triggered the mTOR enzyme to speed up aging, which led to the recommendation to reduce food consumption to slow the aging process.
The problem is severe calorie restriction can lead to severe hunger and health issues including loss of sexual desire and function, infertility, osteoporosis, low blood pressure, and reduced cognitive function.
It is a good thing science got a bit smarter. Later studies indicated it wasn’t actually calorie restriction that slow the aging process, but it was the reduction of protein consumption that slowed the aging process.
Want to slow the aging of your skin, it looks like you need to reduce your protein consumption. But wait a minute! Looking further into the issue, the research pinpointed a certain protein amino-acid was the main culprit.
This protein is leucine. Leucine consumption greatly stimulates the mTOR enzyme to hasten aging of cells. Leucine restriction not only suppresses mTOR, but it also suppresses IGF-1 which is the other main pathway involved in aging.
Well where is leucine to be found? You might have guessed it. The highest concentrations of leucine are found in animal products including meat, dairy, and eggs.
Plants foods contain all the protein you need to support health and homeostasis, and they also have low levels of leucine!
[1] S C Johnson, P S Rabinovitch, M Kaeberlein. mTOR is a key modulator of ageing and age-related disease. Nature. 2013 493(7432):338 – 345.
[2] L Yan, R. F. Lamb. Amino acid sensing and regulation of mTORC1. Semin Cell Dev Biol. 2012 23(6):621 – 625.