Fewer calories, 'younger' hearts

ST. LOUIS, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- A U.S. study showed that calorie restriction with optimal nutrition may delay primary aging of the heart in human beings.

The hearts of people who follow a low-calorie, yet nutritionally balanced, diet resemble those of younger people when examined by sophisticated ultrasound function tests -- and they tend to have more desirable levels of some markers of inflammation and fibrosis -- said Dr. Luigi Fontana of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Italian National Institute of Health in Rome.

"Eating less, if it is a high-quality diet, will improve your health, delay aging, and increase your chance of living a long, healthy and happy life," said Fontana. "This is the first paper to show that long-term calorie restriction with optimal nutrition has cardiac-specific effects that ameliorate the age-associated decline in diastolic function in humans."

The caloric-restriction subjects ate a healthful balanced diet with at least 100 percent of the recommended daily intake of each nutrient, providing approximately 1,671 plus or minus 294 calories per day.

The study appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.