As a volunteer, John Apollos is losing weight—the old-fashioned way—by eating less. Apollos has lowered his daily caloric intake

admin2013-05-19  45

问题     As a volunteer, John Apollos is losing weight—the old-fashioned way—by eating less. Apollos has lowered his daily caloric intake 25% over the past eight months. The fat, not surprisingly, has melted away. But that’s not the real reason Apollos and the other participants in the program are eating only three-quarters of what they used to. The researchers are trying to determine whether restricting food intake can slow the aging process and extend our life span. "I feel better and lighter and healthier," says Apollos. "But if it could help you live longer, that would be pretty amazing."
    The idea is counterintuitive: If we eat to live, how can starving ourselves add years to our lives? Yet decades of calorie-restriction studies involving organisms ranging from microscopic yeast to rats have shown just that. Last July a long-term study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, found that calorie restriction seemed to extend the lives of humanlike rhesus monkeys (恒河猴) as well. The hungry primates fell victim to diabetes, heart and brain disease and cancer much less frequently than their well-fed counterparts did.
    Scientists have suspected that calorie restriction could extend the life span of animals since at least 1935, when researchers at Cornell University noticed that severely food-restricted lab rats lived twice as long as normal ones and were healthier. Other investigators began exploring the idea and learned that the secret is not merely a matter of body weight.
    One theory is that a state of slight hunger acts as a mild but constant stressor that makes an organism stronger and more resistant to the ills of aging. Taking in fewer calories also slows metabolism (新陈代谢), and some data indicate that humans with a slower metabolism live longer. But even if these theories are correct, simply defining the mechanism is not the same as identifying the molecular pathways behind it. If researchers could determine those pathways, they might be able to pharmacologically mimic (模仿) the effect of calorie restriction. That could be the ultimate benefit of the CALORIE study. "Calorie restriction is pretty much the only thing out there that we know will not just prevent disease but also extend maximal life span," says Dr. Marc Hellerstein, a nutritionist at the University of California.
What does the research on rhesus monkeys imply?

选项 A、The less people eat, the longer they will live.
B、Calorie restriction can help people suffer fewer diseases.
C、People who often feel hungry can live longer.
D、Humans depend on calorie to support lives.

答案B

解析 细节辨认题。由定位句可知,研究人员发现,通过控制热量摄人,类人恒河猴的寿命似乎也得以延长。比起饱食终日的同类,那些吃不饱的恒河猴患糖尿病、心脏病、脑部疾病及癌症的几率大大地降低了。故选B)“控制热量摄入有助于帮人们减少疾病的困扰”。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/oBg7777K
0

最新回复(0)