cron-web.org

[Matthewlake]

Name: Matthew
D.O.B: 21.10.1984
Location: Cardiff, UK
Started CR: March 2005
Pre-CR weight: 118.5lbs (bmi 18.5)
Final CR weight: 105lbs
Height and frame: 5ft 7" - small frame
Level of CR: 1650k/cal

Body Temperature (axillary): 35.3 degrees celsius
Blood Pressure: 95/60

I started Calorie Restriction when I was 20, after reading a lot of information that is available on the net, I was convinced that it would work, and that I could possibly gain decades of extra life. I've always thought that I could get away with eating anything that I liked, and never gain weight... I have been slightly underweight and just above normal for most of my life. My parents used to take me to the doctors often because they were worried about how skinny I have been growing up. I took part in sports a lot so burned off all that extra junk food calories I ingested everyday, but I didn't exactly over eat either and mostly ate small meals, I couldnt believe how some people could eat a three course meal, I had trouble eating the main meal alone!!! - I literally lived on wholegrain cereals for much of my teens, I ued to eat as much as three bowls of cereal a day. Also ate a lot of baked beans, sometimes had white bread, chips (fries), crisps, sweets and fruit juices. I never went to fast food places that often, maybe once or twice a year.

Even though I never got to experience serious health effects of my diet, I realized that being thin isn't likely to protect me further into the future. Initially I just added a lot of foods with some raw vegetables and fruits, but still ate cakes, milk chocolate, white bread etc.. I still had yet to read walfords books at this point, I didn't track my weight either. So at least 4lbs of my weight loss was not recorded and I have no idea how fast I lost it, probably too fast! - - I must have eaten anywhere from 1500-1700 calories a day for a while, this was too much of a restriction but couldn't have been in a serious calorie deficit, because I had never lost more than 1lb a week for months...

After taking some tests everything was fine and my initial serious CR didn't cause any metabolic problems. See blood tests here http://www.matthewlake.plus.com/results.htm

I now make sure that my calories stay at 1700k/cal a day. Maybe someday in the future I will lower my calories as I get older, to 1500-1600... but not now as I do not want to lose any more weight. I also weigh all the food that I eat and track nutrient intake with DWIDP.

A typical CR day for me looks a bit like this:

Breakfast - Quaker Oats, Almonds, Walnuts, Banana, Blueberries, Whey Protein powder, Strawberries, Dark chocolate.

Snacks - Strawberry low fat yoghurt, Almonds, AOR Essential Mix

Dinner - Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Carrots OR Sweet Potato, leeks, Cauliflower, Mushrooms, Basil, Lemon Juice Salsa, Garlic, Green beans, Balsamic Vinegar, Turmeric, Black Pepper, Tomato sauce (reduced sugar and salt), Onions, Whey protein powder.

Salad - Spinach, Red Cabbage, Red Onion, Garlic, Balsamic Balsamic Vinegar, Tomatoes, Egg whites, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Salsa, Turmeric, Black Pepper, Tomato sauce (reduced sugar and salt).

Snack - Apples, Blueberries

Salmon once every 2 weeks and chicken once a month.

Supplements - AOR Essential Mix, Zinc/Copper Balance (every other day), Zinc 15mg (on the day I don't take zn/cu balance), Green Tea Extract, Calcium/Vitamin D3 and Cod Liver Oil - 10ml 2 times a week

Will I reach a time when real anti aging therapies are developed to reverse aging?

Every kid and young adult seem to think they are immortal and do not foresee the consequences of aging because the effects take years to show up, I have decided to do CR to keep my young both outside and in. As I do CR, I expect in the future to look and feel significantly younger than my peers. At everystage in my life so far I have looked much younger than my age, I usually pass as a 15-16 years old, and I'm almost 22. I expect to keep myself looking young and feeling young for decades to come. I do not know how long it will take for real anti aging therapies to be developed, and I am taking no chances. Why start CR when the signs of aging have already appeared!

I am suprised that other pro life extentionist have not adopted CR, even though the evidence in mounting every year that it is highly effective in preventing diseases. None of us know if we will be the unlucky one and become ill early on in life and miss out on life extension tecnologies by decades. CR offers both protection from premature death to normalize life span, and possible decades of extra life if begun early in life.

I have always been an optimistic person, I sincerely believe CR will work, like Roy Walford said, You have to believe it is going to work to stay on the program, especially serious CR.

If in the unlikely event that CR does not work, then it may have at least prevented premature death and extended my vitality well into my senior years.

[Matthewlake]

I've been thinking lately, what is my chances of living a long life without CR (I have no intention of quiting, ever!). Almost all of my great grandparents and grandparents lived to 85 eating ad lib, junk food diet and all smoked during their lives, which caused their death from lung cancer. All but one led active lives up until a few months before their diagnoses. My father looks quite young for his age, right now hes around 51 and looks around 40. He ate quite healthy growing up, mostly vegetables, fruits and nuts and was quite skinny. Now he eats whatever he likes, so I thought I'd take a few measurements, he also got some blood tests done which I asked him to get done.

He's not on a CR diet but seems to have indicators of good health
blood pressure is around 100/60
Fasting glucose 83
Body temperature 35.4 degrees celsius in the morning
Cholesterol - ??? (blood tests done, will know soon!)

Something I've also noticed, I can't remember ever seeing him ill, not even with a cold! for 22 years I've been alive. My sister also shows the similar readings and eats junk food all the time... but is ill frequently with infections several times a year.

[Matthewlake]

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[Matthewlake]

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[Matthewlake]

Just had my blood taken and never fainted! yay! - The nurse found my veins very easily as usual, although the blood tube stoppped filling up half way through so they had to use the other arm too, I must have been tense or something.

Fasting Glucose
Basic metabolic panel
CBC
Liver function
Lipids panel
CRP
Ferritin

I'm hoping that CR has had soem protective effects against soem of the anxiety I've had over the last few months, my lab results in december were fine, hopefully these are too! - I get the results next friday I believe. Feeling much better today, i'm slowly resolving all the problems I got, talking to my family and stuff to calm down a bit, getting some reports finished, and making decisions without leaving them on my mind for ages.

[Matthewlake]

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[Matthewlake]

I still have no anxiety/stress symptoms, like palpitations which has been the biggest thing over the last 7 months or so. Palpitations seem to have completely gone. The only thing I really did was increase Vitamin C intake to 2000mg spread out throughout the day, largest dose in the morning when cortisol tends to be highest. Fish oil also probably played a big part.

I wish I had done this months ago, but I just gave up after a while and lived with it everyday, trying to ignore it. Initially I didn't know that Vitamin C could have an affect on stress/anxiety related symptoms, but apparently studies have shown that it reduces the symptoms significantly when the dose is above 1000mg.

I used to get frequent urination aswell, which can associated with anxiety, this has also almost totally resolved. I can now drink Green Tea with caffeine without experiencing any anxiety symptoms like adrenaline rushes shortly after.

Looking good so far

Blood results on friday

[Matthewlake]

BE GONE HAY FEVER!

At the end of spring I was wondering, will my hayfever make a return this year? Because last year was a hay fever free year for me, no medication needed, just CR. This year I only had two days of hayfever, and those days pollution in the city was quite high, I could not go anywhere near the city without sneezing every few seconds. But on these two days people who never had hay fever in their life started having symptoms of it.

Luckily for me, all that sneezing in that very short period never gave me any noticeable inflammation. Usually before starting to eat healthy and doing calorie restriction my throat would be extremely soar, eyes would itch and so on, even on mild pollen count days. But on this occasion I never experienced any other hayfever symptom except sneezing. Not once have my eyes gone red, or throat gone red with inflammation. Also, when I got in the house the sneezing QUICKLY went away, far faster than ever before. So we are in august now, I have 0 hay fever symptoms that I aware of. Pretty good!

[Matthewlake]

Will calorie restriction enable more people to become centenarians?

I'm always facinated and like to learn about centenarians, and try to understand what enabled them to reach their age. Can a good CR diet be any match to those super genes some people inherit from their parents?

When I read stories on centenarians there are a few things that keep on being mentioned in the reports. Almost always centenarians are asked about their lifestyle, what to they eat, what do they drink and so on. The vast majority of news reports, video interviews, audio interviews show that centenarians typically lead healthy lives relative the majority of people. Also being able to cope with stress seems to be one of the main factors, but we know now that nutrition can have huge implications on how one handles stress. Is their coping mechanisms being enhanced by their genes, or is it by their diet, or maybe they have very good relationships and environment. Centenarians also seem to have avoided bad habits, a significant portion of them avoid alcohol and smoking. Two huge problems is society today. I've always said that I would avoid both and have done so far, well, I took one tiny sip of alcohol about 5 years ago and never touched it again.

Can a good CR diet beat good genes?
This is one I have thought about a lot, when we look at centenarians they seem to have avoided most of the age related diseases. This is a trend we see in calorie restriction studies over and over again. Are centenarians showing us the limits of human lifespan? Maybe CR will enable us to match a person with good genes, but not do much better. In that case, CR wouldn't have actually slowed down aging.

CRONies are more than likely to be in the top percent of healthy people for their respective ages. Some maybe healthier than people decades younger. This is stuff we can already see now with the latest studies on heart fuction of long term CRonies for example. Although we are seeing some amazing results in humans now, some researchers are still claiming that CR will not affect lifespan at all, and CR is worthless. The evidence for CR is much stronger than any argument against it thus far.

I will predict that we will see preliminary evidence of much younger physiological function in CRONies within the next two decades. We have some people doing CR that started at all different ages. For those who started in their 20's and early 30's, by the time they reach 50 years of age they will very likely look far younger than their age. This is shown in rhesus monkeys who are genetically very similar to humans. At the moment we can't really tell that CR has had much affect on appearance because most CRONies started when aging had already shown, they had already lost their hair, got a few wrinkles etc.. but for those who started in their early 20's and 30s it will be interested to see just how young they look when they get to middle age, I expect most to keep their hair, show few wrinkles and be able to function like a person decades younger

You DO NOT need super genes to become a cetenarian

Some centenarians are found to have genes that protect them from heart disease, some centenarians have genes that protect them from neurodegenerative diseases. CR does this too! - and might even do a much better job of it. Whether or not we brake the 130 year mark I don't know, I think that we will actually never know from our practise of calorie restriction because other anti aging therapies will have probably arrived for us by then. But CR will CERTAINLY give us more life, and whatever amount of extra life that is, it's totally worth it!

[Matthewlake]

Less Calories = hunger?

Sine starting calorie restriction I have found that dealing with not eating foods like pizza, fries, crisps, milk chocolate and so on very easy. Infact, as far as I am concerned these foods do not exist in my world. I never once think that I would like to eat that... I don't day dream over my next huge feast of junk food. I look forward to my porridge in the morning, that is my super food.
People ask me all the time how can I go without eating all what they call 'normal' foods. There is hardly anything normal about that processed junk... And to me, fruits, vegetables, fish, nuts, porridge, a square of dark chocolate with some green tea, tastes far better. Plus its much healthier for me! I am in a win win situation, I don't feel like I am sacrifcing anything, I absolutely enjoy every meal that I make. I also also happen to feel very well fed at the end of the day, even though my target is 1700k/cal a day.

[Matthewlake]

Just had blood results back yesterday, had to pay £10 admin fees for them to print out four pages!

Everything seemed good, until I got to the electrolytes. My potassium levels are down to boreline hypokalemic (3.4). Excessive cortisol is very likely to be a factor here. One of the minerals that I aimed to get quite high was potassium, I got at least 5000mg a day since starting CR. So I probably lost a lot through urine excretion.

Latest blood results: http://www.matthewlake.plus.com/results.htm

[Matthewlake]

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[Matthewlake]

I've increase potassium intake now to 6g a day by diet and whey protein shakes. I've added extra calories and am at 2000-2100 to see if this induces any weight gain over the next week. Obviously I am still quite young so have plenty of time to go back to 1700k/cal later on. My goal is to gain back no more than 5lbs, I guess over a 2 month period if possible. All extra food that I eat will be healthy, noway would I ever go back to junk food! Gaining 5lbs which will take to me 110lbs and a Calorie Restriction calculator says I would require an extra 27 calories a day (estimate). I seem to be able to maintain my weight on 1700 at the moment so its around about correct. I will hopefully be able to stay in the 1700-1800k/cal a day range People may think 5lb is nothing, but it is to me since I only lost around 13lbs total during CR. But will an extra 5lbs on me make much of a difference? We will see! - This is also a precaution to my latest electrolyte results, Im going to get tested early september again, just my electrolytes.

I did read though that not always do extracellular potassium reflect intraceullar potassium levels. But whatever the case, I think I am doing the most sensible thing for me at this point in time. I will continue on with CR, but 5lbs heavier than I am now, which will give me a BMI of 17.3 rather than a bmi of 16.4. It may put my mind at rest a bit and cheer up my family a bit.

[Matthewlake]

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[Matthewlake]

Found an article on a study published that shows Anger, Hostility and depressive symptoms are linked to higher C reactive protein levels.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040922070643.htm

"The Duke study is the first to link this combination of negative psychological attributes with higher levels of CRP in people without traditional risk factors for heart disease"

"In earlier studies, Suarez has shown that people who are prone to anger, hostility and depressive symptoms respond to stress with increased production of the stress hormone norepinephrine. Scientific evidence suggests that an increase in this stress hormone activates the inflammatory arm of the immune system and triggers the expression of genes that cause chronic, low-grade inflammation. This inflammation is characterized by high levels of CRP"

Respondents who were prone to anger, had high hostility levels, and showed mild to moderate symptoms of depression had two to three times higher CRP levels than their calmer counterparts. The more pronounced their negative moods, the higher CRP levels they had, the study showed.

The highest levels of CRP were in the range of 1.7 mg/L to 3.0 mg/L. While these levels are still considered relatively low... a fever, an active infection, or physical trauma is associated with CRP levels above 10.0/mg/L CRP levels in this range are associated with a moderate to high risk of heart attacks and strokes, said Suarez

I'll just have to get it done again later this year, Is there any point in getting the same test a month from now... I may need sometime before things get back to normal.