Cut Sweets and Vitamins for a Longer Life?

Filed in archive General Health on October 3, 2007

As a lover of all things sweet, I'm hoping this latest study turns out to be false.

Prepare yourself, ladies. German researchers are reporting that avoiding sweets and vitamins could help prolong your life. Yes, that's right. If you want to live longer, you must give up sweets. That includes chocolate cake, apple pie, Godiva Chocolates. I could go on and on, but you get my point. The focus of the study is that we're taking in too much glucose, which is unhealthy.

The key was boosting the level of "free radicals" - unstable molecules that can damage the body and which people often try to get rid of by consuming food or drinks rich in anti-oxidants such as vitamin E, they said in a study published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Restricting glucose first spurred the worms to generate more free radicals, but then they quickly built up long-lasting defenses against them, said Michael Ristow, an endocrinologist at the University of Jena and the German Institute of human nutrition, who led the study.

"During the process, the worm generates more free radicals, which activates defenses against free radicals within the worm," he said in a telephone interview. "The bad thing in the end promotes something good."

The body needs glucose, but taking in too much was unhealthy, Ristow said.

Scientists have long known that restricting calorie intake in worms and monkeys increases longevity, and the study narrowed that idea further, to glucose.