Calorie Restriction Protects rhesus monkeys from sarcopenia

Well according to that abstract it significantly slows the decline. We see the same with various hormones, and bone with CR too. Start off at a lower level, but the decline is much slower.

There was an interesting study a little while back on rodents. An article states;

"Scientists from the University of Calgary found that rats fed a nutritious, calorie-restricted diet maintained their muscle mass much better than rats that ate a normal amount of food. "It's the equivalent of an 80-year-old rat with the muscles of a 20-year-old rat," said Russ Hepple, a physiologist at the University of Calgary."
Source

It seems very likely the same effect will be seen in humans. The fact that CR preserves muscle mass is very nice because not only could we expect to be more functional with age, but also have much less chance of bone fracture. People with better muscle function and mass tend not to be as susceptible to falls as old frail people with poor muscle function, co ordination... Even at 18y the CR group had a higher ESM than the ad lib group at 10 years!

Heres a direct link to the graph from the paper

Attenuation of sarcopenia by dietary restriction in rhesus monkeys.
Colman RJ, Beasley TM, Allison DB, Weindruch R.

Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1220 Capitol Ct., Madison, WI 53715. rcolman@primate.wisc.edu.

Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass with normal aging, devastates quality of life-and related healthcare expenditures are enormous. The prevention or attenuation of sarcopenia would be an important medical advance. Dietary restriction (DR) is the only dietary intervention that consistently extends median and maximum life span, as well as health span in rodents. Evidence suggests that DR will have a similar effect in primates. Furthermore, DR opposes sarcopenia in rodents. We tested the hypothesis that DR will reduce age-related sarcopenia in a nonhuman primate. Thirty adult male rhesus monkeys, half fed a normal calorie intake and half reduced by 30% in caloric intake, were examined over 17 years for changes in dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry-estimated skeletal muscle mass. Body weight-adjusted skeletal muscle mass declined somewhat in both groups but was far more rapid in the control group. We have shown that moderate, adult-onset DR can attenuate sarcopenia in a nonhuman primate model.

PMID: 18559628 [PubMed - in process]