Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Science
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
For worms fed a sugary diet, life is sweet. But short. According to a new study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, consistently adding a small amount of sugar to a worm's regular diet of bacteria shortened its lifespan by 20 percent. The research was performed on C. elegans, tiny roundworms that typically live an average of two weeks.
In previous work, Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco, found that a mutation to a gene called daf-2 changed insulin signaling and doubled the lifespan of the worms. And the worms didn’t get old at their usual pace and then hang on longer—they actually aged more slowly.
Now Kenyon’s new study shows that worms with the daf-2 mutation don’t get the life-extending benefits if they are routinely fed glucose. More research will be needed to see whether a similar situation holds true in humans. But Kenyon believes the findings might have significant implications for emerging diabetes therapies, as well as for diets that could extend lifespans. This much is certain: based on her research, Kenyon has stopped eating dessert.
—Rachel Kremen
See what we're tweeting about
5 Comments
Add CommentSimply illustrates what we know true of the effect of sugar in those with arthritis
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile this is objectively interesting, the cutesy wink to the reader at the end is both predictable and patronizing. To intimate anything applicable to human biology based on an organism so genetically far removed is absurd, and if it's true the researcher changed her behavior based on her experiments, she is irrational.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd to Val1953, really? The suppression of an effect of a mutated growth/aging gene in worms (which in humans would probably be analogous to some endocrine component) 'illustrates what we know true of the effect of sugar in those with arthritis" which has nothing to do with similar systems? Something tells me you have a personal agenda or bias that has nothing to do with the real, empirical scientific ramifications of this work.
I better give up that hard candy I like to suck on in the car and after dinner.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI BOUGHT A 5LB. BAG OF SUGAR, WHEN I OPENED IT TO PUT SOME IN MY COFFEE, THERE WERE WORMS CRAWLING ON MY HAND AND IN THE BAG, WHAT ARE THEY, AND CAN THEY HURT MY INSIDES
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt really wouldn't surprise me if these findings (that glucose could shorten life span when provided in excess, as it is in the average western diet) we're corroborated down the line by human research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeems like just another very good (potential) reason to cut the sugar (and highly processed foods that might as well be sugar).