In Defense of Defending CRON

At first I didn't understand why anyone would bother defending CR. I could care less if someone else practiced it, because I am the one who wants the health benefits. It sounds selfish when I think of it this way, but, yes, I care about numero uno and that's about it, lol. In fact, if I was going to care even .0001% about someone else's assessment of it, the juvenile in me would actually feel happy that it's dumb annoying people with poor reasoning skills who won't be around at some point in my long life, even if I have to wait a really long time to realize the benefits, haha.

I had supposed that the people who took it personally when people criticized CR had unsupportive people in their real lives, so their defensiveness was on autopilot. It wouldn't even dawn on me to engage with someone over the benefits of CR. Again, what do I care if someone else does it? It's not like advising people to stop smoking, which can also benefit me so I don't have to breathe it secondhand.

But now I feel differently.

The more CRON is accepted as a mainstream cultural idea, just as going to the gym, jogging, and vegetarianism have slowly come onto the public's radar and gradually been accepted as desirable health behaviors in the 20th century, all individual CRONies stand to benefit from it. No, I'm not just talking about an end to the haranguing about low weight once and for all! I'm talking about improved health research specific to the CR lifestyle. Even when studies aren't addressing CR specifically, wouldn't it be nice if CR status were often controlled as a variable so we knew how certain medications or other interventions affected CRONie subjects? Because of all the effects of CR, including weight loss, lower glucose, lower insulin, reduced body temperature, and upregulating neurotrophins, orexin, etc., as well as changing gene expression to induce a longevity-promoting state, it stands to reason that CR status should be controlled for in ANY study, just as body weight or physical activity level should be (studies will frequently specify whether an intervention was on obese or non-obese mice, for example. The results are NOT always similar.).

And the more people who practice it, the more likely (hopefully) the sexism in the studies can be addressed, although that problem is so pervasive in all medical research in general that I won't hold my breath on that one. But there would be more public criticism that might move researchers to improve the quality of the studies on that front (more on that later--I'll have to dedicate a post just to that subject eventually).