Lower body heat may boost longevity
A new study on genetically engineered mice appears to offer a novel way to live as much as 20% longer: Chill out.
Scientists engineered mice to have body temperatures 0.5 to 0.9 degrees lower than normal mice. Female experimental mice lived a median of 662 days, about 112 days longer than normal female mice. Male experimental mice survived a median of 805 days, 89 days longer than their normal counterparts.
“We have identified that a small but continuous reduction of temperature can have a beneficial effect in life span and aging,” said the study’s lead author, Bruno Conti, a biologist at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. “It is equivalent to seven or eight years of human life, so it is not bad.”
Scientists have known for decades that restricting calories in a diet prolongs life, and animals with restricted calories tend to have lower body temperatures. Conti wanted to know whether decreasing body temperature alone could increase longevity.
Earlier studies looked at animals whose body temperature depends on their environment, but Conti said this was the first study to alter the temperature of warm-blooded animals.
Conti and his colleagues altered cells in each experimental mouse’s hypothalamus, a section of the brain that regulates body temperature. The cells generated more heat than normal.
“It’s like having a thermostat in a room set to a certain temperature,” he explained. “Go close to it with a source of a heat, a flame, for instance, and the thermostat will set off the air conditioning.”
The 79 experimental mice did not appear significantly different from the study’s 67 normal mice, eating about the same amount.
Conti acknowledged that the technique was “not terribly practical” for human beings yet.
But he added, “If we figure out how the thermostat works, one could think there could be the development of a pharmacological approach.”
