Calorie Restriction and Alpha-synuclein
Look hard enough and you'll find all sorts of interesting indications of the broad effects the practice of calorie restriction (CR) with optimal nutrition has on the progression of age-related damage: "Dietary restriction (DR) is one of the promising environmental interventions known to attenuate aging and decrease risk of age-related neurodegenerative disorders. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of DR on expression of alpha-synuclein, a presynaptic protein involved in pathogenesis of Parkinson's and some other neurodegenerative diseases, in the cortex and hippocampus of adult, middle-aged, late middle-aged, and aged rats. Using Real Time RT-PCR, the authors report that aging regulates the expression of alpha-synuclein in a tissue-specific manner and that long-term DR reverts the late age-related changes of alpha-synuclein expression." Which is interesting indeed, but not completely unexpected, given that CR slows the buildup of other forms of damaging protein aggregates in rodents.