--- title: Researchers May Have Found a Way to Slow Human Aging description: A new study suggests prolonged calorie restriction may reduce the pace at which people age, offering a potential clue for slowing aging. canonical: https://time.com/6254236/slow-human-aging/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-02-09T16:34:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T15:24:58.689Z article:section: Health og:title: Researchers May Have Found a Way to Slow Human Aging og:description: A new study on calorie restriction shows promising results og:url: https://time.com/6254236/slow-human-aging/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt04386f15c61b6ff0/698a3a34929fad01d8bf98ea/slow-aging-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2121 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: An hourglass on a man's palm og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Researchers May Have Found a Way to Slow Human Aging twitter:description: A new study on calorie restriction shows promising results twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt04386f15c61b6ff0/698a3a34929fad01d8bf98ea/slow-aging-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Researchers May Have Found a Way to Slow Human Aging > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Feb 9, 2023 4:34 PM UTC  An hourglass on palm of your hand, yellow background, concept of loss and old age passing time An hourglass on palm of your hand, yellow background, concept of loss and old age passing time Getty Images  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Feb 9, 2023 4:34 PM UTC A new study brings scientists closer to an elusive goal: figuring out how to [outsmart humans’ biological clocks to slow the aging process](https://time.com/6246864/reverse-aging-scientists-discover-milestone/) and keep people healthier, longer. For decades, researchers have studied calorie restriction as a potential method of extending lifespan. Numerous promising trials, [some dating back almost a century](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884327/), have been conducted in animals—but the new [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-022-00357-y), published Feb. 9 in _Nature Aging,_ is significant because it demonstrates that calorie restriction may also slow aging in humans. A group of researchers, led by scientists from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, used data from a trial called Comprehensive Assessment of Long-Term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE), which tracked a group of more than 200 healthy adults ages 21 to 50 who did not have obesity. Some of the participants were directed to reduce their calorie intakes by 25% for two years, while the rest of the group stuck to their normal diets. [Previous research on CALERIE trial participants](https://time.com/5625306/cutting-calories-study/) found that those who ate less over those two years had signs of better health, including improved markers of cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar, compared to those who ate regularly. For the new study, the researchers wanted to see if people who restricted calories also aged more slowly than those who ate normally. To find out, they used blood samples taken when the study started, at the one-year mark, and at the two-year mark to look for signs of aging in participants’ DNA. They used three different methods of analyzing DNA. Two of the methods calculated participants’ [biological ages](https://time.com/4776345/exercise-aging-telomeres/), regardless of how old they were chronologically, based on the state of their DNA. Using those methods, the researchers didn’t observe any significant changes after two years of calorie restriction. The third model was meant to find the rate at which someone is aging, rather than their current biological age. Under that framework, the researchers found that two years of calorie restriction led to a 2% to 3% slower pace of aging. That may not sound like much, but, according to the study’s authors, [previous research](https://elifesciences.org/articles/73420) suggests a similar slow-down in biological aging could reduce someone’s risk of death by up to 15%—roughly the same [longevity benefit associated with quitting a smoking habit](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15710956/). **Read More**: [_What Time You Eat Doesn’t Matter For Weight Loss, Study Finds_](https://time.com/6248943/intermittent-fasting-diet-meal-time/) That’s only an estimate, though. Since people in the study were only tracked for two years, it’s impossible to say exactly how their diets affected their longevity and life-long health. Plus, a 25% drop in calorie consumption is dramatic and, for many people, unsustainable. Even many of the CALERIE trial participants—who were given a month’s worth of prepared meals to get used to their new eating styles, as well as behavioral counseling—didn’t stick with the plan for a full two years. Those who were able to reduce their daily calories by at least 10% still saw some aging benefit, the researchers found, but not as much as those who ate even less. [Some researchers have raised concerns](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9042193/) about the potential drawbacks of long-term calorie restriction among people, including mental-health consequences and declines in bone density and muscle mass. [One 2018 study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-018-0024-8) on non-human primates also found that calorie restriction can extend lifespan, but may also change the composition of the brain (albeit not in ways that affected cognitive function, according to that study). Widespread calorie restriction is “not a practical strategy for slowing aging in the population,” the authors of the new study write. But the new data “suggest that slowing aging in humans is possible and provide benchmarks for effects of more scalable interventions, including [intermittent fasting](https://time.com/6188405/type-2-diabetes-intermittent-fasting/) and drug therapies.” Even if they don’t translate into practical advice yet, the study’s findings are a step forward in the effort to understand—and perhaps someday [slow, or even reverse](https://time.com/5209427/aging-nicotinamide-mononucleotide-nmn/)—the negative effects of human aging. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6254236/slow-human-aging/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6254236/slow-human-aging/"},"headline":"Researchers May Have Found a Way to Slow Human Aging","datePublished":"2023-02-09T16:34:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T15:24:58.689Z","description":"A new study on calorie restriction shows promising results.","url":"https://time.com/6254236/slow-human-aging/","keywords":["Longevity","Wellbeing","TIME 2030","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt04386f15c61b6ff0/698a3a34929fad01d8bf98ea/slow-aging-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jamie Ducharme","jobTitle":"Ducharme is a contributor to TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt04386f15c61b6ff0/698a3a34929fad01d8bf98ea/slow-aging-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"An hourglass on a man's palm","caption":"An hourglass on a man's palm","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/longevity/","name":"Longevity"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6254236/slow-human-aging/","name":"Researchers May Have Found a Way to Slow Human Aging"}}]}] ```