If there were a simple way to increase your life span, virtually eliminate cancer, decrease all forms of chronic disease, and age at half the rate you are currently aging, would you want to know what it is? Well, there seems to be a way to do just that. An astute scientist from the Cornell University, Dr. C.M. McKay, detected it in the 1930s. He made the remarkable discovery that calorie restriction is a consistent and reproducible method of prolonging life and vitality in animals, and it's been shown to be effective in every species tested, from aquatic organisms to primates.
Interestingly, only one human population that we know of has a self-imposed habit of calorie restriction - the Okinawans, the longest-lived population in the world. Okinawans eat a lot and certainly do not go hungry. But they tend to stop eating before they are bursting at the seams. They call their secret hara hachi bu, which loosely translated to "eat until you are eight parts full (out of ten)." Simply put, leave a little room at the end of each meal. Here's why: It takes the stretch receptors in the stomach about twenty minutes to tell the brain how full you really are. You will actually feel fuller twenty minutes after you put down your fork. If you eat until you are 100 percent full, you will go about 20 percent overcapacity with every meal. Your stomach will stretch a little bit each time to accommodate the extra food. Then you have to eat more next time to get the same feeling of fullness. It's a vicious cycle. It served a good purpose in the days when we had to forage for our calories, but with a mini-mart around every corner it's a dangerous mechanism.
