Calorie restriction can help mice stay lean, live longer, resulting in less fat to keep their bodies warm. Faced with this change, a team of researchers from the Institute of Chemistry of the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) has discovered that mouse skin responds to caloric restriction by stimulating skin growth, increasing blood flow and altering cell metabolism to increase energy efficiency. Thus, animals can use this method as an evolutionary adaptation to keep warm and alive under limited feeding conditions.
“ The changes in the skin were quite evident , and they are interesting because they were visible after a few months, when the animals were not yet old. The changes may be related to an increase in skin stem cells, which help to preserve the skin from the effects of aging, which we were also able to detect, “says Alicia Kowaltowski, leader of the study.
A calorie-restricted diet has been linked to a long list of health benefits, from increasing life expectancy to reducing insulin resistance to helping fight cancer. However, its effects on the skin have been little studied . To learn more, his group, including researcher Maria Fernanda Forni, who studies skin stem cells, teamed up with Jorge Shinohara at the Department of Fundamental Chemistry in Sao Paulo, who built a custom temperature sensor for the skin of de the rats.
The researchers conducted an experiment with rodents: the first group fed without measure and the second, was subjected to considerable caloric restriction. The experiment lasted 6 months.
Mice that ate absolutely everything they wanted and at any time became obese mice. Mice restricted to 60% of calories from a control diet lost about half their body mass and had a more uniform, thicker, and longer coat of hair than their overweight congeners.
The group observed that, at the cellular level, one of the side effects of the diet was an expansion of stem cells from the hair follicle, leading to increased hair growth and retention rates. Compared to mice that had been able to eat without measure, the calorie-restricted mice also had three times as many blood vessels in their skin, to bring more warm blood to the surface, and their skin cells showed differences in metabolism so they lost less energy over time.
“These findings are especially significant as they reveal not only a remarkable effect of caloric restriction on the skin, but also an adaptive mechanism to cope with reduced isolation resulting from skin changes under conditions of reduced caloric intake ,” says Kowaltowski. .
Scientists now want to focus on understanding the signals involved in promoting skin changes seen with calorie restriction. If we understand this mechanism, we could discover ways to keep skin healthy during the aging process. Will it be the same for human beings?
Referencia: Cell Reports, Maria Fernanda Forni, Julia Peloggia, Tárcio T. Braga, Jesús Eduardo Ortega Chinchilla, Jorge Shinohara, Arturo Navas, Niels Olsen Saraiva Camar. : “Caloric Restriction Promotes Structural and Metabolic Changes in the Skin.” cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(17)31177-4 , DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.08.052
