It’s not just Woody Allen who desires to become immortal. If we all suffered the mortality rates of eleven-year-old American girls, according to aging researcher Dr. Gordon Stoltzner, we could live 1,500 years.

       Don’t expect that result yourself.

       Not that people aren’t trying. Many companies are receiving very large amounts of capital to make the attempt. Individuals fork over smaller amounts merely in hope of a victory against time. Some years back I attended a lecture at the Sarasota Book Fair, given by Ben Bova. Famous for his science fiction novels, Bova came to describe his new book on aging.

       I looked at the audience. Very few young heads popped up. I figured the average age of the audience at 75.

       Bova looked everyone over. He happily predicted that “soon” people would be living to 130 to 150 years. Vast changes were occurring in biological sciences, undreamed of technological advances. Everyone there might plan for a longer life.

       After speaking for about 15 minutes, he stopped. No details for increasing longevity would be given. The implication was clear that enhanced lifespan could only be obtained by buying his book.

       Anti-aging is now a media industry, creating its own stars and future villains. In a nation prone to hucksterism, living longer is a goal on which many plan to make their fortune. Treatment with growth hormone costs tens of thousands of dollars a year, and dried organs of endangered animals won’t cost much less. Many people figure they can take a chance on a few vitamin or supplement pills. The costs are not great, and great benefits may be gained. Like playing the lottery, what’s to lose?

       Plenty. Growth hormone may make people feel young, but may also provoke atherosclerosis. Liver of bear or eagle may prove expensive not just monetarily but to your immune system, potentiating allergic reactions and infections. Recent government recommendations on vitamins find precious little support even for multivitamin use by the general population, let alone for specific vitamins. The national tendency to see health in a pill rather than the way we live obscures and hides the hard facts of what people need to do: put food, activity and rest into a program that fits what the human body is built to do.

       Yet the siren call of immortality remains. And there appears to be a candidate with real evidence and appeal.

       It’s called caloric restriction. Evidence that it works is impressive.

       Caloric restriction has been used in animals to increase both average and maximal lifespan. When mosquitoes are given 65 to 70% of the calories they prefer, their maximum lifespan doubles. Large increases in age span occur in mice, rats, and fruit flies, the latter important, as their genetics has been extensively studied. Though most caloric restriction starts at birth, “middle aged” fruit flies have also doubled lifespan with caloric restriction.

What about people? Okinawan women are the longest-lived humans on earth. Those who were “food restricted” in World War II, which means they were literally starved, lived longer than other groups. Similar, Dutch who survived the famine of the late war years demonstrated major decreases in cardiac death, as if the fats around their arteries were reabsorbed and used as food.

Data in Americans who food restrict is chemically impressive. Their arterial pressure, inflammatory status, cholesterol and lipids make food restrictors look young, like pre-adolescents and adolescents. In narrow chemical terms, they do appear to have “de-aged.”        But will they live longer? The jury is out, and will remain out a long time.

       Humans have a long life span. In many ways, humans do not respond medically as do animals with shorter spans.

       There’s an old, bitter joke in oncology — “we can cure most tumors — in the mouse.” Many treatments that work in other animals run up against unexpected and often unexplained obstacles in people.

       And food restriction is not for most of us. Surviving on 1,200 calories a day will not appeal to most Americans, who are eating more like 2,500 to 3,000 calories a day in a country that agriculturally produces 4,000 calories per day. Food restriction makes most any diet program look like luxurious dining, and diets fail about 98% of the time.

       Instead, the American population will have to look to eating programs that have kept other people alive longer and healthier than our own. That’s the topic for next week — what’s to eat?

Dr. Matthew Edlund, M.D., M.O.H., director of The Center for Circadian Medicine, is an expert on applied public health, sleep medicine and psychiatry. A former professor at Brown and University of Texas medical schools, he can be reached via email to DocME@DoctorEdlund.com. And CLICK HERE to subscribe to our new Fitcast, via the iTunes Store.