The immunologist Antonella Viola has published a book in which she talks about de The Way of Balance: Science of Aging and Longevity. The professor of general pathology at the University of Padua explains today in an interview with Repubblica that diet, sleep and physical activity can slow down the symptoms of old age and maintain good health. “The moment I realized that something was changing was at 38. I had my first two children at 30 and 32, without planning them because I was in two very challenging moments in my working life. At 38, I was in a more solid position and thought the time was right for my third child. But that never arrived: my husband and I tried for a year, but without success. Evidently my biological time for reproduction had passed.”
Sustainable longevity
Viola explains to Giuliano Aluffi that «although I still looked and felt very young, in reality my body was changing. Then I saw other signs: for example, menopause in recent years, or seeing that the body is no longer as it was before because you gain weight more easily and therefore need to move more”. For the scientist, “our population is ageing, and an aging country needs more healthcare and above all different healthcare than a young country. But the resources aren’t there, so the only answer is sustainable longevity. We are living more and more but we spend the last 20-30 years in sickness, and this is unsustainable both from a personal and collective point of view. Therefore we have to do prevention from an early age and change our lifestyle to spend the last few years without too many health problems. My book wants to help us do that.”
The intermittent fasting diet
What Viola recommends is called the intermittent fasting diet: «It involves a 6-8 hour window in which you eat, and fasting for the rest of the day. Several clinical trials show the enormous benefits of this practice, which is based on our body’s biological clocks and realigns them. We have a central biological clock that follows sunlight. But there’s also a nutrient-sensitive biological clock. And when we eat at night, there is a misalignment: the body receives both the message: “it’s dark, you have to sleep” and the opposite one: “you’re eating, you have to stay awake”. And the body suffers.”
The husband
The immunologist reveals that her husband is also involved: «He does the right thing: stop eating at four in the afternoon until breakfast the next morning. But I can’t. For this reason, in the book I recommend knowing yourself and not stressing yourself, which is the way of balance. In my case, if I stop eating at 4 pm, by midnight I’m with my eyes open and stomach cramps. And insomnia does much worse than eating. So I changed my diet by having dinner around 7.30, skipping breakfast and having lunch around 1. But this means that during the working week we never eat together: he eats breakfast and I don’t, I eat dinner and he doesn’t, at lunch we both at work… But we make up for it on the weekend, where we eat normally».
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