Eating less and more healthily may be just the ticket for women to add years to their fertile lives - as well as boosting their sex drive and sexual satisfaction, which are part and parcel of fertility.

This is true if a study done recently with mice can be extrapolated to humans. In the research, performed by a team led by Kaisa Selesniemi of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, adult female mice were fed less, and it was found that the aging process in their ovaries was slowed. This led to an extension of their fertility by a considerable number of months, which would translate into many years for women.

Two groups of mice were created, one that was fed reduced-calorie diets for four months and one that was allowed to eat whatever quantities of food the animals desired. The scientists, whose paper was published in the journal Aging Cell, discovered that restricting calorie intake in adulthood doubled the mice's ovarian follicle reserve.

For the control group, the average age for the mice to lose their fertility was 15.5 months. In the low-calorie experimental group, after 15.5 months of age, the mice were allowed to eat any amounts they wished. The result was that almost half of these mice experienced a six-month fertility extension (the equivalent of about 16 years in women), and approximately one-third were able to have litters up to 23 months of age.

Moreover, the fecundity and offspring survival rates of the experimental group were vastly greater than those of the control group. Specifically, 10- to 23-month-old mice in the control group delivered 54 pups, only 22 percent of which survived. But in the experimental group, 15.5- to 23-month-old mice delivered 94 offspring, over 73 percent of which survived without any complications.

Related Stories

 - TEEN SLEEP CYCLE
 - WEEKLY HEALTH WRAP
 - Air Force Allows Pilots With Lasik to Fly