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Sirtfood: How Useful is The Trend Diet?

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Stay slim and young with Sirtfood: That is what a new and very popular diet promises – the Sirt diet. Here’s what’s behind the claims.

The principle of the sirt diet sounds simple: Eat sirt food, i.e. foods that activate so-called sirtuins in the body. Among other things, these proteins are supposed to stimulate the metabolism and help the body to build muscles. In addition, sirtuins are said to be involved in numerous protective and repair mechanisms of the body. That’s why Sirtfood not only makes you slimmer, but also healthier – at least that’s the promise.

What is sirt food?

Sirtfood is food that contains molecules that are thought to activate the body’s production of sirtuins. Scientists have identified 20 such molecules so far. These include, for example, resveratrol, a secondary plant substance that is found in red wine, among other things. In an experiment on cell cultures, scientists have managed to activate the sirtuin Sirt1 with the help of resveratrol.

Here is a selection of foods that contain possible sirtfood activators:
Vegetables: Greens, cabbage, legumes, radishes, onions, garlic
Fruit: citrus fruits, apples, apricots, cherries, plums, grapes, berries
Spices: Chili, Cinnamon, Turmeric, Tonka Bean, Licorice
Cashews
black, white and green tea, coffee
red wine
cocoa
Basically, the diet consists of eating as many of these foods as possible – but of course not mainly red wine and chocolate.

This is how the Sirt diet works

There are several guides that suggest slightly different variations of the Sirt diet. This is how the diet works:
For the first three days, you’re only consuming 1,000 calories a day. You divide this into a meal rich in sirt food and three juices or green smoothies, which you mix together from the vegetables and fruits from the list.
For the remaining four days of the first week, increase your calorie intake to 1500 calories per day (exactly how much varies from guide to guide). You are now allowed to eat two meals rich in sirt food and drink two smoothies.
The guides then recommend continuing to eat a lot of sirt food and incorporating one or two juices a day. There are different statements as to whether you should further restrict your calorie requirements or not. Ultimately, that depends on how much weight you want to lose.

Sirtfood – the key to happiness?

This question has to be answered step by step. First of all, it is questionable whether the molecules that are supposed to activate sirtuins actually do so. Previous studies have been carried out on mice, yeast and cell cultures – it is not yet clear whether Sirtfood can also activate the sirtuins in the human body.

In addition, we know little about how the sirtuins – seven different ones have been identified in the human body – influence each other and whether there are “better” and “worse” sirtuins.
This leads to the second part of the question: How do sirtuins actually affect our body?
Sirtuins cleave certain chemical groups from some proteins: the acetyl groups. This is a signal to the body to boost metabolism. In this way, sirtuins are said to help with weight loss. In addition, scientists from the Max Planck Society have found, among other things, that increased activity of Sirt1 in mice causes them to break down fat.
A team of Japanese scientists has discovered that the sirtuin Sirt2 regulates glucose metabolism. It could therefore play an important role in diabetes therapies.
In general, sirtuins are said to be involved in numerous protective and repair mechanisms in the body and in this way reduce the risk of many diseases and even increase life expectancy. However, a lot of research still needs to be done in this area.
So there are many hopeful reports on sirtuins – but also a lot of research is still needed.

Is the Sirt diet recommended?

Sirtuins appear to be important to our bodies and they may actually be activated by sirt food. The basic concept of the Sirt diet sounds sensible at first. However, many nutrition experts advise against the diet. These are the reasons:

Eating only 1000 calories for three days is very difficult for most people and can quickly become yo-yo. The diet promises that you can lose up to seven pounds of fat in a week, but experts believe that the lack of calories causes the body to lose a lot of water.
It is said that sirtuins can be used to build muscle without exercising. There are explanations as to how sirtuins can boost muscle growth, but no evidence. On the contrary, the scientific consensus is that you can’t build muscle without exercising.
The foods on the sirt food list are certainly healthy in general, but you can’t eat a balanced diet from them alone. So the Sirt diet is not a diet that you can practice permanently.
In general, short-term diets aimed at losing weight quickly are rarely successful. Instead, you should eat a balanced diet overall and eat lots of seasonal fruit and vegetables. There will certainly be one or the other sirt food.

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