Be careful: reducing food intake compromises the immune system
This month's issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology (you all do read that, dont' you?) carries an important story of enduring signficance about how curtailed dietary intake compromises the immune systems of deer mice. Researchers Lynn Martin et al of The Ohio State University report that cutting back just 30% of dietary intake "reduces secondary antibody responses in deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), functionally representing a cost of immune memory." Ohio State's been doing some good work in nutrition recently.
The results are another recurring reminder of this lesson long-taught and repeatedly-reminded: there are very real physiological costs in terms of unintended consequences in reducing "normal" dietary intakes. It's been more than 20 years, for example, since Dr. Mark Cook of the University of Wisconsin published results that curtailing salt intake in chickens impaired their immune system function . That's before most of the world woke up to the AIDS catastrophe.
