This is fascinating. So perhaps General Stanley McChrystal, who said to everyone that he eats once a day in the evening since he was a lieutenant is, actually does something right, despite saying otherwise? Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. 

Yeah, I mean, again, I think, you know, as I said, it's a correlation does not equal causation. But, you know, this gets back to the idea of time-restricted feeding, right. And I know, several people now who eat, you know, either within a six-hour window or eat one meal a day. Again, though, I think, you know, it's hard to know whether any potential benefits associated with that sort of a dietary approach are due to the time-restricted nature of the feeding versus the fact that almost all of those people are also eating less, right. As I said, I know several people who do one meal a day. Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. None of them are overweight or obese. And so I think it's actually kind of hard to be overweight or obese if you're only eating one meal a day. And so, you know, if there are health benefits associated with that, in that person, what's the mechanism? That's still an open question, but yeah, I think it's, um, it's, you know, intriguing to note that there was this strong correlation in dogs, and certainly suggests that it's worth doing additional studies to try to get to causation. 

So overall, you would say that those have a better diet, and let's not comparable to the Western diet that is being blamed for most chronic diseases in the western civilization? Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. 

I don't know. So, you know, talking to my veterinary friends, my understanding is that obesity is a growing problem in pet dogs. And so, you know, I don't think it's quite up to the obesity rates that we see, you know, in the United States. But it's not uncommon that companion dogs are obese. And so I don't know that I would say that, you know, in general, companion dogs eat a healthier diet than people do. That remains to be seen, I guess.

And certainly, adults probably follow the activity pattern of their owners. So, you know, less mobility among dogs in the western world is quite likely, unless their owner is essentially an outdoorsman. What about hormones?

Yeah, and I mean, this is something, you know, this is data that we get. So at this point, we haven't been able to finalize activity tracking with these sort of, you know, continuous activity monitors like a Fitbit for a dog. We're working on that. But, you know, even from the owners, one of the interesting things is we have dogs, we have many dogs, as you might imagine, that live in urban environments, or suburban environments, or rural environments. Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. And so you're right, I think owner activity is one predictor of dog activity, but also where they live dogs that live in a rural environment that maybe have a really large yard and spend a lot of time outdoors are more likely to be active than the dogs that live in an apartment, you know, in New York or a large urban center. Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. So we do get data from the owners on the activity of the dogs. And in fact, there are members of the team who are looking exactly at that question. What sorts of correlations can we draw between the activity level of the dog and health outcomes during aging? And one of the interesting questions is, You know, is it the case that that activity level or maybe even age of the owner is a predictor of an activity level of the dog, which is a predictor of health outcomes during aging? So yeah, those are exactly the kinds of questions that we're digging into right now.