Why dietary interventions fail or succeed in ageing: metabolic resilience as the missing integrative framework

Apr 10, 2026Clinical nutrition ESPEN

How the body’s ability to manage metabolism may explain why diet changes work or don’t work in aging

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Longevity & Aging on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

Metabolic resilience may explain the variability in dietary responses observed in ageing populations.

Metabolic resilience is defined as the ability to adapt to various stressors while maintaining functional stability.
Ageing may be associated with a decline in systemic adaptive capacity, impacting dietary intervention outcomes.
Impaired metabolic flexibility, chronic low-grade inflammation, and reduced functional reserve could contribute to inconsistent effects of nutrition in older adults.
Current approaches focusing on isolated nutrients and short-term biomarkers may overlook the complexity of metabolic responses.
The AMPK-mTOR-SIRT1 pathway may interact with inflammation and functional status to influence nutritional responses.

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Metabolic resilience, defined as the organism's capacity to dynamically adapt to nutritional, energetic, and inflammatory stressors while maintaining or restoring functional stability over time, may help explain the marked heterogeneity observed in responses to dietary interventions, particularly in ageing populations. Despite substantial advances in nutritional science, clinical trials frequently report modest, inconsistent, or poorly sustained effects, especially in older adults. These limitations are not fully explained by differences in dietary composition, adherence, or study design, but may instead reflect a progressive decline in systemic adaptive capacity associated with ageing, including impaired metabolic flexibility, chronic low-grade inflammation, and reduced functional reserve. Conventional approaches centred on isolated nutrients, dietary patterns, or short-term metabolic biomarkers often fail to capture this system-level complexity, limiting clinical interpretability and translational impact. This critical integrative review examines whether metabolic resilience can serve as a unifying framework to reinterpret variability in dietary responsiveness. Evidence from human and translational studies is synthesised to explore how energy-sensing and stress-response pathways, particularly the AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase)-mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin)-SIRT1 (sirtuin 1) axis, interact with inflammatory burden and functional status to shape responses to nutritional interventions. Within this framework, variability in outcomes is interpreted not as inconsistency of dietary effects, but as a reflection of underlying differences in adaptive capacity. This perspective supports a shift towards resilience-oriented endpoints, improved biological stratification, and the integration of functional phenotypes into study design, with the aim of enhancing the clinical relevance and translational consistency of nutrition research in ageing.

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Why dietary interventions fail or succeed in ageing: metabolic resilience as the missing integrative framework

Abstract

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