New research is exploring whether creating an environment akin to eating less often — fasting — may be as important as lowering caloric intake.

Results could be key to finding new ways to fight diseases, including diabetes and heart disease, and disease-causing markers like inflammation.

People have been losing weight by counting calories for years. But some recent medical studies are trying to prove that if you want the ultimate benefit of better dietary habits — less diseases and a longer life — your body may need to think you're eating less often, too.

Longevity scientists are studying food fasting to find out if regular periods of going without any food, or making your body think you are going without food, could be a key to lengthening the human lifespan.

"When you consume calories also plays a role," said Sebastian Brandhorst, data analyst at the Longevity Institute, based at the University of Southern California, who is involved in pioneering studies with what is called the fast-mimicking diet (FMD), a way to eat that tricks the body into thinking that a person is fasting.