Michael Ristow

Michael Ristow is a German medical researcher, born in 1967 in Lübeck, whose work concerns the biochemistry of mitochondrial metabolism and the possible health-promoting role of reactive oxygen species in type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer and ageing. He took his medical degree at the University of Bochum in 1996, became a full professor of nutritional science at the University of Jena in 2005, then professor of energy metabolism at ETH Zurich in 2013 and professor of experimental endocrinology and diabetology at Charité Berlin in 2023, where he also directs the Institute of Experimental Endocrinology. His group's 2007 study in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans found that limiting glucose extended lifespan, and he interpreted this as mitohormesis, a mild stress that raises the body's defences against oxidative stress. Later work reported that antioxidant supplements blocked some of the benefits of exercise in humans, a result that challenged the free radical theory of ageing.