An interesting paper: "The idea that bodies wear out with age is so ancient, so pervasive, and so deeply rooted that it affects our thought in unconscious ways. Undeniably, many aspects of aging, e.g., oxidative damage, somatic mutations, and protein cross-linkage are characterized by increased entropy in biomolecules. However, it has been a scientific consensus for more than a century that there is no physical necessity for such damage. Living systems are defined by their capacity to gather order from their environment, concentrate it, and shed entropy with their waste. Organisms in their growth phase become stronger and more robust; no physical law prohibits this progress from continuing indefinitely. Indeed, some animals and many plants are known to grow indefinitely larger and more fertile through their lives. The same conclusion is underscored by experimental findings that various insults and challenges that directly damage the body or increase the rate of wear and tear have the paradoxical effect of extending life span. Hyperactive mice live longer than controls, and worms with their antioxidant systems impaired live longer than wild type. A fundamental understanding of aging must proceed not from physics but from an evolutionary perspective: The body is being permitted to decay because systems of repair and regeneration that are perfectly adequate to build and rebuild a body of ever-increasing resilience are being held back. Regardless of the reason for this retreat, it should be more fruitful to focus on signaling to effect the ongoing activity of systems of repair and regeneration than to attempt repair of the manifold damage left in the wake of their failure."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/rej.2009.0967

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Spurring regeneration by use of signalling molecules is a promising field of medical development. Here is an example from the Technology Review: "scientists have identified a pair of peptides that can stimulate new cell growth and improve heart function in rodents induced to have heart attacks. [Researchers are] now testing one of the peptides, periostin, in pigs induced to have heart attacks. Because these animals have hearts similar in size to humans, they provide a good model for testing new therapies prior to human clinical trials. Preliminary results show that injecting the peptide into the pericardium, the lining around the heart, seems to help. ... [This] approach is, to some degree, in competition with stem-cell therapy, which is already being tested in humans. Scientists are working on different ways of harvesting and delivering stem cells to patients with heart disease, and clinical trials have so far yielded mixed results. Transplanted cells appear to have difficulty surviving and integrating into their new environment. In fact, some scientists suggests that benefit of cell transplants comes from the cells ability to stimulate innate growth. Triggering this process with peptides [may] be a simpler method of treatment of certain conditions such as cardiomyopathy [an enlarged heart] where the problem is lack of viable, contractile heart muscle cells."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=25139

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

Researchers Say Diet Influences Alzheimer’s Risk

Columbia researchers say you can cut your risk for Alzheimer's disease through proper nutrition.

One fact that I’ve hammered over my readers’ heads over the years is the prevalence of heart disease.  It remains the number one cause of death for Americans, but believe it or not, between the years 2000 and 2006, there’s been an 11 percent drop in heart disease related deaths.  Other conditions where there’s been a decline in deaths include stroke (18 percent fewer), prostate cancer (8 percent fewer) and HIV (16 percent fewer).

That’s good news, but as is typical when good news is reported, here comes the bad news: There’s been a dramatic rise in Alzheimer’s related deaths.  In fact, comparing 2006 to 2000, there’s been a near 50 percent rise in Alzheimer’s related deaths, making it the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.  Approximately 26 million people have Alzheimer’s in the world, 5.3 million of whom live stateside.

While advances are being made every day in doctors’ knowledge about this mysterious brain disease, there’s no cure for it.  Medicines are available to slow its progression, but nothing can stop its advancement.  In short, once you have it, you can’t get rid of it.

Thus, prevention remains your best defense.  And it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it all starts with your diet.  Researchers from Columbia University confirm this.

Researchers discovered this recently after analyzing the dieting habits of approximately 2,150 adults over the age of 65 for four years.  Through food frequency questionnaires and annual checkups (i.e., every 18 months), they wanted to see if there was any correlation between what people were eating and whether or not they were eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

According to their results, people who tended to eat a diet similar to the Mediterranean diet – one that’s rich in vegetable oils like olive oil, fresh fruits and vegetables like berries and broccoli, as well as nuts like almonds and walnuts—were 40 percent less likely to have developed Alzheimer’s disease.  Other brain boosting foods include seafood sources high in omega-3s like snapper and salmon.

The people more likely to have developed Alzheimer’s were those who ate diets high in saturated fat from food sources like butter, organ meat and red meat.

The full findings appear in the pages of the Archives of Neurology.

Yet more evidence that our diet plays a HUGE role in how healthy our mind will be.  No, a healthy diet doesn’t guarantee you’ll be from Alzheimer’s disease, but if you’ve had relatives with Alzheimer’s, you’d be foolish not to take every precaution available.  Not much is known about Alzheimer’s but what is known is that’s its hereditary.

Sources:
alz.org
newsmaxhealth.com

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Another Reason to Opt for Wheat Over White

Italian researchers find that women who eat white bread have two times the risk of heart disease than women who eat wheat.

When we were young and our folks asked us what bread we wanted our peanut butter and jelly on—white or wheat—our answer depended upon our mood at the time.  Did we want the white, which had a more bland taste but soaked up the jelly and peanut buttery goodness, or did we want the wheat, which had a more distinctive taste but didn’t marry with the PB and J quite as well as the white did?

Now that we’re older—and with any luck more health conscious than taste conscious—we hopefully choose wheat over white because it has the complex carbohydrates and fiber that white bread is void of, both of which are great for maintaining healthy weight levels and regularity.

But there’s another why white should always play second fiddle to wheat:  It may double your risk for heart disease.

In a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Italian scientists found that women who tended to eat high glycemic foods like white bread, pastries and ice cream had more than two times the risk of having heart disease later in life compared to women who ate foods low on the glycemic index.

Writing in the journal, Italian scientist Sabina Sieri and her colleagues said, “A high consumption of carbohydrates from high glycemic index foods, rather than the overall quantity of carbohydrates consumed, appears to influence the risk of developing coronary heart disease.”

The study of 32,500+ women also looked into the diets of over 15,100 men to see if their consumption of high glycemic foods affected their heart health.  But interestingly, no such linkage could be made between the kinds of carbohydrates men ate.  Researchers attribute the differentiation to the fact that men and women metabolize foods differently.

So, does this give men the green light to eat white bread and corn flakes whenever they want?  Alternatively, does this mean women should avoid white bread like the plague?

To both, the answer is no.  There’s nothing wrong with an occasional sandwich with white bread, so long as your bread options are more often than not 100 percent whole wheat.

And men, while your choice of bread may not influence your heart disease risk, a 10-year study conducted by Harvard researchers in 1994 found that men who ate high fiber breads like wheat had fewer heart attacks and fewer strokes than men who opted for white.

So when you’re out perusing the bread aisle and deciding what bread’s best, keep the white out of sight and make wheat your new favorite treat.

But buyer beware:  Don’t assume that brown in color means it’s wheat.  Many breads are made with refined flour; they’re just dyed brown with caramel color to make it look like they’re wheat. Read the ingredients label.  If the first listing doesn’t say “100 percent whole wheat,” put the brown down.

Sources:
vegetariantimes.com
msnbc.msn.com

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Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) seem to be important in aging, their buildup effectively a form of damage that harms cellular processes in a number of ways. Here, researchers suggest that an AGE precursor chemical is also problematic: "Oxidative stress is believed to be a very important factor in causing aging and age-related diseases. Oxidative stress is caused by an imbalance between oxidants such as reactive oxygen species (ROS) and antioxidants. ROS are produced from the mitochondrial electron transport chain and many oxidative reactions. Methylglyoxal (MG) is a highly reactive dicarbonyl metabolite formed during glucose, protein and fatty acid metabolism. MG levels are elevated in hyperglycemia and other conditions. An excess of MG formation can increase ROS production and cause oxidative stress. MG reacts with proteins, DNA and other biomolecules, and is a major precursor of advanced glycation end products (AGEs). AGEs are also associated with the aging process and age-related diseases such as cardiovascular complications of diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and connective tissue disorders. AGEs also increase oxidative stress. In this review we discuss the potential role of MG in the aging process through increasing oxidative stress besides causing AGEs formation. Specific and effective scavengers and crosslink breakers of MG and AGEs are being developed and can become potential treatments to slow the aging process and prevent many diseases."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://pmid.us/20393592

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

This release via ScienceDaily summarizes the goals of present day calorie restriction research: "Organisms from yeast to rodents to humans all benefit from cutting calories. In less complex organisms, restricting calories can double or even triple lifespan. It's not yet clear just how much longer calorie restriction might help humans live, but those who practice the strict diet hope to survive past 100 years old. ... calorie restriction influences the same handful of molecular pathways related to aging in all the animals that have been studied. Aware of the profound influence of calorie restriction on animals, some people have cut their calorie intake by 25 percent or more in hopes of lengthening lifespan. [Researcher Luigi Fontana] is less interested in calorie restriction for longer life than in its ability to promote good health throughout life. ... Right now, the average lifespan in Western countries is about 80, but there are too many people who are only healthy until about age 50. We want to use the discoveries about calorie restriction and other related genetic or pharmacological interventions to close that 30-year gap between lifespan and 'healthspan.' However, by extending healthy lifespan, average lifespan also could increase up to 100 years of age."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100415141123.htm

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

Green Tea Expands its Health Promoting Repertoire

German researchers find improved fat oxidation when men combine EGCG with caffeine.

From improving arthritis symptoms to preventing heart disease, heightening eye health to discouraging Alzheimer’s disease development, green tea is the libation of choice for health aficionados.  Yet as multifaceted a drink green tea is, could encouraging weight loss be added to its repertoire?  German researchers sure think so.

A team of researchers from Berlin’s University Medicine recruited 10 middle-aged men who, besides being obese, were generally healthy.  They broke the 10 men into groups of two and randomly assigned them to take an allotted amount of EGCG, some in high doses, others in low doses.  EGCG is the antioxidant compound in green tea believed to make it such a nutritional powerhouse.

One of the cooler aspects of this study is that all the men got a turn in taking a specific amount of EGCG.  In other words, instead of taking a specific amount of EGCG for the length of the study period, the men would take 300 mg of EGCG for three days, then go off for seven days, then pick up their EGCG regimen for another three days.  But instead of taking the same amount as last time, they’d take 600 milligrams.  Then go on to another group 10 days later.  So by the end of the study, all 10 men had gone through the five regimens.

(To be honest, I wish more studies were set up like this.  It makes the results of the study more reliable.)

By the end of the study, the researchers found increases in fat oxidation across the spectrum.  Compared to the time in which they took a placebo for three days, fat oxidation increased 33 percent (300 mg of EGCG daily), 20 percent (600 mg of EGCG daily), 34.5 percent (200 mg of caffeine), and 49 percent (200 mg of caffeine combined with 300 mg of EGCG).

What’s interesting is that there was greater fat oxidation when the men took the lower EGCG combination as compared to the high EGCG combination.  So apparently the Goldilocks rule applies to EGCG—not too much, not too little, but an amount that’s “just right” works for weight loss.

The question, of course, is how many drinks of green tea must one guzzle in order to see any significant weight loss?

Researchers say it may be as few as three drinks or as many as 10 drinks…per day!  Now, as much as I like to drink tea, I don’t have the time, nor the inclination to drink that amount of green tea every day!

But that as it may, the very fact that I could lose weight by drinking that amount of green tea every day illustrates just how amazing a drink green tea is.

The study is published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sources:
nutraingredients.com

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Study:  Underage Drinking Increases Benign Breast Disease, Breast Cancer Risk

Teenage girls that drink alcohol are about five times more likely to develop what's often a precursor to breast cancer.

When we go to get something checked and the results come back benign, that’s usually a positive prognosis.  But if you get a benign prognosis and you’re a teenaged girl that drinks alcohol, a “benign” prognosis may be a bad prognosis.

According to a recent study conducted by researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine, young women who drink an average of 6.5 alcoholic beverages a week are five and a half times more likely to develop a condition called benign breast disease.  Benign breast disease, or fibrocystic breast disease, is similar to breast cancer in that it’s characterized by breast pain, discomfort, nipple discharge and lump formation, but unlike breast cancer, the lumps that form are usually non-life threatening.

At least, until now.  Because according to the study’s lead researcher, Graham Colditz, benign breast disease is a warning sign for eventual breast cancer development.

Colditz and his colleagues discovered this after looking into the health surveys of over 9,000 “tweens” and teenagers between the ages of nine and 15 years old.  Parts of the survey asked how often the girls drank alcohol and whether or not they’d been diagnosed with benign breast disease.

Reporting in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics, the St. Louis-based researchers found a relationship between benign breast disease diagnosis and the amount the girls drank.  The more they drank, the more likely they were to be diagnosed with benign breast disease.

Besides alcohol, other risk factors for fibrocystic breast disease include a high fat diet, excessive consumption of caffeine and whether there’s a family history of the disease.

Now, before you cast off this study by saying, “I know my daughter and there’s no way she drinks alcohol,” permit me to tell you a short story that a friend of mine recently told me.  A true story.

A friend of mine lives in New Hampshire and works as a substitute teacher at a local junior high school.  As a substitute teacher, it comes as no surprise that the kids are pretty unruly when he’s leading the classroom, as the word “substitute” has long been loosely translated by students to meaning, “Hey, the regular teacher is gone, so I can get away with more!!”

But what did come as a surprise was the recent arrest of an eighth grade girl due to underage drinking. Apparently, throughout the school year, she had been sneaking alcohol into the school by combining beer and soda pop, sipping her beverage throughout the day like it was nothing out of the ordinary.  The smell of beer on her breath finally did her in.

Moral of the story:  Don’t automatically assume your son or daughter isn’t drinking.  Because the father of this girl was stunned, even though 11 percent of underage drinkers take their first drink in the eighth grade.

For the sake of your kids’ short and long term health, remind them about the dangers of alcohol consumption—even if you’ve had the conversation dozens of times.  Remain ever vigilant of what they’re doing and with whom.

It’s a matter of life and death.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
pubs.niaaa.nih.gov
health.google.com

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A general interest article on transhumanist visions of the future and immortality in the sense of the continued repair and reversal of aging through medical technology: "Immortality could be sneaking up faster than we can believe. Barely a month goes by without some new advance in organ replacement, and a recent operation to replace a boy's windpipe with one generated from his own stem cells was called 'embarrassingly simple' by the specialist in charge. Further breakthroughs could be made by the SENS Foundation, led by the radical immortalist Aubrey de Grey, with a brutally simple plan to give humans an unbeatable protection against cancer. This involves limiting human cells' ability to divide at cancerous levels, with regular top-ups from externally grown cells replacing worn-out tissue. If these technologies can hold to their promise, biological immortality, perhaps the most cherished goal of the transhumanists, may be with us in a few decades. A loose grouping of scientists, philosophers and sympathisers, with organisations such as the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute and Humanity+, transhumanists urge human progress through radical technological enhancement. With regards to immortality, I'm certainly a sympathiser: if a dictator was murdering tens of millions of people right across the world, we'd gladly do anything to overthrow him. And yet ageing, as eloquently put by the transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, is a tyrant that kills us by the cartload - and what do we do to stop it?"

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/transhumanism-biological-immortality

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

A general interest article on transhumanist visions of the future and immortality in the sense of the continued repair and reversal of aging through medical technology: "Immortality could be sneaking up faster than we can believe. Barely a month goes by without some new advance in organ replacement, and a recent operation to replace a boy's windpipe with one generated from his own stem cells was called 'embarrassingly simple' by the specialist in charge. Further breakthroughs could be made by the SENS Foundation, led by the radical immortalist Aubrey de Grey, with a brutally simple plan to give humans an unbeatable protection against cancer. This involves limiting human cells' ability to divide at cancerous levels, with regular top-ups from externally grown cells replacing worn-out tissue. If these technologies can hold to their promise, biological immortality, perhaps the most cherished goal of the transhumanists, may be with us in a few decades. A loose grouping of scientists, philosophers and sympathisers, with organisations such as the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute and Humanity+, transhumanists urge human progress through radical technological enhancement. With regards to immortality, I'm certainly a sympathiser: if a dictator was murdering tens of millions of people right across the world, we'd gladly do anything to overthrow him. And yet ageing, as eloquently put by the transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, is a tyrant that kills us by the cartload - and what do we do to stop it?"

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/transhumanism-biological-immortality

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

It will be possible to replace the functions of some organs with machines in the near future, this advance accomplished on much the same timescale as the creation of tissue engineered replacement organs: "An artificial pancreas system that closely mimics the body's blood sugar control mechanism was able to maintain near-normal glucose levels without causing hypoglycemia in a small group of patients. The system, combining a blood glucose monitor and insulin pump technology with software that directs administration of insulin and the blood-sugar-raising hormone glucagon, was developed at Boston University (BU). The first clinical trial of the system was conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and confirmed the feasibility of an approach utilizing doses of both hormones ... Large doses of glucagon are used as a rescue drug for people with severely low blood sugar. Our system is designed to counteract moderate drops in blood sugar with minute doses of glucagon spread out throughout the day, just as the body does in people without diabetes." The future for this sort of technology is one of miniaturization, falling cost, and the possibility of incorporation into the body as an implanted device.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/mgh-nap041210.php

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

The Tithonus Error is the widespread and mistaken belief that extending the human life span will result in us being aged and decrepit for longer. This is not the case, however: engineered longevity can only be accomplished by repairing or reducing cellular and biochemical damage - which means you will be younger for longer. At In Search of Enlightenment, you'll find an examination of the roots of the Tithonus Error: "There is an irrational public predisposition to regard research on specific late-life diseases as marvelous but to regard research on aging, and thus all late-life diseases together, as a public menace bound to produce a world filled with nonproductive, chronically disabled, unhappy senior citizens consuming more resources than they produce. ... I am working on a new paper [that] examines how misperceptions about the present and future state of global health are themselves major obstacles to tackling aging. Because [imagined simulations of the future] are based on memories, medical research that proposes to eliminate a disease is much more likely to invoke hedonic experiences in our simulations then is a medical intervention that retards aging. ... our inability to make accurate, sensible simulations of what a future of retarding human aging would entail (for both the developed and developing world) is itself one of the greatest obstacles to prioritizing aging research. And this problem needs to be redressed."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://colinfarrelly.blogspot.com/2010/04/prospection-errors-are-obstacles-to.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

From the University of Bristol: "Synthetic biology is about improving our ability to engineer biology, and to engineer biology you have to understand the underlying chemistry. ... We look at natural molecules and ask, 'How does nature do this?' And then we take those key features and build them into synthetic molecules to mimic the natural ones. ... Specifically, Woolfson is trying to capture features of the materials that hold cells together and which provide the environment to turn collections of cells into tissues such as skin, liver and networks of nerves. This 'glue' is called the extracellular matrix (ECM). However, the ECM is made up of large, complicated molecules with lots of different chemistries, so Woolfson began to investigate whether it would be possible to build something similar to ECM, but out of much simpler and more chemically accessible materials. That was 10 years ago. Today he has developed nano-sized proteins that have been designed to 'self assemble' into long, spaghetti-like strings, which then become entangled to form a gel. ... The result is a hydrogel (a gel in which the liquid constituent is water) made up of these tiny, spaghetti-like strings of proteins which acts as a scaffold to support cell growth in much the same way as the ECM does."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2010/6928.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

As illustrated by the reliability theory of aging, we are complex machines, and our life expectancy is a function of the pace at which we accumulate damage. For example, one contribution to rising life spans over the past century was the elimination of much of the burden of chronic disease throughout early life and middle age. Here, however, is an example of another, less common form of damage that nonetheless has the expected end result: "Although more children today are surviving cancer than ever before, young patients successfully treated in the 1970s and 80s may live a decade less, on average, than the general population ... The study, based on a computer model, is the first to estimate the lifetime toll of childhood cancer and the grueling but increasingly successful treatments for diseases such as kidney and bone cancers, leukemia, and brain tumors. About 10,000 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer annually, and the five-year survival rate has risen to about 80 percent overall. ... The study is based on how children were treated in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is our hope that when we see data from more recent cohorts of patients, there will be improved life expectancy as a result of some changes that pediatric oncologists have made."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/dci-ccs040510.php

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

From the SENS Foundation: "To develop an unbreachable defense against cancer, SENS Foundation is pursuing the WILT (Wholebody Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres) strategy (OncoSENS) of systematically deleting genes essential to the cellular telomere-maintenance mechanisms (TMM) from all somatic cells, while ensuring ongoing tissue repair and maintenance through periodic re-seeding of somatic stem-cell pools with autologous TMM-deficient cells whose telomeres have been lengthened ex vivo. In addition to the deletion of one or more genes coding for essential element(s) of the telomerase holoenzyme, success will also require the deletion of some essential element of the machinery for the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT) phenomenon, observed in a minority of cancer cells. Heretofore, the identity of that machinery has been elusive. Yeast cells have the ability to lengthen telomeres through a telomerase-independent mechanism involving telomere recombination, and there has been evidence for some time suggesting that ALT cancers lengthen telomeres through a similar process." The article goes on to look in detail at one plausible candidate mechanism for ALT, and how this new knowledge might be incorporated into WILT.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.sens.org/node/739

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/