Researchers are very interested in establishing biomarkers of aging and longevity, as at present the only truly reliable way to distinguish between long-lived and not so long-lived individuals is to wait and see what happens – which isn’t an efficient way to run studies of potential therapies for aging. Here’s an example of one line of investigation: “Wound healing (WH) is a fundamental biological process. Is it associated with a longevity or aging phenotype? In an attempt to answer this question, we compared the established mouse models with genetically modified life span and also an altered rate of WH in the skin. Our analysis showed that the rate of skin WH in advanced ages (but not in the young animals) may be used as a marker for biological age, i.e., to be indicative of the longevity or aging phenotype. The ability to preserve the rate of skin WH up to an old age appears to be associated with a longevity phenotype, whereas a decline in WH with an aging phenotype. In the young, this relationship is more complex and might even be inversed. While the aging process is likely to cause wounds to heal slowly, an altered WH rate in younger animals could indicate a different cellular proliferation and/or migration capacity, which is likely to affect other major processes such as the onset and progression of cancer. As a point for future studies on WH and longevity, using only young animals might yield confusing or misleading results, and therefore including older animals in the analysis is encouraged.”

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21667230

Today I noticed a fairly long interview with David Gobel of the Methuselah Foundation – a lot of interesting detail in there as to the Foundation’s goals and arrangements. For example:

Q: What collaborations, partnerships, or other types of relationships does Methuselah Foundation have with other longevity funding organizations, if any. One example would be the Ellison Foundation.

A: Ellison has been a donor to the Methuselah Foundation. We’ve had many organizations that have been supporters such as the Thiel Foundation, the Ellison Foundation, The Paul Glenn Foundation.

Q: Are there any other collaborations with any funding or research-focused organizations?

A: We are, I suppose closest to SENS foundation, we do many things together. We also co-founded the Super Centenarian Foundation which did the world’s first autopsies on super centenarians to figure out not how they lived so long, but what exactly they died from, which is a question I posed during the discussion about founding that organizations so they did the autopsies and there’s a paper talking about what came up and what can be done about it.

Q: What is your relation with SENS in particular?

A: We are their fiscal sponsor. They recently received their 501c3 tax-deductible exemption from the IRS but from the 2 or 3 years where they did not have that, we were their fiscal sponsor. We also continue to provide them donations from donors and they recently donated funds to help fund the NewOrgan Prize that we’re producing.

Q: How far into the future do you think you and your team plan the strategy and goals of the organization?

A: We are looking at what we can accomplish and deliver to end users within 18 months and 5 years and SENS is focused on 10-15 years.

That last point is an important one, and keeping it in mind will illuminate a great deal of the thinking behind the activities of the two organizations. The Methuselah Foundation invests in technologies likely to emerge within the next few years, for example, like organ printing development by startup Organovo. The SENS Foundation, on the other hand, spends a fair amount of effort on building the foundation for the next generation of the research community – outreach amongst people who are in college now, studying life science, but who may have their own laboratories and companies in the biotech space ten years from now.

Researchers are making the first inroads into implanted machinery that can adjust the workings of memory, potentially leading in the years ahead to ways to restore memory function in the old: “Scientists have developed a way to turn memories on and off – literally with the flip of a switch. Using an electronic system that duplicates the neural signals associated with memory, they managed to replicate the brain function in rats associated with long-term learned behavior, even when the rats had been drugged to forget. … Using embedded electrical probes, [scientists] recorded changes in the rat’s brain activity between the two major internal divisions of the hippocampus, known as subregions CA3 and CA1. During the learning process, [CA3 and CA1] interact to create long-term memory … experimenters blocked the normal neural interactions between the two areas using pharmacological agents. The previously trained rats then no longer displayed the long-term learned behavior. … the teams then went further and developed an artificial hippocampal system that could duplicate the pattern of interaction between CA3-CA1 interactions. Long-term memory capability returned to the pharmacologically blocked rats when the team activated the electronic device programmed to duplicate the memory-encoding function. In addition, the researchers went on to show that if a prosthetic device and its associated electrodes were implanted in animals with a normal, functioning hippocampus, the device could actually strengthen the memory being generated internally in the brain and enhance the memory capability of normal rats.”

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/uosc-rmr061211.php

Most of us take for granted that the water flowing from our tap is clean and pure. We compare our tap water with the standards of much of the world and we reassure ourselves that the water in our drinking glass is safe. But we should be asking an important question: “safe” and “pure” compared to what?

The practice of purifying our drinking water with chlorine was pioneered by the military a century ago. It began to be commonplace in the U.S. in the 1930’s and was widespread by World War II. Chlorination has been a major boon to human health: the spread of water-borne diseases that still claims millions of lives around the world soon became a thing of the past in the developed world. That, as they say, is the good news.

But remember Dr. Mixon’s first rule:  “Anything strong enough to help is strong enough to hurt!” That applies to chlorination of water in a surprising way. Chlorination very effectively kills bacteria, parasites, and viruses. But as they are destroyed, these organisms and their component parts do not simply vanish. The chlorine rips them apart and transforms the basic molecules of their bodies into a series of compounds referred to as “halomethanes,” or chlorination sterilization byproducts (sometimes referred to as “disinfection byproducts”).

Here is the scary part. Virtually all of the dozen or so recognized chlorination sterilization byproducts are known to be carcinogens – that is, they can cause cancer. The over-consumption of some of these byproducts has been linked to rectal, bowel, and bladder cancer, and these byproducts also appear to be linked to an increase in some forms of leukemia.

Although everyone in the water treatment industry knows about the problem, only a few of these potentially dangerous chemicals are monitored by city water departments, while others are not. For many people the risk is statistically insignificant; however, these chlorination sterilization byproducts are especially dangerous to people who have a predisposition for cancer formation, whether it be from genetics, exposure to other carcinogens or poor life style. So what is a health-conscious person to do?

Fortunately we have an ideal solution. These unhealthy compounds can be removed from your drinking water by distillation. That’s why we sell the Water Wise distillers in our store. What’s more, we recommend these distillers to all our patients, and we provide them for all our doctors at Longevity Medical Clinic. So the bottom line is simple. I approve of adding chlorine to the water supply. The tragic alternative would be to let millions die from infectious disease. But chlorine has its downside, and a wise person takes common sense precautions. Chlorination is good public policy – drinking pure, clean safe distilled water is good personal policy. Ask us about it next time you call or visit Longevity Medical Clinic.

An interview from the Scientist: “Cartilage is a firm, yet elastic, connective tissue that cushions joints and minimizes friction between bones. It is made up mostly of a matrix of collagen and proteoglycans and lacks nerve cells or blood vessels. In fact, cartilage contains only one cell type, the chondrocyte. A joint injury is often followed by progressive degeneration of cartilage, but there is hope that stem cells injected into damaged cartilage can help repair it. University Hospital Basel tissue engineer Ivan Martin discusses a recent study that sheds light on the mysterious process of cartilage regeneration by tracking labeled, implanted cells using a conventional MRI scanner … [For treating cartilage injury] there is a very promising, relatively new technique – the use of autologous cartilage cells, or chondrocytes, which are expanded ex vivo and injected into the defective area. Even more recently, people have considered using mesenchymal stem cells, which are the progenitors of chondrocytes. … We cannot just continue injecting cells and looking two years down the road to see if there is a change or not in the clinical results. We need to have control over the treatment we apply in order to understand the mechanisms of action and to be able to predict with better reproducibility the clinical outcome. This [MRI-based] technique would possibly contribute or provide the technical means to address this important scientific question.”

Link: http://the-scientist.com/2011/05/30/cellular-salve/

A new study from Purdue University reports that cayenne pepper helps curb the appetite and promotes the burning of calories as well.

If you have a special fondness for hot and spicy foods and you are looking for foods to curb your appetite in your goal to lose the extra weight, then consuming cayenne pepper would be the best choice. Cayenne pepper is a member of the Capsicum family of vegetables commonly known as chili peppers. The cayenne pepper powder come from red hot chili peppers that are dried and grounded, pulped then baked to cakes and sifted.

Since time immemorial, cayenne pepper has been known to be of many uses to the body’s health, but before that, it is first known for its culinary uses. It is commonly used as a cooking spice, to add flavor to the foods served at the table. It can be added to sea foods such as sardines, scallops, oysters, smoked salmon, fried mussels, lobster, crab and crayfish. It can also be eaten or added to eggs in many ways, and is also good for roasted and grilled meat.  If you want some spiciness in your dishes, you can add it to sauces and stews and as well as sprinkle it on fish, chicken and vegetables to add some spice.

Health Benefits of the Amazing Cayenne Pepper

Many studies from around the world have reported on the wonders that cayenne pepper has given to the human body because of the nutrients that it contain such as Vitamin A, Vitamin C, manganese, Vitamin B6, dietary fiber and Vitamin K.

• It contains high concentrations of capsaicin which has been studied for its ability to reduce pain, ulcer and promote cardiovascular benefits as well as in opening drained nasal passages. The spicier the chili pepper, the more capsaicin it contains.
• Capsaicin is also shown to provide pain relief in many conditions as it is said to be a useful treatment for osteoarthritis pain and head aches.
• Furthermore, 200 patients with psoriasis underwent a double-blind placebo controlled trial where they were given topical preparations with capsaicin or placebo. Capsaicin-fed patients showed improvement on traced symptoms of psoriasis.
• In addition, it is also a great source of Vitamin A which is beneficial for the health of epithelial tissues. Vitamin A’s antioxidant activity makes cayenne prevent free radical damage which can lead to colon cancer, atherosclerosis and other heart diseases.
• It is also being studied to fight inflammation and treat conditions with pain such as arthritis, and diabetic neuropathy. A study where a mouse was injected with a substance that causes inflammatory arthritis and then fed with diet consisted of capsaicin showed delayed onset of arthritis and reduced inflammation in the paws.
• Cayenne pepper and other chili peppers are also known to show cardiovascular benefits. It reduces triglyceride levels and blood cholesterol while dissolving the substance fibrin that causes blood clot.
• The capsaicin in cayenne pepper can also clear congestion for its peppery heat rouses secretions that help in removing mucus in the nose and congested lungs.
• Its bright red color signifies high amounts of beta-carotene or Vitamin A, which provides anti-infective activities and boosts the body’s immunity from many kinds of conditions. Cayenne is also popularly known to prevent ulcers. Not just that, they also kill the bacteria ingested and stimulates the cells to secrete protective juices to prevent ulcer.
• The heat felt after consuming hot peppers takes energy and calories from the body, therefore showing the possibility to lose weight.

The Study

Purdue University’s new study suggests that hot cayenne pepper contributes to burning calories and curbing the appetite.

This study, published in Physiology and Behavior, observed the effects of small amounts (half a teaspoon) of cayenne pepper in foods. Results showed that tasting it could increase its effectiveness as an appetite suppressor and boost the outflow of energy.

The study consisted of 25 non-overweight people, where 13 of them liked spicy food and 12 did not.  The participants were observed for six weeks and the researchers examined the effect of the consumption of cayenne pepper in their appetite. Increased body temperature and burning of more calories were evident in all participants after their consumption of spice. Those who did not take spicy food frequently said that after spice consumption, they were less hungry and felt less cravings for fatty, sweet and salty foods.

Richard Mattes, a foods and nutrition distinguished professor as well as the lead author of the study, said that their results showed that red pepper consumption helps in appetite management and burning of more calories after every meal.

The Importance of Losing Weight

A lot of medical conditions have been associated with obesity.  Health problems such as diabetes, arthritis, as well as heart and vascular diseases could lead to a decline in a person’s quality of life.  Diabetes may cause complications such as retinopathy, nephropathy and poor wound healing which could lead to the loss of vision, loss of kidney function and the loss of limb, respectively. Arthritis may develop because the excess weight places added pressure to the joints and this may force a person to become immobile because of too much pain, leading to the loss of independence. Heart and vascular diseases may cause life-threatening conditions such as myocardial infarction, stroke, heart attack, kidney failure and heart failure, among many others.

The importance of healthy living, therefore, had been emphasized over and over again, and for good reason. It is not simply enough that we exercise – it should be done regularly and consistently and after careful planning in order to meet the body’s needs. It is not simply enough that we eat – we should make sure that the foods we consume are beneficial to the body.  It is not simply enough that we do not smoke – we must take necessary precautions when it comes to second hand smoke as well because it poses health dangers too.

The first step to achieving the good health that you desire is to make the decision to live a healthy life. Of course, this may require lifestyle modification and maybe a little tweak here and there but the end-result of your choices will not only be of benefit to you, but the persons around you most especially to the people that you love.

Sources
nutraingredients.com
theepicentre.com
cayennepepper.info
whfoods.com

A new study paves the way to the possible health benefits of a tangerine flavonoid, nobiletin, in preventing obesity and atherosclerosis.

What are Flavonoids?

Flavonoids, or bioflavonoids as it is called when used in supplements, are a class of plant based compounds. They are polyphenols and a diverse group of phytochemicals that are mostly found in vegetables, fruits and herbs and are responsible for their different colors. They can be found in high amounts in foods such as grains, legumes, nuts, teas, onions, honey and many more. The teas, specifically black, green or white tea, are high sources of a flavonoid known particularly as quercetin. Furthermore, onions contain myricertin and kaempferol; honey has myricertin and quercetin. Other good sources of flavonoid include buckwheat, tangerines, strawberries, blueberries, beans and spinach. However, the composition and concentration of flavonoid in each plant may vary depending on certain factors such as maturity, growing condition, plant part and variety.

There are different types of flavonoids, which may vary depending on the plant source. One of the most important is the flavonoid quercetin as it acts as building blocks for other flavonoids and can be found in foods like apples and onions. There are also flavonoids that can be found in citrus fruits, and among these citrus flavonoids are the compounds hesperidin and rutin which are present in fruits like tangerines, grapefruits and oranges. There are other well known flavonoids that include compounds like PCO (proanthocyanins), polyphenols and genistein which can be found in a variety of food sources and has been known to give great health benefits. The polyphenols, primary source of a class of flavonoid called EGCG (epigallocatechin-gallate) is known to be an effective natural compound to fight cancer.

Health benefits of Flavonoids

Studies have been performed to prove that flavonoids are necessary for human health and may also show some healing potential. This is because flavonoids are known to perform antioxidant activities. Flavonoids are even considered to be more powerful than Vitamin C and Vitamin E in eradicating the body’s free radicals and in preventing cellular damage to the body. They also have anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, vasodilatory and antiallergenic effects.

The flavonoid quercetin is the most known compound to provide many health benefits. It suggests delay of the onset of diseases like cancer that is triggered by free radicals. Clinical studies show low rates of pancreatic, lung and breast cancer brought about by the intake of foods with high amounts of quercetin. It can also slow down low density lipoprotein oxidation, thus preventing heart diseases. A recent study conducted in Finland and the Netherlands suggested that people who consume large amounts of flavonoids, especially quercetin, showed a reduced risk of heart disease and stroke. Quercetin also provides anti-inflammatory action, therefore reducing allergic reactions like sinusitis and chronic asthma. The anti-inflammatory properties of quercetin may also be ideal for the treatment of minor problems like eczema and bug bites, as well as disorders affecting joints, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic gout and the like.

Aside from flavonoids being acquired from the diet, it can also be beneficial as supplements as they strengthen blood vessels. The flavonoids PCO and citrus flavonoids help in repairing problems like chronic hemorrhoids and varicose veins.

Doses of flavonoid supplements will vary depending on the type consumed and the specific condition. However, if long term health is considered, a mixture of quercetin, rutin, and hesperidin will do the job. Instructions on the label must be always followed. To improve the flavonoid’s protective action and taste, it is usually combined with Vitamin C. But still, nothing beats natural sources like grape seeds and green tea where flavonoids are greatly found.

The Study

A new research reports that tangerine flavonoid does not only prevent obesity but also gives protection from type-2 diabetes and atherosclerosis. It suggests that nobiletin, high concentrations of which are found in tangerine’s white pith, helps maintain healthy levels of glucose, insulin and cholesterol, as well as preventing fat build up.

Dr. Murray Huff, from the Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, and USA vascular biology research group director said that mice treated with nobiletin were originally protected against obesity, but as the study progresses, it shows that it also protected the mice from build up of plaque in arteries which can cause atherosclerosis that can lead to heart attack and stroke.

Nobiletin was observed to prevent fat build up in human cells by the stimulation of gene expression involved in the burning of excess fat, as well as in slowing down the genes responsible for fat manufacture. The authors said that sensitivity to insulin and glucose tolerance in the peripheral tissues and liver were restored by nobiletin and the improvement in these parameters may lead to prevent atherosclerosis.

A second group where the western diet was administered with nobiletin, however, showed no rise or difference in cholesterol levels, glucose and insulin and a normal amount of weight was maintained. It was also monitored that mice fed with nobiletin were found to have less fatty livers and were more insulin sensitive.

According to the researchers, their studies give evidence, both in the physiological and molecular level, that nobiletin has the ability to regulate the metabolism of hepatic lipid and prevent insulin resistance abnormalities. It also corrects dyslipidemia, hepatic steatosis and glucose homeostasis and it protects the body from further development of atherosclerosis through a variety of mechanisms.

Dr. Huff cited that the study gives way for future studies in testing the many potential of nobiletin to reduce metabolic syndrome risks and related conditions. However, Huff suspects that tangerines lack enough nobiletin to transfer the same effects that it did to mice to the humans, adding that supplements are most likely required.

They also suggested that inflammation and foam cell formation reduction may as well help in reducing the risk of atherosclerosis, though it was not evaluated in their study.

The research of Dr. Huff was mostly focused on observing the properties of bioactive molecules that are naturally occurring. A research of his two years ago where he discovered a flavonoid called naringenin in grape fruit offered the same protection against obesity and other metabolic syndromes and drew attention internationally. This time, he said that what was interesting was that nobiletin is ten times more potent in its protective effects than naringenin, and this time they have proven that it can also prevent atherosclerosis.

Sources
herbs2000.com
dietaryfiberfood.com
nutraingredients.com

Green tea has long been associated with a number of health benefits such as cancer and stress prevention, but a recent study has found that it can enhance a person’s memory.

Green tea rose to stardom and has been well-known all over the world since it was subjected to the glaring lights of the spotlight with the numerous studies conducted regarding its health benefits.  A study conducted by researchers from Japan revealed that drinking 5 cups of green tea in a day could significantly reduce one’s risk of developing different types of cancer by 50 percent.  Furthermore, consuming 5 cups of this beverage each day has also been associated with a reduction in the levels of stress according to the results of yet another study which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.  While this may sound like too much, it is actually not – especially when you start drinking green tea instead of what you normally drink such as water after a run or coffee in the morning.

What Makes Green Tea Special?

The power behind green tea’s knockout punch is its very potent antioxidant content. The polyphenols that it contains are commonly referred to as catechins and these help combat and neutralize the damaging effects of free radicals.  Free radicals are by-products of oxidative processes and these are said to be the cause of different forms of health conditions such as cancer, premature aging and heart disease. Because of this, the catechin content of green tea is also able to boost a person’s immune system thereby promoting overall health. Aside from polyphenols, it also contains alkaloids and L-theanine which further contributes to green tea’s health benefits.

Green Tea for Mental Alertness

A study conducted in Korea revealed that taking green tea extract supplements can actually enhance a person’s memory and promote mental alertness. The results of the study which was published in the Journal of Medicinal Foods showed that green tea extract coupled with L-theanine was linked to improvement in general memory, as well as in a person’s immediate and delayed recall ability. Funding for the said study was provided by LG Household & Health Care, Ltd., a Korean company which also manufactured the ingredient which was utilized in the study.

The study involved ninety-one participants who were already diagnosed with mild level cognitive impairment, which is an important risk factor in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease.  The 91 participants were assigned randomly to receive either a placebo supplement made of lactose plus maltodextrin or 1,680 milligrams of a combination of L-theanine and green tea extract. The supplements were given for a period of 16 weeks.  After the said period, different tests were administered to the participants in order to assess attention levels and memory.  The results of the tests revealed that the group of participants who received the green tea extract plus L-theanine supplement showed signs of improved memory.  Electroencephalogram tests (EEG) also revealed improvements in mental alertness indicators in particular areas of the brain.

The researchers wrote that the use of LGNC-07, which is actually a combination of L-theanine and green tea extract, as a nutraceutical candidate used to enhance cognitive performance should be taken into account. However, the researchers believe that there is a need to conduct more studies to further investigate the ability of LGNC-07 to improve a person’s cognitive functions in order to establish its potential health benefit.

More Reasons to go for Green Tea

Much has been said about green tea – and for good reason.  It has been the subject of worldwide studies and there are facts to support its health claims.  There are a lot of life-threatening diseases that can be prevented simply by consuming sufficient amounts of green tea.  Aside from taking green tea in beverage form, you can also take it in the form of supplements.

Aside from green tea’s capability to help prevent cancer and promote mental alertness, there are other conditions that can greatly benefit from green tea consumption:

Hypercholesterolemia. This is a condition which is characterized by high levels of bad cholesterol in the blood. Excessive LDL levels are dangerous since the fatty plaques can deposit in the walls of blood vessels.  There will be a resultant narrowing of the blood vessels and blood flow will become turbulent in the specific area. Because of this, the fatty plaques may dislodge and may travel through the bloodstream.  The clot, now called an embolus, can lodge in small arteries such as in the brain causing a stroke, or in the lungs causing pulmonary embolism. Both conditions are life-threatening and necessary steps should be taken to ensure prevention.

Studies have shown that green tea can help raise the levels of good cholesterol and reduce bad cholesterol levels in the body. A study conducted on men revealed that those who drink green tea have lower LDL levels compared to those who do not. Furthermore, a study made in animals revealed that the polyphenols in green tea blocks cholesterol absorption in the intestines and aids in its secretion.

Diabetes. The condition is associated with complications that can significantly lead to a reduction in a person’s quality of life.  Common complications include retinopathy, nephropathy, cataracts, and diabetic foot which can lead to amputation. The good news is that green tea has been found to promote healthy blood sugar levels by properly regulating and lowering high sugar levels in the blood.

Obesity. Being obese is linked to the development of conditions such as stroke, heart attack and arthritis – and these are only some of those that are brought about by obesity. Because of its dangers, a lot of people are mightily trying to win the battle of the bulge. The fight to conquer and overcome obesity is still going on and some have resorted to taking diet pills.  However, the danger lies in the safety of the product that you are using.  Weight loss products may possess harmful adverse effects that can actually do harm than good, and this is why sticking to natural alternatives is the best decision you’ll ever make.

Green tea has been known to help promote weight loss in overweight and obese people because of its ability to burn fats due to its catechin content.  Several studies have revealed that the intake of green tea can help enhance a person’s metabolic rate.

Sources
nccam.nih.gov
livestrong.com
nutraingredients.com

A study made by researchers from the South of France revealed that grape polyphenol extract can significantly aid in the fight against diabetes.

Researchers coming from the South of France’s University of Montpellier reported that rats that were given a high-sugar and high-fat diet managed to display reduced fat accumulation in their muscle tissue provided that their diet was supplemented with grape polyphenols. The researchers believe that the antioxidant compounds that are found in red grapes are responsible for preventing fat build up.  Furthermore, the antioxidants positively affect the body’s insulin response.  Insulin is a hormone that is responsible for fat and sugar metabolism.

Diets that contain high amounts of saturated fat are said to further worsen a person’s resistance to insulin.  What happens is that the cells no longer adequately respond to the normal insulin levels produced inside the body.  As the researchers explained in the British Journal of Nutrition, this is a typical marker of diabetes onset.

Diabetes Facts

According to the 2005-2007 figures provided by the American Diabetes Association, diabetes affects 8 percent of the American population, or approximately 24 million people. The financial impact associated with diabetes is staggering – estimated to be $175 billion, from which $116 billion is spent on medications. Aside from the financial aspect of diabetes, the emotional and social impact could not be overlooked. A diabetic person would normally suffer anxiety and depression regarding his health. His activities would also be affected especially when complications such as retinopathy, cataracts and poor sensation have occurred. This would lead us to conclude that indeed, prevention is better than cure.

Details of the Study

The study, conducted at the University of Montpellier, made use of rats as its subjects. The lab rats were randomly assigned into three different groups.  One group was given a standard diet for a lab rat and the remaining two groups were given a high-fat, high-sugar diet, with one group given an additional grape polyphenol extract. The results revealed that the lab rats who were given the grape polyphenol extract exhibited lower levels of triglycerides in their muscular cell membranes as compared to those who were not given the grape extract. Furthermore, the group that was fed with grape extract had an increase in the levels of Omega-3 fatty acids in their cell membranes.

Complications of Diabetes

If the condition remains uncontrolled, diabetes can actually precipitate the development of other serious health conditions. Below are some of the complications brought about by diabetes:

Retinopathy. Also known as diabetic retinopathy, this condition is mainly because of the very high levels of sugar in the blood which damages the small blood vessels in the eyes, specifically in the area of the retina a tissue that is sensitive to light and is essential for good vision. The blood vessels can either swell, causing fluid to leak out, while some people experience an abnormal growth of blood vessels in the retina’s surface.  Retinopathy is the most common cause of blindness among Americans.

Nephropathy. Diabetic nephropathy affects the functional units of the kidney known as the nephrons.  Once extensive damage to the nephrons occurs, kidney damage may follow suit. High levels of sugar in the bloodstream, or hyperglycemia, can once again cause damage to the blood vessels of the kidney. The kidneys are mainly responsible for removing wastes from our body, and if kidney disease develops, the wastes, which are toxic to the human body, will start to accumulate. Nephropathy is one of the most common causes of mortality and morbidity in persons diagnosed with diabetes. It is so dangerous because it can lead to kidney failure which may precipitate the need for a kidney transplant or dialysis.

Neuropathies. Commonly known as nerve damage, diabetic neuropathy presents dangers to the person. High levels of blood sugar leading to damaged blood vessels may cause inflammation which, in turn, could trigger the development of neuropathies.  Problems on the nerves may occur in almost any organ in the body – legs, feet, arms, hands, and sex organs.  Symptoms such as a tingling sensation, pain or numbness may occur. Diabetics are often cautioned not to go barefooted around the house because the condition tends to cause the loss of sensation, especially in the areas of the foot. A small wound could be the source of a big problem, especially because diabetics typically exhibit delayed wound healing since their blood is viscous and has difficulty reaching distal parts of the body.

How to Deal with Diabetes

The cost of diabetic medications could significantly affect a person’s finances.  However, there are a lot of natural means to help you prevent, and deal, with the condition.  Below are excellent recommendations:

• Maintain a Healthy Weight

If you haven’t been living a healthy lifestyle, then it’s time to act now before it’s too late.  This would mean eating the right kinds of food and regularly exercising. Obese individuals are more prone to develop diabetes. Foods, herbs and spices such as lupin seeds, flax seeds, avocadoes, sweet potatoes, lemons, blueberries, cherries, almonds, onions, cinnamon, ginkgo biloba, bilberry, bitter melon, garlic and barley are excellent for diabetes management.  Drinking green tea has also been found to help in the prevention, management and control of diabetes due to its antioxidant content.

• Take in Supplements.

Manganese supplements aid in the repair of pancreas, the organ responsible for the production of insulin. 5-10 milligrams of manganese per day could very well do the trick.

Coenzyme Q10 helps enhance circulation and it also acts as a blood sugar stabilizer. Take 100mg of CoQ10 each day for healthy blood sugar levels.

Zinc supplements should be taken because diabetics have been found to have zinc deficiency. 50-80 milligrams is the recommended dosage.

• Know what to Avoid

When going grocery shopping, learn to read the labels. Just because the box says it’s sugar-free doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll give in right away.  Be wary of foods and beverages that contain a lot of sugar – as sweet as it may seem, it won’t do you any good. Aside from sugar, avoid foods that contain saturated fats. If you already are a diagnosed diabetic, continuous intake of saturated fats will most likely double your risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

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nei.nih.gov
nlm.nih.gov
diabetes.niddk.nih.gov

A new study conducted by the NIS Labs shows that acai juice intake is now being linked to reduced joint pain and improvements in the antioxidant levels in the blood.

The human body is composed of bones, specifically 206 for the adult body. These bones allow us to stand up straight since it serves as the frame work of the whole body. While these structures are important, the ability to move is just as essential. Every time we sit down, eat, exercise, play, and work, our body moves in different angles, ways and directions. A part of our body twists and folds and this is made possible by the joints located in the many parts of our body. Through our joints we can swivel, stretch and pivot because it allows movement in a certain spot.

The Pain of Joint Pains

Joint pain, or also called arthralgia, is a common health condition that can occur in not only one but also in other joints of the body, sometimes simultaneously. Most people point out that the reason for this kind of pain is because of old age. Though it may be directly related to aging, it can also be caused by serious conditions such as osteoarthritis (OA), where there is a degeneration of the cartilage in the joint and is very common in people older than 45 years old, and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disorder that causes the immune system to attack the cartilage in the joints and could lead to stiffness and pain. Other common causes of joint pains include wear and tear, injury, fracture, sprain, and cartilage damage. Inflammation of the joint, metabolic disorders like gout and pseudo-gout, bone diseases, tumors and cancers near a joint can also produce joint pains.

Joint pains vary according to cause. Some will experience swelling and stiffness due to OA or RA. Joints that are affected may become swollen, red and very painful when touched and mobility of the joints becomes restricted because of the accompanying pain.

To keep the joints healthy and pain-free, living a healthy lifestyle and taking the right food is the best course to take especially those that are rich in calcium and Vitamin D. Exercise and meditation should be done regularly as well as precautions during vigorous activities. Wearing comfortable footwear will also keep your ankle joints healthy. Sitting at one place for 30 minutes should also be avoided and it is recommended that one take regular breaks as often as possible to stretch and to prevent stiffening of the joints.

Wonder of Acai

The Acai Palm is very common throughout northern South America, most especially along seasonal flood plains and in the river edges of Brazil. There, it is mostly widely distributed because of the numerous properties of the Acai fruit or the Acai berry. The Acai Palm produces a highly nutritious and edible berry 1-2 cm in diameter which comes from green to dark rich purple in color.

The Acai berry is considered as an herbal medicine by the Brazilians. Its oil is used to treat diarrhea and wash skin ulcers. The seeds are prepared for fevers. From the Acai berry also comes the Acai juice. It comes in a dark purple color extracted from the small round fruit. It is often served fresh and ice cold. It is a nourishing drink that is also used to produce mousses, liquor, ice cream and sweets.

It is no wonder that Acai berry and Acai juice are considered to be a treasure by those who drink it.  It is one of the most nutritious foods of the Amazon because it is rich with phytonutrients, as well as Vitamin B, minerals, protein and omega 3 fatty acids. The most abundant mineral found in Acai is potassium and that a small intake of it provides the body with more than what it needs. Acai berry is also rich in anthocyanins that are known to possess antioxidant activity. In a research known as French Paradox, it says that anthocyanins are the antioxidants that protect the French from heart disease. By the neutralization of free radicals, the Acai berry may actually help maintain healthy functioning of systems and organs.

However, there are a lot of circulating reports saying that this wonder berry is being used by scammers for easy money. A great deal of scammers nowadays are creating products with purple coloring and which tastes exactly the same as this wonder fruit, but does nothing to the body. If you are one of the people who are still interested in the health benefits provided by Acai berry, you need to be very cautious. Exercise caution and research a lot about the product, and only pick the ones that offer real Acai berry which can give you the full benefits that you deserve.

Acai Juice for Joints

A recent study has shown that a glass of Acai juice a day have been associated with reduced joint pains, alongside advanced antioxidant levels in the blood.

Consumption of 120 ml of Acai juice for twelve weeks were related to an increase in the antioxidant levels of 14 study participants and an improvement in physical well being according to results published in the Journal of Medicinal Foods.

14 old adults with varying degrees of joint pains were sought for the test by Dr. Jensen. Each of the 14 participants received 120 ml of Acai juice daily for a period of three months.

Dr. Gitte Jensen from NIS Labs in Oregon stated that the findings show a relationship between pain and antioxidant.

Specifically, results showed relief from pain and enhancement on the motion range in the spine and other extremities. Only two weeks from the starting period, antioxidant levels showed improvement and continued to rise throughout the 12 weeks of the study according to the researchers. However, no significant changes were reported to the inflammation marker, C-reactive protein.

Researchers from NIS Labs, Oregon-based Cascade Chiropractic and Rehabilitation and AIBMR Life Sciences performed the study which was funded by MonaVie LLC.

How to Promote Healthy Joints

Aside from Acai berry, here are other means to ensure that you keep your bones healthy:

• Keep moving. Because joints are meant for movement, keeping these structures fixed for long periods of time can cause weakness of the muscles that surround them.
• Lose the extra weight. Remember that those extra pounds can cause unnecessary stress to the joints and could lead to early wear and tear.
• Observe proper posture. Something as simple as picking up an object from the floor can lead to joint pain if done in a wrong manner as this can strain ligaments or impinge nerves which would eventually lead to immobility and joint stiffening.
• Take Supplements. Examples of supplements that promote joint health are Chondroitin and Glucosamine

Sources
familyhealthguide.co.uk
library.thinkquest.org
health-report.co.uk
nutraingredients.com
articlesbase.com

The conclusion of the researchers in this study is interesting, leaning as it does towards cognitive function rather than better implementation of health practices – though both general health and cognitive function are linked via mechanisms such as blood vessel health in the brain. Untangling the knots of many interrelated correlations in such complex things as human beings isn’t easy: “Conscientious individuals tend to experience a number of health benefits, not the least of which being greater longevity. However, it remains an open question as to why this link with longevity occurs. The current study tested two possible mediators (physical health and cognitive functioning) of the link between conscientiousness and longevity. … We tested these mediators using a 10-year longitudinal sample [of 512 people], a subset of the long-running Health and Retirement Study of aging adults. Measures included an adjective-rating measure of conscientiousness, self-reported health conditions, and three measures of cognitive functioning (word recall, delayed recall, and vocabulary) included in the 1996 wave of the HRS study. … Our results found that conscientiousness significantly predicted greater longevity, even in a model including the two proposed mediator variables, gender, age, and years of education. Moreover, cognitive functioning appears to partially mediate this relationship. … This study replicates previous research showing that conscientious individuals tend to lead longer lives, and provides further insight into why this effect occurs.”

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21604882

I am looking for volunteers to undertake some light, spare-time research for Open Cures:

An open volunteer initiative that aims to speed the advent of biotechnologies that can slow down or repair aspects of the biological damage of aging and thus extend healthy human life. Our primary long-term goal is to bring together (a) promising but undeveloped biotechnologies of longevity and (b) the developers who can bring them to the clinic.

The Open Cures roadmap looks a way past the present foundational work (website, writing, organizational details, and so forth) and past the forthcoming efforts to build a repository of documentation for longevity-enhancing biotechnologies. Beyond all of that lies a process of building relationships with the medical tourism industry and developers outside the US. At present I have just as little an idea of the fine details of that process as you do – but discovery is half the challenge in building any initiative.

This is where research and volunteers come into the picture. There is a great deal of very useful information out there in various websites and publications that I would like to see assembled into one place – or at least the references to it all assembled in one place. This is light research work that any smart person with an internet connection can undertake, and it can take place in parallel to other foundational work for Open Cures – and be accomplished piecemeal by many different people. Many hands make light work.

Thus I am looking for volunteers to take on the assembly the following data, and other items that logically follow on from it, for as many different countries as make sense to look at. This may be a case of cleverly finding out that someone in the medical tourism industry has done much of this work already, but I think there’s a little more to it than that. To my mind the eligible countries include much of the Asia-Pacific region, India, and a few others – but validating that list with real numbers is one of the tasks on the table.

The state of medical tourism

How many people travel to this country for medical procedures on a yearly basis, and how does that compare with historical data? Are there estimates for the market value of this medical tourism? Is there data broken down by types of procedures and institutions?

Noteworthy organizations and advocates in the field of medical tourism

Who is leading the charge in growing medical tourism to this country? Which organizations and advocates are prominent, both in the US and in the other country?

Conferences and trade shows

Where does the medical tourism industry focused on this country gather when they come together? Are there established conference series, either in the US or overseas? Are these general conferences, or focused on this particular country?

The state of investment into medical research

How much public and private investment into medical research takes place in this country? How does that break down by field of medicine?

Noteworthy developers and medical tourism destinations

Who are the leaders in offering new medical technologies for medical tourism in this country? What procedures do they specialize in? What is their background and how are they funded? For example, see Beike Biotech in China.

Existing international arrangements

Are there already examples of international cooperation between local developers in this country and developers or research groups in the US or Europe? For example, see Vescell/TheraVitae which offers stem cell treatments in Thailand, but is a Canadian and Israeli company. Countries and regions where there are existing arrangements will likely prove easier to nudge into producing new ones.

Legal environment

To what degree are developers in this country legally bound by various forms of intellectual property in the US? To what degree does that matter on a practical basis? Is there a lot of scofflaw development taking place, for example? The legal details are likely to be quite different for copyright, patents (and international patents), trademarks, and other distinct forms of intellectual property.

Other important matters

How does the country rank in safety for US tourism, local bureaucratic corruption, and items that will factor into its attractiveness as a destination?

One of the near term items on my to-do list for Open Cures is to set up a wiki to better allow people to incrementally contribute this sort of information. As data like this is assembled, it will be posted and made available as a resource to inform later decisions and relationship building exercises.

If you are interested in helping with this part of the Open Cures agenda, please sign up for the discussion group and let us know.

We human beings seem to like to label things – the simpler, the better! This urge to put everything into simple categories definitely applies to drugs and supplements – we like to think that Drug A always has one particular effect, and Supplement B has a different one. Just take this pill or use this crème and, voila, you always get one simple outcome.

That may be tidy, but it’s seldom accurate. In the real world, the drugs and supplements we take usually refuse to cooperate with this fantasy. Instead, one compound can have many effects – and many compounds can have similar effects. Often none of these interactions seem to correlate very well to the labels we put on them.

Take alpha lipoic acid for example. Alpha lipoic acid, sometimes called ALA, is a fatty acid found naturally inside every cell in the body. It’s needed by the body to produce the energy for our body’s normal functions. Alpha lipoic acid converts glucose (blood sugar) into energy. At Longevity Medical Clinic, we often give our patients alpha lipoic acid, most commonly to combat neuropathy in diabetics (or in patients who may not yet have diabetes but who have developed enough insulin resistance to experience neuropathy). So, because that is ALA’s primary use, does that make alpha lipoic acid simply a neuropathy supplement? Let’s look a bit closer at the rest of the story.

• ALA and Cancer: There are now many studies that clearly demonstrate that, when administered to breast cancer patients, alpha lipoic acid kills a significant number of breast cancer cells and slows the growth of others. When combined with a citric acid derivative called hydroxycitrate, ALA greatly enhances the effectiveness of breast cancer chemotherapy. What’s more, some studies show that ALA can inhibit the type of enzyme activity in our bodies that leads to the development of breast and prostate cancer in the first place.

• ALA and polycystic ovarian syndrome: Polycystic ovarian syndrome is a common endocrine disorder affecting up to 10% of women of childbearing age. In a study of women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, ALA was found to have a host of beneficial effects, leading to better cholesterol profiles, improved blood sugars and healthier insulin levels. Alpha lipoc acid also significantly increased the number of normal periods in many test subjects.

• General healing: Alpha lipoic acid helps to improve blood flow in small blood vessels – an important component of normal healing. ALA has been repeatedly shown to improve healing in wounds of virtually every kind, from minor skin cuts to surgical incisions.

• Healthy skin: Alpha lipoic acid promotes the growth of connective tissue and provides smoother, younger looking skin.

So what do we make of alpha lipoic acid? We know it helps fight neuropathy. But is it also a cosmetic enhancer? Is it an anti-cancer drug? Is ALA a supplement to restore hormone balance? Is it an all-purpose nostrum that cures whatever ails you? If we are going to use supplements intelligently, we need to avoid thinking in terms of labels. Instead we need to learn the biochemistry and understand the physiology of the compounds we take. That level of knowledge is what makes your Longevity Medical Clinic doctor a far better adviser for all your supplement needs and applications than the clerk at the health food store or the multi-level marketing company your Aunt Matilda represents. Don’t trust yourself to amateurs, and don’t settle for simple labels that don’t tell the whole story! Trust your medical support team at Longevity Medical Clinic to watch out for your best interests and to give you the real scoop on drugs and supplements.

Transdifferentiation is the act of changing a cell directly from one type to another, without having to first go through the process of producing induced pluripotent stem cells and then differentiating them into the desired final product. This shows some promise as a yet more effective way of producing cells to order for research and therapies: “Human skin cells can be converted directly into functional neurons in a period of four to five weeks with the addition of just four proteins … The finding is significant because it bypasses the need to first create induced pluripotent stem cells, and may make it much easier to generate patient- or disease-specific neurons for study in a laboratory dish. It may also circumvent a recently reported potential problem with iPS cells, in which laboratory mice rejected genetically identical iPS cells – seemingly on the basis of the proteins used to render them pluripotent. The new research parallels that of the same Stanford group in 2010, which showed it was possible to change mouse skin cells directly into neurons with a similar combination of proteins. However, when done in human cells, the conversion of skin cells to neurons occurs less efficiently and more slowly. … We are now much closer to being able to mimic brain or neurological diseases in the laboratory. We may perhaps even be able to one day use these cells for human therapies. … The direct conversion of skin cells to neurons contrasts with similar research that first transforms skin cells to a pluripotent, or developmentally flexible, state and then coaxes them to become neurons or other specialized cells. … The iPS cell approach is doable and has been shown to work. We need to keep working on both strategies. It’s possible that the best approach may vary depending on the disease or the type of research being done.”

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/sumc-ss052511.php

Researchers continue to investigate the link between germ cells and longevity in lower animals. In this open access paper, changes to fat metabolism are implicated as an important mechanism: “Removing the germ line of Caenorhabditis elegans extends its lifespan by approximately 60%. Eliminating germ cells also increases the lifespan of Drosophila, suggesting that a conserved mechanism links the germ line to longevity … Reproduction and aging are two processes that seem to be closely intertwined. Experiments in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila have shown that depletion of the germ line increases lifespan and that this process depends on insulin and lipophilic-hormone signaling. Recently, it was demonstrated that when germline stem cells (GSCs) cease to proliferate, fat metabolism is altered and this affects longevity. In this study, we have identified a nuclear hormone receptor, NHR-80, that mediates longevity through depletion of the germ line by promoting fatty acid desaturation. … Our results reinforce the notion that fat metabolism is profoundly altered in response to GSC proliferation, and the data contribute to a better understanding of the molecular relationship between reproduction, fat metabolism, and aging.”

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057950/

Aging is an inevitability, or so we have to assume: the processes of evolution blindly but efficiently explore the space of possible living creatures, and have been doing so for a very, very long time. Surely a very long-lived or ageless species would have a great advantage in evolutionary competition, its individual members able to produce descendants for far longer than their competitors in a short-lived species that ages. Yet virtually all species – with only a very few exceptions – age in easily measured ways. The species that age are also the species that have won in evolutionary terms, and therefore prospered and spread. Why is this?

A recent open access paper (in PDF format) explores one of the approaches used to answer this question, and does so in a very readable fashion:

Living organisms shouldn’t age, at least if that could be helped (many of use would certainly like that, but our wishes are not a valid argument). Evolution works in a way that any species whose representatives have any distinct disadvantage will be driven to extinction. It makes sense then to assume that, if aging could be avoided, species that showed senescence as the individuals grow older should be replaced by others where aging does not happen (or happens at a much slower rate). Senescence increases mortality and an individual who dies of old age will leave, in average, a smaller number of descendants than another individual that does not age and manages to live and reproduce for a longer time. And yet many known living organisms show senescence. The time it takes for an individual to show signs of old age varies greatly among species, but aging seems so natural that many people fail to realize there is an apparent contradiction between senescence and evolution.

…

Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will propose a model for aging based on assumptions that are compatible with evolutionary theory: i) competition is between individuals; ii) there is some degree of locality, so quite often competition will between parents and their progeny; iii) optimal conditions are not stationary, mutation helps each species to keep competitive.

When conditions change, a senescent species can drive immortal competitors to extinction. This counter-intuitive result arises from the pruning caused by the death of elder individuals. When there is change and mutation, each generation is slightly better adapted to the new conditions, but some older individuals survive by random chance. Senescence can eliminate those from the genetic pool. Even though individual selection forces always win over group selection ones, it is not exactly the individual that is selected, but its lineage. While senescence damages the individuals and has an evolutionary cost, it has a benefit of its own. It allows each lineage to adapt faster to changing conditions.

We age because the world changes.

And there is illustrated one of the present competing viewpoints on the origins of aging.

Few topics are of greater interest to my patients than sexuality. And why not? A rich and rewarding sex life is something men and women enjoy and appreciate. But today’s advertising paints a pretty weird picture!

Most of you have seen the barrage of ads on TV and in newspapers and magazines for drugs claiming to cure “E.D” – erectile dysfunction. When I see these relentless ads for drugs like Viagra and Cialis, I always laugh at the fast talking disclaimer at the end, where the announcer (reading a script surely written by the Legal Department) says something like, “Be sure to check with your doctor to make sure you are healthy enough for sexual activity.” The purpose of this disclaimer is to protect the company: if you do get over excited and topple over dead while making love, this careful wording ensures that it’s your family doctor who gets sued rather than the multi-billion dollar drug company.

But it also raises a larger and more important issue. I believe that not dropping dead during sex is a triumph of low expectations!

Are you “healthy enough” for the activities you engage in every day? I hope so. Not dropping dead while carrying your groceries up the stairs, or while walking out to get the mail, seems to me to be a pretty modest goal. The same is certainly true in your most intimate relationships (although admittedly your partner will be less distressed if you fall over on the stairs or at the mailbox than if you are with her or him at the time of your demise!). Back in the 1980’s the rock group The Beegees sang a song called “Stayin’ Alive.” Maybe this is what they were singing about.

I may sound facetious, but come on: doesn’t having a great sex life require a whole lot more than simply not dying? Shouldn’t we be learning how to stay healthy and active so that we approach every activity of life, including sex, with energy and vitality? Instead, if you are like all too many Americans, you come home every evening both physically and emotionally spent. You drag yourself into the kitchen or dining room and sit with a sigh of relief. After dinner you make your way into the living room where you sit through the evening watching TV. Then you drag yourself to the bedroom where you collapse into bed, again with a sigh of relief. Sex is far from the minds of most people over 50 because they simply do not have the energy to initiate or respond sexually.  Sexuality is an emotional state requiring high amounts of energy, and that emotional energy is dependent on having enough physical energy to generate the right emotionally-charged sexual mood.

At Longevity Medical Clinic, I want my patients to come home at night with a spring in their step, a song in their heart, and a slightly mischievous twinkle in their eyes. A man should have the physical and emotional energy to come dancing up the stairs, throw open the door, rush into the room and sweep his woman off her feet and into his arms. He should run (not stagger) while he carries her to the bedroom, laying her under the covers and leaping in after her. She should be able to respond in kind. A couple with this sort of emotional and physical energy is able to enjoy their sexual relationship to the fullest, at any age.

But this approach is light years away from the presumptions behind the Viagra advertising. They would have to believe that the key to sexual response is – a pill. You and I know better. Sexuality is about more than prescription drugs, and great sex means far more than simply not dying in the act. Rich, vibrant sexuality requires the sort of strength, energy, and enthusiasm we endeavor to foster in our patients at Longevity Medical Clinic.

I like our approach far better than theirs.

An example of the sort of immune system engineering that is presently taking place in the laboratory: “Until this research, we thought the immune system needed to attack the cancer directly in order to be effective. Now we know that isn’t necessarily so. Attacking the dense tissues surrounding the cancer is another approach, similar to attacking a brick wall by dissolving the mortar in the wall. Ultimately, the immune system was able to eat away at this tissue surrounding the cancer, and the tumors fell apart as a result of that assault. These results provide fresh insight to build new immune therapies for cancer. … pancreatic cancer patients received standard gemcitabine chemotherapy with an experimental antibody [that] binds and stimulates a cell surface receptor called CD40, which is a key regulator of T-cell activation. The team initially hypothesized that the CD40 antibodies would turn on the T cells and allow them to attack the tumor. The treatment appeared to work, with some patients’ tumors shrinking substantially and the vast majority of tumors losing metabolic activity after therapy, although all of the responding patients eventually relapsed. When the researchers looked at post-treatment tumor samples, obtained via biopsy or surgical removal, there were no T cells to be seen. Instead, they saw an abundance of another white blood cell known as macrophages. … When the investigators treated mice that developed pancreatic cancer with gemcitabine in combination with CD40 antibodies, the results looked like those of the human trial. Some mouse tumors shrank and were found to be loaded with macrophages but contained few or no T cells. Closer inspection showed that the macrophages were attacking what is known as the tumor stroma, the supporting tissue around the tumor. Pancreatic tumors secrete chemical signals that draw macrophages to the tumor site, but if left to their own devices, these macrophages would protect the tumor. However, treating the mice (or patients) with CD40 antibodies seemed to flip that system on its head. … It is something of a Trojan horse approach. The tumor is still calling in macrophages, but now we’ve used the CD40 receptor to re-educate those macrophages to attack – not promote – the tumor.”

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/uops-pru031611.php

Nuclear DNA damage accumulates with age, but is it a cause of aging? This open access paper illustrates why there is a question – as for many studies, the results do not point unambiguously in one direction or another. “Accumulation of DNA damage leading to adult stem cell exhaustion has been proposed to be a principal mechanism of aging. Here we tested this hypothesis in healthy individuals of different ages by examining unrepaired DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells matured in their physiological microenvironment. … The highest inter-individual variations for non-telomeric DNA damage were observed in middle-aged donors, [where] the individual DSB repair capacity appears to determine the extent of DNA damage accrual. However, analyzing different stem/progenitor subpopulations obtained from healthy elderly (>70 years), we observed an only modest increase in DNA damage accrual, [but] sustained DNA repair efficiencies, suggesting that healthy lifestyle may slow down the natural aging process. … Based on these findings we conclude that age-related non-telomeric DNA damage accrual accompanies physiological stem cell aging in humans. Moreover, aging may alter the functional capacity of human stem cells to repair DSBs, thereby deteriorating an important genome protection mechanism leading to exceeding DNA damage accumulation. However, the great inter-individual variations in middle-aged individuals suggest that additional cell-intrinsic mechanisms and/or extrinsic factors contribute to the age-associated DNA damage accumulation.” Meaning that nuclear DNA damage may or may not be a primary cause of aging, and may or may not be important in comparison to other factors.

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049780/

The Vegas Group: a so far fictional community of the next ten years that will merge the longevity advocacy and open biotech communities in order to (a) reverse engineer the most promising life-span-enhancing techniques demonstrated in the laboratory, (b) translate that work into human rejuvenation biotechnologies, and (b) make these therapies available for use via medical tourism to Asia-Pacific region clinics.

So I have been pondering how best to make the vision of the Vegas Group a reality: what steps do we take so that we wake up six or seven years from now to an open source biotech community whose members are working on enabling the best longevity therapies produced by the formal research community – and who have the overseas connections to enable responsible use of resulting therapies in a clinical setting.

The path to this future involves networking and community building in a whole new and different direction from that taken by much of the longevity advocacy community – and the construction of a codex of information, a how-to manual of recipes for replicating specific products of the formal research community in longevity science. Networking makes the world go round, and that is the most important part of any attempt to create the Vegas Group, or indeed any human endeavor: making relationships and persuading people to join in. But this is not where I can be the most effective.

So any step one for me will involve considering the codex: what it is, and how it will be constructed, maintained, and made useful to the seeds of what will be the Vegas Group – however that organization ultimately comes about, and whatever form it ultimately takes. It is very clear to me that open biotechnology will grow into a massive semi-professional sphere of activity, exactly like the open source software community today. I want to take advantage of the wave that is coming, and produce a work that will both aid that wave and in turn be aided by it.

When thinking about the way in which contributions of content are made voluntarily to any given community or site – such as Wikipedia, or blogs such as this one, or the documentation repository at your workplace – it is self-evident that very, very few people step up to produce good content. Wikipedia works because a great many people each contribute just a little, a continual process of polishing, one grain of sand at a time, applied to the bulk outlines contributed by the motivated few. But for smaller groups, you don’t get polishing, you just get next to nothing in the way of contributions.

So I’m fairly certain that for the Vegas Group codex, while a wiki model may be helpful as an adjunct to a motivated community further down the line, it isn’t a way to get things written at the outset – it’s not a way to provide the corpus of work that a community can later polish. There are few biotechnologists in the world in comparison to, say, football fans. Look at the number of science bloggers as compared with other topics, for example. Despite this, there are still initiatives out there, however, working on pulling together repositories of techniques and knowledge: OpenWetWare for example. So the concept of producing an open collection of techniques and recipies is not a foreign one to the biotechnology community – it’s just not very advanced at this stage, at least not in comparison to the bodies of knowledge associated with larger communities.

Thus I think that a larger seed, a bigger online repository of freely available and reliable recipes for longevity-related biotechnology, would act as an attractor for people willing to tinker and help out. The same class of supporters and advocates who produced initiatives like OpenWetWare will contribute to help polish its contents. Overall, the concept of a codex seems to me to be where a comparatively small amount of money could be leveraged to good effect. Consider this:

• Creating an initial repository website and content management system isn’t a significant cost given the present state of open source content management software – it’s almost something I could undertake myself.
• People with significant knowledge of biotechnology are remarkable cheap to engage at the post-graduate level. Consider that a few thousand dollars of post-graduate time can net you a long and well-informed analysis, or detailed explanation of a specific methodology.
• It wouldn’t be a good piece of writing of course – no offense is intended when I say that few post-graduate scientists can write well. Writing well is hard, and just as much a specialty as is becoming a scientist; few people have the time and inclination to specialize in more than a few things, and why should one of them be writing?
• Fortunately, people who can write well are always in supply, desperate for work, and inexpensive. It is a buyer’s market.

So I can envisage a guiding council of advisors putting together a plan for the hierarchy of topics they would like to see in the Vegas Group codex, from basic methods in biotechnology through to best attempt reverse engineering of things we know to be possible and that have been published: such as Cuervo’s work on restoring youthful levels of autophagy, or protofection to replace mitochondrial DNA. The end result of that process might look something like a distillation of Fight Aging! mixed with the very elegant materials produced by the Science for Life Extension Foundation.

Codex project volunteers would then run an ongoing process of hiring post-graduates and interested researchers to write, and passing the results to starving authors who improve the output to a quality suitable for the open biotechnology community. There would of course be some back and forth between the post-graduates and the starving authors in order to reduce the inevitable translation errors, but I see this as a viable way to produce a body of knowledge that is sufficiently good to begin with – not perfect, not even necessarily very good, but sufficient.

Since only a comparatively limited reach of biotechnology is under consideration, the cost of bootstrapping such a project might be less than a few hundred thousand dollars. The things I would need to understand before getting seriously underway on a Vegas Group codex are largely related to validating that price tag. A few hundred thousand dollars would mean that it is worth starting with ten thousand dollars, some volunteers, spare time, and raising funds as we go based on the quality of work exhibited. That would be true bootstrapping, but I’d have to give thought in advance to:

• The actual cost of generating the materials – something that I suspect won’t be clear until the project is at least twenty articles in. I have a fair grasp on the range of costs for writing for hire, in fields that range from very specialist (pricey) and completely generalist (a few cents a word), but I’ve no idea where this market falls in that spread of values, nor how much management and general cat-herding of writers would be required.
• The predicted size of a sufficiently large body of information, as set out by guiding experts. Is it a hundred articles, a hundred videos, a thousand images, or half that, or ten times that?
• How to make this project attractive to the existing open biotechnology community even in its earliest stages. There is no such thing as “build it and they will come” – if anything building in isolation guarantees that you’ll have few visitors.

Which comes right back around to networking and relationships: as I said, they make the world go round. On that topic, I am sadly lacking in a knowledge of the current state of the open biotechnology community – something that will have to change as I give more thought to the Vegas Group idea. No sense in reinventing the wheel if there is a wheel out there already … or even a half-built wheel, a project where lessons were learned.