You might recall the identification of klotho as a longevity-related gene in mice and other lower animals in recent years. Here is a study on levels of klotho in humans: "The aging-suppressor gene klotho encodes a single-pass transmembrane protein that in mice is known to extend life span when overexpressed and resemble accelerated aging when expression is disrupted. It is not known whether there is a relationship between plasma levels of secreted klotho protein and longevity in humans. ... We measured plasma klotho in 804 adults, greater than or equal to 65 years, in the InCHIANTI study, a longitudinal population-based study of aging in Tuscany, Italy. ... During 6 years of follow-up, 194 (24.1%) of the participants died. In a multivariate Cox proportional hazards model, adjusting for age, sex, education, body mass index, physical activity, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, cognition, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, parathyroid hormone, serum calcium, mean arterial pressure, and chronic diseases, participants in the lowest tertile of plasma klotho [had] an increased risk of death compared with participants in the highest tertile of plasma klotho ... In older community-dwelling adults, plasma klotho is an independent predictor of all-cause mortality. Further studies are needed to elucidate the potential biological mechanisms by which circulating klotho could affect longevity in humans." Given the number of adjustments there, I'd like to see a confirming study - and for preference one that explicitly took into account calorie intake as well. Just because you see the expected result is no reason to abandon the usual level of caution needed when reading the output of the scientific method.

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21474560

Mitochondria are the cell's roving herd of bacteria-like power plants, and the damage they suffer in the course of their operation is strongly implicated as a contributing cause of aging. Here researchers show that calorie restriction appears to boost the rate at which new mitochondria are spawned: "mice with increased respiratory rates and reduced energetic conversion efficiency due to spontaneously uncoupled mitochondria lived longer than their counterparts. Indeed, different uncoupling strategies were able to extend lifespan in models ranging from yeast to mammals. ... uncoupling could be an approach to promote lifespan extension due to its ability to prevent the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Indeed, mild mitochondrial uncoupling is a highly effective intervention to prevent the formation of ROS ... CR also increases the number of functional respiratory units (mitochondrial biogenesis) [and researchers] demonstrated that mitochondrial biogenesis was essential for many beneficial effects of dietary limitation in mice. ... We recently demonstrated that murine lifespan can be extended by low doses of the mitochondrial uncoupler 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP) in a manner accompanied by weight loss, lower serological levels of glucose, insulin and triglycerides as well as a strong decrease in biomarkers of oxidative damage and tissue ROS release. Similar effects have been repeatedly reported using CR diets ... Based on the similarities between these two interventions, we hypothesized that DNP treatment could also lead to enhanced mitochondrial biogenesis. In this manuscript, we measured the effects of DNP treatment and CR on mitochondrial biogenesis and associated pathways. We observed that both DNP and CR increase mitochondrial biogenesis, [confirming] that signaling events in both treatments converge."

Link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018433

Long-lived naked mole-rats exhibit fairly large systematic differences in longevity within the species, and understanding the mechanisms may point the way to a class of therapies for aging: "African mole-rats (Bathyergidae, Rodentia) contain several social, cooperatively breeding species with low extrinsic mortality and unusually high longevity. All social bathyergids live in multigenerational families where reproduction is skewed towards a few breeding individuals. Most of their offspring remain as reproductively inactive 'helpers' in their natal families, often for several years. This 'reproductive subdivision' of mole-rat societies might be of interest for ageing research, as in at least one social bathyergid (Ansell's mole-rats Fukomys anselli), breeders have been shown to age significantly slower than non-breeders. These animals thus provide excellent conditions for studying the epigenetics of senescence by comparing divergent longevities within the same genotypes without the inescapable short-comings of inter-species comparisons. It has been claimed that many if not all social mole-rat species may have evolved similar ageing patterns, too. However, this remains unclear on account of the scarcity of reliable datasets on the subject. We therefore analyzed a 20-year breeding record of Giant mole-rats Fukomys mechowii, another social bathyergid species. We found that breeders indeed lived significantly longer than helpers (ca. 1.5 - 2.2fold depending on the sex), irrespective of social rank or other potentially confounding factors."

Link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018757

Senior individuals with low levels of vitamin D are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk for diabetes and heart diseases.

Researchers from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam state that insufficient amounts of vitamin D in seniors may be one of leading causes of metabolic syndrome.

The study involved 1,300 respondents (men and women) over the age of 65. A staggering 50% of all the respondents had vitamin D deficiency. Thirty-five percent of this segment of the respondents of the study had metabolic syndrome.

According to Dr. Marelise Eekhoff, co-author of the metabolic syndrome study, the findings of the study is significant because metabolic syndrome actually predisposes a person to other degenerative conditions like adult-onset/type-2 diabetes and heart problems.

Universal medical problem

In another study published in the medical journal Diabetes in the United States, it was found that 40% of elderly Chinese persons had metabolic syndrome because of the same vitamin deficiency.

In earlier animal studies, it was observed that test animals that had vitamin D deficiency had difficulty in producing and secreting insulin, which is necessary for the breakdown and utilization of blood glucose.

Dr. Eekhoff states that logically, increasing vitamin D in the body through supplementation and proper exposure to natural sunlight can help prevent metabolic syndrome and all of the medical maladies associated with the condition.

Getting enough of the vitamin

The National Academy of Sciences recommends that every person have at least 200 IU of vitamin D everyday to reduce risk of disease and to promote general wellness. For maximum benefits, 800 IU to 1000 IU can be used safely; the upper limit for vitamin D supplementation is 2000 IU everyday.

The following may cause vitamin D deficiency:

1. You don’t get enough vitamin D over a very long period of time (e.g. for years).

2. You don’t go outside to expose yourself to natural sunlight regularly.

3. Darker skins have reduced capacities to produce vitamin D.

4. Your kidneys are unable to help manufacture the vitamin naturally. This problem is more common in seniors than in younger individuals.

5. The digestive tract is unable to absorb available vitamin D in the body.

6. Obesity can also reduce the body’s capacity to use vitamin D, since fat cells leech the available vitamin D. People with a BMI of thirty or higher often have vitamin D deficiency.

Dire consequence of vitamin deficiency

What happens when you don’t have vitamin D? Here are just some of the problems associated with vitamin D deficiency:

1. Vitamin D deficiency, according to recent research, has been linked to higher risk of high blood pressure and other heart-related problems.

2. Vegetarians who shun dairy products and eggs may be at risk for vitamin D deficiency. If you are a vegan, you can easily supplement your diet with vitamin D by taking small amounts of fish liver oils.

3. The most common problem associated with not getting enough vitamin D is rickets, which cause soft bone formation and a deformed skeletal system.

4. Older adults may suffer from cognitive impairment if they lack sufficient vitamin D.

5. Children with low levels of vitamin D are predisposed to severe forms of asthma.

6. The risk for nearly all types of cancer increases with vitamin D deficiency, including breast cancer (according to one US study) and colorectal cancer.

7. Children vitamin D deficiency may suffer from slow growth.

8. According to Michael Holick MD from the Boston Medical Center, extreme vitamin D deficiency predisposes a pregnant woman to deliver via caesarean section (C-section).

9. In a study headed by researchers from the SUNY Upstate Medical University in New York, insufficient amounts of vitamin D in women can cause pelvic floor disorders and urinary incontinence.

10. Persons recovering from post-traumatic brain injury with vitamin D deficiencies are more at risk for chronic fatigue, says a study from Rijnstate Hospital in The Netherlands.

11. According to researchers from the Heart Institute of the Intermountain Medical Center, people with low levels of the vitamin are 77% likelier to die from a stroke.

12. Type 2 diabetics suffering from poor blood glucose control may be suffering from vitamin D deficiency, as well.

Sources:
nutraingredients.com
mayoclinic.com
webmd.com
webmd.com
webmd.com
webmd.com
webmd.com
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com

Discuss this post in Frank Mangano’s forum!

Resveratrol is a polyphenolic phytoalexin with antioxidant effects, which have shown benefits on animals in past studies; now, human studies have started to emerge.

Whether as urban or rural dwellers, a noticeable fact is prevalent in our daily eating routines. Our food intake, habits, and preferences usually indicate a lack in necessary nutrients that our bodies need for better health. Several factors contribute to this phenomenon such as the proliferation of processed foods and fast-foods, the busy lifestyle that we engage in, and the changing technologies that contribute to the fast-paced world. As such, we often neglect having the necessary nutritional levels. This marks a pressing need to pay attention to what we eat, starting with learning about certain food contents and supplementation that boost our nutrient intake. Furthermore, particular food or supplementation contents do not merely provide general health benefits. These have specific remedy and preventive effects.

One of these is a polyphenolic phytoalexin called resveratrol. In a recent study, it was discovered that resveratrol supplementation has strong capacities of improving cardiovascular health. We may gain essential insights into this powerful antioxidant since the human heart, along with our body, warrants nurturing if we want to reduce our risk of acquiring severe conditions which may sometimes prove to be fatal; and if we want to thrive healthily within this rapidly-changing and busy world.

Study Findings Yield New Insights into Resveratrol Supplements: Cardiovascular and Heart Health

Published in Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular  Diseases, the research led by Dr. Narelle Berry from the University of South Africa is the first of its kind. There have been other resveratrol studies, but the recent one particularly focused on the effects and possible health benefits of resveratrol supplements on the functions of the human circulatory system.

Supplements were said to aid improvement in a special indicator of cardiovascular function, which is called flow-mediated dilatation (FMD). An FMD analysis that shows changes or damage is normally characterized or caused by endothelial dysfunction, and reveals an indication of various risk factors such as obesity. The endothelium is essential to maintaining the body’s vascular tone, through its regulatory efforts towards blood flow. The dysfunction is reportedly due to the lack of nitric oxide production, which may result in the constriction of blood vessels.

As one of the notions that pushed the research to take form, polyphenols are suggested as active, potent agents that improve FMD results. In particular, the polyphenol called resveratrol was suggested to aid in increasing the production, release, and availability of nitric oxide.

Fortunately, the results were positive. Increasing resveratrol was linked to increases in concentrations of plasma in the blood. Furthermore, FMD showed improvement through the employed supplementation. While some details remain unclear, the researchers noted that the evidence suggests that nitric oxide availability and an increase in its levels can be made possible through resveratrol.

A Broader Look at How Humans can Benefit from Resveratrol

Resveratrol was believed and suggested to be the content in red wine, which makes the well-loved drink a very healthy choice of beverage with alcoholic contents. Furthermore, former knowledge on the health benefits of resveratrol supplements did not have strong scientific evidence or support, particularly when applied to humans, because former studies usually employed mice.

However, with the recent study that was earlier discussed, these notions have gained solid footing.

Sources and health benefits

Grape-skin is a major source of the said polyphenol, which explains why red wine contains a good level of resveratrol concentrations, considering the fermentation process of red wine. We may go directly to grape or grape juice consumption if we want. In reportedly comparable or lesser concentrations, resveratrol may also be found in cranberries and blueberries, which also have powerful antioxidant components.

Given the increasing scientific evidences on its potential favourable roles on human health, resveratrol supplementation may possibly be one of the best, if not the best way of acquiring the benefits of resveratrol. According to a resveratrol supplement website, a single resveratrol supplement or pill already equates to the benefits of a huge number of red wine bottles.

Regardless if you’re in the process of recovering from a particular illness, or if your immune system needs an efficient boost, or even if you are currently enjoying a good health status, resveratrol has several benefits for you. It is not only an effective treatment remedy, it also aids in risk-reduction, healing, prevention, and health maintenance. Furthermore, it contributes to optimal weight loss and heightened physical performance among athletes.

Apart from the newly-discovered favourable roles on human health, through its effects on cardiovascular health and functionality, the following list provides a glimpse of some of the more particular ways in which humans can benefit from resveratrol and resveratrol supplementation.

1. Cancer Prevention

Based on research tests on animals, resveratrol was proven as an effective means of reducing tumour incidence. This is primarily done through its interference with certain stages of cancer development. As an antioxidant, resveratrol inhibits cancerous cells’ growth, proliferation, and invasion through their metastasis process.

Some studies show that resveratrol’s anti-cancerous effects are at their peak when the polyphenol comes in direct contact with tumours. Particular tumours to which resveratrol have heightened effects are reportedly gastrointestinal tract and skin tumours. Other types need further research and experimentation.

2. Risk-reduction for Alzheimer’s Disease and Neurodegenerative Diseases

According to researchers at the Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, resveratrol supplementation has shown potent effects on the reduction of plaque formation found in the brains of tested animals. It is important to note that Alzheimer’s disease and several other neurodegenerative diseases are developed through several factors that include plaque formation.

Other studies reportedly show that the said polyphenol decreased the intracellular amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptide levels, which is associated with the reduction and clearance of plaques located in the brain.

3. Inhibition and Risk-reduction for Influenza

The reproduction of viruses that affect the respiratory tract, particularly viruses that cause influenza, are inhibited by resveratrol. Instead of attacking the flu virus, the said polyphenol appears to have a more wide-scale approach: It blocks certain functions in the host cell that allows and aids the replication of influenza virus.

4. Slow Aging

Several companies sell resveratrol supplements, packaged prominently in a way that emphasizes its slow aging effects, and possible capacity for lifespan expansion. As an anti-aging tool, resveratrol is believed to have the capacity of stimulating the SIRT1 gene; which, besides aiding in fat reduction, also helps slow down the process of aging. Further research and studies need to confirm and discover stronger links.

Sources
nutraingredients.com
prnewswire.com
zhion.com
hubpages.com
mayoclinic.com
medicinenet.com
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
circ.ahajournals.org
cehd.org
resveratrolbenefits.com

Discuss this post in Frank Mangano’s forum!

I notice that Science Progress has thoughtfully posted an overview of a book that, like so many, passed beneath my distracted field of vision. It's a good overview, and in reading it I'm struck by just how greatly modern fields of intellectual study have devolved into the title of this post - efforts to find smart ways to say profoundly stupid things. This isn't the aim and goal at the outset, of course, but with postmodernism leading the way, there is a well defined sort of style that accompanies the ability of a community of intellectuals to cut themselves off from rationality and evidence in order to build castles in the sky. Up becomes down and left becomes right, and all sorts of nonsense rises to rule the roost. The end result is a core of stupidity well wrapped by a tremendous expenditure of earnest intellectual effort: a sort of Emperor's new clothes situation wherein few parties involved have any incentive to point out the obvious.

Outside of theology and the worst reaches of postmodernism, this disconnect from reality is perhaps most evident in modern macroeconomics - largely an effort to convince the world against all the evidence that up is down and black is white - and the various fields of ethics, such as bioethics. The bioethics community in particular long ago lost its way.

But back to some examples from that Science Progress piece:

When I say that here, too, Agar builds his argument on an appeal to nature, I have in mind his foundational premise regarding what he calls "species relativism." The "relativism" part of that label might at first sound like a rejection of anything resembling an appeal to nature. But Agar holds that there is something good, something worth preserving, about the way members of our species typically or naturally find happiness. As he puts it, "Experiences typical of the ways in which humans live and love are the particular focus of my species-relativism" (pg.15).

So for an enhancement to count as moderate on Agar's account, it has to be "relative" to our species. As distinct from a radical or "purported" enhancement, a moderate one has to enhance a way of being that is typical of homo sapiens.

...

He argues that, while it is indeed reasonable to want more of "a recognizably human life," it is not reasonable to want a form of life without the sorts of experiences that are typical for members of our species. As he says, there are some Galapagos tortoises that live up to 150 years, and they no doubt enjoy experiences that are pleasurable for members of their species, but no human being would trade our "distinctively human varieties of pleasure" for distinctively tortoise varieties of pleasure. Because, however, he grants the respect in which that example is unfair - becoming a tortoise would entail diminished cognition and radical life extension would not - he needs to say more.

He begins by suggesting that de Grey's "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS) might create an obsessive fear of death, which might come to completely dominate the lives of those who adopted such strategies. Agar worries that, because negligibly senescent people would have more years of life to lose if they failed in one of their projects, they would have a strong reason not to take any risks at all (pg. 116). Indeed, at this point he invokes the concern that later in the book he will call its central theme: the concern about alienation, about becoming separated from the kinds of, here, risky experiences that constitute human lives as we know them. According to Agar, de Grey's ambition to radically extend our lives "is likely to alienate us from the things and people who currently give our lives meaning" (pg. 122).

Agar allows that there may appear to be a way around the obsessive fear of death that SENS could bring about. To get around the risks associated with going out into the real world, he allows, negligibly senescent people could use technologies to have virtual experiences instead. But the problem with that strategy, he says, is that it fails to appreciate the extent to which human beings want "direct" contact with the "real" world. It fails to appreciate that "We think differently about these kinds of indirect contact [with the real world] than we do about 'being there.'" No one, he suggests, thinks that "seeing a Discovery Channel documentary filmed on Mount Everest substitutes for actually climbing it" (pg. 123).

Castles in the sky, and straw ones at that. I would hope that little needs to be said in response to this sort of thing - it is so self-evidently hollow, a gut feel trying to cover itself in words and failing, that it falls apart at a glance.

From MSNBC: "Four common bad habits combined - smoking, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet - can age you by 12 years, sobering new research suggests. The findings are from a study that tracked nearly 5,000 British adults for 20 years, and they highlight yet another reason to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Overall, 314 people studied had all four unhealthy behaviors. Among them, 91 died during the study, or 29 percent. Among the 387 healthiest people with none of the four habits, only 32 died, or about 8 percent. ... The risky behaviors were: smoking tobacco; downing more than three alcoholic drinks per day for men and more than two daily for women; getting less than two hours of physical activity per week; and eating fruits and vegetables fewer than three times daily. These habits combined substantially increased the risk of death and made people who engaged in them seem 12 years older than people in the healthiest group ... The findings don't mean that everyone who maintains a healthy lifestyle will live longer than those who don't, but it will increase the odds." This study joins many others in putting a number on the harm we do to ourselves by failing to keep up with the health basics.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36786312/ns/health-aging/

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

The results of this study make for an interesting comparison with research that demonstrates lack of blood vessel dilation in muscles to be a root cause of age-related loss of muscle mass, or sarcopenia: researchers "have determined that moderately and temporarily restricting the flow of blood through muscles - a practice adopted by bodybuilders who noticed that it made light weights feel heavier - can be combined with low-level resistance exercise training to produce muscle-mass increases in older men. ... investigators studied changes in the thigh muscles of seven older men (average age 70) when they performed four minutes of low-resistance leg extension exercises both with and without inflatable cuffs that reduced blood flow out of the muscles. Muscle protein synthesis was measured in each of the men by monitoring changes in a chemical tracer infused into the bloodstream. In addition, a series of biopsies yielded muscle samples that were analyzed to track alterations in biochemical pathways critical to muscle growth. ... We saw that when we put the cuffs on, they responded similarly to young people doing traditional high-intensity resistance exercise."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100514151926.htm

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

Discuss this post in Frank Mangano’s forum!

Nature looks at the chaotic state of bringing cancer vaccines to trial: "Many first-generation cancer vaccines such as PANVAC, a pancreatic cancer vaccine, were deemed safe but failed to demonstrate that they significantly slowed the progression of cancer. Because cancer-associated antigens - such as those used in Provenge - are also found at low levels in healthy tissue, their ability to trigger a powerful immune response may be blunted. A second generation of vaccines, designed to provoke a stronger immune response, is under development, with some scientists now focusing on antigens that are found only on tumour cells. ... Over the past decade, researchers have reached a deeper understanding of how tumours actively suppress immune responses in their immediate environment, which can dampen responses to cancer vaccines. To overcome this, some therapies currently in development combine the vaccine with chemotherapies that are designed to counteract this immune suppression. ... For some in the field, the struggle to create effective cancer vaccines conjures up memories of the long battle to develop antibody-based therapies, which are now a mainstay of the biotechnology industry. There, too, a series of clinical-trial failures initially soured the field's reputation ... We realized you just have to test a lot of drugs to find one that works, and it's the same for a cancer vaccine."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100421/full/4641110a.html

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

This paper outlines the overlap between the ways in which both processes of aging and eating too much lead to the loss of muscle mass and strength: "Sarcopenia, which is defined by the loss of skeletal muscle mass, predisposes skeletal muscle to metabolic dysfunction which can precipitate metabolic disease. Similarly, overnutrition, which is a major health problem in modern society, also causes metabolic dysfunction in skeletal muscle and predisposition to metabolic disease. It is now the prevailing view that both aging and overnutrition negatively impact skeletal muscle metabolic homeostasis through deleterious effects on the mitochondria. Accordingly, interplay between the molecular pathways implicated in aging and overnutrition that induce mitochondrial dysfunction are apparent. Recent work from our laboratory has uncovered the stress-responsive mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) as a new player in the regulation of metabolic homeostasis in skeletal muscle and mitochondrial dysfunction caused by overnutrition. These observations raise the intriguing possibility that MKP-1 may function as a common target in the convergence between sarcopenia and overnutrition in a pathophysiological pathway that leads to a loss of skeletal muscle mitochondrial function." Going the other way, you might recall that calorie restriction helps to maintain muscle mass with age.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v2/n3/full/100135.html

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

Per the reliability theory of aging, we should expect to see shorter life expectancies result from damage or stress in early life. Here, a historical analysis supports that line of thinking: "Nutritional conditions in utero and during infancy may causally affect health and mortality during childhood, adulthood, and at old ages. This paper investigates whether exposure to a nutritional shock in early life negatively affects survival at older ages, using individual data. Nutritional conditions are captured by exposure to the Potato famine in the Netherlands in 1846-1847, and by regional and temporal variation in market prices of potato and rye. The data cover the lifetimes of a random sample of Dutch individuals born between 1812 and 1902 and provide individual information on life events and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. First we non-parametrically compare the total and residual lifetimes of individuals exposed and not exposed to the famine in utero and/or until age 1. Next, we estimate survival models in which we control for individual characteristics and additional (early life) determinants of mortality. We find strong evidence for long-run effects of exposure to the Potato famine. The results are stronger for boys than for girls. Boys and girls lose on average 4, respectively 2.5 years of life after age 50 after exposure at birth to the Potato famine. Lower social classes appear to be more affected by early life exposure to the Potato famine than higher social classes. These results confirm the mechanism linking early life (nutritional) conditions to old-age mortality."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20663577

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

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2016 Call for Abstracts

Deadline approaching - October 5, 2015

The American Psychosomatic Society is pleased to accept abstracts submissions for papers, posters and symposia for the

2016 Annual Scientific Meeting

Translating Research to Policy: From Bench to Policy

March 9-12, 2016 in Denver, CO

Details and directions on abstract submission are available at

http://www.psychosomatic.org

Abstract Deadline is October 5, 2015

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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/

An article by Ben Goertzel over at h+ Magazine discusses the Russia 2045 initiative, a program I've noted on a couple of occasions. A few highlights:

For 3 days in late February, Russian businessman Dmitry Itskov gathered 500+ futurists in Moscow for a "Global Future 2045 Congress" - the latest manifestation of his "Russia 2045" movement. ... The occurrence of a conference like this in Russia is no big shock, of course. Russia has a huge contingent of great scientists in multiple directly Singularity-relevant areas; and it also has an impressively long history of advanced technological thinking . My dear departed friend Valentin Turchin wrote a book with Singularitarian themes in the late 1960s, and the Russian Cosmists of the early 1900s discussed technological immortality, space colonization and other futurist themes long before they became popular in the West.

...

It's unclear from the online conference abstracts and other Russia 2045 materials just how much actual work is going in Russia on right now, explicitly oriented toward realizing the exciting visions Itskov describes; and it's also unclear to what extent Itskov's "Russia 2045" movement serves an active R&D role, versus a visionary and publicity role. It appears that most of the concrete science and engineering work at the conference was presented by scientists who had made their breakthroughs outside the context of the "Russia 2045" project; whereas Itskov and the other Russia 2045 staff were largely oriented toward high-level visioning. But of course, Russia 2045 is a new initiative, and may potentially draw more researchers into its fold as time progresses.

...

Ray Kurzweil gave a fairly glowing report, noting "It was a well funded conference, funded by a number of major corporations in Russia..... There was significant representation from the mainstream press. The ideas were taken seriously. There were people from companies, from academe, from government.... The comparison to Humanity+ or the Singularity Summit is reasonable.... The people at the conference (about 500-600) were pretty sophisticated about all the issues you and I talk and write about."

...

Clearly there are many smart scientists and engineers in Russia doing directly Singularity-relevant things; and Itskov's Russia 2045 organization seems to be doing a good job of attracting public and political attention to this work. What amount of concrete work is actually going on toward Itskov's list of grand goals is unclear to me at present, but certainly seems something to keep an eye on.

As Goertzel notes, there are the standard reasons for caution before becoming too taken by this project - but unlike the usual situation for an emerging initiative there is already a fair amount of money involved. So if we outsiders adopt a wait and see approach, matters will undoubtedly become more clear in time. Either there will be tangible progress, leading to more outreach and collaboration with the scientific community, or there will not. Either way it can be taken as a confirmation that the time is becoming right for far greater public support of longevity engineering: building longer healthy lives and attempting to reverse or effectively work around the consequences of aging.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

One of the many popular and distinct online communities that make up Reddit is IAmA ("I am a"), which runs verified question and answer sessions (AMAs, or "ask me anything") with all sorts of folk in interesting positions, with interesting jobs, or who are just plain interesting. You might consider it the crowdsourced, irreverent, collaborative offspring of chat shows, radio call-in programs, and the last ten years of online bulletin board evolution - this is what the kids do nowadays in place of turning on the TV or radio. In any case, I somehow entirely missed noting that a video AMA for Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Foundation has been running at Reddit to accumulate questions these past few days. Most AMAs are real-time posting sessions, but in this case the most upvoted questions will be passed on to de Grey to be answered in a video which will then be posted back to the community:

Aubrey de Grey is a leading scientist in the field of biomedical gerontology, the quest to develop true medical control of aging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey

Dr. de Grey wrote in this week and mentioned that he had been urged on several occasions in the past few months to do an AMA. There was a lot of interest in the possibility that he could do his AMA as a video reply to a selection of representative questions, in the way that Richard Dawkins did some time ago ... We'll take your top ten best questions for Aubrey de Grey and send them to him later this week to be answered on video.

Once you get past the lowest common denominator popular communities - Reddit really doesn't work well unless you create an account and start ruthlessly pruning what you see - Reddit is a fairly pro-longevity, pro-biotechnology, and pro-science community, supportive of the goal of extending the healthy human life span through medical science, and the sooner the better. It has been pleasant to see that emerging ever more readily in the online communities of the past ten years.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

Philosophy determines strategy - it matters greatly which of the answers to the fundamental existential questions you subscribe to. Consider questions of identity, for example: do you identify with the pattern that is you, or do you identify with the present slowly changing collection of physical structure that is you? If the former, you might consider destructively uploading the data of your mind to a robust computing system to be a fine strategy for the defeat of aging. If the latter, destructive uploading looks like an expensive and ornate suicide method - you are not your copy, and you will not survive the procedure. Doors to the future open or close depending on your philosophical inclinations. Here's a piece that reviews some of the spectrum of philosophical thinking on identity, which has been going on for a good deal longer than modern ideas and technologies have been around: "Star Trek-style teleportation may one day become a reality. You step into the transporter, which instantly scans your body and brain, vaporizing them in the process. The information is transmitted to Mars, where it is used by the receiving station to reconstitute your body and brain exactly as they were on Earth. You then step out of the receiving station, slightly dizzy, but pleased to arrive on Mars in a few minutes, as opposed to the year it takes by old-fashioned spacecraft. But wait. Do you really step out of the receiving station on Mars? Someone just like you steps out, someone who apparently remembers stepping into the transporter on Earth a few minutes before. But perhaps this person is merely your replica - a kind of clone or copy. That would not make this person you: in Las Vegas there is a replica of the Eiffel Tower, but the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, not in Las Vegas. If the Eiffel Tower were vaporized and a replica instantly erected in Las Vegas, the Eiffel Tower would not have been transported to Las Vegas. It would have ceased to exist. And if teleportation were like that, stepping into the transporter would essentially be a covert way of committing suicide."

Link: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/alex_byrne_philosophy_personal_identity_afterlife.php

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

Telomeres are the ends of the chromosome, caps of repeating DNA sequences that shorten with each cell division and lengthen according to the activity of the enzyme telomerase - this is a very dynamic process, responding differently to circumstances in different cells and tissue types. Telomere length somewhat acts as a countdown clock, moving a cell towards shutdown after a certain number of divisions rather than permitting continued replication, but as for all matters biological the telomere-telomerase-chromosome system considered as a whole is exceedingly complex. It influences and is influenced by many other important cellular systems and feedback loops: mitochondrial damage, for example, appears tied to telomere length and telomerase activity. Thus even as data rolls in ever faster in this age of biotechnology, the telomere story has stubbornly remained that telomeres generally become shorter on average with age or ill health or stress, and that this shortening might be a contribution to aging or it might only be a marker for other cellular changes and damage that occurs with aging.

This is an important distinction to draw: we should find ways to fix and reverse the changes that are fundamental, that are causes of aging. But we don't have to fix and reverse the markers and secondary changes. If we repair the root causes, the many other line items should take care of themselves. But biology is complicated - obtaining the answers for processes that are right down there in the depths of the cellular machinery, central to everything and touching on everything, takes time.

Here's a good editorial from Impact Aging, very readable for the layperson:

Not surprisingly, given that species differ in many other relevant aspects of their biology, including the pattern of activity of the telomere-restoring enzyme telomerase simple comparisons of average telomere length across species do not map directly onto interspecific variation in maximum lifespan. In relatively long-lived species, telomerase is downregulated in most somatic cells, thought to have evolved as a mechanism to counteract an increased risk of tumour formation, particularly in endotherms. One potential cost of this is that tissue renewal capacity is limited, resulting in somatic deterioration with age.

However, within a given long-lived species, there is good reason to predict that variation in average telomere length in somatic cells will be related to potential lifespan. Examining this link is fraught with difficulties, not least of which is that studies covering the entire lifespan of a cohort of long lived animals take a very long time. Circumventing this by looking at telomere length and subsequent survival in individuals that are already old omits all the individuals who died early in life (and who may have had the shortest telomeres). The alternative approach of comparing average telomere length in a cross sectional sample of individuals of different ages suffers from a related bias; mean telomere length could actually appear to increase with age if individuals with short telomeres die and so drop out of the sample. Furthermore, since telomere length is a dynamic character, if it is predictive of lifespan, we also need to know at what life history stage the relationship is strongest. Longitudinal studies are therefore essential.

Time is the most precious thing for us, and it is unfortunate that finding the necessary information that would allow the research community to be more effective in addressing the causes of aging - by eliminating potential mechanisms from the "must fix" list - might at this point take up more time than it would save.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

An Australian program featuring researchers Aubrey de Grey and David Sinclair: "It feels like science fiction, but it's actually true. And we're really at the cutting edge, it's a really exciting time in the field right now. ... There's no such thing as ageing gracefully. I don't meet people who want to get Alzheimer's disease, or who want to get cancer or arthritis or any of the other things that afflict the elderly. Ageing is bad for you, and we better just actually accept that. As far as I'm concerned, ageing is humanity's worst problem, by some serious distance. ... Now if you think that's an overstatement, consider this: world-wide, a hundred and fifty thousand people die each day, two-thirds of them from ageing. That means potentially one hundred thousand people could be saved every day with therapies that combat ageing. ... Ageing is simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That's all that ageing is. What it's going to take is development of thoroughly comprehensive regenerative medicine for ageing. That means medicine which can repair the molecular and cellular damage that accumulates in our bodies throughout life, as side effects of our normal metabolic processes. ... We do not know what humanity of the future is going to want to do. If thirty or fifty years from now people don't have the problems that we thought they might have, but we didn't develop those therapies, so those people have to die anyway, after a long period of decrepitude and disease, then they're not going to be terribly happy are they? That's why we have a moral obligation to develop these technologies as soon as possible."

Link: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3465499.htm

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

If you can have a range of single nucleotide polymorphisms and other quirks of your DNA analyzed by mail and presented via an online service, then why not the same for the length of your telomeres?

Telomeres - the terminal caps of chromosomes - become shorter as individuals age, and there is much interest in determining what causes telomere attrition since this process may play a role in biological aging. The leading hypothesis is that telomere attrition is due to inflammation, exposure to infectious agents, and other types of oxidative stress, which damage telomeres and impair their repair mechanisms. Several lines of evidence support this hypothesis, including observational findings that people exposed to infectious diseases have shorter telomeres.

At least two nascent companies presently aim to commercialize telomere measurement technologies: Telomere Health and Life Length were recently featured in Scientific American:

"Knowing whether our telomeres are a normal length or not for a given chronological age will give us an indication of our health status and of our physiological 'age' even before diseases appear," says Maria A. Blasco, who heads the Telomeres and Telomerase Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and who co-founded the company Life Length in September. Telomere research pioneer Calvin B. Harley, who co-founded Telome Health last spring with Nobel laureate Elizabeth H. Blackburn, considers telomere length "probably the best single measure of our integrated genetics, previous lifestyle and environmental exposures." Beginning as early as this spring, the companies will offer telomere-measurement tests to research centers and companies studying the role of telomeres in aging and disease; the general public may have access by the fall through doctors and laboratories, perhaps even directly.

I think that these initiatives are not so interesting in and of themselves, but should be considered as part of a powerful trend now underway. The marketplace for personal biochemical information supplied on demand, via mail and internet, will only grow as the underlying technologies become cheaper, more reliable, and possible to run at scale. One very desirable next stage in the evolution of this marketplace is to do away with the mail portion - the need to send samples in envelopes to a central processing location. The tools of analysis are becoming ever cheaper, and it won't be too many more years before it is cost-effective for most people in the developed world to produce raw data from their own biochemistries with desktop devices at home. The results will be sent over the network to be processed, analyzed, and matched against sophisticated databases owned by for-pay subscription services.

This vision will of course be fought against tooth and nail by the myriad entrenched interests in the command and control style medical systems of the Western nations - those who benefit from medical regulation at the expense of progress. These interests can't stop the internet, however, and nor can they regulate devices that connect to encrypted services outside the US. Distributed medicine, in which a great deal of the process of managing diagnosis and data collection rests with ordinary people, is the inevitable end result of falling costs in biotechnology and communication technologies. This is a good thing, and the sooner all opposed give up and go home, the better.