The immune system is a powerful tool for the selective destruction of unwanted cells, and researchers are a fair way down the road of engineering the activity of the immune system to form therapies. You might look at granulocyte transplant therapy as an example of the sort of tools that are under development. Here is an article on another line of research that has just reached the stage of early tests in humans:

In the research published Wednesday, doctors at the University of Pennsylvania say the treatment made the most common type of leukemia completely disappear in two of the patients and reduced it by 70 percent in the third. In each of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away in a few weeks, and a year later it is still gone.

...

the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients. In similar past experimental treatments for several types of cancer the re-injected white cells killed a few cancer cells and then died out. But the Penn researchers inserted a gene that made the white blood cells multiply by a thousand fold inside the body. The result, as researcher June put it, is that the white blood cells became "serial killers" relentlessly tracking down and killing the cancer cells in the blood, bone marrow and lymph tissue.

An editorial and research paper are available if you are interested in delving further into the details. Unfortunately this work suffers from much the same problem as efforts to develop granulocyte transplant therapies, which is that there are next to no sources of funding for research groups at the cutting edge of immunotherapy. The article relates what is a sadly common story in this part of the scientific community:

So why has this remarkable treatment been tried so far on only three patients? Both the National Cancer Institute and several pharmaceutical companies declined to pay for the research. Neither applicants nor funders discuss the reasons an application is turned down. But good guesses are the general shortage of funds and the concept tried in this experiment was too novel and, thus, too risky for consideration. The researchers did manage to get a grant from the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy, a charity founded by Barbara and Edward Netter after their daughter-in-law died of cancer. The money was enough to finance the trials on the first three patients.

This is a good example of how philanthropy modeled on venture investment - backing a range of early stage, high risk, high reward projects - can help break up the log-jams that result from institutional reluctance to fund the cutting edge in any field. The larger an institution, the more they will tend towards only backing the safe choices, but by doing that they ensure that the backing of their resources has little chance of producing radical change. Hopefully other projects, such as work on granulocyte based therapies, can find the connections needed to benefit from similar sources of funding and vision.

Another potential method to treat or minimize the progession of sarcopenia: researchers "report that a family of protein transcription factors, called 'Forkhead (Fox0)' plays a significant role in the regulation of skeletal muscle mass. Specifically, they found that interfering with the activity of these transcription factors prevents muscle wasting associated with cancer and sepsis, and even promotes muscle growth. This discovery is likely to be relevant to any disease, condition or lifestyle that leads to muscle wasting, including voluntary inactivity. [Researchers] genetically inhibited the activity of 'Forkhead boxO' proteins, or 'FoxO,' in the skeletal muscle of healthy control mice, septic mice, and mice with cancer. The loss of muscle mass in those with cancer and sepsis was significantly decreased by inhibition of FoxO activity. In healthy control animals inhibiting FoxO activity caused an increase in muscle cell size which occurred as a result of protein synthesis. ... FoxO proteins may provide a target for therapies aimed at reducing muscle wasting and thus improving the quality of life and survival rates for patients with many different diseases."

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/foas-nwn022912.php

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

Good news is now arriving frequently from the tissue engineering community, who really seem to be hitting their stride of late, especially when it comes to muscle. Recreating structured muscle is the simple stuff on a relative scale of difficulty - at least in comparison to lungs and other intricate organs - but this is still a very challenging task. Dumb muscle isn't just dumb muscle: it has to be the right shape, have the right nerve structures, the right distribution of tiny blood vessels, the right layering and fiber types, and so forth. Don't underestimate just how much work was involved in coming to the point at which researchers can announce this latest advance:

Researchers have built the first functional anal sphincters in the laboratory, suggesting a potential future treatment for both fecal and urinary incontinence. Made from muscle and nerve cells, the sphincters developed a blood supply and maintained function when implanted in mice.

...

Current options for repair of the internal anal sphincter include grafts of skeletal muscle, injectable silicone material or implantation of mechanical devices, all of which have high complication rates and limited success. To engineer an internal anal sphincter in the laboratory, the researchers used a small biopsy from a human sphincter and isolated smooth muscle cells that were then multiplied in the lab. In a ring-shaped mold, these cells were layered with nerve cells isolated from mice to build the sphincter. The mold was placed in an incubator for nine days, allowing for tissue formation. The entire process took about six weeks.

Numerous laboratory tests of the engineered sphincters, including stimulating the nerve cells, showed normal tissue function, such as the ability to relax and contract. The sphincters were then implanted just under the skin of mice to determine how they would respond in the body. Mice with suppressed immune systems were selected so that there would be no issues with rejection. ... After 25 days of implantation, each sphincter was re-tested and also compared with the animals' native sphincters. The engineered sphincters had developed a blood vessel supply and continued to function like native tissue.

As the news release points out, this is one of the areas where the available prosthetic alternatives are just not that great; engineering a replacement sphincter in machinery is a hard challenge at our present level of technological prowess. So that a research team has constructed a functional biological sphincter is very promising - and this is especially true given that there are dozens of sphincters scattered throughout the body. It is an oft-reused structure, and being able to build any one type of sphincter from a patient's own cells implies that building the others is also a very realistic goal. So all in all, this is an encouraging example of progress in the field.

Another of the many benefits of exercise: a study "shows that a small amount of physical exercise could profoundly protect the elderly from long-term memory loss that can happen suddenly following infection, illnesses or injury in old age. ... aging rats that ran just over half a kilometer each week were protected against infection-induced memory loss. ... Our research shows that a small amount of physical exercise by late middle-aged rats profoundly protects against exaggerated inflammation in the brain and long-lasting memory impairments that follow a serious bacterial infection. Strikingly, this small amount of running was sufficient to confer robust benefits for those that ran over those that did not run. This is an important finding because those of advanced age are more vulnerable to memory impairments following immune challenges such as bacterial infections or surgery. With baby boomers currently at retirement age, the risk of diminished memory function in this population is of great concern. Thus, effective noninvasive therapies are of substantial clinical value. ... Past research has shown that exercise in humans protects against declines in cognitive function associated with aging and protects against dementia. Researchers also have shown that dementia is often preceded by bacterial infections, such as pneumonia, or other immune challenges. ... Previous research has shown that immune cells of the brain, called microglia, become more reactive with age. When the older rats in the study encountered a bacterial infection, these immune cells released inflammatory molecules called cytokines in an exaggerated and prolonged manner. ... In the current study we found that small amounts of voluntary exercise prevented the priming of microglia, the exaggerated inflammation in the brain, and the decrease of growth factors."

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/uoca-sao080911.php

The evolutionary view of cancer and aging is that these end points stand in opposition: complex organisms such as mammals evolve to some point of balance between risk of cancer and certainty of accelerated aging. This happens because the mechanisms that suppress cancer also inhibit the necessary regenerative capacity to maintain tissue function: it's largely a matter of how free cells are to divide and multiply, taking into account the increasing levels of damage and mutation with age - which increase the chance of a cancer developing.

In research focused on this balance between aging and cancer, two genes - and the proteins they produce - are especially important: p53 and p16. Both can suppress cancer, but at the cost of accelerated aging:

• On p53 and Aging
• Understanding a Tumor Suppression Gene

p16 has been particularly interesting of late because it appears to be a plausible candidate for the cancer immunity observed in naked mole rats:

the mole rat's cells express a gene called p16 that makes the cells 'claustrophobic,' stopping the cells' proliferation when too many of them crowd together, cutting off runaway growth before it can start. The effect of p16 is so pronounced that when researchers mutated the cells to induce a tumor, the cells' growth barely changed

Unfortunately, as recent research illustrates, making use of this knowledge isn't as easy as just ramping up p16 gene expression in other mammal species:

"I didn't anticipate that increased production of the p16 tumor suppressor protein would so readily promote aging," says Enders, who led the study. "The p16 protein has been previously associated with aging, and we know its expression increases during late stages of aging. But the idea that its expression would be sufficient to generate features of aging was surprising."

Although scientists know that loss of p16 is associated with numerous human tumors, they know much less about the function of p16 in normal cells and tissues. To explore this, Enders' team engineered a strain of mice that enables them to control p16 expression in various tissues and at various times in an animal's lifespan. They quickly found that turning on p16 blocked cell proliferation in normal tissues.

The implications of blocked cell proliferation emerged when they expressed p16 in animals that were not yet fully mature. "They developed features of premature aging," Enders says. "To my knowledge, this is the first model that induces striking characteristics of premature aging where there is no macromolecular damage. The premature aging appears to be the result of blocking cell proliferation."

In this respect, p16 is very similar in behavior to p53. But that in fact means that there is great promise inherent in p16 research: a few years ago, Spanish researchers engineered their way around the aging-cancer balance in mice for p53, producing mice that suffered less cancer and lived 50% longer than normal. Trying a similar approach with p16 sounds very plausible. It is also possible that their work is analogous to the biology of naked mole-rats, animals that manage to live vastly longer than the members of other similarly sized rodent species, and this despite their evolved usage of p16 and apparently complete immunity to cancer. Equally, mole-rats might exhibit yet another completely different configuration of mammalian biology - one that it may soon be possible to reverse engineer and test in mice.

Answers to this sort of speculation still lie in the near future, but research into the biochemistry of p16 and p53 is worth keeping an eye on. Few other methodologies can claim to have extended healthy life in mice by as much as that mentioned above, and, furthermore, somewhere in the biology of these species lies a way to simply turn off cancer.

There exists a fair-sized research community whose members think about extending healthy human life by manipulating the long term operation of metabolism. They are looking at small and incremental gains, however, and don't expect success in their work over the next ten to twenty years to go much beyond providing a few additional years of life and generally better health throughout life. This will be achieved through ways of mimicking calorie restriction or other life-extending genetic and epigenetic alterations discovered in mice. This is a far cry from the quality and quantity of life extension we'd expect to emerge from a mature SENS technology base, focused on repair of the low-level biological damage that causes aging, but it is the focus of the mainstream - much as we'd like that to be different.

In this world of incremental advances and manipulation of metabolism, researchers are becoming increasingly aware that they cannot ignore the vast population of symbiotic bacteria we carry with us throughout our lives. You can look back in the Fight Aging! archives to see that evidence has emerged in recent years to support the idea that changes in gut bacteria may be significant for long-term health:

• Intestinal Bacteria and Ageing
• Aging and the Role of Your Bacteria

The intestinal microbiota is important for maintenance of host health, providing energy, nutrients and protection against invading organisms. Although the colonic microbiota is relatively stable throughout adult life, age-related changes in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, as well as changes in diet and host immune system reactivity, inevitably affect population composition. Recent studies indicate shifts in the composition of the intestinal microbiota, which may lead to detrimental effects for the elderly host.

Here is a more recent paper on the same topic, entitled "Gut microbiota as a candidate for lifespan extension", which looks toward turning understanding into action:

On the basis of recent knowledge in worms, flies, and humans, an important role of the gut microbiota in aging and longevity is emerging. The complex bacterial community that populates the gut and that represents an evolutionary adapted ecosystem correlated with nutrition appears to limit the accumulation of pathobionts and infections in all taxa, being able of affecting the efficiency of the host immune system and exerting systemic metabolic effects.

There is an urgent need to disentangle the underpinning molecular mechanisms, which could shed light on the basic mechanisms of aging in an ecological perspective. Thus, it appears possible to extend healthy aging and lifespan by targeting the host as a metaorganism by manipulating the complex symbiotic ecosystem of gut microbiota, as well as other possible ecosystems of the body.

I think we'll be seeing more of this line of thinking in the years ahead - it hasn't been greatly explored and there's an increasing level of interest in slowing aging through metabolic manipulation. This fits right in to that research community and its interests.

This post at Less Wrong makes the case for cryonics as a business that would work well at large scale: "Cryonics scales very well. People who argue from the perspective that cryonics is costly are probably not aware of this fact. Even assuming you needed to come up with the lump sum all at once rather than steadily pay into life insurance, the fact is that most people would be able to afford it if most people wanted it. There are some basic physical reasons why this is the case. ... Surface area is where heat gains entry. Thus if you have a huge container holding cryogenic goods (humans in this case) it costs less per unit volume (human) than is the case with a smaller container that is equally well insulated. ... liquid nitrogen, the super-cheap coolant used by cryonics facilities around the world, is vastly cheaper (more than a factor of 10) when purchased in huge quantities of several tons. The scaling factors for storage tanks and high-capacity tanker trucks are a big part of the reason for this. ... The conclusion I get from this is that there is a very strong self-interested case (as well as the altruistic case) to be made for the promotion of megascale cryonics towards the mainstream, as opposed to small independently run units for a few of us die-hard futurists."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2f5/cryonics_wants_to_be_big/

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

Resveratrol may be helpful in reducing the growth of prostate cancer cells and also provides a myriad of other health benefits.

According to the US Agricultural Research Service, the compound responsible for the so called “French Paradox” is proving to be a potent weapon against one of the deadliest killers around – prostate cancer.

The statement from the US ARS came about because of a study that was published in the medical journal Carcinogenesis. In the said study, in-vitro testing showed that prostate cancer cells actually died when they were exposed to the potent compound, resveratrol.

Throwing caution into the air

While it was true that cancer cell inhibition took place when the prostate cancer cells were exposed to the compound, it also increased the growth of blood vessels after the initial death of cancer cells, according to Thomas Wang, a researcher working for the Diet, Genomics and Immunology Laboratory of the US ARS.

The growth of extra blood vessels in the site of the prostate cancer was observed in laboratory animals who were genetically prone to developing prostate cancer.  Each of the animal subjects had been given 3 to 6 milligrams of the potent compound, which was equivalent to the amount of resveratrol found in six glasses of red wine.

What does this all mean?

According Wang, more research is needed to further substantiate the potential anti-cancer benefits of resveratrol.  He also stated there should be a clear focus on studying the effective dosage needed for cancer prevention as well as important factors such as interaction with other chemical compounds and timing.  In short – people shouldn’t be complacent with just taking large amounts of supplements.

The issue of overabundance

Nutrients (like vitamins, theanine and resveratrol) are still biological compounds, whether we like it or not.  With the proliferation of nutritional supplements in the market, it’s hard not to take extra doses of these supplements because of the health benefits.  Folic acid for one, is being taken in large amounts by people because of its numerous purported health benefits.

But did you know that too much of this nutrient can actually encourage the growth of cancer cells?

According to Joel Mason, a program director for the US ARS, cancer requires a very complex process in order to survive.  And one of the requirements for cell growth are nutrients like folic acid.

If you get more than four hundred micrograms of folic acid per day, you just might be encouraging the growth of cancer cells, instead of preventing it.

Too much folic acid can actually facilitate the DNA replication process necessary for the growth of cancer cells.  Watch what you eat – if you take a high-nutrient shake in the morning and eat folic-acid loaded snacks toward the end of the day, you just might be taking in too much of the nutrient.

Other benefits of resveratrol

1. Resveratrol helps promote a healthy heart by reducing oxidative stress and by improve blood circulation.  It also reduces the incidence of swelling or inflammation in the body’s tissues, as well as reduce unnecessary clotting in the blood vessels, which may lead to embolisms or even stroke.

2. In another study, it was shown that resveratrol prevented the initial processes required for cancer growth.

3. Studies show that resveratrol can help seniors by reducing the risk of neurological diseases and neural degeneration.

4. Coupled with calorie reduction, resveratrol can make a person resistant to many chronic and degenerative conditions such as heart diseases and even diabetes.

5. If used in conjunction with supplements like co-enzyme Q10 and omega 3 fatty acids, resveratrol can protect you from conditions like coronary heart disease.

6. Resveratrol has also been shown to reduce damage caused by stroke.

Sources:
nutraingredients.com
altmedicine.about.com
longevity.about.com
longevity.about.com
altmedicine.about.com
longevity.about.com
wine.about.com
altmedicine.about.com

Discuss this post in Frank Mangano’s forum!

A study published in an issue of Cell Metabolism revealed that researchers found that the consumption of spinach can increase the performance of the power house of the cells, the mitochondria.

A team of researchers observed how doses of inorganic nitrate can improve a person’s muscle performance. They gathered a group of healthy people and asked them to take in specific amounts of inorganic nitrate.  This lasted for a period of three days and researchers then observed how their oxygen consumption responded to the change in diet. The results of the study were published in the science journal Cell Metabolism. But despite the promising results, the researchers said that they are not recommending the intake of inorganic nitrate food supplements basing on the results of their study alone. They added that they are recommending the consumption of natural sources like green vegetables and fruits to obtain the health benefit of nitrate.

Head researcher from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, Eddie Weitzberg, said that the dosage of nitrate which they used in the study is equivalent to that contained in a small spinach plate and three red beets. He added that the consumption of more vegetables and fruits can help reduce the risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But it is unclear which nutrients in these natural food sources are responsible for producing the effects. The researchers are looking at inorganic nitrate as one of the strongest candidate.

Nitrate: Under the Magnifying Glass

The nutritional value of nitrate is not well established compared to other well-studied nutrients. Other people are considering nitrate as a toxic substance that may produce adverse effects to the body in high amounts. But the researchers found that nitrate can be beneficial to the body by acting as a co-producer of nitric oxide assisted by good bacteria present in the mouth. Nitric oxide had been found by decades of scientific research to be beneficial in opening up the blood vessels, lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

The Swedish researchers found another health advantage of nitrate and its resulting nitric oxide. The mitochondria is responsible for providing power to the cells. But levels of protein decreases in the process of increasing its efficiency which in turn makes the mitochondria become leaky. Weitzberg said that the mitochondria is not fully efficient in normal circumstances and added that no machine is.

The study showed that the increase intake of nitrate through diet can have an immediate effect to the body by increasing the efficiency of the mitochondria. But researchers are still finding a way to determine the long term effects of eating inorganic nitrate to people. Weitzberg said that their next study will focus on observing the effects of inorganic nitrate to people with health conditions concerning the mitochondria like mitochondrial dysfunction, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

The researchers concluded that other studies had been consistent in saying that eating fruits and vegetables can have positive effects to the body like the prevention of certain diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But despite this, they added that the mechanisms responsible for producing these effects are still not for certain. Weitzberg also said that certain organisms in the mouth need to be present in order to fully take advantage of the health benefits of nitrate; the use of strong mouthwashes can kill these microorganisms and may prevent the production of the nitric oxide in the body.

Health Benefits of Eating Spinach

Spinach is an epic vegetable with tons of health benefits but which is dreaded by most kids. It has more nutrients than any other vegetable and is very available throughout the year; but it has the best flavor during its season which runs from September to October. The vegetable belongs to the family of beets and Swiss chard and has a similar taste with the other vegetables in its group. Spinach has a distinctive mild and sweet taste which makes it perfect for making salads, but the taste becomes more robust and acidic once cooked. The three types of Spinach available in the market are baby spinach ideal for salads, smooth-leaf and savoy.

The Anti-Cancer and Anti-Inflammatory Health Benefits of Spinach

Studies had found that spinach has more flavonoid content than other vegetables. Researchers had identified more than a dozen favonoids in spinach which are effective in reducing cellular inflammation and the risk of developing certain types of cancer. The evidences indicating that the potential antioxidant value of spinach is strong enough for research to extract these compounds for controlled laboratory studies. And they found that the compounds are effective in reducing the cell division rate of human stomach cancer cells.

Studies using laboratory animals also showed that the extracts can inhibit the growth of skin pappilomas or skin cancer cells. In addition, a related study found that women with higher intake of spinach have lower risk and incidence of breast cancer than women who ate less of the jade green vegetable.

Spinach is also a good source of carotenoids and other antioxidants like vitamin E, beta-carotene, manganese, vitamin C and zinc that have been found to inhibit inflammation and reduce cancer risk. The peptides in spinach can also lower blood pressure and help in treating and lowering the risk of certain diseases like atherosclerosis and other blood-vessel related problems.

Two other important and powerful antioxidants can also be found in spinach. These are zeaxanthin and lutein which can naturally be found in certain areas of the eye like the macula and retina. Though there hasn’t been any large scale study which investigated the effects of lutein and zeaxanthin in preventing eye problems like macular degeneration, studies have found that the consumption of spinach can increase the concentration of lutein in the blood.

Spinach for Bone Health

A cup of boiled spinach contains around 100 percent more of the body’s daily requirement of vitamin K; this nutrient is essential in preventing the excessive activation of osteoclasts which are responsible for breaking down the bones. In addition to this, vitamin K reacts with certain microorganisms in the stomach to produce vitamin K2 which is an important component in the production of more osteocalcin in the bones. Osteocalcin helps in storing more calcium in the bones to make it stronger. There’s a reason why Popeye always had a can of spinach with him.

Sources
eurekalert.org
whfoods.com
spinachwords.com
buzzle.com

Discuss this post in Frank Mangano’s forum!

As this Independent article shows, the public view of longevity science extends little beyond the goal of slowing aging espoused by mainstream researchers, and conflates the fakery and fraud of "anti-aging" cosmetics companies with real science: "We spend millions of pounds each year on anti-ageing tonics, potions, vitamins and creams, trying to stave off the ravages of the years. But our genetic inheritance trumps all other factors in determining how well we age and how long we live. By unravelling the genetic determinants of longevity, scientists believe they will be able to manipulate them to add not only years to life, but also life to years. An elixir of youth remains a distant dream but medicines to help us live longer and better are moving closer. At a conference this week, Turning Back the Clock, organised by the Royal Society, researchers described the progress that has been made in the science of ageing. At least 10 gene mutations have been identified that extend the lifespan of mice by up to half, and in humans several genetic variants have been linked with longevity. They include a family of genes dubbed the sirtuins, which one Italian study found occurred more commonly in centenarian men than in the general population. A subsidiary of drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is now looking at sirtuins, and their association with a range of age-related diseases including type 2 diabetes and cancers."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/has-the-elixir-of-youth-come-of-age-1971341.html

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

An open access paper from Impact Aging: "The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (MFRTA) is currently one of the most widely accepted theories used to explain aging. From MFRTA three basic predictions can be made: long-lived individuals or species should produce fewer mitochondrial Reactive Oxygen Species (mtROS) than short-lived individuals or species; a decrease in mtROS production will increase lifespan; and an increase in mtROS production will decrease lifespan. It is possible to add a further fourth prediction: if ROS is controlling longevity separating these parameters through selection would be impossible. These predictions have been tested in Drosophila melanogaster." Where I think the researchers go wrong here lies in not accounting for how differences in mitochondrial composition might affect the level of damage caused by a given amount of ROS. There is a strong argument that species life span differences have a lot to do with how resilient mitochondria are to damage. But read the paper anyway; it's a good introduction to thinking about the mitochondrial free radical theory of aging.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v2/n4/full/100137.html

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

Ten minutes of exercise produces benefits that can last for up to one hour. Exercise also has endless benefits that makes it the most natural anti-aging activity around.

In a recent study performed by researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital, it was found that ten minutes worth of real exercise (jogging, walking, etc.) produced positive changes in a person’s metabolism that last for at least one hour.

This means that the more you exercise, literally, the more calories and fat your process and burn.  So in a way, exercise can create that very healthy addiction: the more you exercise, the more benefits you get on an exponential rate.  It’s a healthy cycle that everyone should adapt for a healthier, more vibrant life.

The study involved 70 participants who engaged in exercise and were measured based on their speed, oxygen intake and general fitness profile.  It was found that thinner people were generally more able to handle the exercise and produce more metabolites associated with calorie and fat-burning.  Inversely, heftier individuals showed signs of possible heart problems such as shortness of breath – a dire reminder what excess weight could do to the heart.

Why exercise is good for you

We all know that exercise is good for us, and here’s why:

1.  Exercising lifts depressive moods and improves your mental outlook, instantly. - exercise activates the production of chemicals in the brain that allows you to feel better.  It’s the body’s natural means of rewarding the body for a hard day’s work.

In addition to this, exercise reduces the total fat percentage in the body, which makes you look more fit and healthy – this always gives people reasons to smile and feel good about themselves.

Think of exercise as a cost-effective way of gaining more self confidence and becoming healthier over the long term.  This type of investment requires nothing but your willpower and time.

2.  Exercise keeps your heart healthy - regular exercise (at least 30 minutes everyday) lowers your blood pressure, burns excess fat, improves your circulation, lower bad cholesterol and makes you look younger, too!

3.  Exercise – the only weight loss tool you will ever need –forget all those fad diets. Exercise is the real deal. Exercise directly burns fat, controls your appetite and increases your metabolism naturally – no pills, fad diets or special supplements needed.

4.  Who needs energy bars when you’ve got exercise? - people experience low energy levels even if they eats lots of calories. So forget about energy bars and sugar & sodium-packed energy drinks. Instead of buying another energy bar, start walking daily for extra energy throughout the day.

5.  Quality sleep – if you schedule your exercise in such a way that you have cooled down sufficiently at bedtime, you will get better sleep.

6.  More loving with exercise – having problems with lovemaking? Exercise may be the key. Exercise naturally energizes you, even after a hard day’s work. A run on the treadmill just might be the key for better lovemaking.

7.  Exercise is fun! - why do people run or walk everyday? Well they are doing it not just for the benefits. They do it because it is fun! Try to find an exercise or sport that fits your needs. Find something that entertains you as well. Dancing, stretching and even Olympic wrestling can make you very fit.

8.  Exercise calms you down – when you exercise, the body’s core temperature is increased. When you cool down, the natural cooling process relaxes the whole body and allows your body to de-stress at its own pace.

9.  Better immune system – exercise increases your body’s natural defense system. Even cancer survivors will attest to the vibrancy they felt after engaging in a specially-tailored exercise regimen, which helps them cope with the side effects of cancer treatment.

Sources:
news.yahoo.com
mayoclinic.com
mayoclinic.com
mayoclinic.com

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An interesting study that provides another view of the relationship between accumulating damage, repair systems, and life span in cells: "Yeast cells, much like our own cells, have a finite ability to reproduce themselves. A 'mother' cell can only produce 20-30 'daughters' before it loses the ability to replicate and dies. ... Multidrug resistance (MDR) proteins are best known for helping cancer cells expel anticancer drugs - hence their name - but they also ferry compounds in and out of normal cells. [Researchers] found that yeast lacking certain MDR proteins have a shorter reproductive lifespan; they produce fewer daughter cells. Yeast engineered to contain more of these pumps, however, can produce more daughters. ... during division, the mother conserves damaged proteins and other cellular components that could prove harmful to the bud. ... Indeed, some research groups have posited that the mother's finite reproductive capability is the result of accumulating these damaged and toxic compounds. ... yeast division also results in an unequal distribution of MDR proteins. The mother cell retains the original MDR proteins while the bud gets young, newly formed MDR proteins. Because the mother's supply is never replenished, she has to rely on the pool of MDR proteins that she's born with. ... Over time these proteins decay. Some lose only part of their function; others may stop working altogether."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100725/full/news.2010.373.html

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

We no longer have to guess. Harvard Medical School released a paper outlining the only five exercises weneed topracticeto get the best outcomefor our bodies. And the resultsaresurprising!

Dont like going to the gym? No problem! Part of the reason that these exercises are so fantastic isthat you dont necessarily need a gym membership. As the Harvard researchers say:

Some of the best physical activities for your body dont require the gym or that you get fit enough to run a marathon.

The researchers elaborate that these five workouts can do wonders for you health, as you will experience a wide range of benefits:

The researchers found after extensive research that swimming has a positive affect on mental health in particular mood. Swimming is for all its intents and purposes a very healthy form of exercise for the body. The buoyancy of the water takes the strain off your joints and allows you to move them more fluidly.

For example; swimming is good for individuals with arthritis because its less weight bearing, explains Dr. I-Min Lee, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Termed meditation in motion, Tai Chi is a Chinese martial arts practice that incorporates movement and relaxation. The researchers elaborate: Tai Chi is made up of a series of graceful movements, one transitioning smoothly into the next.

Because the classes are offered at various levels, Tai Chi is accessible, and valuable, for people of all ages and fitness levels.

Dr Lee adds: Its particularly good for older people because balance is an important component of fitness, and balance is something we lose as we get older.

Contrary to common myth, strength training will not bulk up your muscles. However, it will keep them strong. As Dr Lee says; If you dont use muscles, they will lose their strength over time. It also helps to preserve your memory in the long run.

Muscles helps to burn calories: The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, so its easier to maintain your weight, says Dr. Lee. However, you need to learn the proper form for strength training so that you do not injure yourself.

The researchers elaborate: Before starting a weight-training program, be sure to learn the proper form. Start light with just one or two pounds. You should be able to lift the weights 10 times with ease. After a couple of weeks, increase that by a pound or two. If you can easily lift the weights through the entire range of motion more than 12 times, move up to slightly heavier weight.

Walking is a low intensity exercise, that is easy to do and highly beneficial! The researchers share the following benefits:

Walking improves cholesterol levels, strengthen your bones, keeps blood pressure in check, lifts your mood, keeps you slim, and lowers the risk for a number of diseases (diabetes and heart disease for example).

A number of studies have also shown that walking can improve your memory and prevent memory loss.

All you need is a well-fitting and supportive pair of shoes. Start with walking for about 10-15 minutes at a time. Over time you can start to walk farther and faster until youre walking for 30 to 60 minutes on most days of the week, the researchers explain.

(We are also fans of WalkingThe.Earth and this great story from Kenya.)

While these exercises might not fast track you to getting the figure you have always wanted, they do something as important. Kegel exercises strengthen your pelvic floor muscles which support your bladder. These exercises go a long way to preventing incontinence in both men and women.

How To Do A Kegel Exercise

The researchers explain: To do a Kegel exercise correctly, squeeze and release the muscles you would use to stop urination or prevent you from passing gas. Alternate quick squeezes and releases with longer contractions that you hold for 10 seconds, and the release for 10 seconds. Work up to three 3 sets of 10-15 Kegel exercises each day.

Many of the things we do for fun (and work) count as exercise. Raking the yard counts as physical activity. So does ballroom dancing and playing with your kids or grand children. As long as youre doing some form of aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, and you include two days of strength training a week, you can consider yourself an active person.

Follow this link to learn how exercise can make your brain younger.

Read the original post:
The 5 Best Exercises For A Healthy Body - Longevity LIVE

As time progresses, researchers are increasingly able to correlate changing mental characteristics in aging with changing structure in the brain. Here is one example: "A brain-mapping study [has] found that people's ability to make decisions in novel situations decreases with age and is associated with a reduction in the integrity of two specific white-matter pathways that connect an area in the cerebral cortex called the medial prefrontal cortex with two other areas deeper in the brain. Grey matter is the part of the brain that contains the bodies of the neurons while white matter contains the cable-like axons that carry signals from one part of the brain to another. In the past, most brain-imaging research has concentrated on the grey matter. Recently, however, neuroscientists have begun looking more closely at white matter. It has been linked to the brain's processing speed and attention span, among other things, but this is the first study to link white matter to learning and decision making. ... The evidence that this decline in decision-making is associated with white-matter integrity suggests that there may be effective ways to intervene. Several studies have shown that white-matter connections can be strengthened by specific forms of cognitive training. ... The critical white-matter connections that the experiment identified run from the thalamus, a highly connected relay center in the brain, to the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain involved with decision making, and from the medial prefrontal cortex to the ventral striatum, which is associated with the emotional and motivational aspects of behavior." You might also look at past research on age-related damage to white matter and its consequences on metal capacity.

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411131917.htm

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

Small steps towards understanding the greater regenerative capacity of one species: "When the spinal cord is severed in humans and other mammals, the immune system kicks in, activating specialised cells called glia to prevent bleeding into it. ... Glia are the workmen of the nervous system. The glia proliferate, forming bigger cells that span the wound site in order to prevent bleeding into it. They come in and try to sort out problems. A glial scar forms. ... However, the scar prevents axons, threadlike structures of nerve cells that carry impulses to the brain, of neighbouring nerve cells from penetrating the wound. The result is paralysis. ... The axons upstream and downstream of the lesion sites are never able to penetrate the glial scar to reform. This is a major barrier in mammalian spinal cord regeneration. In contrast, the zebra fish glia form a bridge that spans the injury site but allow the penetration of axons into it. The fish can fully regenerate its spinal cord within two months of injury. ... Scientists discovered the protein, called fibroblast growth factor (fgf), controlled the shape of the glia, and accounted for the difference in the response to spinal cord injury between humans and zebra fish. The scientists showed the protein could be manipulated in the zebra fish to speed up tissue repair even more. ... The hope is that fgf could eventually be used to promote better results in spinal cord repair in people."

Link: http://www.monash.edu.au/news/show/fish-study-raises-hopes-for-spinal-cord-injury-repair

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

Much like the practice of calorie restriction, exercise changes everything for the better in most people - it is far more effective in improving and sustaining long term health for the majority of us than any presently available medical technology. We need the future of better medicines that will achieve what good living cannot, such as rejuvenation of the elderly, absolute prevention of age-related disease, and radical life extension, but in the meanwhile it makes sense to make the most of present and proven methodologies to better out position as much as possible. People in the middle of life today will be cutting it fine under the most optimistic estimates for the development of working rejuvenation biotechnology - every year counts when it comes to either making future technology arrive more rapidly or being able to wait for longer.

The present phase of rapid development in biotechnology is uncovering a great deal of new knowledge when it comes to the workings of exercise: how exactly, down to the level of cells and signals, it improves health and life expectancy. For example, here is a paper on exercise and the brain:

The benefits of exercise and physical fitness on mental health and cognitive performance are well documented ... Animal studies have also demonstrated that exercise or physical activity produces very specific changes in the brain that are distinct from those produced by learning or novel experiences. ... Recently, studies have been carried out in humans using non-invasive brain imaging techniques to investigate exercise-related changes in brain structure. Such studies provide compelling evidence for the powerful effects of exercise on the brain, but also raise several questions. For example, do structural changes occur throughout the brain or are they limited to specific brain regions? What aspects of brain architecture are specifically modified by physical activity? On what time scale do these changes occur, and how persistent are they when exercise is discontinued? Do specific preconditions such as aging, disease, or genetic phenotypes make individuals more or less susceptible to activity-based brain changes?

...

Although relatively few studies exist on the effects of aerobic activity on the brain structure of healthy, younger individuals, there is a wealth of data demonstrating the cognitive benefits of frequent aerobic exercise throughout the lifespan - perhaps none more convincing than a recent study of 1.2 million Swedish military conscripts that showed a strong correlation between fitness and intelligence. Much work remains to be done to determine what level of aerobic activity is required for cognitive and brain health to be maximized, but it seems likely this level is well above that of the average individual.

You might compare that conclusion with data on life expectancy in athletes:

• Atheletes Live Longer, Probably the Exercise
• Putting Upper Bounds on Longevity Derived From Exercise

But equally, it seems clear that even moderate regular exercise has great benefits - the 80/20 point is probably somewhere in the vicinity of the venerable recommendation of 30 minutes of some aerobic activity. Sadly, even that level of exercise is probably "well above that of the average individual" in the wealthier nations.

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

An example of work that lays the foundations for lung tissue engineering, which has been lagging behind advances for other organs: "How do you grow stem cells into lungs? The question has puzzled scientists for years. First you need the right recipe, and it took [researchers] seven years of trial and error and painstaking science to come up with it. ... Some tissues, like muscle and nerves, are relatively easy to grow, but others, including liver, lung, thyroid, and pancreas, have been much more difficult. These troublesome tissues all spring from the endoderm, the innermost layer of an early embryo. The endoderm forms when an embryo is about three weeks old and differentiates into organs as early as five weeks. Somehow, in these two weeks the endoderm transforms into differentiated organs as diverse as the lungs and the stomach. ... [Researchers] decided to create a knock-in reporter gene that would glow green during the 'fate decision' - the moment when the stem cells expressed a gene called Nkx2-1 and thereby took a step toward becoming lungs. This allowed the team to track the cells as they developed, mapping each of the six critical decisions on the path to lung tissue. ... Once [the] team had grown what appeared to be lung cells, they had to make sure they had the recipe right. They took samples of mouse lungs and rinsed them with detergent until they became cell-free lung-shaped scaffolds. They seeded one lung with 15-day-old homegrown lung cells that they had purified from stem cells. As a control, they seeded another lung with undifferentiated embryonic stem cells. Within 10 days after seeding, the lung cells organized themselves and populated the lung, creating a pattern recognizable [as] lung tissue. ... A happy side effect of the discovery was that the scientists also mapped out the road from stem cell to thyroid. [The] thyroid, it turns out, also comes from the endoderm layer, deriving from a progenitor that expresses the same key gene as lung progenitors. [The] work will likely have a huge impact on lung stem cell researchers, who have been waiting for a discovery like this to propel their research on inherited lung disease."

Link: http://www.bu.edu/today/2012/from-stem-cells-to-lung-cells/

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

Resistance to cancer and increased longevity are thought to be flip sides of the coin when it comes to variations in metabolism and the controlling mechanisms of stem cell action. Either your cells are more ready to divide and repair your tissues, in which case you have increased longevity coupled with increased risk of cancer, or your cells are less ready to divide and repair your tissues and as a consequence you are less likely to suffer cancer, but also less likely to live for as long as your contemporaries in the scenario under which you do evade cancer. The decline of stem cell capacity with age is thought to be an adaptation to resist the increasing risk of cancer due to rising levels of cellular and molecular damage - the less that your stem cells take action, the less likely it is that a cancerous mutation will occur and take hold.

Cancer is a game of odds, in other words. We're all rolling those dice, day in and day out - regardless of how indifferent we are or pretend to be. It's a sobering thought.

On this topic, I noticed an intriguing twin study today that suggests the naturally longer-lived humans amongst us are having their cake and eating it too when it comes to the supposed cancer-longevity balance. There's no balance here at all, just benefits all round from happening to be naturally longer-lived:

BACKGROUND: Animal models and a few human studies have suggested a complex interaction between cancer risk and longevity indicating a trade-off where low cancer risk is associated with accelerating aging phenotypes and, vice versa, that longevity potential comes with the cost of increased cancer risk. This hypothesis predicts that longevity in one twin is associated with increased cancer risk in the cotwin.

METHODS: A total of 4,354 twin pairs born 1900-1918 in Denmark were followed for mortality in the Danish Civil Registration System through 2008 and for cancer incidence in the period 1943-2008 through the Danish Cancer Registry.

RESULTS: The 8,139 twins who provided risk time for cancer occurrence entered the study between ages 24 and 43 (mean 33 years), and each participant was followed up to death, emigration, or at least 90 years of age. The total follow-up time was 353,410 person-years and 2,524 cancers were diagnosed. A negative association between age at death of a twin and cancer incidence in the cotwin was found in the overall analyses as well as in the subanalysis stratified on sex, zygosity, and random selection of one twin from each twin pair.

CONCLUSIONS: This study did not find evidence of a cancer-longevity trade-off in humans. On the contrary, it suggested that longevity in one twin is associated with lower cancer incidence in the cotwin, indicating familial factors associated with both low cancer occurrence and longevity.

It's worth remarking that the ultimate goal for longevity science is to make this and all similarly interesting discoveries absolutely irrelevant - to create a world in which it no longer matters in the slightest which genes we are born with. Sufficiently advanced medical technology - such as that envisaged in the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, which could be produced within the next twenty to thirty years given the funding - will enable all people to live extremely long lives in good health regardless of their genetic heritage. This is all the more reason to support that research; doing something about the limitations of the human condition beats sitting around listening to the dice roll and your chances of cancer inch upward year by year.

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

A thought for the day: nobody out there is seriously arguing for the impossibility of radical life extension, and I don't think anyone has been for quite some time. It is a given in the present diffuse discussion on the future of medicine and human longevity that at some point advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology will lead to greatly extended lives: centuries and longer lived in good health and vigor. Aging will be brought under control by medicine, like any number of other once intractable medical conditions.

It wasn't always this way. People in past centuries might have hoped for the plausibility of radical life extension, but couldn't have said in certainty that it was possible. We, on the other hand, know far more about physics, chemistry, and biology: we know that there is no wall created by the way the universe works standing in our way. The only reason we presently age and suffer is because we haven't yet advanced far enough down the path of biotechnology that is clearly visible and well understood. Aging is, at root, a matter of atoms and molecules in the wrong place and the wrong configuration. Moving atoms and molecules around to order, en masse, and with precision, is a task that we know is possible. We do it all the time, and are learning ever greater finesse with each passing decade.

Yesterday the tools were found molecules that happened to do something useful with other molecules. Today we make use of designed molecules for particular operations, knowing much more about the molecular machinery of our cells. Tomorrow the biotechnologists will build and repair complex molecular machinery that performs far more effectively than our evolved biology.

Thus discussions on the engineering of human longevity focus on how, when, and (sadly) whether it should be done at all. I see great strategic importance in the right groups gaining ground in the "how" discussion - we're all going to age to death just like our ancestors if the scientific community remains focused on metabolic manipulation to slow damage accumulation rather than the repair of damage exemplified by SENS, for example. Similarly if there are not good inroads made in growing the community of researchers interested in SENS and related lines of research.

Discussions on "when" can probably be skipped as lacking rigor: no-one knows. All the meaningful timelines depend greatly on seeds sown now that will only bear fruit in the 2030s - the course of twenty years remains a matter of long term planning and great uncertainty in specific outcomes while we're stuck living lives that top out at a century (and that with great luck). The beginnings of a larger research community, the outcome of the debate over strategy in longevity research, and so forth. It is interesting to ponder and plot the windings of future events, but that time is probably better spent on influencing the "how" discussion or materially contributing to progress.

As to the discussion on whether engineering longevity is desirable, or should be blocked by people in power - I think it never hurts to take a little time to oppose such lines of thought. Unthought opposition to extending human life or even simply intervening in the disease of aging is widespread, and success in building the research communities and funding institutions of the next few decades depends on a certain degree of broad public support.

But all that said, no-one out there is seriously arguing that radical life extension is impossible.