Longevity Meme News and Commentary

An Interesting Theory on Obesity

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:24:08 CST

Almost nothing in biology is entirely immune to a good argument for altering what is presently thought of as cause and effect. Here, for example, a researcher argues that the metabolic syndrome we presently ascribe to excess fat, caused by eating too much, is in fact a direct consequence of that high calorie intake, not the fat. It is an intriguing view, but one that needs more evidence before being taken seriously, I think. From the release: "obesity is the body's way of storing lipids where they belong, in fat tissue, in an effort to protect our other organs from lipids' toxic effects. It's when the surplus of calories coming in gets to be too much for our fat tissue to handle that those lipids wind up in other places they shouldn't be, and the cascade of symptoms known as metabolic syndrome sets in. ... There is some disagreement in the field about whether insulin resistance is a primary cause of metabolic syndrome or just one of its features ... Insulin resistance is not the cause of metabolic syndrome, [according to this theory], it is a 'passive byproduct' of fat deposition in the liver and muscle once storage in fat cells begins to fail. ... Based on the genes they carry, some people will be better able to sustain lipid storage in fat and can get away with being overweight, even obese, without the other symptoms. Eventually, though, the need to cut calories is something all of us will face. ... Once you reach a certain age, almost everybody is leptin resistant. Nature stops protecting you once you pass the reproductive years."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/cp-oap030110.php
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Little Golden Assassins (of Cancer)

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:10:26 CST

A great deal of work is presently taking place to develop targeted nanoparticles to kill very specific types of cell with no side-effects or collateral damage. This is good, as the applications of this technology range far beyond cancer: the aging immune system, for example, or cases of autoimmune disease could benefit from killing off malfunctioning immune cells. Many other potential uses exist. Here is another example of work in progress: "researchers synthesized nanoparticles - shaped something like a dumbbell - made of gold sandwiched between two pieces of iron oxide. They then attached antibodies, which target a molecule found only in colorectal cancer cells, to the particles. Once bound, the nanoparticles are engulfed by the cancer cells. To kill the cells, the researchers use a near-infrared laser, which is a wavelength that doesn't harm normal tissue at the levels used, but the radiation is absorbed by the gold in the nanoparticles. This causes the cancer cells to heat up and die. ... This is a so-called 'smart' therapy. To be a smart therapy, it should be targeted, and it should have some ability to be activated only when it's there and then kills just the cancer cells."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100308171219.htm
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Why Supercentenarians Die

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:08:48 CST

The Daily Bruin looks at the work of the Gerontology Research Group and Supercentenarian Research Foundation: "UCLA's Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine recently autopsied 115-year-old Gertrude Baines, formerly the oldest person in the world. Baines was one of the current 77 validated living supercentenarians in the world, a group including any person aged 110 years or older. She died Sept. 11, 2009 from Senile Systemic Amyloidosis ... Supercentenarians appear to escape from the common diseases that kill ordinary people, such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes, but there's another form of the grim reaper waiting in the wings ... Senile Systemic Amyloidosis is a common cause of death among supercentenarians. The mechanism involves a slow process in which a native protein called Transthyretin, which transports thyroid hormones to the body, becomes increasingly unstable. As humans age, the carrier protein begins to unravel and misfold, sticking to the inside of blood vessels and restricting blood flow. As a result, the heart undergoes hypertrophy, growing and working harder in an attempt to compensate ... The consequence of this process includes the symptoms of congestive heart failure, but without an autopsy, the attending physician would never know the underlying cause. ... Now that we've started this research, we can draw attention to Senile Systemic Amyloidosis and we can try to find a cure for this disease. Maybe supercentenarians could live healthy even longer."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.dailybruin.com/articles/2010/3/5/autopsy-115-year-old-aids-research/
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Campaign for Aging Research Blog

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:58:47 CST

I see that the Campaign for Aging Research has started a blog, populating it with fairly middle of the road posts on aging research. For example, this one on fat and diabetes risk: "It is thought that the increased chance of developing type 2 diabetes as a person ages is related to increasing insulin resistance. In an interesting study comparing insulin sensitivity between different groups of individuals, no difference was identified in insulin sensitivity between old and young athletes, between older and younger normal weight individuals, or between older and younger obese subjects. The athletes demonstrated the highest insulin sensitivity, followed by the normal weight individuals, with obese subjects having the lowest sensitivity to insulin. The authors concluded that aging alone cannot account for insulin resistance, but that the decreased physical activity and obesity that can occur with aging can be responsible for age-related insulin insensitivity. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to studying the relationship between physical activity, obesity and diabetes. It is now generally accepted that the presence of abdominal fat increases the risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://healthyyears.org/blog/
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Sestrin, Metabolism, and Aging

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:00:16 CST

Here, researchers identify another piece of the molecular machineries of metabolism that help to determine life span: "a protein called Sestrin [serves] as a natural inhibitor of aging and age-related pathologies in fruit flies. ... Sestrins are highly conserved small proteins that are produced in high amounts when cells experience stress. Sestrin function, however, remained puzzling until [researchers] found that these proteins function as activators of AMP-dependent protein kinase (AMPK), and inhibitors of the Target of Rapamycin (TOR). AMPK and TOR are two protein kinases that serve as key components of a signaling pathway shown to be the central regulator of aging and metabolism. ... AMPK is activated in response to caloric restriction, a condition that slows down aging, whereas TOR is activated in response to over-nutrition, a condition that accelerates aging. Activation of AMPK inhibits TOR, and drugs that activate AMPK or inhibit TOR can delay aging in several different model organisms including mammals. But how the body keeps the activity of these two protein kinases in balance to prevent premature aging was unknown. ... In future work, [researchers plan] to examine whether the mammalian Sestrins also control aging and metabolism, and whether defects in proper Sestrin expression will provide the explanation to some of the currently unexplainable degenerative diseases associated with old age."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/uoc--pst030110.php
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Humanity+ UK 2010 Conference

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:44:34 CST

Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey is amongst the speakers scheduled for a transhumanist community conference to be held in London in April. "How will accelerating technological change affect human mental and physical capabilities as well as the environment in which we live? Humanity+ UK2010, a one-day conference in London on 24 April 2010, gathers together some of the leading thinkers to discuss these and many other topics. ... Over the last year, the regular Saturday meetings of the UK Transhumanist Association have attracted larger and larger crowds eager to listen to and debate with speakers seeking to answer these vital questions. ... Inspired by the increasing popularity of these regular meetings, this one-day conference [gathers] together some of the leading thinkers in nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive science and their real-world implications. ... With 9 speaker sessions and two panel discussions confronting the big issues of tech change, this is your opportunity to engage in some of the big debates that will shape our future." I see that David Pearce will be speaking also: "In 1995, he wrote an online manifesto, The Hedonistic Imperative, advocating the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world." The Hedonistic Imperative - the urge to engineer paradise through technology - is an important contribution to transhumanist thinking, especially for those of us interested in engineering away the horrific, worldwide suffering caused by degenerative aging.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://humanityplus-uk.com
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Another Strike Against Growth Hormone

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:47:17 CST

Something to think about from EurekAlert!: "IGF-I is a protein hormone similar in structure to insulin and is regulated in the body by growth hormone (GH). Levels of GH and IGF-I decline progressively with age in both men and women and this drop is thought to be related to deteriorating health conditions found with advanced age. In an attempt to combat aging some people use GH as its actions elevate IGF-1. This study however showed that older men who had higher levels of IGF-I were more likely to die from a cancer-related cause in the following 18 years than men with lower levels. ... This is the first population-based study to show an association of higher IGF-I levels with increased risk of a cancer-related death in older men. Although the design of this study does not explicitly show that the higher IGF-I levels caused the cancer death, it does encourage more study as well as a reexamination of the use of IGF-I enhancing therapies as an anti-aging strategy. ... researchers used data on 633 men aged 50 and older from the Rancho Bernardo Study, a population-based study of healthy aging. ... In this study, the increased risk of cancer death for older men with high levels of IGF-I was not explained by differences in age, body size, lifestyle or cancer history." You might compare this with other findings on IGF-1 levels in long-lived humans.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/tes-htt022510.php
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Why Do People Accept Aging?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:34:53 CST

From the IEET Blog: "When I was in undergrad, a professor asked our whole class a strange question. ... 'Lets say that I have in my hand, right now, a pill. This pill, if you take it, will make you ageless. [If] you would take this pill, raise your hand.' ... His point was not that people want to age and die but that we naturally distrust such offers. It simply sounds too good to be true. ... Our brains are trained, over time, to understand what a reasonably possible benefit can exist for a given price. A free pill that has no side-effects and no Twilight Zone caveats (you have to be alive, can't die so are tortured, etc) seems more impossible than the idea of anti-aging itself. The problem is that this protective aspect of our mind can become over excited, so we stop believing certain solutions are ever possible. To cure, or even significantly reduce the damages caused by aging, are such an epic benefit that it seems our minds will actively manufacture problems, because the benefit must have some sort of epic cost associated. So we tell ourselves curing aging will cause too many problems and that aging has a lot of natural beauty to it and creates a lot of meaning and that all of that is good."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3780/
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Another Novel View of Alzheimer's Disease

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:25:53 CST

It is good that more new theories on the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease are emerging, such as this, via EurekAlert! One thing you don't want to see in an advancing field of science is a monoculture of ideas. "For years we thought that A-beta was just metabolic garbage produced as a byproduct of other processes within the brain, but these data suggest it is a normal component of the brain's innate immune system. It looks like factors that trigger hyperactivity of the innate immune system - not only infection but also traumatic brain injury and stroke, which are already known to increase the risk for Alzheimer's - could cause excessive deposition of A-beta. ... The researchers suggest that chronic activation of the innate immune system in response to either a persistent or transient infection of the central nervous system might lead to excess production and accumulation of A-beta. Known Alzheimer's risk factors such as stroke, head injury and exposure to certain anesthetics could also trigger the innate immune system and increase A-beta production, leading to an excessive and dangerous inflammatory response within the brain. ... Now we need to figure out what is triggering the innate immune system, particularly as we age, and what genes control A-beta's role in the innate response. If we can identify which pathogens are more likely to trigger A-beta plaque aggregation, we might develop ways to prevent or control that response, for example by immunization."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/mgh-apm022510.php
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What To Do With Leftover Copies of Ending Aging?

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:46:08 CST

Over at the Immortality Institute forums, researcher John Schloendorn (who worked on LysoSENS and is now one of the driving forces behind Livly) remarks: "I have a bazillion surplus Ending Aging books sitting at my house in Mountain View, CA. If anyone has a creative use for them, I can give them out for the cost of shipping or free if you pick them up." Ending Aging is a great book, and there are some good ideas in that discussion thread as to what to do with Schloendorn's surplus copies, such as handing them out at conferences, or donating them to libraries. If you have a good idea as to what to do with the copies, or would like one yourself, jump on in and have your say.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=38961&hl=
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