May You Be Forever Young

This one is half a year old, but in case you missed it, Wired did a great interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Kurzweil does not believe in half measures. He takes 180 to 210 vitamin and mineral supplements a day, so many that he doesn’t have time to organize them all himself. So he’s hired a pill wrangler, who takes them out of their bottles and sorts them into daily doses, which he carries everywhere in plastic bags. Kurzweil also spends one day a week at a medical clinic, receiving intravenous longevity treatments. The reason for his focus on optimal health should be obvious: If the singularity is going to render humans immortal by the middle of this century, it would be a shame to die in the interim. To perish of a heart attack just before the singularity occurred would not only be sad for all the ordinary reasons, it would also be tragically bad luck, like being the last soldier shot down on the Western Front moments before the armistice was proclaimed.

A lot of it will be familiar if you’ve read any of his books, like Fantastic Voyage. It is certainly interesting to see his take on things.

Photo by Rennio Maifredi from the Wired article.

In Search of Enlightenment, a piece on Why Worry About Aging?, an extensive post which looks at the aging issue from the point of view of risk taking and biogerontology.

When people ask me what I am working on I inevitably mention aging and the aspiration to retard human aging. This provokes many different responses. The most common response is a sense of surprise that we might actually be able to do something about aging. This is of course understandable, for if one had not been following the field of biogerontology for the past few years one might assume that aging is immutable, for that was a common belief. But this belief has been proven wrong- aging is not immutable.

Once I note this people often persist in their scepticism, and express doubt that we could actually develop a technology that could slow aging in humans (rather than just in mice). Again, this scepticism is understandable, indeed some scepticism is warranted. But I often ask them how much scepticism they have about finding a cure for cancer, or reversing climate change. And when it comes to these issues they are pretty optimistic about the likelihood that these goals could be achieved.

So I push them a bit further… and it becomes evident that this optimism is not based on any scientific experiments that demonstrate a particular therapy could cure all 200+ types of cancer, or that climate experiments demonstrated that we could reverse the rise in global temperature. What their optimism is based upon is the desire to achieve these things, that they would create enormous benefits for humanity. Again, I understand the appeal of this line of thinking. We want to believe that we can achieve those things that would really do a lot of good in the world.

And:

And so at some level everyone knows, to some degree, that aging is a big problem for them as individuals. No one enjoys the fact that their risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, AD, etc. will continue to rise for all of their remaining years. When in certain moods, we can all admit this. But we don’t want to go on and on about it every day. It’s depressing! And so we tend to bury these feelings deep inside and go on with our daily activities wearing “aging-blinders”.

And so we find there is an enormous disconnect between what the public actually demands of their governments- like protection from terrorists, tackling abortion , etc.- and what would actually substantively improve their lives. If you really want government to reduce your chances of death and disease, then get behind aging research. If there was no chance that scientists could actually develop a drug or intervention that could modify the rate at which the molecular and cellular damage of aging occurs then it would be cruel to tell people to “worry about aging”. But given where the science actually is, it is irrational and irresponsible *not* to tell them to worry about aging. Especially when people fear so many things that really do not pose a great threat to their health and well being.

Via Fight Aging.

Brap!! Ouroboros points us to research aimed at creating beer that is high in resveratrol.

Yeast has taught us a great deal about the mechanisms of aging. But what about using yeast to fight the aging process itself?

A group of young scientists is trying to genetically engineer brewer’s yeast to make resveratrol, an antioxidant compound that activates sirtuins and may or may not extend mammalian lifespan (link):

Eins, zwei, g’suffa!

In Watermelon Packs a Powerful Lycopene Punch, the USDA sings the praises of watermelon for lycopene (that stuff that makes a tomato red and is a good antioxidant).

Watermelon is fat free and is a source of vitamins A, B6, C, and thiamin. Studies have shown that a cup and a half of watermelon contains about 9 to 13 milligrams of lycopene. On average, watermelon has about 40 percent more lycopene than raw tomatoes. Red, ripe flesh is the best indicator of the sweetest and most nutritious watermelon, though it’s hard to choose the ripest melon when it’s uncut.

Time to nom nom nom.

Photo by CurlyCam

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Googling is good for geriatrics.

A team of US researchers has found that searching the internet stimulates brain activity in the elderly and middle-aged and may help keep their minds sharp.

And:

The UCLA scientists found that searching the web triggers key centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning and may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function.

“The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerised technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults,” said Dr Gary Small, the principal investigator of the study.

“Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function,” said Small, a professor at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour.

So does it matter what you Google for? Does looking for the latest in longevity research differ from searching for celeb gossip or political pap?

You’d hope so.

Anyway, keep Googling.

The mental stuff is crucial to longevity. We are dominated by our thoughts. What you hold in your mind - illness, wellness, thinness, fatness, decay, repair - affects how you feel and how you act.

I’m a big fan of The Secret and Bob Proctor. I think they both have a lot to offer.

If you are into this part of being young forever - the mind part - then you might like to check out Bob Proctor’s new program. Best of all, you can try it for free.

I had an aikido instructor who used to always say to us, “Feed your mind.” That’s what this is all about.

Check it out.

From Reason’s post The Way People Think About Aging:

When talking about progress over decades, the most important part of that progress is not the year in which scientific progress reaches a tipping point - although that helps - but it is the year in which advocacy and education reaches a tipping point. Significant progress occurs when a large number of people want it to occur: up until that point matters tends to move slowly. This means that we should pay more attention to the way we used to think, back in the day. How did we wake from our pro-aging trances? That event has to be repeated many millions of times over the next decade if a large community and effective community of supporters, researchers, and fundraisers is to arise.

I think that distinction between technical tipping point and advocacy tipping point is an important one. At some point, more and more people are going to think, “Hey, this is possible and worth pursuing.” But we’ll need some sort of critical mass before the general consensus is, “Let’s go for it.” It’s a critical mass that we’d be better off reaching sooner rather than later.

Prevention.com gives us a quicky article outlining 14 Surprising Signs You’ll Live Longer Than You Think. Their list:

1. Your Mom Had You Young
2. You’re a Tea Lover
3. You’d Rather Walk
4. You Skip Soda (Even Diet)
5. You Have Strong Legs
6. You Eat Purple Food
7. You Were a Healthy-Weight Teen
8. You Don’t Like Burgers
9. You’ve Been a College Freshman
10. You Really Like Your Friends…
11. …and They’re Healthy
12. You Embrace New Challenges
13. You Don’t Have a Housekeeper
14. You’re a Flourisher

Some of these aren’t so surprising, but still a decent list.

Micro World tells us that scientists have increased the life of yeast ten-fold.

Scientists have extended the lifespan of yeast, microbes responsible for creating bread and beer, by 10-fold. That’s twice the previous record for life extension in an organism. The breakthrough could ultimately inform efforts to extend human lives. Instead of one week, the yeast lived for about 10 weeks through genetic tinkering and a low-calorie diet. Brewer’s yeast, known formally as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, illuminated using a special technique called immunofluorescence. Scientists have recently extended the lifespan of the microscopic organism by both tinkering with aging genes and cutting the amount of calories it takes in

“We’ve reprogrammed the healthy life of an organism,” said Valter Longo, a biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles who led the life-prolonging experiments.

Obvious question: can it give us really old beer?

Photo from Micro World

Slate has a look at why vegans can’t decide whether they’re allowed to eat honey. It is, as they say, an old debate.

A fierce doctrinal debate over its status has raged for decades; it turns up on almost every community FAQ and remains so ubiquitous and unresolved that radio host Rachel Maddow proposed to ask celebrity vegan Dennis Kucinich about it during last year’s CNN/YouTube presidential debate. Does honey qualify as a forbidden animal product since it’s made by bees? Or is it OK since the bees don’t seem too put out by making it?

I fall into the it’s OK camp.

What was perhaps more interesting is coming across the term “flexitarian”.

Five years ago, the American Dialect Society honored the word flexitarian for its utility in describing a growing demographic—the “vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.” Now there’s evidence that going flexi is good for the environment and good for your health.

BTW, one can ignore the “dangers of a vegetarian diet” stuff toward the bottom of the article. Sheesh.