May You Be Forever Young

Science Daily reports on a Buck Institute study that says nematodes doped up on lithium live a lot longer — 46% longer.

In the study, scientists discovered that longevity was increased in the worms when the lithium “turned down” the activity of a gene that modulates the basic structure of chromosomes.

And:

“Understanding the genetic impact of lithium may allow us to engineer a therapy that has the same lifespan extending benefits,” said Lithgow. “One of the larger questions is whether the lifespan extending benefits of the drug are directly related to the fact that lithium protects neurons.” The process of normal aging in humans is intrinsically linked to the onset of neurodegenerative disease.

Photo: Petromyzon

When you think of long-lived creatures, I bet naked mole rats don’t spring to mind first. Perhaps they should.

Some of the “hottest” research on naked mole rats today concerns senescence, or aging. Naked mole rats in the lab have reached up to 28 years of age. And it’s not just the controlled environments of their captivity that are doing this. Braude has observed mole rats in the wild that are 17 years and older. But these are the breeders. Lab researchers didn’t realize that in the wild workers only live two or three years.

And my favourite quote from the article:

For a rodent of this size, they are ridiculously long-lived.

Image Source

The Times reports on research that says staying married helps you live longer.

The Office for National Statistics has published definitive proof that married couples live longer, enjoy better health and can rely on more home care in old age than their divorced, widowed, single and cohabiting peers. Children who live with their married parents are also healthier, and can expect to stay in full-time education for longer, whatever their economic background.

And:

Mortality rates are also greatly affected by marital status. The mortality rate among single men under 34 is about 2½ times higher than that for young married men. Widowed and divorced men over 80 have a mortality rate one third higher than married men. Single, widowed and divorced older women all have higher mortality rates than their married peers.

Gives you another reason to sing that Queen song, “Can anybody find me somebody to love.”

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Wired’s co-founder Kevin Kelly has a death counter running on his computer. It counts down the days he estimates he has left in his life. Yuck.

I decided to take the idea of number days seriously, and to revisit my earlier experience of counting down my remaining time on this lovely mortal plane. My hope was that a reckoning of my numbered days would help me account for how I spend each precious 24 hours, and to focus my attention and energy on those few tasks and projects I deem most important to me. Indeed, it might help me decide which ones are most important, which is the harder assignment.

What I wanted was a great big flashing sign that would show up on my computer and shout out to me how many days I had remaining. Then I would try to use my blog to record what how I spent the day to keep me honest. A wasted day would reveal its loss in the empty lower count the next day. I figured that mounting an automatic personal countdown sign should be pretty easy, and something that others might want to do as well.

While I can understand the “live life like it’s almost over and make the most of it” attitude behind this, it actually really irks me. I believe the body takes instructions from the mind (what happens to your mouth when you think of the taste of lemons?), and that what you focus on expands. Surely Kelly is not-so-subtly programming his mind and body to die in a planned way.

For those with an interest in radical life extension, perhaps this is an idea to simply flip around. Create a counter the goes up instead of down, adding life instead of taking it away. And maybe get rid of the huge “until Dead”, and replace it with “More Life to Live”.

Via Boing Boing.

Okay, so this option isn’t open to most of us, but winning a Nobel prize tends to add a couple of years to your life. Being nominated just isn’t good enough. You have to win.

From Biology News Net:

The researchers carried out their study to try to answer a long-standing question for economists and medical researchers as to whether social status alone can affect people’s well being and lifespan. Although the existence of some kind of effect is known from studies of monkey packs, in humans it has been difficult up till now to separate any perceived positive effect of “status” from the effect of simple greater wealth that status often brings. Nobel Prize winners were viewed as an ideal group to study as the winners could be seen as having their status suddenly dropped on them. They also come with a ready made control group they can be directly measured against - scientists who were nominated for a Nobel prize but did not actually win one.

The researchers looked at winners and nominees in physics and chemistry between 1901 and 1950 … 524 scientists, of whom 135 actually won a Nobel Prize.

The average life span for this group was just over 76 years. Winners of the Nobel Prize were found to live 1.4 years longer on average (77.2 years) than those who had “merely” been nominated for a prize (who lived on average for 75.8 years). When the survey was restricted to only comparing winners and nominees from the same country, the longevity gap widened even more by around another two thirds of a year on average.

So, what would be the implication of winning a Nobel for anti-aging research?

A Harvard School of Public Health study (pdf) looks at race mapped to location, and comes up with a surprisingly wide span of life expectancies based on where people live. Obviously, location is only part of the story, but it is interesting to see some numbers, like more than a third of the average lifespan.

Native American males in the cluster of Bennet, Jackson, Mellette, Shannon, Todd, and Washabaugh Counties in South Dakota had a life expectancy of 58 years in 1997-­2001, compared to Asian females in Bergen County, New Jersey, with a life expectancy of 91 years, a gap of 33 years.

Wow.

Perhaps there are some public health issues that need looking at here.

Via WIStv.com

I find this creepy.

An increasing number of [cryonics company] Alcor’s 800 living members are signing up to have their entire families frozen in liquid nitrogen soon after their deaths.

Last year alone, six couples signed themselves and their children up on the slim chance they could be brought back to share another lifetime together.

And:

“We had one girl who was signed up on the very day she was born,” Jones said. “Her mother had all of the paperwork ready to go, and the day that child was born, she was a member.”

How much does it cost? $150,000 for the whole body and $80,000 for just the head. But the bit I really like is the financial planning involved. Costs are normally covered out of life insurance. Says certified financial planner Rudi Hoffman, “I have a number of folks, because it is affordable through life insurance, they can fund the entire family suspension.”

The Arizona Republic tells us that American guys are living longer, and that the lifespan gap between men and women is narrowing. The CDC says male life expectancy hit a record 75.2 in 2004, five years less than women.

Reasons? Mainly smoking less and taking other steps to reduce the risks of cancer and heart disease.

Longevity Science tells us that Forbes has covered their research that shows that “the odds of living to 100 and beyond double when a person is born to a woman under 25 years of age”.

OK, great. But how does that sit with the findings that older mothers live comparatively longer?

LiveScience has an article that looks at reasons lifespans have increased in the last century in The Truth on Longer Life Spans. After the yada-yada on increased safety and public health, they get to the nub: lower infant mortality. If you take out the low numbers, your average goes up.