Just came across Why We Age. It has a nice, simple page called How to Live Longer with five simple-on-the-surface steps. I’ve included all of the text for the last one to give you a feel for the writing.
Step one - Eating for a long life
Step two - Exercise your body into a long life
Step three - Learn the lessons of the hundred year olds. Don’t stress
Step four - Sleep
Step five – Develop strong and loving relationships
It has been shown that individuals who live longer also have a higher likelihood of being surrounded by loved ones. They tend to get married, have children and have a close circle of friends. These individuals therefore have emotional support around them in times of stress and hardship. All of which means that their levels of stress, are reduced. Reduced stress causes a cascade of other benefits to the body:
A reduction in the levels of damaging hormones, such as Cotosol
Deeper and more effective sleep
A reduction in blood pressure
A strengthening of the immune system
Those lab rats are at it again. They seem to be choosing a sugar reward over a cocaine reward. Maybe that’s why sugar is so hard for some people push away.
An astonishing 94 percent of rats who were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between sugar water and cocaine, chose sugar. Even rats who were addicted to cocaine quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered as a choice. The rats were also more willing to work for sugar than for cocaine.
Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.
Fight Aging! has a round-up of news on the stem cell front, including the Oz Senate voting to overturn the current stem cell ban after an emotional debate. It was a rare conscience vote, rather than a vote along party lines. The law has yet to go before the House.
There are a few Aubrey de Grey videos around, so I thought I’d do a round-up of some of the ones I like, with the videos embedded for convenience. There’s a more comprehensive list here.
Presentations
First, here are a few videos of presentations made at conferences.
This is de Grey’s presentation to the Immortality Institute Conference on November 5, 2005. He does the stuff that should be familiar to his audience in about 13 minutes, then then discusses the SENS Challenge, which has now been judged. If you’re asking, “What’s this guy on about?”, then this is half an hour well spent. (28:49 on Google Video. Link)
The next one is his presentation to the TED 2006 Conference. Here he is not speaking to the converted, so there’s a fair discussion of his motivations, and an overview of his approach. Very spirited. (23:05 on Google Video. Link)
“Taking the Defeat of Aging Seriously: The Time is Now” is the title of de Grey’s talk at the Ted Global conference. Again, a lot of overview material and some interesting Q&A. He fields a question at the end where a woman quotes Neal Donald Walsh (Conversations with God). As someone who believes that a spiritual (not religious) component is important to the longevity process, it is interesting to hear his response. (29:59 on Google Video. Link)
De Grey’s presentation at Poptech, put on by Popular Technology, is preceded by an amusing, if disturbing, song called “It’s Gonna Be the Future Soon”. De Grey’s talk is called Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS): How Foreseeable Bioengineering Can Comprehensively Reverse Human Aging. The video qualtiy is pretty poor, but because he has a bit more time, he covers a bit more ground. (45:06 on Google Video. Link)
Media Encounters
The following are media appearances.
This one is on Bloomberg Encounters. It is a good look at social implications, and is light on the technical side. The inteviewer, Janet Street-Porter, has done a reasonable job of doing her preparation, so the discussion has some depth. (12:29 on Google Video. Link)
Next, a short and reasonably sober interview with decent questions, from CBC Canada Now. (5:53 on YouTube. Link)
Next is an interview with on GMTV’s Good Morning. This one’s worth watching, if for no other reason, than the woman interviewer equates radical life extension with the End of Christmans As We Know It. Otherwise, a reasonable high-level pitch, and de Grey handles the inanities well. (7:23 on YouTube. Link)
And if you feel like pursuing the issue in Italian, this one’s definitely for you: (2:23 on YouTube. Link) (more…)
). As someone who believes that a spiritual (not religious) component is important to the longevity process, it is interesting to hear his response. (29:59 on Google Video. 