Aging & Longevity News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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A 45-year-old biotech CEO may have reduced his biological age by at least 5 years through a rigorous medical program that can cost up to $2 million a year, Bloomberg reported

https://www.businessinsider.com/bryan-j ... int-2023-1
Bryan Johnson, a 45-year-old biotech founder, hopes to rewind the clock of his body a few decades through a program he started, called Project Blueprint. Courtesy Dustin Giallanza

Bryan Johnson, a biotech founder, aims to have the body of an 18-year-old, Bloomberg reported.
He and a team of experts started a program called Project Blueprint to unlock the key to aging.
Test results show that Johnson has the heart of a 37-year-old, according to the report.

Bryan Johnson is 45 years old but, according to a new report, his test results show he has the heart of a 37-year-old and the lungs of a young adult.
weatheriscool
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Anti-ageing scientists extend lifespan of oldest living lab rat
https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ng-lab-rat
Wed 8 Feb 2023 01.00 EST
Last modified on Wed 8 Feb 2023 03.19 EST
Scientists working on an experimental anti-ageing therapy claim to have broken a record by extending the lifespan of a lab rat called Sima.

Named after the Hindi word for “limit” or “boundary”, Sima is the last remaining survivor from a group of rodents that received infusions of blood plasma taken from young animals to see if the treatment prolonged their lives.

Sima, who was born on 28 February 2019, has lived for 47 months, surpassing the 45.5 months believed to be the oldest age recorded in scientific literature for a female Sprague-Dawley rat, the researchers say. So far, Sima has outlived her closest rival in the study by nearly six months.

“We have the oldest living female Sprague Dawley rat,” said Dr Harold Katcher, a former biology professor at the University of Maryland, now chief scientific officer at Yuvan Research, a California-based startup.

Researchers have rushed to produce and trial therapies based on young blood plasma after numerous experiments found that infusions could reinvigorate ageing organs and tissues. But while studies have found benefits for rodents, there is no evidence to date that the somewhat vampiric approach to youthfulness will help humans dodge the passage of time, despite the best wishes of Silicon Valley.

The results from Katcher’s latest study will be written up when Sima dies, but data gathered so far suggests that eight rats that received placebo infusions of saline lived for 34 to 38 months, while eight that received a purified and concentrated form of blood plasma, called E5, lived for 38 to 47 months. They also had improved grip strength. Rats normally live for two to three years, though a contender for the oldest ever is a brown rat that survived on a restricted calorie diet for 4.6 years.

“The real point of our experiments is not so much to extend lifespan, but to extend youthspan, to rejuvenate people, to make their golden years really potentially golden years, instead of years of pain and decrepitude,” Katcher said. “But the fact is, if you manage to do that, you also manage to lengthen life and that’s not a bad side-effect.”
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caltrek
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Transplanting a Gene Common in Centenarians Could Rewind the Heart's Age by Years
by David Nield
February 0, 2023

Introduction:
(Science Alert) Age catches up with us all eventually, but in some people the right genes can make that chase into our twilight years a relatively leisurely one.

A few years ago Italian researchers discovered something special about people who live well into their 90s and beyond: they commonly have a version of a gene called BPIFB4 that protects against cardiovascular damage and keeps the heart in good shape for a longer period of time.

By introducing the mutated gene into older mice, the scientists have now seen how the variant rewinds markers of biological heart aging by the equivalent of more than 10 human years.

In middle-aged mice, the same therapy was shown to halt the decline of heart function.

How quickly the heart and its nearest blood vessels typically decay depends on numerous factors, including how much we drink and whether or not we smoke. Based on the study's results, mutations in protein-encoding genes also have a key part to play.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/transplan ... -by-years
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raklian
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:o

To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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caltrek
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A cursory review of this thread convinces me that I am no expert on the subject of aging and longevity. Still, I have been doing a lot of reading lately on the subject. I started with Valter Longo's book The Longevity Diet. Longo writes approvingly of the work of Dr. Dean Ornish, who in turn has this to say about a book entitled The China Study: "This is one of the most impressive books about nutrition ever written - reading it may save your life."

A thread that runs through all of the writings of these experts is the importance of shifting our eating habits to being more of a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet. This is explicitly put forward in The China Study. Many years ago, Chou En Lai, second in command behind Mao Ze Dung in China, while he was dying of cancer pushed forward a massive epidemiological study of China. Later, T. Colin Campbell collaborated with Chinese experts to review and refine the results of this study. The China Study is one result of that effort. It also includes review of a lot of scientific studies conducted in the West that corroborate the findings of their review.

Bottom line is that a WFPB can be helpful in preventing a large number of diseases that are especially prevalent in the West. This includes diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders, etc. It can even help reverse the negative effects of such diseases. Resistance to adaptation of such a dramatically revised diet comes from vested interests that want us to keep consuming meat and dairy products in large quantities. Confusing the issue further are a lot of fad diets that have been put forward that lack a sound scientific validation. There is also a very deep cultural resistance to adopting the diets of other cultures. Anything that requires a change in living habits seems to engender such resistance. Just look at the problems encountered in persuading people to wear masks during a pandemic. Certainly, diet should be a matter of choice, but such choice should be well informed free of myth and distorting misinformation.

This thread also puts forward a lot that further complicates the issue. Miracle cures might seem to render use of a WFPB diet as obsolete. Yet, most of these cures remain untested and unproven. The positive effects of a WFPB are well documented and explained in The China Study and other studies. Scientists are even beginning to understand why this is the case.

To learn more, here is a link regarding The Longevity Diet: https://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Diet-D ... 0525534075 and here is a link concerning The China Study: :https://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Com ... 932100660
Last edited by caltrek on Mon Feb 13, 2023 7:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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caltrek
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One of the things that I should have mentioned is the importance of exercise. It is probably foolish to think that all of the positive results of using a WFPL diet can be achieved without proper amounts of exercise. Exactly what constitutes a proper amount of exercise remains elusive for me. My reaction to most recommendations is "that is not enough." Exercise should also be carried out using proper techniques in order to avoid muscle strain, pulling of tendons, injuries due to falls, etc.
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weatheriscool
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The secret to helping your dog live longer

Dogs age seven times faster than humans – but new research into canine longevity could offer the key to extending their lifespan
By Hannah Betts 13 February 2023 • 8:00am
Dog science
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/202 ... ve-longer/

I got back from my first term at Oxford and asked where my childhood bull terrier was. ‘He’s in the garden,’ said my family, collapsing with collective mirth. I looked: he wasn’t. As you’ve doubtless realised, he was in the garden – only six feet under. They’d been distraught about this at the time, deciding not to inform me so it didn’t ruin my college introduction. Only now they were over it, and found the whole thing darkly hilarious.

It was tough love in my family. But I still dream about Pooh Bang Betts, my first four-legged love. Canine mortality – and its limits compared to our own – is one of life’s harsher realities, however one learns the news. At 51, four years into adult dog ownership, I worry about my blue whippet’s death daily, despite her relatively young age. At six months, Pimlico nearly died of meningitis, rendering her uninsurable and me neurotic. The months of steroids required to save her involved weight gain and muscle loss.

At the same time, Pim’s earliest weeks were with toddlers and she thus knows no fear. Cue her delight in being chased by froth-mouthed rottweilers and flying over farm walls to land on enraged bulls. Whippets injure easily and south London’s chicken shops present a constant choking challenge. I’ve taken a dog first aid course – something I am yet to do for humans – swotting up on cardiopulmonary resuscitation, sight-hound Heimlich manoeuvre, bleeding, bandaging, poisoning, fitting, burns, broken bones, bites, stings, allergies, anaphylactic shock, head and spinal injuries, drowning and road accidents.
Nanotechandmorefuture
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Always a GREAT topic to see updated! :D
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Ken_J
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caltrek wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 5:03 pm A cursory review of this thread convinces me that I am no expert on the subject of aging and longevity. ...
A thread that runs through all of the writings of these experts is the importance of shifting our eating habits to being more of a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet.
Bottom line is that a WFPB can be helpful in preventing a large number of diseases that are especially prevalent in the West. ...
the issue I have with a lot of these things is that they make a lot of generalized assumptions about cause and effect.

For instance, whole food plant based diets have a higher variety of soluble and insoluble fibers. Does that mean it's not really being plant based that his the benefit but the fiber amount and variety? Well actually the increase in both types of fiber can lead to a wider diversity and larger population of gut microbiota. So is it gut microbiome that benefits the health and longevity of the people? Because there are other factors that can change both the bodies ability to process and tolerate fiber content, and also can change the microbiome. For instance a whole food plant based diet could just as easily be created with low fiber variety and volume, which could fails to provide the beneficial WFPB results and you'd never know. Likewise there are ways to get high fiber variety and volume in on an american standard diet which is notoriously nothing like whole food or plant based. and furthermore there is the ability to increase microbiome diversity and volume without changing fibers of either type. Likewise over exposure to some things like antibiotic treatments could negate everything else here. Including the antibiotic content of farmed meat, and or antibaterial soap and sanitizer use.

So when anyone says that the plant based diet is the best diet I smell an agenda, or at the very least a bias. And generally they never address the questions and factors above.
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caltrek
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^^^The China Study does look at fiber and in one section concludes that “high-fiber intake was consistently associated with lower rates of cancers of the rectum and colon. High-fiber intakes also were associated with lower levels of blood cholesterol” The problem with such single answer approaches is that they miss the benefits of consumption within an overall WFPB diet. Pills or concentrates isolated from such an intake are usually comparatively ineffectual or even counter-productive. Exceptions are vitamin B12 and Vitamin D. I have not seen a discussion by the authors cited, but recent studies have indicated that pregnant women may also be an exception.

While high fiber may help with specific conditions, the variety of conditions addressed by a WFPB is breathtakingly large. Further, one would have to deliberately select WFPB foods low in fiber to achieve the low fiber input you describe. Fiber is very pervasive in WFPB foods.

Campbell notes that with his farm upbringing, he was actually predisposed to believing in a meat-based diet. It was only after encountering the huge evidence presented in the various studies that he put aside his earlier prejudices.

In this forum, we have put forth a huge amount of evidence that global climate change is being brought by anthropogenic sources. Unfortunately, no such effort has been made regarding studies on nutrition. Yet, from Campbell and others, one very much begins to get the sense that the evidence for their claims, at least at the broadest level, is almost as overwhelming. Like climate change, there are a lot of countervailing studies put up by special interests that simply don’t seem to hold up to scrutiny. There are also some contradictions in the details. Still, the big picture is what should count the most.

Because the evidence has not been amassed in this forum, I do not want to get dragged into a prolonged debate on the subject. I would simply recommend consultation with the sources I cited earlier and then making up your own mind as to how persuasive they have made their case. I think even a basic internet search would give you the same conclusion as long as you do not focus on just the skeptics and detractors.
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