Health
Rapamycin Redux
Rapamycin is the best anti-aging treatment yet discovered. Most treatments that work in flies and worms fail when they get to mammals, but rapamycin has…
Jun 13, 2016
Column
Josh Mitteldorf
Aging & evolutionary biology
Josh Mitteldorf is best known for promoting the theory that aging is not “wearing out” but rather an evolved program that limits lifespan. The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. He began blogging about aging on this site in 2012. His guidance for a long life is at AgingAdvice.org. His two books on aging are available at Amazon and elsewhere.
Mitteldorf’s PhD is in astrophysics. Since about 2020, he has taken up a new challenge as curator and critic of science on the fringe, writing about promising science that the science establishment has unjustly neglected.
In other areas of life, Mitteldorf’s two daughters were among the first girls to be adopted from China in the 1980s. He has taught a weekly yoga class for fifty years. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. Follow his other writing at mitteldorf.substack.com, and listen to his poetry on YouTube.
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Health
Lamarck Update
I wrote a few weeks ago about newly-discovered dynamics of DNA that make Lamarckian genetic inheritance more plausible than ever.
Jun 7, 2016
Health
A Germ Theory of Aging?
Can microbial infections make you age faster? Last week, Alzheimer’s experts cited several lines of indirect evidence linking infections to dementia.
Jun 1, 2016
Health
Update: Cell Phones can cause Cancer
There’s a suppressed science correlating cell phone use with cancer risk. It is suppressed because the health risks pose a basic threat to the business model…
May 31, 2016
Health
“No animal dies of old age in the wild”
True, but that’s not really the relevant question to ask. In fact, aging has a major impact on mortality in the wild, and this poses a dilemma for evolutionary theory.
May 16, 2016
Health
Epigenetics of Aging, and Prospects for Rejuvenation
Last week, I attended the tail end of a Keystone conference on Epigenetic Regulation of Aging, followed by a one-day brainstorming session to kick off a project called GILGA-mesh, intended to take this bull by the horns.
May 9, 2016
Health
Aging is a Military Coup
The military forces of the United States are not to be deployed within the country.
Apr 17, 2016
Health
Retrotransposons: The Lamarckian Link
Today’s offering is not directly related to aging, but I’m an evolutionary biologist and these ideas about the fundamental mechanisms of evolution are compelling to me.
Apr 10, 2016
Social Sciences
Politics Drives a Promising Nutraceutical Underground
The plural of “anecdote” is “data”. When Anatabloc was taken off the market two years ago, customers bemoaned the loss of the only product they had ever found that relieved their arthritic symptoms.
Apr 4, 2016
Health
Cholesterol and inflammation; Statins and alternatives (Part II)
Last week, I cited evidence that statins work to lower risk of heart disease, but their benefit is probably independent of their design function, which is to deprive the body of cholesterol.
Mar 21, 2016
Health
When your doctor suggests statins (Part 1: Mechanism of Action)
High blood pressure is statistically associated with cardiovascular risk. Avoiding salt lowers blood pressure, but it does not affect cardiovascular risk.
Mar 15, 2016
Health
'one of the most important aging discoveries ever'
The science news circuits have been buzzing about Jan van Deursen’s recent paper, in which mice stayed younger, longer when their senescent cells were removed.
Feb 8, 2016