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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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
High blood pressure is statistically associated with cardiovascular risk. Avoiding salt lowers blood pressure, but it does not affect cardiovascular risk.
Mar 15, 2016
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
For more than a decade, Claudia Cavadas of the Center for Neuroscience in Coimbra, Portugal has been on the trail of a signal molecule that comes from a region of the brain associated with timing.
Jan 29, 2016
I am a passionate life extensionist. I am a passionate conservationist. I have been living with a contradiction, increasingly stark as my understanding of both these causes, and my commitment to them deepens.
Dec 31, 2015
Years ago, I worked for an energy conservation priest whose motto was, “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” We were training unemployed young people to install fuel-efficient furnaces in the homes of people who couldn’t afford heat.
Dec 22, 2015
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320"] ...and sorry I was I could not travel both.[/caption] Aging is an accumulation of damage.
Nov 19, 2015
Last week I came upon a 1998 study finding that the risk of heart attack was 18 times lower in people who donate blood, compared to a matched sample of people who don’t.
Nov 9, 2015
Finally, strain-specific lifespans under CR and AL feeding were not correlated, indicating that the genetic determinants of lifespan under these two conditions differ.
Oct 19, 2015
“Berberine has low rates of absorption when taken orally due to both being subject to P-Glycoprotein (ejects Berberine back into the intestines) and increasing…
Oct 13, 2015
Promoting growth is dangerous, especially if it is done in an un-natural way.
Sep 30, 2015
Last year, I blogged on a CDC report that Alzheimer’s Disease is more prevalent than previous epidemiology had acknowledged.
Sep 25, 2015
