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.
Search Josh Mitteldorf’s columns only
Results stay inside this archive — not the rest of Science Blog.
Tests with human subjects require decades, and are impossible to control, so the gold standard for testing claims for treatments that delay aging is the controlled trial with rodents, usually mice.
Sep 15, 2015
In the 1980s, Growth Hormone was explored by athletes to build muscles and by aging men to...build muscles.
Sep 4, 2015
Fifteen years ago, Aubrey de Grey organized the first SENS roundtable--Strategies for Engineering Negligble Senescence.
Aug 24, 2015
One species has come to sit atop the biosphere in much of the world, to dominate and transform the world’s ecosystems.
Aug 13, 2015
How many headlines have you seen that purport to reveal THE secret of aging? Just in the last few weeks, there have been several fundamental, earthshaking, paradigm-shifting, game-changing, disruptive discoveries--and they were very different one from another.
Aug 7, 2015
The more unpredictable the result, the more important the experiment.
Jul 23, 2015
Aging is very old. Long before there were plants and animals, aging was fully-developed in one-celled eukaryotes and before that in bacteria.
Jul 13, 2015
Last week, I suggested a do-it-yourself version of Dr Longo's FMD diet, and offered sample recipes.
Jul 8, 2015
The main reason I am enthusiastic about Selegiline is because of its potential as a life extension drug.
Jul 6, 2015
Incremental advances in understanding the genetics, epigenetics, and biochemistry of aging are gradually pushing the field forward.
Jun 26, 2015
Nuts are a big part of my diet. It’s my habit to eat handfuls of nuts through the day, and a few times a week to incorporate almonds or cashews or peanuts into a main course.
Jun 23, 2015
Eight years ago, I assumed erroneously that the chute of my food processor was longer than my fingers.
Jun 16, 2015
