Aging Matters
Eating less helps you live longer, but eating less is hard. One line of experiment suggests that eating less of just one protein component, methionine, is sufficient to extend life span, perhaps as effectively as though less calories were being consumed. It’s an intriguing idea, though the research is fraught with contradictions, and to separate … Read more
A new report this week about signals from hypothalamus reminds us that some of the biggest influences on longevity are mediated through the nervous system. To this extent, the decision about how long to live comes from a calculation made in the brain. The new research suggests a hormone known as GnRH as a relatively … Read more
Eating less is the best-tested and surest way to a younger body and an increased life span. But it’s a hard discipline to maintain, and many of us would welcome an easier alternative. Perhaps we can realize some of the benefits applying a more temporary exercise of willpower, with intermittent fasting. It’s counter-intuitive, but seems … Read more
Last week we talked about a wrong turn taken by 20th Century evolutionary theory. Foundation for the theory was laid in the 1930s in a model put forward by a towering figure of statistical science, R. A. Fisher. Fisher’s model was based upon competition among individual genes distributed through members of a breeding population. He … Read more
Darwin’s legacy, his gift to science is the idea of a creative competition that selects the strong, the robust, the fertile, and thereby ratchets the complexity of life. But does this contest take place one individual against another? Or more collectively, species against species? Do whole ecosystems compete with other ecosystems, or is it “every … Read more
For decades, we have been treating cancer by hammering away at cancer cells with radiation and chemical poisons. Fearful that even one surviving cell can seed a recurrence, we routinely apply the maximum tolerable dose, with side-effects ranging from nausea and hair loss to permanent impairment of the immune system. Is there a better approach? … Read more
Dr. Harold Katcher of the University of Maryland believes that signals in our blood tell our stem cells how old to act, and that some key disabilities of old age might be reversed by serial transfusions of blood plasma from a young donor. Plasma transfusion is a routine medical procedure, established to be safe for … Read more
Deprenyl is a neuro-protective drug discovered in Hungary more than 30 years ago. It has prolonged life span in many rodent studies, and also in dogs. In the 1990s, under the brand name Selegiline(also Eldepryl and Zelapar) it became a standard treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s patients who take Selegiline live longer than matched patients … Read more
A study this week helps to establish a relationship between resveratrol (the anti-aging tonic refined from red wine) and a family of genes known as SIRT, which seems to extend life span in some lab species by turning genes off. But the results may be moot if resveratrol cannot be shown to extend life span … Read more
The thymus is a thumb-sized organ just above the sternum where our immune cells are trained to recognize self from other. It is fully developed by the time we are 10 years old, but after that it begins gradually to shrink. By age 25, it has already lost 30% of its mass, and by age … Read more