Aging Matters
A funny thing happened along the way to testing a carbon nanostructure for toxicity. The lab rats who got the toxin lived twice as long. Is there a possibility here for human health? Three Allotropes of Carbon When I went to school, they taught us that carbon was found in nature in two elemental … Read more
An eminent Russian biochemist has been working fifteen years to get the cell’s most active anti-oxidant into the mitochondria, which is the locus of its action. Called “SkQ” for short, his designer drug administered in food, has been shown to make mice live longer; and topically it can induce regression of eye diseases in rodents, … Read more
Last week, I wrote aspects of aging that appear to be active self-destruction. I mentioned four such processes that might make promising targets for anti-aging therapies: inflammation, immune derangement, cell suicide (or apoptosis) and telomere shortening. I promised more detail to follow We used to think the body wears out with accumulated damage. In order to … Read more
Most people think of aging as passive – something that happens to your body. Random mutations occur faster than the body can fix them. Cholesterol deposits build up in the arteries. Above all, oxidation damages the body’s delicate chemistry, and this affects the ability to fix other damage. But a new view is emerging, in … Read more
Meditations on “infinity” (with apologies for taking liberties in the Holiday spirit) Les deux infinis Infinity has at least two meanings. We sometimes forget that the word is used very differently in math and in science, and we conflate the two. For the mathematician, infinity is an abstraction with a pure and definite meaning, with some … Read more
In the news this week was a huge British study in The Lancet about longevity trends worldwide. The headlines were about the admirable progress that our world is making toward fewer avoidable deaths in the underdeveloped world. Life expectancy there is going up, for reasons that have nothing to do with aging. The secondary headline: Life … Read more
The best theory we have for the evolution of aging says that bearing children should shorten your life span. The best theory is wrong. Current Evolutionary Theory Here’s the surprise from genetic research in the 1990s that changed the way evolutionary scientists think about aging: Aging takes place under control of an intricate regulatory system, … Read more
There’s a social stigma attached to being fat, a cultural prejudice that is utterly unfair. It makes no distinction between those who are lax about their diet and those whose metabolisms incline them toward obesity even when they eat moderately. But Mother Nature is more equitable. She distributes the gift of longevity not according to … Read more
As we age, we all lose sensitivity to insulin and begin, gradually or rapidly, to poison our bodies with excess sugar in the blood. This happens to almost everyone, and it is only when the symptom is particularly severe that it is diagnosed as (type 2) diabetes. Metformin is a drug that has been used … Read more
Oxidative damage was the prevailing theory of aging in the 1990s, and anti-oxidants became the preferred prescription for youthfulness. But in lab animals and in human studies, the cure didn’t pan out – anti-oxidants never did fulfill their potential, and this left the theorists scratching their heads. Then, in recent years the situation became curiouser … Read more