Aging Matters
When cold-blooded animals are exposed to a cold environment, their metabolisms slow and they live longer. When warm-blooded animals are exposed to a cold environment, their metabolisms speed up (to maintain body temperature) and they live longer. In a new study from University of Michigan, both responses are traced to a common genetic mechanism that … Read more
How does the body know how old it is? Our metabolisms change as we get older, even though our DNA doesn’t change. Different genes are activated at different times of life, and the timing of gene expression is what controls growth, development, sexual maturity, and perhaps aging as well. The body keeps accurate track of … Read more
The China Study used a broad comparison of different diets and living styles across diverse regions of China to answer questions about diet and disease. The authors’ bottom line is that eating animal protein leads to the high rates of cancer and heart disease, and many other afflictions of the Western world as well. They … Read more
The “declining force of natural selection” is the foundation of two classical theories of aging. The phrase means that what happens when an individual is young contributes more to its fitness than what happens later in life. A new study seeks to test whether aging tends to evolve in the direction predicted by this theory, … Read more
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