Scientists Discover Possible Anti-Aging Gene 323
werelnon writes "The BBC is running an article about researchers who seem to have discovered a gene which controls aging. By stimulating this gene, which when malfunctioning causes premature aging, scientists have managed to prolong the average life span of lab mice from 2 to 3 years. Because a very similar gene is present in humans it is quite possible it will do the same thing for people." From the article: "But there may be downsides with Klotho. The long-lived mice in the new experiments tend to be less fertile. And the gene may also predispose people to diabetes. The trick for researchers will be to find ways of getting the life-enhancing results of Klotho while avoiding the drawbacks."
Re:Cheating death (Score:2, Insightful)
the key... (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that always the goal of a research scientist? To find the benefits, while mitigating or eliminating the drawbacks?
Side effects? (Score:5, Insightful)
diabetes and infertility? (Score:1, Insightful)
And how do you distribute this miracle? (Score:3, Insightful)
And doesn't that open an interesting can of worms? If, for example, it turns out that some people with decently well-off and very foresightful parents can live 50% longer than the rest of us? If you think we have nasty debates now about, say, equal opportunity in college education, just wait a few decades, when it's a question of equal opportunity for that extra 30 years of life...
The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:2, Insightful)
I know that I would not want live in that state. Just imagine yourself in the early stages of alzheimer's where you know that you are forgetting all that you used to know. I'm sure to incite a couple of fierce replies with this next comment but it is my opinion: I would want to be euthanized if I was in that state.
The article does state that in the mice, the typical effects of old age were delayed. But I would bet anything that in humans, infertility and diabetes would be only the start of the problems caused by this.
P.S. People who oppose my opinion, don't take offense to what I say for it is simply my opinion and it often changes as more information is taken into account.
Quality of life is decreasing (Score:1, Insightful)
Most food people consume is no longer organic, most people know nothing at all about supplements and how to stay healthy.
We should be focused on life extention and not waiting for government or corporations to come in with the cure for diseases like cancer and diabetes.
If you want a cure, start a business to fund the search for it. The life extension foundation does this. Life extension foundation [lef.org]
Life expectancy is not important. Only quality is important. We are not as healthy as we once were, and every 10 years more of us are dying from heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other illnesses due to the foods we are consuming. It is time for us to take control of our own destiny, become our own doctors, create our own supplements and treatments, and finally start supporting the organic food industry.
We can complain about the results (obesity, diabetes, cancer) of consumption of low quality products, but the only way to improve our health is to stop consuming products designed to ruin our health. This means we need to both fund research for cures while also focus on prevention by offering alternatives to Coke, Pepsi, and high fructose corn syrup which are actually safe. We need to be consuming products like green tea, with natural organic sugar, not high fructose corn syrup and dextrose mixed with acid.
whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
and besides, as asimov said, our relatively short life-spans are a cause for collaboration, and you can't say that's not a good thing. a big part of human nature is the concept of legacy, evolving ourselves and passing down to the next generation. if we increase our life-spans, we just slow down the process.
not to mention overpopulation, poverty, blah blah blah etc. etc. ad nauseum.
if we're going to evolve, let's evolve along the lines of cybernetics, improving the quality of life for the here and now, instead of hanging around longer. those who dream of extended life are dreaming of more time to regret wasting the first bits.
and we're STILL not immune to large trucks. BUGGRIT.
Re:And how do you distribute this miracle? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dying early can be a drawback. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:3, Insightful)
For all 15 years of this degenerative process, up until the last two months of his life, he maintained that life was still worth living, and that in spite of everything, he was still enjoying being alive. (Children, marriages, grandchildren...) Only in the last two months did he say he was ready to die. (He went peacefully.)
One anecdotal data point. My point? Us young folks really can't say what old folks want, or will want. Including ourselves.
Re:Quality of life is decreasing (Score:4, Insightful)
I also do not see how natural organic sugar is going to affect us in any way. Sugar is sugar, our bodies process the sugar from apples the same as the sugar from coke and pepsi, however apples contain many benneficial antioxidants and far less sugar than soda pop. It's just like natural sea salt, it's still just salt.
What we really need is to eat less fast food, and to get off our asses. There are plenty of other things that we can do to help us be more healthy, but until we can start doing those two simple things we're hopeless.
Re:The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:1, Insightful)
People get sick and have all sort of problems when they are old, because the cells in their body are starting to die.
If we could find a way to make cells to regenerate, we could be as healthy as youngsters are today, even if we would be thousands of years old.
The trick (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the trick will be finding whether what they did with the mice applied to humans. Suppressing the side effects they found in mice is nothing by comparison.
While mice are similar in some ways to people, they are also rather different. What extends the life of lab mice might, in humans: a) have no effect, b) cause humans to sprout extra limbs, c) live longe and prosper, or d) none of the above.
And it's going to take a long time before they can try these experiments on humans.
--Pat
Re:Behold! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The trick (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The older we get the worse shape we are... (Score:3, Insightful)
from the article:
I have to agree I wouldn't want to live in a decrepit state, but staying young for longer has a definite appeal.
Re:Geriatrics (Score:2, Insightful)
Eat processed food and live longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, great, that's a perfect plan if you intend to life the 20~25 years lifespan of a cave man. But what people who lament the wide availability of processed food forget is that the use of packaged food is closely correlated with increased life span.
No, I'm not saying that processed food prolongs life, not at all. A correlation does not imply in cause and effect, there could be a common cause for both phenomena. For instance, the problems of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease that you mention could have an alternative explanation: old age. Even if we assume that processed food brings some health problems, those are certainly offset by other advantages in using processed food, because people who live in industrial countries and eat processed food live much longer than people who live in poor countries and eat food directly from nature.
Remember, the industrial system that gives us processed food is the same system that gives us sanitation and advanced health treatment. It's no use eating vegetables fresh from the garden if you don't have treated water to wash them before eating. Even the most "natural" fruit and vegetables are unable to protect us from typhus and cholera.
Perhaps one could eat natural food in an industrial society and get the best of both worlds, maybe that's what you are trying to say. But the system isn't prepared to supply organically grown food for all the 6+ billion people living on Earth today. If it weren't for the hundreds of millions of tons of grain grown with pesticides and fertilizers and now also with genetically modified plants, people would starve.
All in all, the combination of processed food + advanced health treatment has almost doubled the expected lifespan of people living in the industrial countries, compared to a hundred years ago. Given the choice, most people prefer to face the possible risks of diabetes and heart disease in old age rather than dying from other causes before those diseases appear.
Diet & Lifestyle (Score:3, Insightful)
Rural people and particulary the rural poor tend to lead more active lives and eat food that is fresher, home made and healthier than the moderatly wealthy to obsenely rich.
Kind regards
Re:Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
How to Extend Your Life 50% (No Joke) (Score:4, Insightful)
Diseases of heart - Heart Attack
Malignant neoplasms - Cancer
Cerebrovascular diseases - Stroke
Chronic lower respiratory diseases - Lung Disease
Diabetes mellitus - Diabetes
Now, heart attacks are caused almost exclusively bad poor diet (too much fat) and not enough exercise. Cancer has strong links with diet (too much fat) and exposure to chemicals. Strokes are "heart attacks of the brain" in that diet and exercise are major contributing factors here too. A good portion, but not all, cases of lung disease are induced or exacerbated by smoking. And (adult onset) diabetes has been linked to diets high in fats and sugars.
So considering that 66% of male deaths and 63% of female deaths were caused by the above diseases, if you can eliminate the causes of those diseases, you're obviously going to increase your chances for a long and healthy life.
Re:Eat processed food and live longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Washing your fruit off with clean tap water does not make them
"processed". We're talking about foods made from lots of artificial ingredients, stuck in plastic packaging, and placed in long store shelves. They're convenient, and they taste good cause they're full of lots of concentrated sugars. But they aren't natural, they're chemically way different than anything nature would provide, and so our bodies have not evolved to process them in healthy ways. Fertilized crops aren't the problem, it's the fact that so much of our food cannot be efficiently dealt with by our bodies. And so we become fatasses and get diabetes and stuff.
The solution, the easy one, is to stop eating those manufactured foods. We don't need to go back to everyone growing their own vegetables in their own gardens, but we need to be more intelligent about how the food that is grown ends up in front of the average person. The earth can grow plenty of food. Go talk to some farmers, especially in countries where they aren't subsidized. They're having a rough time because prices are so low. The world is growing more food than it needs. People are only starving for political and economical reasons, not because all the farmland is already being used to capacity.
Re:Geriatrics (Score:2, Insightful)
From TFA:
Klotho seems to delay many of the effects of old age, like the weakening of bones, clogging of the arteries and loss of muscle fitness.
This is important for those researching the causes of ageing, whose intention is not so much to prolong life as to improve the quality of our final years.
So this certainly seems to be the former category. I'd gladly work for longer if I'm living a healthy life for longer (obviously it would be absurd and selfish to suggest I should work for 65 years, then live for 100 years off the state). The ratio of workers to pensioners would increase.
Even if the downsides such as lack of fertility and diabetes were not solved, this would still not prevent people from working.
Re:Diabetes is already becoming popular (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Eat processed food and live longer (Score:4, Insightful)
Processed food is the problem. If I process organic food (chop it up, press it, fry it, add salt and sugar, etc...) it will now be unhealthy food.
If you want to eat healthy buy and eat FRESH fruit and vegatables. Buy fresh meat, poultry, and fish. Eat most fruit and vegatables raw. Steam your other vegatbles instead of boiling them. Do NOT deep fry anything. Keep sugary and fatty treats to a minimum. Cut back on the amount of meat you eat (unless you are training vigorously every day you most likely eat more meat than you need). Never drink more than a single glass of pop (soda to the Americans) per day. EXERCISE every day for at least 20 minutes.
Pop/soda is liquid sugar. All deep fried foods have too much fat. Virtually all processed foods have too much sugar, salt, and fat. Processing often reduces the vitamins, fibre, and other good parts of food. Cooking your own food is fun and healthy.
Re:Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
The fast food joints actually tried to offer a bunch of healthy (well, healthier) selections a few years ago; the only problem was people really do like burgers and fries better than salads. They're giving us exactly what we want, which is food that tastes good even if it eventually kills us.
Re:Side effects? (Score:3, Insightful)