Could Getting Rid of Old Cells Turn Back the Clock on Aging? (arstechnica.com) 107
Long-time geriatrician James Kirkland is a Mayo clinic researcher joining "a growing movement to halt chronic disease by protecting brains and bodies from the biological fallout of aging," reports Ars Technica.
"While researchers like Kirkland don't expect to extend lifespan, they hope to lengthen 'health span,' the time that a person lives free of disease." One of their targets is decrepit cells that build up in tissues as people age. These "senescent" cells have reached a point — due to damage, stress or just time — when they stop dividing, but don't die. While senescent cells typically make up only a small fraction of the overall cell population, they accounted for up to 36 percent of cells in some organs in aging mice, one study showed. And they don't just sit there quietly. Senescent cells can release a slew of compounds that create a toxic, inflamed environment that primes tissues for chronic illness. Senescent cells have been linked to diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis and several other conditions of aging.
These noxious cells, along with the idea that getting rid of them could mitigate chronic illnesses and the discomforts of aging, are getting serious attention. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is investing $125 million in a new research effort, called SenNet, that aims to identify and map senescent cells in the human body as well as in mice over the natural lifespan. And the National Institute on Aging has put up more than $3 million over four years for the Translational Geroscience Network multicenter team led by Kirkland that is running preliminary clinical trials of potential antiaging treatments. Drugs that kill senescent cells — called senolytics — are among the top candidates. Small-scale trials of these are already underway in people with conditions including Alzheimer's, osteoarthritis and kidney disease.
"It's an emerging and incredibly exciting, and maybe even game-changing, area," says John Varga, chief of rheumatology at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, who isn't part of the Translational Geroscience Network. But he and others sound a note of caution as well, and some scientists think the field's potential has been overblown. "There's a lot of hype," says Varga. "I do have, I would say, a very healthy skepticism." He warns his patients of the many unknowns and tells them that trying senolytic supplementation on their own could be dangerous....
So far, evidence that destroying senescent cells helps to improve health span mostly comes from laboratory mice. Only a couple of preliminary human trials have been completed, with hints of promise but far from blockbuster results.
In conjunction with SpaceX and Axiom Space, Kirkland and a colleague also are investigating how space radiation affects senescence indicators in astronauts, the article points out . "They hypothesize that participants in future long-term missions to Mars might have to monitor their bodies for senescence or pack senolytics to stave off accelerated cellular aging caused by extended exposure to radiation."
"While researchers like Kirkland don't expect to extend lifespan, they hope to lengthen 'health span,' the time that a person lives free of disease." One of their targets is decrepit cells that build up in tissues as people age. These "senescent" cells have reached a point — due to damage, stress or just time — when they stop dividing, but don't die. While senescent cells typically make up only a small fraction of the overall cell population, they accounted for up to 36 percent of cells in some organs in aging mice, one study showed. And they don't just sit there quietly. Senescent cells can release a slew of compounds that create a toxic, inflamed environment that primes tissues for chronic illness. Senescent cells have been linked to diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis and several other conditions of aging.
These noxious cells, along with the idea that getting rid of them could mitigate chronic illnesses and the discomforts of aging, are getting serious attention. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is investing $125 million in a new research effort, called SenNet, that aims to identify and map senescent cells in the human body as well as in mice over the natural lifespan. And the National Institute on Aging has put up more than $3 million over four years for the Translational Geroscience Network multicenter team led by Kirkland that is running preliminary clinical trials of potential antiaging treatments. Drugs that kill senescent cells — called senolytics — are among the top candidates. Small-scale trials of these are already underway in people with conditions including Alzheimer's, osteoarthritis and kidney disease.
"It's an emerging and incredibly exciting, and maybe even game-changing, area," says John Varga, chief of rheumatology at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, who isn't part of the Translational Geroscience Network. But he and others sound a note of caution as well, and some scientists think the field's potential has been overblown. "There's a lot of hype," says Varga. "I do have, I would say, a very healthy skepticism." He warns his patients of the many unknowns and tells them that trying senolytic supplementation on their own could be dangerous....
So far, evidence that destroying senescent cells helps to improve health span mostly comes from laboratory mice. Only a couple of preliminary human trials have been completed, with hints of promise but far from blockbuster results.
In conjunction with SpaceX and Axiom Space, Kirkland and a colleague also are investigating how space radiation affects senescence indicators in astronauts, the article points out . "They hypothesize that participants in future long-term missions to Mars might have to monitor their bodies for senescence or pack senolytics to stave off accelerated cellular aging caused by extended exposure to radiation."
Aging is a horrible thing (Score:2)
Re:Aging is a horrible thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Mice actually [nih.gov]
Methods
A panel of flavonoid polyphenols was screened for senolytic activity using senescent murine and human fibroblasts, driven by oxidative and genotoxic stress, respectively. The top senotherapeutic flavonoid was tested in mice modeling a progeroid syndrome carrying a p16INK4a-luciferase reporter and aged wild-type mice to determine the effects of fisetin on senescence markers, age-related histopathology, disease markers, health span and lifespan. Human adipose tissue explants were used to determine if results translated.
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The ability to link to an article that has nothing to do with your claim is unimpressive
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The slightest resistance to your narrative causes you to immediately wish death on the person you're trying to convince.
I don't think you're going to be able to raise an effective argument around here. Go back to Facebook.
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Did you link to the right study? The one posted says basically after the 2nd vax dose (and even more after the 3rd) there's an increase in IgG4 anti spike immune proteins. Not sure how you think that will make people 'die soon'
The only issue I've heard so far with the vaccine is related to the spike protein binding to the p53 and BRCA1 binding sites. The retracted study said this led to failure of the immune system's V(D)J recombination. Not sure why the study was retracted, the retraction only said there w
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I got vaccinated as soon as Moderna became available, early spring of '21. I spent the rest of the year doing all of the travel, domestic and international, that I had missed since the beginning of the pandemic. While you conspiracy theorists and your radio talk hosts were dying of Covid like so many houseflies, I spent the year reaping the benefits of cheap travel deals. Low-cost business Phoenix-Budapest! New York on Chase points!
When you get Covid, and if you remain unvexed you will, your odds of clott
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And if we don't, do you and your rain-maker buddies just keep pushing the date out further, like all those clowns that thought the world would end in 2012 because the Mayan calendar stopped?
"I can make it rain, give me $100 and pray really hard!"
"You didn't pray hard enough! Give me another $100 and pray harder and I'll make it rain tomorrow!"
etc.
Don't you think that if the NIH had conclusive proof that vaccination was going to cause everyone that received the shots to die, they might stop offering the vac
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You might feel differently if you were 25 years older.
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You might feel differently if you were 25 years older.
You aren't kidding. I've been around long enough to know that the end of life is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm rather looking forward to it.
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That's a horrible and depressing idea. I've been on the edge of death and come back. I am thankful for every single day I wake up and every night I go to bed and still in one piece. Looking forward to as many of those as I can get.
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Aha, finally, that explains your caustic posts. You're a Revenant!
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I didn't actually die. I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any form of divinity.
My caustic posts result from the entertainment I get popping the echo chamber bubble. So many here have never been challenged to defend a single one of their thoughts they're incapable of it. Sometimes for kicks I'll leave a hole in my argument as a sort of handicap to see if they can find it so we can have some fun. Pretty much never happens. The poor fragile dears just down mod with sock puppets, toss out childish ad homi
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> test on rats before...I be someone's guinea pig!
So test it on politicians and lawyers first?
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Aging IS a horrible thing, sure, but billions of people all around the world find it generally far preferable to the alternative: not aging. (Because aging is a part of living, the alternative to which is DYING.) Better to focus on living as well as you can while you can, than living for as LONG as you can, even if that means spending every extra second fixating on how long that ends up being. I refuse to worry about it; death is inevitable and I'm not wasting what time I have left worrying about it.
Is death really inevitable though? You don't think we'll ever reach a point where you can transfer your consciousness into a clone or cybernetic replacement?
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"Is death really inevitable"
There are a few thousand people who don't think so and have signed up for cryonics.
May not work, but when you reach such a situation, what over choice do you have?
Old News? (Score:1)
I seem to recall some discussion on this from a couple years ago.
Yes, it "reverses" aging. You live more comfortably and healthily. Then you die, all of a sudden. That this doesn't extend your life - it in fact shortens it - but it arguably increases quality of life substantially. (Then, because of that "shortens it" part, it'll never be accepted by the US, and never get too much funding.)
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Young blood (Score:3)
Maybe we have genetic clones cleated of us when we are born so we can transplant identical organs when we need them
I think the key is our body is replacing cells all the time and this replication sometimes involve error or parts of the body just have a lifetime.
There is no reason to think we should live a very long time. In some myths, human characters live for hundreds of years, so some superstitious people think this was once the state of humans. But it wasnâ(TM)t. We die and this allows us to progress.
Periodic fasting (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe take the blood of children and transfuse into old people?
Maybe we have genetic clones cleated of us when we are born so we can transplant identical organs when we need them
I think the key is our body is replacing cells all the time and this replication sometimes involve error or parts of the body just have a lifetime.
Periodic fasting is supposedly a way to do this. . As it was explained to me, when your body has to sacrifice bits of itself to continue living, it takes the old and senescent cells first.
Additionally, this may explain why exercise helps keep people healthy - continuous building up of the body tissues.
(Then again, exercise has been found to be racist [dailymail.co.uk], so maybe exercise isn't such a good idea after all. YMMV)
There is no reason to think we should live a very long time. In some myths, human characters live for hundreds of years, so some superstitious people think this was once the state of humans. But it wasnâ(TM)t. We die and this allows us to progress.
And no reason to think we shouldn't.
There's a bunch of historical anecdotes about people living long lifetimes, and just saying "But it wasn't" doesn't disprove this. Notably Noah, who lived to around 950 years, or Li Ching-Yuen who lived to age 256.
Noah might be a mistranslation of months instead of years (making him around 75 at time of death), and some of the Sumerian rulers could be a mistranslation of the sumerian calendar (divide by 3600 = 60^2), but another explanation is that there's a rare gene in the population that lets people live excessively long lives.
We have rare genes that give children buff muscular appearance, allow some people to ignore cold weather, and a bunch of gene mutations that cause various diseases.
It's not completely unreasonable to expect that there's a gene that confers longivity. It wouldn't be much of a survival benefit (compared to other things, such as disease immunity, conscientiousness, and intelligence), so probably wasn't heavily selected for in the population.
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One of the observations Galileo made, which is often overlooked, is that as bodies get more massive the parts do not grow linearly. Rather there is a quadratic expansion. Therefore as we go from chicken, to dog, to human, to elephant, the legs do not just double as we double size. This was another reason why the church was not happy. It made the myths of Goliath and giants in general bullshit.
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It made the myths of Goliath and giants in general bullshit.
Goliath was described as "four cubits and a span," which is 6 feet 9 inches, or 206 cm.
Re:Periodic fasting (Score:4, Informative)
It made the myths of Goliath and giants in general bullshit.
Goliath was described as "four cubits and a span," which is 6 feet 9 inches, or 206 cm.
Depends on your source & translation. Some very old texts including a Dead Sea scroll says SIX cubits & a span.
That's a fucking giant even by modern standards. And no, I don't believe it.
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It made the myths of Goliath and giants in general bullshit.
Goliath was described as "four cubits and a span," which is 6 feet 9 inches, or 206 cm.
Depends on your source & translation. Some very old texts including a Dead Sea scroll says SIX cubits & a span. That's a fucking giant even by modern standards. And no, I don't believe it.
That would be almost 10 feet tall. The tallest recorded man in modern history is Robert Wadlow and he was almost 9 feet tall.
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Right but Wadlow wasn't able to walk without leg braces & John Rogan, the 2nd tallest man, was also physically limited
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Re: Periodic fasting (Score:2)
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"(Then again, exercise has been found to be racist [dailymail.co.uk], so maybe exercise isn't such a good idea after all. YMMV)"
I'm sure you realize that the author was trying to show the beginnings of the fitness MOVEMENT was rooted in racism & white supremacy.
I have no idea if that's true or not but what is indisputable is he prohibition against cannabis / marijuana was focused on minorities/POC. Inaugural Federal Bureau of Narcotics director Harry Anslinger said:
“There are 100,000 total marijua
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(Then again, exercise has been found to be racist [dailymail.co.uk], so maybe exercise isn't such a good idea after all. YMMV)
I actually had to look up this article from Time as it sounded so outrageous, but then again you're linking to the Daily Fail as a news source. https://time.com/6242949/exerc... [time.com]
It was super interesting reading the reflections of fitness enthusiasts in the early 20th century. They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. At first, you feel like this is so progressive.
Then you keep reading, and they’re
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It's still a bit of Daily Fail misleading headline. What the article is saying is that "proponents of exercise" were racist. Not that "exercise" is racist.
Re:Young blood (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe take the blood of children and transfuse into old people?
Peter Thiel paid for research on young blood transfusion [wikipedia.org] and a "blood boy" was featured on the TV show Silicon Valley. But there is no evidence that it works.
Re: Young blood (Score:1)
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Maybe that's really what Elizabeth Holmes was up to & she's secretly Elizabeth Bathory?
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That's what the various stem cell transplant projects proposed, for failing kidney or pancreas or skin or liver tissue. It's never worked well enough to get past the reluctance of funding agencies in the US to touch anything with words "stem cell" in the proposal. Even if the stem cells were harvested and cultured from miscarriages or medically necessary abortions or even umbilical cords, the prospect of of gathering attention from the pro-life lobby alarmed the funding agencies.
Re: Young blood (Score:1)
Myths? (Score:2)
Myths!? Myths don't have anything to do with the debate of humans and aging. They're stories and typically aren't any more real than Batman.
You might as well cite Star Wars when discussing the possibility of timely interstellar travel.
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Maybe we have genetic clones cleated of us when we are born so we can transplant identical organs when we need them
Kazuo Ishiguro imagined something similar in the 2005 novel Never Let Me Go [wikipedia.org], later adapted as a film in 2010. The U.K. (in an alternate reality) creates the National Donor Programme which raises human clones from cradle to grave for the sole purpose of organ donation. The donors speculate about their origin, i.e. who they were cloned from, in later parts of the novel. Notably, the donor recipients are never described, so it's unclear whether the donors are identical or not.
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Already built into us (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also a carbohydrate free and carnivorous diet helps a lot also. Carbs promote inflammation, and metabolic syndrome and can lead to type 2 diabetes. Low carb cures this.
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Re: Already built into us (Score:2)
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Sounds like Elijah Muhammad was onto something. https://www.meforum.org/62747/... [meforum.org] Further, on the principle that "the less you eat the longer you live," the NoI leader called on followers to eat just once a day, preferably between 4 and 6 p.m. Most draconian of all, and recalling a concentration camp diet, he recommended eating only once every two, three, or even seven days. Children, however, may eat twice daily. The wrong diet also makes a person look old and behave badly.
He made it to 77.
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In his teens, on his way to school, my father used to pass the home of an old black lady who would invite him to share her daily morning routine - a couple straight shots of rum & a cigar. She died at age 103.
Re:Already built into us (Score:5, Insightful)
If it were this simple, we would have many examples of people who lived longer because of fasting. There are many people who fast for reasons ranging from health to religion, so if it made a real difference in life expectancy, somebody would have noticed by now.
Re:Already built into us (Score:4, Insightful)
If it were this simple, we would have many examples of people who lived longer because of fasting. There are many people who fast for reasons ranging from health to religion, so if it made a real difference in life expectancy, somebody would have noticed by now.
Populations who fast ritually, such as Muslims, would be ideal test populations. If any such effect existed, we would know it by now from such obvious examples.
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> Populations who fast ritually, such as Muslims, would be ideal test populations. If any such effect existed, we would know it by now from such obvious examples.
Ramadan fasting barely meets what most intermittent fasting plans have you do. It's also typically cited that autophagy kicks in around 3-4 days of fasting, so that would certainly not be relevant for Ramadan asting.
For Ramadan, participants fast from sunup to sundown. Generally participants also eat a big breakfast and a huge, rich meal at nigh
Re:Already built into us (Score:4, Insightful)
About the only thing that I’ve observed about pretty much everyone who makes it to advanced old age is that they’re NOT FAT. Sorry to use an out-of-fashion judgemental term, but everyone knows what I mean. Stooped? Yes. Out of shape? Definitely. A bit dumpy and pear shaped? Yup, cause gravity is hard on old flesh. But NOT FAT. I haven’t known a single fat person who made it to 95+.
The rest doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Despite what you’re being told by the health book sellers, the influencers, and the ads in your browser, there’s no “simple 1-trick” to a long life. Remember, your brain tends to latch onto noise and identify patterns where there aren’t. One person thinks it’s fasting. For another it’s keto. Another person is sure it’s coffee. A third person swears that vitamin C is the key to longevity. None of them stand up to actual scrutiny.
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Closely related, and a contributor to excess weight, is a lack of exercise. So yes, watching one's food intake (not fad diets), and proper exercise, go a long way. But there is no miracle or "one simple trick" as you say.
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We were desigend to feast and fast
We weren't really 'designed' to be particularly lively past 50 (for stretching the definition of 'designed to'). Average lifespan back in the days you hearken back to was under 40.
There's a lot of people declaring that something or another about our ancient lifestyle is the key to extending lifespan beyond modern lifespans/healthspans but we have as long of health/lifespans as we have ever enjoyed as far as we can tell.
Strict fasting will do it without drugs (Score:3)
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Since mid-November I've been under 1K calories a day, mainly because swelling from the tumors is crushing my stomach. Here's hoping chemo does its job.
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"Here's hoping chemo does its job"
Best of luck to you, sincerely.
I've spent a lot of time over several decades in hospitals, working on infrastructure projects & have many nurses & a few doctors in the extended family so I know cancer care has come a very long way but it still sucks.
Some years back I was in Toronto, Ontario at the Princess Margaret Hospital which specializes in cancer treatment when they were installing a new kind of radiation treatment machine.
They had a huge banner halfway up the
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With what I've got it's not a matter of if it will kill me, but when. By the time it shows symptoms, you're fucked. If chemo does its job, I've got a year+, if not, months. Five year survival rate is somewhere between 5%-8%.
Cancer of the bile ducts of the liver sucks ass.
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Geez, I really don't know what to say.
Cholangiocarcinoma? I had to look that up.
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I'll know in a couple of months how I'm faring. At least I've got time to get everything in order for my family. Unlike dropping dead of a heart attack at the gym or something.
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"Unlike dropping dead of a heart attack at the gym or something"
That's my likely fate. Seems my father's side of the family have weak hearts and no male in 100 years has survived the 1st - one & done for all of them
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The cardiac guys totally missed it even though I insisted something was wrong.
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I'd need more than people's "raves" to believe that fasting is as effective as you say. What I'd expect to see is people actually living longer. So far, there is no known statistical link between fasting, and lifespan.
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People also "raved" about margarine instead of butter.
People "raved" about saccharin, until the tumors started growing in mice.
I'll take double-blind peer-reviewed studies over "ravings" thank you very much.
- the motivation for investment in senescence - (Score:2)
This is a topic I've been following for a few years and I'm happy to see that some of the TFS is infomative. My pusher, LifeExtension.com has been funding research in this area using the money I give them for a healthy retirement. They provide me with research information and substances that the government and corporate America don't want me to have. (Do I sound like Kevin Trudeau?). It turns out that there are natural substances that reduce senescence.
The research mentioned in TFS is primarily a search for
Senescent cells are believed to inhibit cancer (Score:3)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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Cell senescence is a checkpoint, a tumor inhibitor. Cells, via any numerous ways bypass the normal cell cycle (say with stat3 activation) then divide and reproduce exponentially. Senescence is like the TTL field in a network packet, every step it increments to one and when it hits the limit, it stops (stops dividing in cells, or w/TTL- moving along the network).
This doesn't address the cause of the out of control growth that started it. This is just one of the many ways the body has formed defenses against
Zyrtec / Cetirizine (Score:2)
Could a common allergy medication prevent oncovirus driven cancer?
https://europepmc.org/article/... [europepmc.org] Conclusion Cetirizine inhibits JAK2-STAT3 pathway activation and mast cell activation in lung tissue of asthmatic mice.
Are antibiotics causing cancer?
https://link.springer.com/arti... [springer.com] Collectively, this research demonstrated that gut dysbiosis, characterized by the enrichment of Proteobacteria due to antibiotic exposure, resulted in the elevation of gut permeability and intratumoral LPS, promoting the develop
Wait what? (Score:2)
Yes, getting rid of old cells, such as brain cells will reverse aging by reverting you back toddler IQ? I suppose.
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> getting rid of old...brain cells will...revert you back to toddler IQ?
Explains certain politicians.
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Re: Wait what? (Score:2)
At what rate? Besides, you can install a new hard drive, but with no software and data it's useless.
Treating symptoms (Score:3)
They are treating the symptoms here. The body has natural methods of removing these cells, the question is why the natural processes aren't working. Fix that, and the "old cell" problem will be fixed automatically (along with other, more important problems).
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If we can't figure out why they are not being removed, then perhaps "jumping ahead" to remove them directly is almost as good. Some suggest that occasional near starvation episodes is how they used to be cleared, but that's highly unpleasant. I get grumpy if I merely have to skip lunch.
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> I get grumpy if I merely have to skip lunch.
That itself is a sign of metabolic disease. You might want a glucose challenge test or go a month without sugar then a month without carbs, then fasting.
Metabolic flexibility is key to healthspan.
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I'm afraid there are many, many articles and studies about the mental effect of missing meals. Why would you think this is a "sign of metabolic disease", anymore than bleeding when cut is a sign of hemophilia? Especially for someone who is active, and who may not have eaten a substantial breakfast?
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I'm not sure that i would use the phrase "metabolic disease," but I do believe the GP is likely to be correct that getting "hangry" is often linked to glucose, metabolism, and carbohydrates, rather than purely mental.
My wife, her father, and one of our kids has the the "hangry gene" for lack of a better term. If they miss lunch, they get mean, pissy, and they get headaches.
My wife went keto for a while, and the hangriness completely disappeared. She has always been someone who eats breakfast, lunch, snack,
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It's likely a lack of flow in the intercellular fluid (intercellular matrix), including the lymph system. The lymph system is like the circulatory system, except instead of pumping blood it pumps out refuse from the body (among other things), and it doesn't have a heart (in humans), instead relying on muscle contractions to move the fluid around.
The old cells are a symptom because they aren't being washed away the way they would if the intercellular fluid were flowing properly.
If you are a normal person, th
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Evidence seems to be pointing to the "Epstein-Barr" virus as the upstream cause of lymph and other resulting related disorders
More specifically, the copy # (as we all have the virus) and how well our immune system suppresses it
microcompetition "hit and run theory of cancer" (Score:2)
"Can hidden viruses shorten the life of seemingly healthy people? Dr. Hanan Polansky and Adrian Javaherian use the Mircocompetition model to answer this question."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
also:
Abstract
Background: It is well-known that certain cancers are caused by viruses. However, viral oncogenesis is complex and only a small fraction of the infected people develop cancer. Indeed, a number of environmental factors can contribute to virally infected cells developing cancer hallmarks, promoting tumor
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There are multiple mutations that need to happen for cancer to become a tumor, and more mutations that need to happen for it to escape into the body and kill you.
A virus can cause one (or more) of those mutations, but doesn't cause all of them. That is why the virus contributes to cancer, but doesn't cause it completely.
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They are treating the symptoms here. The body has natural methods of removing these cells, the question is why the natural processes aren't working. Fix that, and the "old cell" problem will be fixed automatically (along with other, more important problems).
Human bodies are designed to last long enough in peak condition to get their children to full maturity, ~40 years. They're probably also designed to hang on long enough to pass down wisdom to grandchildren and even great grandchildren, 60-70.
Once you get beyond the designed lifespan things start breaking down, not just the cells, not just the joints, not just the arteries, everything. I suspect you can add a few years whenever you fix one of these things, but others will keep coming up.
I don't think we nece
Don't really think so. (Score:1)
Simply cleaning up older cells won't necessarily stop the process.
Indeed, it might actually accelerate it.
Remember, as cells reproduce, you see telomere shortening.
The whole "copy of a copy" thing.
So what happens when you completely unfurl the telomeres on a cell set?
The cell line can die out.
Cancer and other abnormal progression of cellular mutation.
So just periodically "scrubbing" an organism means you're forcing a speed up in cellular aging.
antioxidants stem the tide of cell death (Score:2)
I've been taking big doses of antioxidants. Mainly vitamin C (ascorbic acid), 2,000mg/day and beta carotene (fresh steamed, coloured vegetables), everyday. Sodium metabisulphate (aka brewer's sanitizer, 150ppm in water), weekly. This for about 15 years now.
I began this after studying the circumstances of cell death. Oxygen is both a friend and an enemy.
I'll get back to you if I'm still kicking in 20 years.
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I've been taking big doses of antioxidants
waste of time and money. but mostly harmless.
Promising (Score:2)
No, you don't want lots of new cells (Score:3)
Telometers protect your genetic code from damage but are sacrificed in the process. Telomerase can repair this but in humans it doesn't full restore your telometers. Your body doesn't expend energy replacing lots of old cells nor risk spreading genetic damage unnecessarily. Over all the hypothesis seems a bit crack pot to me.
Getting rid of ex wives would help more.... (Score:1)
I'll just wait over here for a while.
These cells might have an undiscovered purpose (Score:2)
On the surface, it seems like these cells are no longer "functional" or are harmful in some way. But as the research progresses, we might learn that they have an important purpose.
When antibiotics were discovered, people assumed that bacteria were universally harmful, and that it was a good thing to take antibiotics to kill them all off. But then research started to uncover helpful bacteria, such as gut microbes, that actually help us.
Reality is rarely as simple as it seems.
The story doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Insightful)
But this line does surprise me:
researchers like Kirkland don't expect to extend lifespan, they hope to lengthen 'health span,'
As an old fart who has been armchair researching the role of diet and lifestyle in his health, I'm gonna have to call BS on that claim. Everything I've seen tells me that killing off those senescent cells and ridding the body of the toxins they produce WILL extend lifespan, and probably quite significantly.
This smells to me like a ploy to sidestep the controversy around lengthening human lifespan.
Re: (Score:2)
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I believe they mean to say max lifespan. This will not extend max lifespan, but it will increase average lifespan. I think they focus on "health span" to rebut the common complaint that people don't want to live longer if they're senile and stuck in a wheelchair.
Thanks - I never thought of that, but it makes perfect sense.
No, thanks (Score:2)
thanks for the memories (Score:2)
Another SF prediction (Score:1)
I remember a story where a guy went through a transporter which seemingly did not work but a little while later his grey hair started to grow back red, his original color. Niven or Heinlein?
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Niven, "A World out of Time"
not correlated (Score:2)
Pretty sure getting rid of cell phones wouldn't help with aging ... oh wait ... nevermind.
Iâ(TM)m going to try, how about you? (Score:1)
Well I'm old (Score:1)
Age is not a shame (Score:1)