New Developments in Aging Research
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-11-22/new-developments-aging-research
Each day around the world 150,000 people die; two-thirds from age-related diseases like cancer and heart disease. Many of these conditions lead to lengthy hospital stays and costly medical treatments. An aging world population is driving some countries to fund biological research aimed at preventing the development of life-shortening diseases. Recently, scientists have discovered that removing old, harmful cells delays the onset of age-related conditions in laboratory animals. The latest developments in aging research and what they could mean for human health.
Guests
David Walker
assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology at UCLA
Jan van Deursen
professor, biochemistry/molecular biology, The Mayo Clinic
Felipe Sierra
director, division of aging biology, National Institute on Aging at NIH
Program Highlights
By age 65, most people will be diagnosed with two age-related diseases. Scientists at The Mayo Clinic recently found that removing old cells in mice prevented them from developing cataracts and muscle loss. At UCLA, researchers activated a gene in the stomach of a fruit fly that extended its life by 50 percent. But can these and other methods really prevent the onset of age-related illnesses and extend life?
Eventually, Cells Stop Dividing
"Senescence" is the term describing what happens when a cell loses its ability to divide. The phenomenon was discovered about 50 years ago, but until very recently, scientists couldn't directly connect it to the aging process. Now, researchers have found that once a cell experiences senescence, it can begin to secrete harmful substances, releasing them in to the body. Dr. Jan Van Deursen of the Mayo Clinic said that in mice, senescent cells have been definitively linked to a loss of muscle mass and functional fat - two hallmarks of the onset of many age-related illnesses.
Delaying the Onset of Disease
Van Deursen and his colleagues found out that by removing senescent cells from mice, they were actually able to delay the onset of diseases in their tissues. The researchers also found no overt negative side effects from the removal of the cells. But Van Deursen is careful to point out that his research is not a fountain of youth-like solution. "I would like to stress that we did not see a reversal of aging," he said. "It's not like we turned an old mouse in to a young mouse."
Genes With the Keys to Lifespan
David Walker, assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology at UCLA, is part of a team that has identified a gene in fruit flies that seems to control life span. When the gene's activity is boosted, fruit flies can live up to 50 percent longer. A normal fruit fly lifespan is about two months. Walker's team has figured out that the intestine, and the function of the digestive system, seem to be very important in aging. "The intestine is a vital organ for nutrient uptake...but it's also a very important barrier that protects us from pathogens and toxins in the environment," Walker said.
The Benefits of Calorie Restriction
Both the role of mitochondria and calorie restriction were the inspiration behind Walker's study. It's known that mitochondria decay is a function of age, and also that dietary restriction can extend lifespan. Although scientists don't yet know the exact mechanism, dietary restriction is actually shown to boost mitochondrial activity. The gene that Walker and his team identified in fruit flies performs the exact same function.
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Okay, here is an interesting notion. In times before history we are told that people lived short brutish lives. As long as you could stay up with the group, you survived. If you were old and no longer had anyone to protect you, if you were a child whose parents were killed and didn’t have someone else to care for you, more than likely you died. This “survival of the fittest” worked for thousands of years and it kept the worlds’ population down. Tribes of hunter gatherers were only as successful as their ability to hunt or gather food and when times got tough, people simply starved and died.
We are now presented with a system which abhors the injustice of letting someone suffer and die. There are religious people who want to protect all life, no exception. As a matter of fact, we are spending fortunes to keep people from dying at present. There is little doubt that the last several years of a persons’ life are the most expensive, especially if they are presented with a life threatening condition. With no mention of “quality of life” or of ethical decisions, it follows that, an older population costs a society a lot more money.
The decision presented by all of this is…do we decide that we want to extend life, with all of the implications and expenses that come with that? Or do we decide that we simply cannot afford to extend life when we appear not to be able to accomplish much of anything else these days, at least not without arguing and being largely ineffective. If we decide to extend or protect human life, what are we doing it for? So we can argue and fight about how much medical care is costing us? Oh wait, that might mean that we want universal healthcare.....nooooo!
I have always been tender hearted. Maybe it was guilt from having been born into a family with money. I used to make the rest home rounds. What I found was a few wrecked bodies containing struggling minds, and a few able bodies containing failed minds. A person with both a functioning body and mind, or with a mind determined to manage usually stays out of the rest homes. There are exceptions. What one must realize is that almost every American has been a conscientious worker and has paid some dues (Entitlements?) so we are obligated to cut them some slack and give a little comfort as they age away. It is only so expensive because care and medicine have become rackets with profit-taking and fraud operating middle men.
Diane's husband John has Parkinson's. I can see why she chose this topic. Disease takes many people before their time. Diane is compassionate like me and wants science to remedy suffering. I think at heart Teece wants that too.
But what makes me mad as Hell is the tendency of business to dominate science into scams and rackets. Much money can be extorted from the elderly who wishfully believe some quack or commercial experimenter can extend their beauty, virility or lifespan with surgery, injections or a special diet. We all die and we all hav e anxiety about that, so I'm surprised Woody Allen hasn't made a movie about mad, greedy age defying doctors.
Maybe this discussion is peculiar to runaway capitalism. It would be only a few wealthier people who could afford these extreme measures. Theoretically, it would set up an Elite class of privilege, of wealthy and powerful Immortals too good to die. Jonathan Swift and other authors have explored such an idea, even Star Trek. So if any method demonstrates efficacy it will only create another artificial need most people can never fulfill. I really wonder if this sort of research has any real societal purpose other than profit. People as such seem in a plentious supply. And it has always been my prejudice that one is about as good as any other. I don't visit rest homes so often anymore. We have young families with children here in Gaston County with no opportunities being crushed by poverty. They have strong bodies and good minds at the same time, and they have not yet lived.
Rats and fruit flies? I think they made that horror movie in the 50s. I think I'll leave the Mayo off my healthcare sandwich. Here's a funny story: I had an aunt and uncle from Rochester , Minnesota who made their income on a succession of successful insurance frauds, but they spent it all at The Mayo Clinic trying to stay young. They died relatively young. Ivan Illich explained why modern medicine is iatrogenic (cures worse than diseases, kills many unfortunates to extend the lives of a fortunate few). Next they'll be injecting people with BT to prevent boll weevils.
0.) We generally wish to live, and to be healthy rather than ill.
1.) We are made of matter; there is no ghost in the machine, no in-dwelling telos put in there by some notional Father or Mother. We are not "meant" to do anything, not the job of our caste nor to suffer nor to die.
2.) As such, if we are clever enough, we should be able to make that matter do as we will, or much better approximate it (e.g.: not have to sweat to make our bread, not have to endure the pain of childbirth or the surgeon's knife, eliminate menses if we wish, and so on---all at one point or another considered a deity's Will).
3.) Amazing luxuries of the past---meat, aluminium, sheet glass---and unobtainable goods, insulin for example---are now cheap and commonplace. (E.g.: Neal Stephenson observed that diamond should be one of the easier materials for nanotech to produce.)
4.) 0.) and 2.) imply that we will something---that is, something more than we already have---about the diseases and infirmities associated with aging. 3.) strongly suggests that they might end up cheap.
That's not to say there won't be problems...I can see societies' trying to limit these to the people of whom it approves strongly---Party officials, rich men, other corrupt sorts---but something so generally desired will be hard to restrict. Personally, I think most of the objections now come from sour grapes from people who resent the thought that they might die earlier than physically possbile due to the dumb, bad, luck of having been born too soon.
I sincerely hope that senescence will eventually be seen as an incomprehensible barbarity of a former time, much as we see serfdom and The Great Chain of Being and lawful marital rape now---as the same should be hoped for jobs and superstition and money.... I will almost certainly not live to see that, but I do not begrudge others' enjoying it: to feel otherwise would be mean-spirited, short-sighted, and in fact barbarous.
How might your research benefit Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia? CLL is common in older adults and involes lymphocytes that accumulate because they don't die.
(Many women will get this, and most men won't)
Humanity is a co-operative social collective where individuals are less important because we function in groups. Persons displaced generationally are maladaptive and disruptive because consciousness must always evolve and adapt to circumstances. Keeping some people alive much longer than most others is an undesirable liability. Think how perverted it is in Twilight for a young girl to marry a 900 year old vampire.
Back to physiology: Overeaters may be shortening their lives by wearing out their guts. They may consume 30 years food supply in 10 years. But our commercial milieu likes to keep us voracious. All I can recommend is, "Eat slow and savor your digestion." It's better than having someone fishing in your guts.
How does Gerald propose to ration resources and limit environmental impact (population)? Humanity has only experienced the plenty and ease he describes since intense fossil fuel use was begun 200 years ago. And our intense production has lessened carrying capacity on this planet, not increased it. Is Gerald going to go La Roushian and pull hot fusion and other worlds out his pancreas? Maybe Gerald is only feeling thankful in observance of this hubristic and exceptional holiday (November 24th) so characteristic of our Empire.
Live long and prosper, Gerald Fnord
Could your guests comment on the role of sugar on inflammation?
Hi Diane,
I wonder if you would consider interviewing some of the Naturopathic Physicians who have studied nutrition and wholistic living and it's relation to health: Dr Joseph Pizzorno from Bastyr College, Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo (Eat Right for Your Type), Harvey and Marilyn Diamond (Fit For Life), Dr Gary Null and others...
There is an entire science of healthy living which has been existence for over a hundred years (if not longer) which is often ignored. Naturopathic training includes all the pre-med classes of anatomy and physiology, in order to build health through support of the immune system rather than just taking care of symptoms.
Thank you.
Pancake wrote:
" compassionate like me and wants science to remedy suffering. I think at heart Teece wants that too".
I do. I often write from an extreme position because I am frustrated and sickened at the ignorance that I see surrounding me. My mother is 90 and was just moved from an "assisted living facility" to a nursing home due to a stroke which has rendered her mentally confused and scared, but still physically able.
She questions every day of her life why she goes on living, when living seems so senseless, and while I cannot sanction her to do so, she wishes simply to end her life.
My parents were life long Republicans of the Barry Goldwater ilk, (talk about voting against your best interests). Dad was a small business owner and ran a pharmacy in the small town where I grew up. Having served his country in the Marine Corps in WW2 you probably could not have found a more idyllic "John Wayne" sort of simplistic American than him. Believe me, he would turn over in his grave if he saw the circus that is now the Republican party. And if he were alive and concious, he would be sick to his stomach at the obscene spectacle of self serving ignorance demonstrated by politics today.
Diane -
Thank you for airing this segment, we found it very refreshing to find this field of research being addressed in a national public forum. We particularly appreciated Dr. Sierra's inputs on senescent cells and apoptosis, as well as Dr. van Deursen's regarding PGC1-Alpha.
While this research does not provide us with the Fountain of Youth, it certainly provides us a sip thereof, and a map leading us in its direction has been developed. This map illustrates that we can remove senescent cells through Caloric Restriction (CR), that CR shuts down the cell immortalization process and turns on the cell suicide mechanism. What this segment of your show did not entirely illustrate was the relativity of the entire metabolic pathway, and the relationship between Caloric Restriction and Cell Growth.
For those who are interested in the actual workings of the biological circuit itself, and how the circuit operates on the major diseases of aging, more comprehensive information can be found in the Bambeck and Wolfson paper entitled: Life Extension Metabolic Pathway Map Reveals New Phytonutrient Candidates, available at http://www.facebook.com/lepath. On this site there are links to additional publications by these authors regarding this subject.
Comments and questions are readily welcomed at http://www.facebook.com/lepath or via email at lepath@yahoo.com.
Sincerely,
Life Extension Pathway
When I heard Mr Rehm announce the show, she said something to the affect that cancer and heart disease are the result of aging. Then she had on three guests who make their living from telling the public it's all about technology to find ways to inhibit the process, and the use of mice which ethical scientists know the data can't be extrapolated to humans.
Aging prematurely has NOTHING to do with bad cells, and EVERYTHING to do with HOW THE CELLS GOT BAD, which has everything to do with nutrients and environmental toxins...
For conscious, critical minds, don't forget her guests make their entire living off these after the fact technological fixes when the simplest way to inhibit aging prematurely,
with LOW risk of every diet/lifestyle related disease, is to learn about a RAW food vegan diet for the healing properties it offers. Enzymes are KEY and cooked , processed food and all animal based foods, have NONE. Study the work of Dr. Gabriel Cousens, founder of Tree of LIFE Rejuvenation Foundation.
It would have been a more truthful, helpful program if he had been a guest. When we eat and live in constant DISCORD with our cells, organs, premature aging results.
In the Bible, people lived longer lives until they began eating dead bodies, meat...
Thanks Diane for your show. I've listened almost every day since you've been on the air in my area - years.
I have been using a 100% natural product that slows cellular aging, for over 3 years now. No need to wait for the big pharmaceuticals to make a product that will probably cost everyone, including insurance, too much $$!!
lost US at system abhors injustUS of... suffer and die.
system designed for maximum suffer and die.
part of life skills test for advancement to...
NEXT level:
Would you like to play again? (Y/N)
Sanest fair comment in some time... no wonder government hates IT.
If only there was a way to expose IT to the people- sharing is caring...
and TAX it- there goes the underneighborhood ~!
Will contact contact at Soylent Green Industries-
believe universal spread of human plus your miracle generic organic drug(GOD) ADDED to basic SGI recipes would deliver a people product beyond peoples wildest dreams... as opiates already USed in (pro)curing process(hence need for insured supply from Afclusterstan as the Indians were going to monopolize resource for their use and sale to areas further east).
Yes US had great idea- Soylent Green Hash, Soylent Brown Hash, whirled peas spiced soyGreen... ALL organic as well
Bestest Idea ever- thank you huMANe
US government- encouraging veterans to self medicate since 1776
Subsidizing Soylent Green Industries since 1869. Open to public. Stop by and experience the process for yourself. So decide- for yourself- and the children. OCCUPY today. Tomorrow may NOT come.
health care FOR profIT
if able care at home with hospice...
goal is for comfortable death with what dignity possible.
easier to be shot at and blown up then having to be primary care giver prior to long suffering death
forgot what US served for
if in one them there socialized countrys(some NOT all- like certain US medical people) an individual has all the proper informed consent and options spelled out while able- like in service you have will, legal guardians etc, all setup... darn commiefascisocial basturds
death panels- unlike for US for profIT healthcare... what do you call an individual American on hard times poor health? (A: dead or high cost crime/ prisoner/ social burden.
Soylent Green- not just of- er- for the Jones anymore.
you sound/ type delicious.
How does Rapamycin, an immune inhibitor, extend life?
This is starting to sound very much like the book, Tuck Everlasting, where the family found that drinking from a small book allowed them to stay at the age they were, at the time they drank from the book and remain that age forever more. They had to leave each town after 20 years or so, as they started to incur suspicion within the town folk. This knowledge on aging could take years but it could also be just around the corner. If we could figure out a way to switch off the genes responsible for aging, it begs the question - at what age in our lives would we choose to take such a treatment?
Heaven help us if the ones running the show now are the only ones who would be able to afford a procedure that allowed them an extension of life! Death at least is a cleanser and gives every one of us some term limits. Imagine never being able to get rid of these hubristic, selfish, and narrow-minded wealthy sociopaths! If that were ever the case, assassination would have to be legalized.
Dr Mercola is another doctor who studies all sorts of cutting edge methods in nutrition and therapies and is very dedicated.