Lifeboat Foundation

The aim of non-pharmacologic interventions for brain health is to preserve cognitive function and safeguard brain structure. This review explores various diets (MeDi, DASH, MIND, ketogenic), exercise approaches (endurance, resistance, yoga, HIIT), and highlights the need for further research to uncover the underlying mechanisms.

As people get older, they tend to have lower levels of anxiety. But why? A new brain imaging study has found that older individuals are faster at recognizing and responding to negative emotions. The findings, published NeuroImage, go against the idea that older adults are less engaged with negative emotions due to cognitive decline or that they are better at regulating negative emotions. Instead, the results suggest that older adults may develop a more automatic way of processing negative emotions.

The study aimed to investigate the relationship between aging, trait anxiety, and changes in cognitive and affective functions. The researchers were motivated by previous findings that older adults tend to have lower susceptibility to anxiety disorders compared to younger and middle-aged adults. However, it was not clear how age-related changes in anxiety symptoms, such as worry and somatic symptoms, were related to changes in cognitive and affective processes.

“We are interested in emotion dysfunction in early dementia, including those people with subjective complaints of memory problem and mild cognitive impairment,” said study author Chiang-shan Ray Li, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine.

In my new Newsweek Op-Ed, I tackle a primary issue many people have with trying to stop aging and death via science. Hopefully this philosophical argument will allow more resources & support into the life extension field:

Philosophers often say if humans didn’t die, we’d be bored out of our minds. This idea, called temporal scarcity, argues the finitude of death is what makes life worth living. Transhumanists, whose most urgent goal is to use science to overcome biological death, emphatically disagree.

For decades, the question of temporal scarcity has been debated and analyzed in essays and books. But an original idea transhumanists are putting forth is reinvigorating the debate. It doesn’t discount temporal scarcity in biological humans; it discounts it in what humans will likely become in the future—cyborgs and digitized consciousnesses.

Continue reading “Eliminating Death Doesn’t Mean Life Will Get Boring” »

Summary: Researchers leveraged a tracking algorithm from video games to study molecules’ behavior within live brain cells.

They adapted the fast and accurate algorithm used to track bullets in combat games for use in super-resolution microscopy. The innovative approach enables scientists to observe how molecules cluster together to perform specific functions in space and time within the brain cells.

The data obtained could shed light on molecular functions’ disruption during aging and disease.

More apologism for aging and death.

Exploring Mitochondrial Bioenergetics, Optogenetics, Human Health And Aging — Dr. Brandon Berry, Ph.D., University of Washington.

Dr. Brandon Berry, Ph.D. (https://halo.dlmp.uw.edu/people/brandon-berry/) is a postdoctoral researcher in the Kaeberlein Laboratory at University of Washington where his research focuses on how aging and metabolism are linked.

Continue reading “Dr Brandon Berry, PhD — Exploring Mitochondrial Bioenergetics, Optogenetics, Human Health And Aging” »

Pain in the knee is one of the most common orthopaedic issues experienced by people as they age. Know what causes the knees to age faster and result in pain.

Scientists have discovered not only that animals age more quickly when they don’t have enough of the amino acid taurine in the body, but that oral taurine supplements can delay aging and increase a healthy lifespan.

An international team of researchers found that taurine supplements delayed aging in worms, mice, and monkeys, and increased the healthy lifespan of middle-aged mice by up to 12 percent.

Continue reading “Boosting One Amino Acid Might Be The Secret to Longer Lifespans” »

Switching to a diet full of fresh veggies and low in processed foods could do wonders for your brain’s biological age, new research shows.

According to the international team of researchers who ran the study, eating a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables, seafood, and whole grains appears to slow the signs of accelerated brain aging typically seen in obesity with as little as 1 percent loss in body weight.

Brain scans taken after 18 months showed the participants’ brain age appearing almost 9 months younger than expected, compared to estimates of their brain’s chronological age.