This episode will take you through Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s Seven Pillars of aging, the research that he’s currently doing, his opinion on biological age, AGEs and the different sources, and the impact of growth hormone on biological age.
Who is Dr. Aubrey de Grey?
Continue reading “How to Live Forever with Dr. Aubrey de Grey” »
New research makes a molecular connection between the brain and aging — and shows that overactive neurons can shorten life span.
This sounds like a roundabout way of saying that the uploaded minds might be seen as superhuman, even though, as Minerva and Rorheim observe, “it’s not clear whether you would survive in any meaningful sense if you were copied several times over.” If you didn’t, something that used to be you might exist and be cognitively superior to the common run of humanity but the “you-ness” is gone.
The authors also warn, “We can be pretty certain, for instance, that rejuvenation would widen the gap between the rich and poor, and would eventually force us to make decisive calls about resource use, whether to limit the rate of growth of the population, and so forth.”
Such considerations as limiting the “rate of growth” of the population may relate to a controversy in 2012 involving a paper written by Dr. Minerva and Dr. Alberto Giubilini:
It has long been understood, and by cultures too various to list, that salamanders have something of the supernatural about them. Their name is thought to derive from an ancient Persian vocable meaning ‘fire within’, and for at least 2,000 years they were believed to be impervious to flames, or even capable of extinguishing them on contact. Aristotle recorded this exceptional characteristic, as did Leonardo da Vinci. The Talmud advises that smearing salamander blood on your skin will confer inflammability. Not so. But the intuition that salamanders possess fantastical powers is not unfounded.
Like earthbound immortals, salamanders regenerate. If you cut off a salamander’s tail, or its arm, or its leg, or portions of any of these, it will not form a stump or a scar but will instead replace the lost appendage with a perfect new one, an intricacy of muscle, nerve, bone and the rest. It will sprout like a sapling. Science has been chopping up salamanders for more than 200 years with the aim of simply understanding the mechanics of their marvels, but more recently with the additional aim of someday replicating those marvels in ourselves. Might salamanders be the great hope of regenerative medicine?
The salamander in which regeneration is most often studied is an odd and endearingly unattractive Mexican species known as the axolotl. In addition to its limbs and extremities, the axolotl is known to regrow its lower jaw, its retinae, ovaries, kidneys, heart, rudimentary lungs, spinal cord, and large chunks of its brain. It heals all sorts of wounds without scarring. The axolotl also integrates the body parts of its fellows as if they were its own, without the usual immune response, and this peculiar trait has facilitated some of the more grotesque disfigurements it’s endured in the name of science. In experiments after the Second World War, East German scientists grafted small axolotls crosswise through the backs of larger ones. The animals’ circulatory systems came to be linked, and the researchers hailed the conjoined mutants as triumphs of collectivism.
Thank you for watching this powerful interview with Dave Asprey!
Check out the show notes here: https://www.lewishowes.com/860
Dave Asprey is the creator of the widely-popular Bulletproof Coffee, host of the podcast Bulletproof Radio, and author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Bulletproof Diet.
Regular fasting is associated with lower rates of heart failure and a longer life span, according to two new studies.
Researchers sought to shed new light on the centuries-old debate about how fasting affects health. Recent studies have shown it contributes to reductions in blood pressure, “bad” LDL cholesterol and insulin resistance, a condition that can raise blood sugar. A 2017 study showed alternate-day fasting was as effective as daily calorie restriction for losing weight and keeping the pounds off.
The new studies focused on data from patients evaluated for heart disease in Utah and other Rocky Mountain states. The research included hundreds of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons, who typically fast one Sunday each month, for up to 24 hours.
Boosting brain function is key to staving off the effects of aging. And if there was one thing every person should consider doing right now to keep their brain young, it is to add extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) to their diet, according to research by scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM). EVOO is a superfood, rich in cell-protecting antioxidants and known for its multiple health benefits, including helping put the brakes on diseases linked to aging, most notably cardiovascular disease. Previous LKSOM research on mice also showed that EVOO preserves memory and protects the brain against Alzheimer’s disease.
In a new study in mice published online in the journal Aging Cell, LKSOM scientists show that yet another group of aging-related diseases can be added to that list—tauopathies, which are characterized by the gradual buildup of an abnormal form of a protein called tau in the brain. This process leads to a decline in mental function, or dementia. The findings are the first to suggest that EVOO can defend against a specific type of mental decline linked to tauopathy known as frontotemporal dementia.
Alzheimer’s disease is itself one form of dementia. It primarily affects the hippocampus—the memory storage center in the brain. Frontotemporal dementia affects the areas of the brain near the forehead and ears. Symptoms typically emerge between ages 40 and 65 and include changes in personality and behavior, difficulties with language and writing, and eventual deterioration of memory and ability to learn from prior experience.
Last July, the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation hosted a great conference on rejuvenation biotechnology in New York City; if you missed it, this episode of X10 will fill you in on some of the best talks of the conference.
Full playlist of all talks: https://bit.ly/2pP2BE6
NOTE FROM TED: This talk, which was filmed at a TEDx event, contains several assertions about diet that come from the speaker’s own understanding of nutrition. While some viewers may find advice provided in this talk to be helpful, please do not look to this talk for medical advice. TEDx events are independently organized by volunteers. The guidelines we give TEDx organizers are described in more detail here: http://storage.ted.com/tedx/manuals/tedx_content_guidelines.pdf
Can you cure your self from life threatening health problems? Can you reverse ageing? Darryl D’Souza, an expert in natural therapy and pioneer in integrated wellness and spirituality talks about how he reversed ageing by following simple laws of nature about food and nutrition. How the food that we eat today has become our poison and how we can reclaim our lives and good health. Darryl is the author of “Become Healthy or Extinct”, a book about reversing chronic illnesses with integrated natural therapy. The book has followers in over 150 countries. An engineer by profession, but drawn into the world of natural therapies after failed attempts by modern medicine to cure him of some serious illnesses at a young age. Darryl is a pioneer in Integrated Wellness & Spirituality and conducts life-transforming talks & workshops that expose the real causes of widespread sickness in society and he gives you breakthrough ideas on how to become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
Tohoku University researchers have developed a strategy that could help cells get rid of disease-related debris. Further research could lead to treatments for neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases, Down syndrome, and maybe even aging-related diseases. The findings were published in the journal Molecular Cell.
Cells have a natural ability to routinely rid themselves of unnecessary or dysfunctional proteins and organelles. During this process of “autophagy,” debris are tagged with a compound called ubiquitin and then degraded within tiny cellular vacuoles. Autophagy is impaired in some cancers, and neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases, so scientists have been working to develop drugs that can regulate this process. However, little is known about the details of autophagy, such as how the cell knows which components to tag with ubiquitin.
In previous research, Hirokazu Arimoto, a chemical biologist at Tohoku University, and colleagues found that autophagy is initiated against invading streptococci bacteria when they are tagged with the nucleic acid guanine. The researchers wondered if guanine tagging could also initiate autophagy against other cellular components.
