Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension – Page 585

How Our Damaged DNA Kills Us

Summary: Without DNA repair, the damage in our genome builds up, which in turn causes disease and aging. Repairing DNA damage is one of the holy grails of anti-aging medicine. As a review earlier this month shows, scientists have made headway in understanding our DNA repair mechanisms. While researchers haven’t found a way to repair DNA damage, they have found potential ways to mitigate some of its effects.

For those us wanting to live in good health to the age of 120, the damaged DNA in our bodies is keeping us from reaching our goal.

Research has shown that our DNA repair mechanisms decline as we get older. Unless we are lucky to be among the tiny percentage of centenarians who are blessed with superb DNA repair mechanisms, the odds are that unrepaired DNA damage will strike us down with chronic diseases before we reach our goal.

Review of Juvenescence: Investing in the Age of Longevity

Only two years ago, when I launched my advocacy website Rejuvenaction, I didn’t think I would read a book like Juvenescence so soon; yet, the topic of rejuvenation biotechnologies has already become mainstream enough to lead investors of the calibre of Jim Mellon and Al Chalabi to devote a whole book to it.

As Juvenescence is a book aimed at potential new investors in rejuvenation biotechnologies, I expected it to be an extremely technical and detailed account of things I don’t understand, such as finance, markets, and funds. To my delight, this was not the case. Rather, the details Juvenescence dives into are primarily those of the emerging field of rejuvenation science (alas, still something whose details I don’t fully understand).

The book explains the paradigm shift that is currently taking place and changing the way science sees aging—no longer as an inevitable fact of life but rather as a disease to be eradicated like any other—and goes through a biology 101 crash course for the benefit of readers who might be not too well versed in the science of life.

MouseAge: Photographic Aging Clock in Mice

Say Cheese! Support science in style with this iconic t-shirt. Just one of the great rewards on offer for supporting the MouseAge Project at www.lifespan.io/mouseage

We are developing a way to measure mouse age using AI and visual recognition. Helping to speed up scientific progress and reduce animal suffering at the same time. Win-win!

Using AI and computer vision techniques to determine age and assess the effect of therapies against aging in mice, increasing the pace of research.

Forget ‘live fast, die young’ – do the opposite instead

So far, the only intervention that is known to increase lifespan in multiple species is caloric restriction (CR). Caloric restriction is known to increase lifespan in the majority of mouse strains tested[1]. The effects of CR have even been shown to influence how primates age and reduce the incidence of diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and brain atrophy[2].

Science has known about the effects of CR since the 1930s, when rat experiments first showed researchers this phenomenon[3]. However, despite the various health benefits of CR, how it delays aging has remained a mystery. A new study suggests that epigenetic drift may be the answer.

A Japanese doctor who studied longevity — and lived to 105 — reveals the key to living a long life

On July 18, 2017 Japan lost a national treasure. He was the 105-year-old Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara.

Dr. Hinohara made a lion’s contribution to healthcare in Japan, both as a practicing medical doctor and as a physician. He headed five foundations in addition to being the president of St Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo. He was responsible for introducing Japan’s system of comprehensive annual medical check-ups, which have been credited with greatly contributing to the country’s longevity, reports the BBC.

Those are laudable achievements, but it is his longevity and the fact that he saw patients until a few months before his death that defies everything we have come to expect of old age.

Robert Shmookler Reis Joins the LEAF Advisory Board

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Robert Shmookler Reis has joined the LEAF scientific advisory board. He studied at Harvard University (B.A.) and Sussex University (D.Phil.). He joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 1980, where he holds the Udupa Chair of Gerontologic Research; he also serves as Affiliate Professor of Pathology at the Univ. of Washington in Seattle WA.

Dr. Robert Shmookler Reis is an expert in genetics whose work focuses on the molecular genetics of longevity and age-associated diseases and his team holds the world record for life extension in C. elegans (roundworms) making them live ten times their normal lifespan.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey — Radical Longevity

“Aging is a consequence of physics, not biology.” Dr. Aubrey de Grey believes that the aging of any machine with moving parents is fundamentally the same, whether that machine is alive or not. He states that the SENS Foundation doesn’t work on longevity and immortality — it works on health. “The only way we are going to live substantially longer is by staying truly youthful for substantially longer.”

German Party for Health Research: Together Against Age-related Diseases

German Party for Health Research is calling for more funding for studies on aging and age-related diseases! Nice initiative! Good luck!

It seems the only reason why the situation with state funding for medical research has not improved over time in a given country is the lack of well-organized public initiatives to support the necessary changes.

People are rarely offered a clear program of action that could promote the development of therapies that might bring aging under medical control and address age-related diseases.

German Party for Health Research is offering such a program, and so far its activities are quire fruitful. We wish them good luck!