Healthy Life Extension

Is Science Extending or Shortening Your Life?

posted on April 07, 2009

The same forces that are creating a health revolution are killing us.

Ten years ago, when I formed Maximum Life Foundation, we saw very little in the news about longevity, let alone radical life extension. Now, hardly a day goes by where you don’t see some reference in the national or world news. I just Googled “aging” and got 61,500,000 results. “Longevity” yielded 18 million.

Then I went to Amazon’s site. “Aging” got me an astounding 226,820 results. Virtually all of them were published in the past ten years. “Longevity” had 108,642.

We’re in the middle of a life extension revolution. Health and wellness is becoming a way of life for millions. So why are we as a nation and as a world, getting fatter, and in many cases, dying sooner? This really bothers me, because with the emerging extreme life extending technologies, the stakes in this longevity game are being raised from an extra 10-20 years to possibly indefinite youth.

Look, for the first time in history, we have a shot at the longevity brass ring. From the beginning of civilization, people have yearned for extended youth and an escape from the ravages of aging. You are pert of the most fortunate generation ever. So count your blessings, and cherish and take advantage of your first-time-in-the-history-of-the-world opportunity. Benefit from what most people squander.

Along with these great life-extending technologies come tasty, but poisonous food choices. Technology makes food cheaper and life a lot easier as well. So easy in fact, that most people get away from regular exercise. On one hand, science gives you a life-saving opportunity while tempting you to not take advantage with the other. High-tech living can also be unpredictable and stressful.

My good friend Rose Cole, along with Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil and other notables, published yet another longevity book called Audacious Aging.

Rose is a top natural health advocate and speaker. In this anthology, Rose shares her story of moving from a sugar addicted, psoriasis suffering fashion model to the sought after health professional she’s become by choosing food that promotes “thriving instead of surviving.” 100% of proceeds from all copies sold at www.WellnessWithRose.com will be donated to CARE (www.care.org).

In the book, Rose explains the connection between our physical bodies and the food with which we fuel it: Says Rose, “98% of the atoms that comprise your body now will be replaced in six months; those cells are made primarily from food. If you’ve messed up your health over the years, you can have a new body in ninety days. All food has a vibrational core. Food that makes your body function well has a higher vibration, whereas food that drags your body down has a lower vibration.”

If you’d like a world class virtual trainer and nutritionist, go to www.WellnessWithRose.com. Rose has transformed the lives of clients all over the world by balancing their body chemicals to self heal with astounding results. Through special engagements and her collection of Wellness With Rose books, virtual coaching programs, CD and DVD programs, she provides the ultimate passport to vital health that results in effortless weight loss, limitless energy and a superior education in how to avoid disease.  Her methodology addresses the root causes of why the body creates excess weight, depression, disease or just a lack luster performance.

Your life, your choice. Get Rose’s book and her programs, read other health books, join a gym, eat sensibly, see an anti-aging physician, manage your stress, and read Life Extension Express at www.MaxLife.org. 

Will I see you in the future?

Long Life!

LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES

Why Does Calorie Restriction Improve Insulin Sensitivity? (April 03 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4145
We know that calorie restriction (CR) greatly improves insulin sensitivity - which seems to be one of the ways in which it increases life span - just as eating too much and getting fat tends to lead to insulin resistance and the diabetes that follows. Here, researchers are making slow inroads into understanding why CR does this: "Caloric restriction (CR) has been shown to retard aging processes, extend maximal life span, and consistently increase insulin action in experimental animals. The mechanism by which CR enhances insulin action, specifically in higher species, is not precisely known. We sought to examine insulin receptor signaling and transcriptional alterations in skeletal muscle of nonhuman primates subjected to caloric restriction over a 4 year period. ... CR increases insulin sensitivity on a whole body level and enhances insulin receptor signaling in this higher species. CR in cynomolgus monkeys may alter insulin signaling in vivo by modulating protein content of insulin receptor signaling proteins."

More Regeneration than Thought (April 03 2009)
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4144
It's been a recurring theme in recent years that cell populations once thought to be static throughout much of life do in fact generate new cells at a slow rate or after injury. That such a process exists opens the door to efforts to speed it up as an alternative to other forms of regenerative medicine. For example, scientists have "shown the human body regenerates heart cells at a rate of about one percent a year, a discovery that could one day reduce the need for transplants. The study of 50 volunteers, using a dating method that detects traces of a carbon isotope left by Cold War nuclear bomb tests, raises the prospect of artificially stimulating the renewal process some day. Heart cells are unusual in that they stop dividing early in life. Doctors knew there were master cells called stem cells in the heart, but heart muscle usually simply forms scar tissue after damage and never fully regenerates. The rate at which the new cells are produced slows as we get older, with a young adult in their twenties renewing cells at a rate of about 1 percent a year, falling to half a percent a year by the age of 75. If you exchange cells at this rate it means that even if you live a very long life you will not have exchanged more than 50 percent of your cells. So at any given time your heart is a mosaic of cells you carry with you from birth and cells that that have been added later to replace cells that have been lost during life."

Magnetic Cell Assembly (April 01 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4140
Researchers are presently working on a very diverse array of methodologies for tissue engineering, seeking the technology base of tomorrow that will enable cost-effective growth of replacement tissues and organs. Here is another in its early stages: "The power of magnetism may address a major problem facing bioengineers as they try to create new tissue - getting human cells to not only form structures, but to stimulate the growth of blood vessels to nourish that growth. Magnetic particles suspended within a specialized solution act like molecular sheep dogs. In response to external magnetic fields, the shepherds nudge free-floating human cells to form chains which could potentially be integrated into approaches for creating human tissues and organs. The next step is to see if the spatial arrangement of these cells in three dimensions will promote vascular formation. A major hurdle in tissue engineering has been vascularization, and we hope that this technology may help to address the problem."

Taming Microglia (March 31 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4139
You might recall that microglia immune cells in the brain and nervous system are implicated in the damage of aging. Evolutionary adaptations beneficial in youth come back to bite you in later life, in this case via excessive release of inflammatory cytokines. Researchers are working on ways to deal with that, however: CHPG, an activator of a type of glutamate receptor, "shuts down activation of key immune cells in the brain known as microglia, which sense pathogens or damage in the spinal cord and brain. They helpfully foster the destruction of microbial invaders and clean up biological detritus that occurs after an injury, but researchers say they have a dark side as well. Under certain conditions, like spinal cord injury and brain trauma, microglia [release] toxic chemicals that can kill healthy adjacent tissue, and this process can continue for months. The team had previously found that microglial cells express a certain receptor, the group I metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5), on their surface. Further work showed that if these receptors were specifically activated on microglia, these immune cells would not produce the neurotoxins that led to cell death near the site of injury. CHPG serves to selectively activate the receptor, reducing microglial toxicity."

Bacterial Roots of Arthritis (March 31 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4138

What triggers some immune systems to run amok, causing conditions like some types of arthritis? Here, researchers have a lead on one possible root cause: "a specific gene called NOD2 triggers arthritis or makes it worse when leftover remnants of bacteria cell walls, called muramyl dipeptide or MDP, are present. Despite recent advances in the treatment of arthritis, none target its cause. Our work with MDP and NOD2 is a step toward understanding the root cause of arthritis which one day may allow certain forms of arthritis to be prevented altogether. [Researchers] made this discovery through experiments using two groups of mice, one group was normal and the other had been genetically modified so that their NOD2 gene was deactivated (commonly referred to as 'knocked out'). Then they administered MDP to the joints of mice in each group, and unlike the normal group of mice, the mice with the deactivated NOD2 gene did not experience signs of arthritis. Now that we know that bacterial products can activate this NOD2 pathway and that this signal contributes to arthritis, the next step is to find treatments that either rid the body of this inflammatory signal or mask it. Either way, the net effect would be the same: people would be spared from a very crippling disease."

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