Healthy Life Extension

Live Longer By Eating Like a Wolfe

posted on February 02, 2010

No, my spellchecker didn’t miss a typo Eagle Eye. I didn’t mean wolf. I meant Wolfe, as in David Wolfe.

David is a raw foods guru who recently wrote a book called Superfoods.

Technology brought us wonderful tools and conveniences, and it will one day deliver age-reversing capabilities. But meanwhile, it shortens our lives with processed foods. Sure, they taste good. And they’re convenient too. They’re also heavily and seductively marketed by some of the biggest and most powerful corporations in the world. And did I mention addictive? So we gobble them up, get fat, then sick, and then die prematurely… just when other emerging technologies promise to reverse all the damage aging and processed food does to you.

So what’s the answer? Superfoods! They also hit the mark for taste and convenience, and they lengthen your life rather than shorten it.

David Wolfe brilliantly illustrates what unknown foods you are probably missing out on, how to continue to enjoy eating while maxing out your life.

What are superfoods? They are vibrant, nutritionally dense foods that have recently become widely available. They offer tremendous dietary and healing potential. In his lively illustrated book, David profiles a host of delicious and incredibly nutritious plant products. As powerful sources of clean protein, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, good fats and oils, essential fatty and amino acids, and other nutrients, they represent a uniquely promising piece of the nutritional puzzle.

Each superfood is described in detail, accompanied by easy and delicious recipes. This accessible guide presents persuasive arguments, based on sound science, for the pivotal role of superfoods in promoting the following:

• nutritional excellence
• health and well-being
• beauty enhancement
• sustainable agriculture
• positive and easy transformation of your diet and lifestyle

 

David is a truly nice guy who walks the talk. I was impressed with not only how healthy he appears to be, but how young and healthy his friends, customers and students look. Some consider my healthy eating habits to borderline the extreme, but that’s just compared to the average American. David takes it up several notches, and his results are obvious. Thanks to him, I am enjoying exciting new foods that promise to improve my health even more.

I suggest you get his book and visit his web site at www.davidwolfe.com.

Long Life,
David Kekich
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MAKING OLD STEM CELLS ACT AS THOUGH YOUNG

Stem cells are essential for the maintenance of our organs and tissues: they continually spawn normal cells to replace those lost, damaged, or worn out. Unfortunately, stem cell activity declines with age, and this is one contributing factor to the degenerating functions of our bodies. It has been known for a few years that at least some types of old stem cell can be made to act as though young again by changing their environment, however:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/01/another-run-at-making-old-stem-cells-act-as-though-young.php

"Surprisingly, this age-related decline in stem cell potency may be somewhat reversible. A team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers has found that in old mice, a several-week exposure to the blood of young mice causes their bone marrow stem cells to act 'young' again. The researchers have not yet isolated the blood-borne factors that can switch old stem cells back to a more youthful state, but their results are consistent with other recent studies that show stem-cell aging may be reversible. Together those results suggest that it might one day be possible to boost the practical lifespan of stem cells, and thereby increase the body's resistance to disease and age-related degeneration."

NOTE: That does not solve the problem of mutations. However a new technology may take care of that too.
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LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES

IMMORTALITY INSTITUTE CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST (January 29 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4575
The Immortality Institute is running a creative writing contest over the next few months, with a submission deadline in March: "Throughout the history of the Immortality Institute a high priority has been placed on communication. The use of various media including graphic arts, film, and prose has always been a powerful means of disseminating ideas and the idea of life extension is no exception. This focus has led to the creation of the world's first comprehensive tome on modern scientific efforts and philosophy of immortality – The Scientific Conquest of Death, and the documentary film Exploring Life Extension (both available free online). The Immortality Institute has also sponsored writing contests. Read about the most recent non-fiction essay contest here. Winning entries here and here. It is 2010 and time again for forward-thinking individuals to put their best pen forward to communicate the ideals, vagaries, possibilities, and dreams of radical life extension, human enhancement, and immortality. Unlock your imagination and submit a story today!"

SKIN CELLS TURNED INTO NEURONS (January 28 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4572
From EurekAlert!: researchers "have succeeded in the ultimate switch: transforming mouse skin cells in a laboratory dish directly into functional nerve cells with the application of just three genes. The cells make the change without first becoming a pluripotent type of stem cell - a step long thought to be required for cells to acquire new identities. Until recently, it's been thought that cellular specialization, or differentiation, was a one-way path: pluripotent embryonic stem cells give rise to all the cell types in the body, but as the daughter cells become more specialized, they also become more biologically isolated. Like a tree trunk splitting first into branches and then into individual leaves, the cells were believed to be consigned to one developmental fate. The research suggests that the pluripotent stage, rather than being a required touchstone for identity-shifting cells, may simply be another possible cellular state. Finding the right combination of cell-fate-specific genes may trigger a domino effect in the recipient cell, wiping away restrictive DNA modifications and imprinting a new developmental fate on the genomic landscape. It may be hard to prove. but I no longer think that [induced pluripotency] is a reversal of development. It's probably more of a direct conversion like what we're seeing here, from one cell type to another that just happens to be more embryonic-like. This tips our ideas about epigenetic regulation upside down."

AN ILLUSTRATION OF PROGRESS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY (January 27 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4571
While we all pay attention to end results in our own field of interest, the general infrastructure biotechnologies that enable those end results are progressing rapidly. This article illustrates just how fast one of the benchmark technologies - DNA sequencing - is moving: "Although Complete Genomics is now slated to sequence an incredible 5,000 human genomes in 2010, this is nothing compared to what the company has in store for the years ahead. The company is now hoping to sequence 50,000 genomes in 2011 and a whopping 1 million genomes by 2014. Considering that by the end of 2009 only about 100 or so human genomes had ever been sequenced, most of them by - you guessed it - Complete Genomics, this represents an enormous shift in the industry. In November of last year Complete Genomics announced that they had sequenced 3 human genomes at an average cost of materials below $5000 apiece, shattering all previous records by nearly a factor of ten! Last year Complete Genomics was charging its customers $20,000 per genome and this year they will be charging $10,000 or less.  We can expect the company’s costs and the prices it charges its customers to continue to drop dramatically in the next few years. The $1,000 genome is indeed within sight."

MORE ON GARAGE BIOTECHNOLOGY FROM H+ MAGAZINE (January 27 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4570
Another good article from h+ Magazine is illustrative of the present state of the art in the DIY Bio scene: "In September 2007, I gave a short talk at Aubrey de Grey's SENS conference in Cambridge outlining my intention to found an open source biotech company that would make customized therapies for breast cancer. The response to the presentation was predictable: many had concerns whether regulators would allow such a drug to be used in a human trial. I had no idea, but I knew the only way to truly find out would be to try. It took almost two years of discussion and feeling my way around, but this company now exists. It‘s called the Pink Army Cooperative. Breast cancer is the first target, but ultimately the cooperative's goal is to open a path from diagnostics to the clinic for individualized medicines - to make effective cancer treatments as fast as diagnostic data can be translated into designs, manufactured, tested in the lab, and approved for use on a single person. Using open source synthetic biology, each of these steps can be automated, and each should get cheaper over time. Pink Army, then, is the first DIY drug company. It's a container that allows people interested in tackling cancer to connect and focus their passion, skills, and other resources."

REJUVENATING ASPECTS OF THE AGED IMMUNE SYSTEM (January 26 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4569
Researchers are investigating a range of ways to restore aspects of the aged immune system to youthful levels. Here is one: "By  comparing the immune responses of both, young and old mice, to bacterial infection they found that the number of macrophages, one of the major cell populations involved in the elimination of infecting bacteria, decreases rapidly in aged mice. This decline in the number of fighters and the associated weakness of the immune defense may be responsible for the age-associated increase in susceptibility to infections. [Researchers] have succeeded to enhance the resistance to an infection in aged mice by treating them with a macrophage-specific growth factor. This treatment increases the amount of macrophages in aged mice and improves their capacity to fight the infection. The treatment made aged mice much more resistant and they could fight much better the infection. The results of our study indicate that repeated prophylactic administration of this growth factor can help to maintain the macrophage compartment in the elderly and the fitness of the immune system."

THE PROSPECTS FOR GARAGE BIOTECHNOLOGY (January 25 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4566

Biotechnology will follow the path of software: it will become a low-cost open source garage industry, and thus highly innovative and competitive. Here, h+ Magazine looks at the transhumanist side of the DIY Bio movement: "Hardware hacking has a rich history, filled with geek heroes, and these skills are being turned towards the creation of biotech equipment. On the bleeding edge of it all, some DIYbiologists are applying their skills to h+ technologies. SENS researchers John Schloendorn, Tim Webb, and Kent Kemmish are conducting life-extension research for the SENS Foundation, building equipment for longevity research, saving thousands of dollars doing it themselves. The DIY SENS lab is headed by PhD candidate John Schloendorn. John is a last- year PhD student at Arizona State University. He volunteers full time for the SENS Foundation. Entering his lab was a mind-blowing experience. The ceilings were high, the lab itself was spacious and well-lit. It smelled of sawdust, the product of constructing the furniture on site. The equipment was handmade, but brilliantly so. Elegance and function were clear priorities. When a panel could be replaced with a tinted membrane, it was. When metal could be replaced by sanded wood, it was. The on-site laser was modified from a tattoo-removal system. Costs were down, but the technical skill involved in manufacturing was top notch."

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