Healthy Life Extension

Looks over Wellness

posted on January 25, 2011

I had the insightful experience of speaking before an audience of health enthusiasts at a major health conference a few years ago. I was featured as the longevity expert, and my speech was similar in content to the highlights in Life Extension Express.  

When I described some of the emerging life extending technologies and what they promise to deliver to the attendees, I captured their rapt attention. After all, if you traveled a long way to, and paid for an expensive health conference, wouldn’t you be interested in hearing about the newest technologies and how they could enhance your life and longevity? Sure you would, and so were they.

When I got to an adult stem cell technology that could regenerate or replace failing organs with pristine cells or tissue, the audience was fascinated with the possibilities of their extended and enhanced lives. I heard positive murmurs and saw nods of approval. But get this: when I mentioned the same technology could give them young skin and hair again, 1200 people literally jumped out of their seats. The response was deafening. And I was shocked.

Here I was, informing a willing audience of the kind of health information they came to hear, but the strongest response I got, by a factor of at least ten, was when I told them they could look better.

This was a lesson instantly and well-learned. It was also a lesson in frustration.

My life’s passion is extended and enhanced life, not looks. And I want everyone to get it. After all, it could be a life or death proposition for literally millions of people. Oh, sure, I want to look better too. I want young skin again, and I want the babes to check me out. We all want to be attractive. That was no secret. But when I got that powerful response to better appearance from an audience of dedicated health advocates, it taught me something about human nature. That’s why the title of my book will change to something about an intermediate or short-term benefit instead of something like The 500 Year Lifespan. Not only would most people not believe the latter, but they want attractiveness now.

As my friend Joe Polish says, “Sell them what they want (looks), and GIVE them what they need (wellness).”

The good news is, when you improve yourself on the inside, your outside reflects it. The quickest and most lasting path to better looks is improved wellness. Follow my seven steps, and you will look better than you have in years. Later, when the stem cell treatments are perfected, treat yourself to a skin makeover along with your new young heart.

Long Life,
David Kekich
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LATEST HEADLINES FROM FIGHT AGING!

GROWING HUMAN LIVER TISSUE Friday, January 21, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/growing-human-liver-tissue.php
Via EurekAlert!: "A new study reports on the success of growing human liver cells on resorbable scaffolds made from material similar to surgical sutures. Researchers suggest that this liver tissue could be used in place of donor organs during liver transplantation or during the bridge period until a suitable donor is available for patients with acute liver failure. Liver cells have excellent regenerative potential making liver cell transplantation a viable therapeutic approach for patients with metabolic defects or fulminant hepatic failure as the native liver is preserved while liver dysfunction may resolve as regeneration occurs. Currently isolated liver cells are used for liver cell transplantation, but these cells suffer during cell isolation and cryopreservation, which is one reason there is limited success with this type of transplant procedure. In applying their tissue engineering approach, [the] researchers were able to successfully create new liver tissue providing a potential solution to the obstacles challenging liver cell transplantation. The team isolated liver cells from 12 human liver specimens with a viability of 82%. After a two-day culture period, liver cells formed tightly packed cellular aggregates, called spheroids, and took on a liver-like appearance. Human liver cells were distributed across a three-dimensional porous structure of the polymer scaffolding. From day two to four, the average number of spheroids more than doubled from 18 to 41 per visual field. Our experimental model represents a promising technique to culture human liver cells and prepare them for transplantation on a biodegradable polymer scaffold into the peritoneal cavity. Further studies are underway to confirm our results and may ultimately offer viable clinical options for liver cell transplantation in the future."

A DISCUSSION ON THE FUTURE OF NANOSCIENCE Wednesday, January 19, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/a-discussion-on-the-future-of-nanoscience.php
The development of nanotechnology has great relevance to the future of healthy longevity; at its simplest, aging is a matter of atoms and molecules being out of place. As our ability to control the building blocks of matter improves, so too will medicine improve in leaps and bounds. Here is an interesting discussion from Nanowerk - experts in the field looking ahead to what is to come: " One of the beautiful things about biology is that biology functions at many different length scales, and all of those length scales are working together to make the being functional. So if you think about down to the molecular scale, to DNA and coding and genetic information, to protein that the genetic information codes, to tissues that it builds up to functional levels - you know, human beings walking around - it's pretty fascinating to think about how all that works together. But it is all basically encoded in these molecules within cells. I think the impact of nanoscience in medicine is going to grow dramatically over the next 10 to 20 years, especially in the field of regenerative medicine.

Another thing that I am hopeful about is that we will be able to hijack the brilliant mechanisms of biology to construct for us functional non-biological nanosystems. One area that's absolutely ripe for incredible advances is the life sciences and medicine, where aggregations of individual nanodevices to create nanosystems will allow us to embrace, rather than run away from, the complexity of biological systems and will give us the tools, I believe, to understand and engineer biological circuitry, which as the root of systems biology and ultimately, I think, will give a technological foundation for personalized medicine. I believe that the broad umbrella of nanoscience is rapidly dissolving the traditional barriers between [disciplines], and maybe wiring them a bit together with the idea that now people are thinking about atoms and materials as arbitrary forms, not in the historical sense. Physicists are now using biological systems, and biologists are exploiting solid state devices and microfluidic devices within a myriad of research efforts. People are thinking much more broadly than in the past [and] I think it's the discoveries in science that are driving this direction. When I look at the students who are entering the university system, they're highly motivated by the idea of breaking down the normal barriers and focusing on the new scientific opportunities that emerge."

MAKING HUMAN CELLS MORE RESISTANT TO DAMAGE Wednesday, January 19, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/making-human-cells-more-resistant-to-damage.php
Are there practical, safe, comparatively simple ways to make human cells more resistant to damage, and thereby reduce the effects of aging and disease? Perhaps, and here is an example of this sort of research: researchers "have discovered a molecule that can make brain cells resistant to programmed cell death or apoptosis. This molecule, a tiny strand of nucleotides called microRNA-29 or miR-29, has already been shown to be in short supply in certain neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease. Thus, the discovery could herald a new treatment to prompt brain cells to survive in the wake of neurodegeneration or acute injury like stroke. There is the real possibility that this molecule could be used to block the cascade of events known as apoptosis that eventually causes brain cells to break down and die. The researchers looked at a number of steps in apoptosis and found that miR-29 acts at a key point in the initiation of apoptosis by interacting with a group of genes called the BH3-only family. Interestingly, the microRNA appears to interact with not just one but as many as five members of that family, circumventing a redundancy that existed to allow cell death to continue even if one of them had been blocked." This is somewhat a damage resistance strategy - it doesn't block damage, but it stops a cell from destroying itself in response to damage. This may allow certain classes of cell to continue functioning usefully under some forms of attack (such as the neurodegenerative conditions mentioned above), but as a general strategy it has flaws - cells usually destroy themselves for good reason. Having malfunctioning cells stick around rather than remove themselves is not a good thing in most tissues.

A LOOK AT THE NANOTECHNOLOGY OF TARGETED CANCER THERAPIES Tuesday, January 18, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/a-look-at-the-nanotechnology-of-targeted-cancer-therapies.php
From Nanowerk: "Chemotherapeutics generally show a delicate balance between maintaining a high enough dose to kill cancer cells while avoiding a dose so high that it causes severe toxic effects. One of the many promises of nanomedicine is a class of nanoscale drug delivery vehicles that can pinpoint cancer cells and deliver their tumor-killing payload right into cancer cells with high efficiency and no side effects. As an example of how scientists are approaching this goal, [we] have provided a first report on in vivo cancer therapy with mesoporous hollow silica nanomaterials. Based on this novel silica nanorattle structure, the Chinese research team further extended their work to fabricate 'all-in-one' multifunctional gold nanoshells on silica nanorattles (GSNs) which combine remote-controlled photothermal therapy with chemotherapy - resulting in a 'magic bullet' to kill cancer cells. The results indicate that a combination of hyperthermia and chemotherapeutic agents is an encouraging approach to optimizing cancer therapy for the synergistic effects are greater than the two individual treatments alone. GSNs are a promising building block with many biomedical applications, such as biological imaging, thermal ablative cancer therapy and immunoassays. Due to the specific silica nanorattle core, GSNs are also promising as a versatile and multifunctional drug delivery platform for their high-payload delivery of various drugs into their targets."

A MASTER SWITCH FOR INFLAMMATION? Monday, January 17, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/a-master-switch-for-inflammation.php
Chronic low level inflammation is an important contributing process to aging - and many age-related conditions have an inflammatory component to their mechanisms. Present means of managing inflammation are very crude, and fail to benefit many patients, but more sophisticated methodologies are on the horizon: "Scientists have identified a protein that acts as a 'master switch' in certain white blood cells, determining whether they promote or inhibit inflammation. Inflammatory responses are an important defense that the body uses against harmful stimuli such as infections or tissue damage, but in many conditions, excessive inflammation can itself harm the body. In rheumatoid arthritis, the joints become swollen and painful, but the reasons why this happens are not well understood. Cells of the immune system called macrophages can either stimulate inflammation or suppress it by releasing chemical signals that alter the behavior of other cells. The new study [has] shown that a protein called IRF5 acts as a molecular switch that controls whether macrophages promote or inhibit inflammation. The results suggest that blocking the production of IRF5 in macrophages might be an effective way of treating a wide range of autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. In addition, boosting IRF5 levels might help to treat people whose immune systems are compromised."

EARLY NANOTECHNOLOGY VERSUS CANCER, AN OVERVIEW Monday, January 17, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/early-nanotechnology-versus-cancer-an-overview.php

This open access review paper surveys current uses of nanotechnology in the research and development of cancer therapies: "Nanooncology, the application of nanobiotechnology to the management of cancer, is currently the most important chapter of nanomedicine. Nanobiotechnology has refined and extended the limits of molecular diagnosis of cancer, for example, through the use of gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. Nanobiotechnology has also improved the discovery of cancer biomarkers, one such example being the sensitive detection of multiple protein biomarkers by nanobiosensors. Magnetic nanoparticles can capture circulating tumor cells in the bloodstream followed by rapid photoacoustic detection. Nanoparticles enable targeted drug delivery in cancer that increases efficacy and decreases adverse effects through reducing the dosage of anticancer drugs administered. Nanoparticulate anticancer drugs can cross some of the biological barriers and achieve therapeutic concentrations in tumor and spare the surrounding normal tissues from toxic effects. Nanoparticle constructs facilitate the delivery of various forms of energy for noninvasive thermal destruction of surgically inaccessible malignant tumors. Nanoparticle-based optical imaging of tumors as well as contrast agents to enhance detection of tumors by magnetic resonance imaging can be combined with delivery of therapeutic agents for cancer. Monoclonal antibody nanoparticle complexes are under investigation for diagnosis as well as targeted delivery of cancer therapy. Nanoparticle-based chemotherapeutic agents are already on the market, and several are in clinical trials. Personalization of cancer therapies is based on a better understanding of the disease at the molecular level, which is facilitated by nanobiotechnology. Nanobiotechnology will facilitate the combination of diagnostics with therapeutics, which is an important feature of a personalized medicine approach to cancer."

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