Healthy Life Extension

It's Not Your Fault

posted on January 18, 2011

Are you unhappy with where you are now in relation to where you want your fitness level, appearance and health condition to be? Don’t be. It’s not necessarily your fault.

We weren’t born smart, and most of the messages we’re bombarded with come from advertisers of profitable but unhealthy products. Also, our teachers and physicians are usually uninformed as to what is and isn’t good for you. That’s also true of our governments.

So the bottom line is, you didn’t necessarily know. You may think you know, but you don’t know. Your most cherished beliefs today might be completely turned upside down with tomorrow’s findings. So when things change, and they will, be willing to adapt. If not, you will be left behind.

That means anything I write about is not dogma. It’s the advice I recommend and follow based on the best information I have from the best experts I can find. They are my current conclusions, not perfect science. They will continue to be updated as more new information flows in. I would be surprised if any of my fundamentals are reversed… but not shocked. If and when that happens, I will publish the latest solid data and change my habits accordingly. Life is a learning process. And we often get into trouble or in bad shape because of what we do not know, or because we are unwilling to change what we want to believe, in spite of conflicting data.

Meanwhile, Life Extension Express represents the best information I have today. If you don’t have your copy yet, go to www.amazon.com for my current edition, or download your free copy at www.MaxLife.org. Then read it.

Now that you do know, or when you learn what to do to recapture and preserve your health, vigor and looks, you will improve—starting now. Start with what you are learning here, and continue to educate yourself to make lasting changes.

It may not have been your fault up until now. You didn’t know. But now that you know, you are on your path to a newly energized life. Right?

Long Life,
David Kekich
____________________________

LATEST HEADLINES FROM FIGHT AGING!

AN INTERVIEW WITH MAX MORE, NEW CEO OF ALCOR Friday, January 14, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/an-interview-with-max-more-new-ceo-of-alcor.php
From KurzweilAI.net, a friendly interview with Max More, who was recently hired as CEO of cryonics provider Alcor: "I spent the last 10 or 11 years learning about business processes and culture, and have run some nonprofits before, but I'm looking forward to tackling the challenges. Fortunately, I'm far from alone in this responsibility. In addition to Alcor's highly experienced board of directors, my first week on the job demonstrated the dedication, skill, and helpfulness of Alcor's staff. While it takes a while to get up to speed on all the operational details of an organization like Alcor, I'm looking forward to working with the board to develop a renewed and refined strategic plan that will help us realize Alcor's huge potential to help far more people have a chance at renewed life in the future. My goal is really to maintain the traditions of Alcor, to protect its patients, but also to stimulate new growth, to improve the way everything functions, and to change the whole public perception to a much more positive view. Alcor is the most technologically advanced cryonics organization. We are on a path to continue improving our capabilities while doing our utmost to protect and preserve our existing cryopreserved members. The most important thing to me is making sure the organization is stable and will not get knocked out by financial or legal attacks or other issues. One of my top priorities is to make sure that we're stable for the long-term by either increasing income or reducing costs. ...
Another priority is to restart growth. When I signed up as an Alcor member [for cryopreservation] in 1986 I was the 67th member. Since then, Alcor has grown to about 930 right now, and the number of cryopreserved people has gone from six to 102. At the Extropy Institute Extro conferences, if asked who were members, out of few hundred people, a majority would put up their hands, showing off their bracelets. Today, you don't get the same response - the recent growth has really slowed down. It seems ridiculous to me that in a world population of close to 7 billion, we only have 1000+ members signed up. I think we can do much better, starting with the most promising groups, such as transhumanists."

A LOOK AT THE BARSHOP INSTITUTE FOR LONGEVITY AND AGING STUDIES Thursday, January 13, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/a-look-at-the-barshop-institute-for-longevity-and-aging-studies.php
Local San Antonio media take a look at the work of the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies: "Naked mole rats aren't much to look at. In fact, you might think the pink, wrinkly, squinty rodents are downright ugly. However, some researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio feel otherwise ('I think they are incredibly cute,' says Zimbabwe-born scientist Rochelle Buffenstein as she tenderly picks up one of thousands squeaking and scurrying through a maze of tubes and plastic tubs). But it's not for their outward appearance that scientists are studying the rodents. Buffenstein and others look beyond the translucent skin and healthy tusks ('They've been called saber tooth sausages and worse,' she says) and see, if not the secret to eternal youth, a chance to cobble a few more decades onto our average 78-year lifespan.

That would explain why the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the UTHSC-SA maintains the world's largest colony of the naked rats. While not much larger than mice, which live around two years, these creatures keep active and healthy for as long as 30 years. And they have an amazing ability to fight cancer and toxins. This is just one of many areas of anti-aging research that's underway at the San Antonio research center. There's hope that scientists here will find a trigger or series of triggers in the human genetic code that could one day extend the 'youthspan' of people - giving people an extra 20 years, 40 years, maybe even longer, to be young and healthy. To be flip about it: researchers are hunting for the Fountain of Youth. And they're closing in. Discoveries are coming in at such a pace that Gen Xers may find themselves saddled with the Baby Boomers for longer than they had planned."

SYNTHETIC BLOOD CELL PROTOTYPES DEMONSTRATED Thursday, January 13, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/synthetic-blood-cell-prototypes-demonstrated.php
More progress towards entirely artificial blood: "A team of scientists has created particles that closely mirror some of the key properties of red blood cells, potentially helping pave the way for the development of synthetic blood. Researchers used technology known as PRINT (Particle Replication in Non-wetting Templates) to produce very soft hydrogel particles that mimic the size, shape and flexibility of red blood cells, allowing the particles to circulate in the body for extended periods of time. Tests of the particles' ability to perform functions such as transporting oxygen or carrying therapeutic drugs have not been conducted, and they do not remain in the cardiovascular system as long as real red blood cells. However, the researchers believe the findings - especially regarding flexibility - are significant because red blood cells naturally deform in order to pass through microscopic pores in organs and narrow blood vessels. Over their 120-day lifespan, real cells gradually become stiffer and eventually are filtered out of circulation when they can no longer deform enough to pass through pores in the spleen. To date, attempts to create effective red blood cell mimics have been limited because the particles tend to be quickly filtered out of circulation due to their inflexibility."

PROGRESS IN GROWING CAPILLARIES Wednesday, January 12, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/progress-in-growing-capillaries.php
From EurekAlert!: researchers "have broken one of the major roadblocks on the path to growing transplantable tissue in the lab: They've found a way to grow the blood vessels and capillaries needed to keep tissues alive. The inability to grow blood-vessel networks - or vasculature - in lab-grown tissues is the leading problem in regenerative medicine today. If you don't have blood supply, you cannot make a tissue structure that is thicker than a couple hundred microns. As its base material, a team of researchers [chose] polyethylene glycol (PEG), a nontoxic plastic that's widely used in medical devices and food. The scientists modified the PEG to mimic the body's extracellular matrix - the network of proteins and polysaccharides that make up a substantial portion of most tissues. [They then] combined the modified PEG with two kinds of cells - both of which are needed for blood-vessel formation. Using light that locks the PEG polymer strands into a solid gel, they created soft hydrogels that contained living cells and growth factors. After that, they filmed the hydrogels for 72 hours. By tagging each type of cell with a different colored fluorescent marker, the team was able to watch as the cells gradually formed capillaries throughout the soft, plastic gel. To test these new vascular networks, the team implanted the hydrogels into the corneas of mice, where no natural vasculature exists. After injecting a dye into the mice's bloodstream, the researchers confirmed normal blood flow in the newly grown capillaries. Another key advance [involved] the creation of a new technique called "two-photon lithography," an ultrasensitive way of using light to create intricate three-dimensional patterns within the soft PEG hydrogels. The patterning technique allows the engineers to exert a fine level of control over where cells move and grow. In follow-up experiments [the] team plan to use the technique to grow blood vessels in predetermined patterns."

SUSPENDED ANIMATION CONFERENCE, MAY 2011 Wednesday, January 12, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/suspended-animation-conference-may-2011.php
Via Depressed Metabolism, I see that cryonics technology company Suspended Animation is hosting a conference later this year: the company "will sponsor the conference, 'Suspended Animation - The Company and The Goal,' which will be held in Fort Lauderdale in May, 2011. The conference will feature speakers on the latest strategies and advances toward perfecting reversible human suspended animation. During the conference, SA will also host tours and demonstrations at its facility in Boynton Beach. Suspended Animation's 2011 conference has been designed to meet your needs. It will provide you with a comprehensive picture of the world of cryonics.

It will reveal the scientific foundations of cryonics, the latest advances in cryopreservation research, and the scientific basis for thinking that revival from cryopreservation is a realistic possibility. It will give your desire for survival a jolt of reality that will make you realize that, while the path ahead is difficult, you can help to make it easier. [Greg Fahy will present] major new findings from Phase I of a revolutionary longterm project to achieve reversible whole-body solid state suspended animation in humans. This project, conducted at 21st Century Medicine, is the only whole body vitrification research being conducted in mammals and was funded entirely by a $5.6 million dollar grant from the Life Extension Foundation. Cryobiologist Greg Fahy will discuss how well whole animals can be cryopreserved right now, the possibility of using a single advanced vitrification solution to cryopreserve entire animals and, eventually, humans, and a unique, newly-invented technology to produce large, cryopreserved tissue slices for scanning and transmission electron microscopy."

THE THOUSAND YEAR LIFE SPAN Tuesday, January 11, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/the-thousand-year-life-span.php
An updated piece on Aubrey de Grey and the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence from the BBC: "Nearly one in five people living in the UK will survive to see their 100th birthday, according to the government. But a Cambridgeshire academic who specialises in the ageing process says that effective medical care could make it possible to live much longer. Dr Aubrey de Grey said: 'I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.' ... Dr de Grey is the chief scientific officer of the SENS Foundation (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) which carries out research into the prevention and cure of ageing. He agreed that the [government] figures were a reasonable projection but added that this was not a new idea. 'Longevity has been increasing by a couple of years each decade for more than 50 years now, due to the success we have had in keeping people from getting the diseases of old age, and in keeping them in better condition throughout their whole lives.' We will not be simply keeping people alive in a frail, sick state. We will be actually keeping them in a youthful state so that they have a low probability of dying each year. ... The medicines that I think are going to come along in the next 20 or 30 years are ones that not only slow down the ageing process and keep us from getting quite so sick, quite so young, but also reverse the ageing process. In other words, conduct periodic repair and maintenance at the molecular and cellular level, so that even if we have already accumulated some of the damaging effects of ageing we can be periodically fixed up - like any simple man-made machine. Once we get medicine like that, we should be in a very powerful position to keep people in a genuinely youthful state - not just looking young, but feeling young and functioning young - for as long as we like."

SUMMARIZING THE USE OF MEDICAL NANOROBOTICS IN THE REPAIR OF AGING Monday, January 10, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/summarizing-the-use-of-medical-nanorobotics-in-the-repair-of-aging.php
VIa Accelerating Future, I see that the nanorobotics chapter from the Future of Aging is available online: "Robert Freitas' book chapter for The Future of Aging compilation is now online. It looks very interesting.

Freitas always produces fantastic work, that's one of the reasons Kurzweil constantly cites him. I talked to Freitas about this work, and he said, 'It's a major piece of work - a current update and the most comprehensive summary so far of the many potential applications of advanced diamondoid medical nanorobotics to conventional and anti-aging medicine.' Theoretical designs for diamondoid nanomachinery such as bearings, gears, motors, pumps, sensors, manipulators and even molecular computers already exist. Technologies required for the molecularly precise fabrication of diamondoid mechanical components and medical nanorobots, along with feasible strategies for the mass production of these devices, are the focus of active current research. This chapter describes a comprehensive solution to human morbidity and aging which will be attained when mankind has established control over all critical molecular events in the human body through the use of medical nanorobotics. Medical nanorobots can provide targeted treatments to individual organs, tissues, cells and even intracellular components, and can intervene in biological processes at the molecular level under direct supervision of the physician. Programmable micron-scale robotic devices will make possible comprehensive cures for human disease, the reversal of physical trauma, and individual cell repair."

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