Healthy Life Extension

Will You Be Left Behind?

posted on February 01, 2011

I want everyone to get the message.

Vibrant open-ended lifespans are within reach. Do you tell your friends? Your family? Do you try to convince the skeptics or those who don’t care? You love them, but they just don’t latch on to your dreams for their healthy longevity. What do you do? Do you cajole them? Do you persistently try to “sell” them on the prospects of rejuvenation? Not unless you’re a masochist.

Often, people who speak to their uninformed friends and loved ones of the prospects of extreme longevity get discouraged when their audience doesn’t get it. Then they assume they will be alone after their friends and relatives have passed away. So they lose their enthusiasm and don’t take the steps that will help ensure their own longevity. Maybe you could slip into this category. It’s not hard to do.

But let’s flip this scenario for a moment.

Sure, you will lose some loved ones along the way. But many will eventually latch on to life extending practices on their own. They will join the ever-growing life extension community and will survive long enough to live in an open-ended future where aging has been repaired and avoided. Others, especially the younger generations, will outlive the era of death from aging and will enter the golden era of extended youth simply from the luck of the draw. Meanwhile, your lost enthusiasm could cost you your life.

Wouldn’t it be sad and ironic then, that instead of leaving your friends and loved ones behind, you are the one left behind? Let’s say you are the one who will miss all the future reunions, vacations, birthdays, holiday dinners and other occasions. Instead of you talking about the departed, imagine them talking about you—or worse—being forgotten over the decades. Imaging nearing the end of your life regretting all your undone goals and aspirations instead of looking forward to a lifetime of new accomplishments and adventures.

It’s meaningful to be part of a family… or a community. That all ends when life ends. The families and communities live on, with or without you. My aim is to keep you from being left behind.

Long Life,
David Kekich

P.S. Do you remember the invitation I sent you to attend a gala Beverly Hills event late last year? It was amazing! Great music, great food, lots of celebrities and a very cool grand opening of the Endless Youth and Life store. Visit their website at www.endlessyouthandlife.com,  or visit the store in Beverly Hills. Here are some photos of the event:

http://www.endlessyouthandlife.com/grand_opening.html
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LATEST HEADLINES FROM FIGHT AGING!

NANOPARTICLES SPUR WOUND HEALING Friday, January 28, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/nanoparticles-spur-wound-healing.php
An example of one of the ways in which the natural process of healing can be adjusted, or rescued when it fails: "investigators have developed a novel system for delivery of growth factors to chronic wounds such as pressure sores and diabetic foot ulcers. The team [reports] fabricating nanospheres containing keratinocyte growth factor (KGF), a protein known to play an important role in wound healing, fused with elastin-like peptides. When suspended in a fibrin gel, these nanoparticles improved the healing of deep skin wounds in diabetic mice. It is quite amazing how just one dose of the fusion protein was enough to induce significant tissue regeneration in two weeks. Previous reports have suggested that KGF can help heal chronic wounds. But in most studies the growth factor was applied to the surface of the wound, limiting its availability to deeper tissues and requiring repeat applications to produce any clinical benefit. Using large quantities of growth factor would make this therapy extremely expensive. Our work circumvents these limitations by more efficiently delivering KFG throughout the wound to stimulate tissue regeneration. The authors describe developing a fusion protein from recombinant KGF and elastin-like-peptides, which are major constituents of skin and other connective tissues. Laboratory experiments showed that the fusion protein retained the wound-healing properties of both elastin and KGF and that it rapidly and efficiently self-assembled into nanoparticles in response to a simple increase in temperature. When applied to deep skin wounds in genetically diabetic mice, the nanoparticles accelerated healing by stimulating the formation of both surface epithelial tissue and thick fibrous connective tissue."

ENHANCING MEMORY WITH INSULIN-LIKE GROWTH FACTOR Thursday, January 27, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/enhancing-memory-with-insulin-like-growth-factor.php
From ScienceDaily: "A naturally occurring growth factor significantly boosted retention and prevented forgetting of a fear memory when injected into rats' memory circuitry during time-limited windows when memories become fragile and changeable. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of potent memory enhancement via a naturally occurring factor that readily passes through the blood-brain barrier - and thus may hold promise for treatment development. The staying power of a memory depends on the synthesis of new proteins and structural changes in the connections between brain cells. These memory-strengthening changes occur within time-limited windows right after learning, when memories undergo consolidation, and also right after a memory is retrieved, a process called reconsolidation. Hints from other studies led the researchers to suspect that IGF-II plays a role in these processes within the brain's memory center, the hippocampus, where it is relatively highly concentrated. The little-known growth factor is part of the brain's machinery for tissue repair and regeneration; it is important during development and declines with age. Learning boosted the expression of naturally occurring IGF-II in the hippocampus. So the researchers injected synthetic IGF-II directly into the hippocampus during windows of consolidation or reconsolidation, when memories are malleable. Remarkably, the rats' memory markedly improved - with the effects lasting at least a few weeks. An examination of the animals' brains revealed that IGF-II had strengthened the cellular connections and mechanisms underlying long-term memory - a process called long-term potentiation."

THE 2ND ANNUAL YOUNG CRYONICISTS GATHERING Thursday, January 27, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/the-2nd-annual-young-cryonicists-gathering.php
The cryonics community last year held an outreach event for younger members - a part of the necessary structure of cryonics as a process is a continuing community to maintain the preserved bodies and brains of those who preceded them. This year the event will be held in May: "This cryonics focus group seminar hosted by Bill Faloon and Carin Idun will be held on Thursday, May 19 and Friday, May 20, 2011, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Invitations were mailed to CI and Alcor members ages 13-29. The purpose of the young cryonicists' seminars is to develop a continuing social network of like-minded individuals who otherwise might not have the opportunity to meet in person.  This gathering is open to young cryonicists from all cryonics organizations. Registered participants will also enjoy the opportunity to attend the Suspended Animation conference. You must be registered in advance to attend." As I noted last year, "this sort of event sounds like something worth making an institution in the community. Cryonics has a long way to go to become mainstream, but every step is a step closer. So many, many lives will be lost between now and the advent of working rejuvenation medicine - and the methodology presently exists to save those lives though cryonics. Most people are not aware of it or interested in it, however, and cryonics provision needs to be scaled up to handle the masses. Scaling is a trivial problem compared to convincing people that a viable workaround to death exists; as soon as there is desire for a product, there will be competition and development."

THE BIG THINK SERIES ON LONGEVITY Wednesday, January 26, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/the-big-think-series-on-longevity.php
SIngularity Hub likes the Big Think series on longevity: "Thinking about living forever? You've got a lot of reading to do... or maybe you can just watch a few videos. The science surrounding longevity is a hive of interweaving studies and counterstudies that can leave the average reader confused. Singularity Hub will always give you a look at the best life-extension technologies as they emerge, but what if you need the very basics? In that case, BigThink's series "Living Longer, Better - and Maybe Forever" is a fun place to start. With videos from Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, Leonard Guarente, and many others the series gives its audience a first look at some of the technologies and possibilities for the future of human life. If you have to begin with one expert to introduce you to longevity, it should probably be Aubrey de Grey. The rather-famous scientist has made a career of studying how human-life could be extended well beyond the means of today. Passionate, thoughtful, and sporting an unforgettable beard, de Grey's talks about longevity are typically as insightful as they are memorable. Part of what makes the BigThink 'Living Longer, Better - And Maybe Forever' series a good place to start is that the videos selected are a small sample of the much longer footage collected. Aubrey de Grey, for instance, has more than a half hour of interview videos available on BigThink divided into sections for easy browsing. If any of the speakers in the series interest you, you can be almost certain that there is more video of their thoughts for you to explore."

SENS FOUNDATION FAQ POSTED Wednesday, January 26, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/sens-foundation-faq-posted.php
The SENS Foundation has posted a FAQ on their work to defeat degenerative aging: "Can anything really be done about age-related degeneration and disease? Isn't getting sicker as we get older just a fact of life? It is informative to think about similar questions which might have been asked at different points over the past century. Can we really do anything about wound infections? After the invention of antibiotics the answer was a resounding, 'Yes'. When will the next outbreak of smallpox occur? After the WHO's program of eradication the answer became, 'Never'. Cholera, and John Snow's work on its epidemiology; polio, and the Salk vaccine... the list goes on. All these advances in medicine changed the answers to questions, and showed that a 'fact of life' is often just a problem waiting for a solution. So it is with the sickness of older age. It has not yet been addressed effectively, but that does not mean that it cannot be addressed. It simply means that we have to find new ways to tackle the problem, and the most promising of these is rejuvenation biotechnology.

Wouldn't it be easier to find ways to slow down age-related degeneration than to reverse it? First, let's be clear on what 'reversing age-related degeneration' means, in rejuvenation biotechnology. We are not trying to reverse the process which causes degeneration: that process is highly complicated and not well understood. Rather, we are working to repair the result of that process, sidestepping our ignorance of the process itself. We believe that this side of the problem of age-related degeneration can be solved more rapidly and effectively. The human body, by its nature, is a very complex system, built from finely-regulated, metabolic subsystems. Tinkering with one aspect inevitably ripples in unexpected ways through the entire system, and in ways which we can rarely predict with any great confidence. This entails a high risk of negative side-effects occurring when any one of them is modified. Reversing age-related degeneration - in the damage repair sense - avoids the complex pathways of metabolism, and has the potential to be simpler and more effective than methods which only slow it down."

SUPERCOOLING APPLIED TO CRYOPRESERVATION Tuesday, January 25, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/supercooling-applied-to-cryopreservation.php
Of possible long-term relevance to cryonics: "A technology used to freeze sushi is solving a dilemma for organ storage. By borrowing tech used to preserve high-end food delicacies, a Hiroshima University research group proved it possible to safely freeze whole teeth and their delicate attaching tissues. As long as the freezer stays cold, the folks at Hiroshima U. think your teeth could be stored for 40 years, no problem. But the sushi-storage system isn't a one trick pony: internal organs could be next thanks to the magic of supercooling. In typical cryo-storage, fast freezing of organs requires poisonous levels of anti-freeze, and let's face it, no one wants a poisoned kidney transplanted into their body. But slower freezing causes cell popping ice crystals to form. So, what do you do to prevent ice crystals during slow freezing? Use magnets. ABI is the Japanese company producing the freezer system. ABI's 'Cells Alive System' (CAS) vibrates water with magnetic fields, preventing freezing, even at supercool temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius (According to the Patent.) When the field is turned off, the water in the food instantly freezes. No time for ice growth. A very tricky part of tooth preservation is keeping tooth ligaments alive, or even some of the ligament cells. Implanting ligaments is important. We have ligaments attached to teeth because the force of chewing could grind our chompers out of our jaws. When the research team tried slow freezing a whole fresh tooth without the CAS magnetic fields, the ligaments didn't survive and were severely damaged. However, a CAS magnetically vibrated tooth's ligaments survived. CAS frozen ligament cells grew as well as those from a fresh tooth, and showed only minor damage."

THOUGHTS ON THE NON-ISSUE OF OVERPOPULATION Monday, January 24, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/thoughts-on-the-non-issue-of-overpopulation.php
A post from the author of the Finnish language book Evolving Humanity: "The replenishment rate required to keep a population stable is about 2.1 children per woman. The average fertility rate in a lot of industrialized countries is well below this - for instance, 1.58 in Canada, 1.42 in Germany, 1.32 in Italy, 1.20 in Japan and 1.04 in Hong Kong. The EU average is 1.51. Yes, in a lot of poor countries the figures are considerably higher - Niger tops the chart with 7.68 children per woman - but even then the overall world population growth is projected to start declining around 2050 or so. To give a sense of proportion: suppose that tomorrow, we developed literal immortality and made it instantly available for everyone, so that the death rate would drop to zero in a day, with no adjustment to the birth rate. Even if this completely unrealistic scenario were to take place, the overall US population growth would still only be about half of what it was during the height of the 1950s baby boom! Even in such a completely, utterly unrealistic scenario, it would still take around 53 years for the US population to double - assuming no compensating drop in birth rates in that whole time. We've adapted to increasing lifespans before. Between 1950 and 1990, the percentage of population over 65 almost doubled in Sweden, going from 10.3 to 18.1. (In the United Kingdom it went up from 10.7 to 15.2, in the US from 8.1 to 12.6, and in the more-developed countries overall it went from 7.6 to 12.1.) The beauty of economics is that like all resource consumption, having children is a self-regulating mechanism: if a growing population really does exert a heavy strain on resources, then it will become more expensive to have children, and people will have less of them. I see no reason to presume that radical life extension and indefinite youths would pose us any problems that we couldn't handle, at least not on the overpopulation front." You might also look at the demographic models mentioned in the Fight Aging! archives.

THE POTENTIAL TO BLOCK METASTASIS Monday, January 24, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/01/the-potential-to-block-metastasis.php

Blocking metastasis would be a big step towards the defeat of cancer, and a number of different approaches show promise. Here, researchers "have discovered a rogue gene which - if blocked by the right drugs - could stop cancer in its tracks. The discovery is a breakthrough in our understanding of how cancer spreads. It is hoped the research will lead to new drugs that halt the critical late stage of the disease when cancer cells spread to other parts of the body. The culprit gene - known as WWP2 - is an enzymic bonding agent found inside cancer cells. It attacks and breaks down a natural inhibitor in the body which normally prevents cancer cells spreading. By blocking WWP2, levels of the natural inhibitor are boosted and the cancer cells remain dormant. If a drug was developed that deactivated WWP2, conventional therapies and surgery could be used on primary tumors, with no risk of the disease taking hold elsewhere. The discovery could lead to the development of a new generation of drugs within the next decade that could be used to stop the aggressive spread of most forms of the disease, including breast, brain, colon and skin cancer. The late-stages of cancer involve a process known as metastasis - a critical phase in the progression of the disease that cannot currently be treated or prevented. The challenge now is to identify a potent drug that will get inside cancer cells and destroy the activity of the rogue gene. This is a difficult but not impossible task, made easier by the deeper understanding of the biological processes revealed in this study."

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