Healthy Life Extension

100 is the New 50

posted on March 22, 2011

Don’t you just love results?

Nothing feels better than having a deal come together after months, or even years of hard brain-sweating work… or having your mirror show you proof that physical training works… or positive feedback from your scale well into your weight-loss program… or seeing your latest blood work which confirms the fact that your new diet, supplement program and lifestyle changes are reversing your former sub-par condition. How about biomarkers that tell you, you are in fact growing biologically younger?

Do you know what makes me feel just about as good? When someone profits from my advice.

Here’s a letter that I got from one of my subscribers, Michael Eaves:

“Hi David,

Just an update on my conversion to the Paleo diet.

Over the past 4 months, I have gone from 130 kgs to 105 kgs. I don’t count calories and don’t go hungry. My health has dramatically improved, e.g. sinus headaches gone, arthritis pain in my knee gone, swelling almost gone, general health very good.

I have a target weight of 85 kgs. That’s what I weighed when Donna and I married 30 years ago. Although reaching my target may prove impossible, as I have noticeably more muscle now, and it continues to increase even as I lose weight. Donna, after seeing the changes I'm making, has started cutting out wheat and corn based foods as well. She is 52 and going through menopause and had put on a fair bit of weight, most noticeably, abdominal fat. Since dropping wheat and corn, she has lost 2 dress sizes, most of the belly fat and over 10kgs in weight. Her muscle mass has increased and overall figure is much more pleasing, not only to me but to herself as well.”

We are on our way to making 100 the new 50. But in order for it to happen for you, you will need to take action. Michael and Donna made some simple changes to their diet, and look at their amazing results. And without pain! The best part is, they are almost certainly helping ensure their longevity.

If you’re not familiar with the Paleo diet, I devoted a fair amount of space to it in Life Extension Express. You can download it for free at www.MaxLife.org, or you can buy a copy from Amazon.com.

Going Paleo is only one way to reverse aspects of aging. We have a long way to go before we can reverse the aging process itself. There is so much to learn. While we are doing that, why not put what we do know to work for you? After all, we have learned more in the past ten years than we have in all the time prior. If you apply just part of what we have learned so far, I see no reason why you could not add ten to fifteen years to your lifespan if you are average. By doing so, you would dramatically reduce your odds of decline, agony, expense, dependence and immobility that most experience in their later years.

Another bonus will be your increased odds of surviving, in fact thriving, until we will truly be able to offer you rejuvenation and open-ended youthfulness.

Michael and Donna are on their way. Won’t you join them? Why be left behind when the rest of the world will be riding the Life Extension Express?

Long Life,
David Kekich
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LATEST HEADLINES FROM FIGHT AGING!

LIVING LIKE A CENTENARIAN Friday, March 18, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/living-like-a-centenarian.php
The modest goals of the mainstream longevity science community are outlined by one of its members in this article - to enable everyone to age as slowly as only some people presently do. No radical life extension or rejuvenation, as would be enabled by the damage repair approach to longevity science, but rather just a gentle slowing of aging, enabled by technologies that would probably not emerge in time to benefit those of us in middle age today. "It is the aging of our cells that causes us to develop most diseases, says Dr. Nir Barzilai, professor of medicine and genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. 'We know this, paradoxically, because of the amazing success we have had in treating heart disease. We have been able to save people from heart attacks with stents and bypass surgery only to find that within a year or two they develop Alzheimer's, diabetes or cancer at an alarming rate. Why? Because we have never treated the underlying aging of their cells. We have simply treated the disease manifestation.' So, explains Barzilai, if we can find the processes in the body that control aging and find a way to treat them, we will be able to protect people from the diseases of aging. Barzilai heads a unique longevity study of more than 500 people who have reached the age of 100. The LonGenity study is looking at the genetic makeup of centenarians to identify the biological markers that explain why they live so long and so well. Because the remarkable thing about these people is not simply that they live to the age of 100, it is that they live to 100 in pretty good health. Just why they live that long without getting sick and dying is what Barzilai wanted to find out."

GENE THERAPY TRIALS TO TREAT PARKINSON'S DISEASE Friday, March 18, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/gene-therapy-trials-to-treat-parkinsons-disease.php
Via EurekAlert!: "A gene therapy called NLX-P101 dramatically reduces movement impairment in Parkinson's patients, according to results of a Phase 2 study. The approach introduces a gene into the brain to normalize chemical signaling. The study is the first successful randomized, double-blind clinical trial of a gene therapy for Parkinson's or any neurologic disorder. Half of patients receiving gene therapy achieved dramatic symptom improvements, compared with just 14 percent in the control group. Overall, patients receiving gene therapy had a 23.1 percent improvement in motor score, compared to a 12.7 percent improvement in the control group. Improved motor control was seen at one month and continued virtually unchanged throughout the six-month study period.

Gene therapy is the use of a gene to change the function of cells or organs to improve or prevent disease. To transfer genes into cells, an inert virus is used to deliver the gene into a target cell. In this case, the glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) gene was used because GAD makes a chemical called GABA, a major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain that helps 'quiet' excessive neuronal firing related to Parkinson's disease. In Parkinson's disease, not only do patients lose many dopamine-producing brain cells, but they also develop substantial reductions in the activity and amount of GABA in their brains. This causes a dysfunction in brain circuitry responsible for coordinating movement."

IMPROVEMENT IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS THERAPIES Thursday, March 17, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/incremental-improvement-in-rheumatoid-arthritis-therapies.php
The present generation of therapies for rheumatoid arthritis are based on TNF inhibition - a fairly crude manipulation of the immune system when considered in the grand scheme of what is possible, but one that is getting better. From Technology Review: "A new protein engineered to inhibit molecules that cause inflammation not only reduces symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis in mice but also may have potential to reverse the disease's course. Researchers hope the findings will point toward a new therapy for this crippling and difficult-to-treat disease, which occurs when the immune system attacks the body's own joints. Even medications that are most successful in halting joint inflammation are effective in only about half of the patients who try them. The new synthetic protein [appears] to target TNF in a far more specific fashion and could be produced at a small fraction of the cost [of present TNF inhibitors]. A protein called progranulin binds to TNF receptors and that administering the protein to mice with rheumatoid arthritis reduced or even eliminated their symptoms. Then they determined which fragments of progranulin were responsible for binding to TNF and combined those fragments to engineer a protein that works even better to suppress disease. Mice with mild arthritis appeared to be disease-free after several weeks of regular injections of the modified progranulin."

MICROMACHINES STEERED THROUGH THE BLOOD Wednesday, March 16, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/micromachines-steered-through-the-blood.php
Nanotechnology can be used to build assemblies of designed molecules that seek out specific cells - such as cancer cells - but an alternative approach to targeted therapies is to build machinery large enough to be controlled from outside the body, such as the microcarriers demonstrated here: "Soon, drug delivery that precisely targets cancerous cells without exposing the healthy surrounding tissue to the medication's toxic effects will no longer be an oncologist's dream but a medical reality using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, [researchers] successfully guided microcarriers loaded with a dose of anti-cancer drug through the bloodstream of a living rabbit, right up to a targeted area in the liver, where the drug was successfully administered. This is a medical first that will help improve chemoembolization, a current treatment for liver cancer.

The therapeutic magnetic microcarriers (TMMCs) [are made] from biodegradable polymer, [measure] 50 micrometers in diameter - just under the breadth of a hair - [and] encapsulate a dose of a therapeutic agent (in this case, doxorubicin) as well as magnetic nanoparticles. Essentially tiny magnets, the nanoparticles are what allow the upgraded MRI system to guide the microcarriers through the blood vessels to the targeted organ. During the experiments, the TMMCs injected into the bloodstream were guided through the hepatic artery to the targeted part of the liver where the drug was progressively released."

OF STEM CELLS, HORSES, AND HUMANS Wednesday, March 16, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/of-stem-cells-horses-and-humans.php
Because veterinary medicine is less (oppressively) regulated than human medicine, animals are benefiting from stem cell therapies that are safe enough for human use but nonetheless still illegal to commercially develop in the US: "In a very unusual breakthrough, a stem cell treatment for racehorses is ready to be tried on you. British scientists pioneered a technique in horses where an individuals' own stem cells are grown outside the body, then injected into the damaged tendon. There will be a clinical trial in the UK in which 24 human patients will undergo this radical new stem cell treatment for similar tendon injuries. We'll tell you about the proven benefits in racehorses so you'll understand the possible benefits in people. The test subjects who join the clinical trial will be in the unique position of enjoying a medical procedure that is years behind the veterinary equivalent. If human beings have the same barely believable 80% recovery rate, this will be a leap forward for sports medicine.

The reason animals can get commercial drugs and treatments faster than people in the US and other Western countries is simple: there is enormous oversight in human medical research. Veterinary research is comparably simple. According to the FDA, bringing a new drug to market for humans requires pre-clinical laboratory tests, animal tests, and human clinical trials.  Each one of those steps costs money, lots and lots of it. Approval for veterinary drugs is simpler, requiring a single study that proves the drug is safe and effective. Because of regulatory difference, progress on animal medical research can move very quickly compared to human research."

ONE OF THE MANY COSTS OF AGING Tuesday, March 15, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/one-of-the-many-costs-of-aging.php
The frailty and degenerations of aging impose enormous costs on sufferers and those who assist them - one of many reasons to accelerate work on repairing the biochemical damage that causes aging: "Nearly 15 million people in the United States take care of a loved one with Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia, amounting to 17 billion hours or more than $202 billion in unpaid care. If these caregivers all lived in one U.S. state, it would be the nation's fifth largest, according to the Alzheimer's Association's 2011 annual report on the disease. The report illustrates the growing burden of Alzheimer's disease, a fatal brain-wasting disease that erodes memory, thinking, behavior and the ability to handle daily activities. Alzheimer's affects more than 26 million people globally and can stretch on for years, slowly robbing patients of their mind and memories. And there are currently no drugs that can keep the disease from progressing. The group estimates that 5.4 million people in the United States are now living with Alzheimer's disease, up from 5.3 million a year ago. That includes 5.2 million people over age 65 or about one in eight senior citizens. A 65-year-old person diagnosed with Alzheimer's typically lives four to eight years after being diagnosed, but some patients live as long as 20 years after diagnosis. The $202 billion in unpaid care is on top of the $183 billion estimate for Alzheimer's care expected to be delivered in 2011 by healthcare workers in homes, hospitals and long-term care facilities."

A PROFILE OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION INC Monday, March 14, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/03/a-profile-of-suspended-animation-inc.php

From the most recent edition of Cryonics Magazine: "Alcor Life Extension members now have access to nationwide standby, stabilization and transport services provided by teams of medical professionals through Suspended Animation, Inc., but some Alcor members may be unfamiliar with Suspended Animation, the company. Founded in 2002, Suspended Animation, Inc. (SA) serves cryonicists in the continental United States from all cryonics companies through contracts with individuals and their membership and long-term care organizations. SA is not a membership organization and does not offer long-term cryonics care, but instead focuses its efforts on research and development of superior equipment and services for cryonics. Over the years, SA has developed or modified a variety of equipment suitable for air travel and used for cryonics applications, including portable ice-baths, custom stabilization kits and two patient care and transport vehicles now deployed in California and Florida. SA's current research and development projects are an automated, air-transportable liquid ventilation device (in conjunction with Critical Care Research) for rapid cooling of cryonics patients; an automated whole body vitrification system (based on a proprietary 21st Century Medicine, Inc. system currently used in animal research), and using cell death gene expression profiling to evaluate existing and new cryonics stabilization strategies."

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