Healthy Life Extension

The Key to the Vault

posted on April 26, 2011

One of my favorite quotes comes from Muhammad Ali. He said “Suffer today, and live like a champion the rest of your life.”

Let’s apply that thought to wellness and longevity for a moment. How about something like “Be sensible today, and live like a champion during your open-ended life.”

People will do almost anything to stay in their comfort zones. But if you want to keep from being left behind in our quest for extreme longevity and wellness, nudge yourself out of yours. It will take a little effort—but not as much as you might think. You don’t have to train like a world champion athlete. You just have to make moderate adjustments.

Think about this for a moment:

“Hell on earth would be meeting the person you could have been.”

What can you be? Are you living up to your potential? Or are you pursuing destructive habits that might not only cost you being tripped up by an avoidable disease, but which might cost you a chance look, feel and function great on your 100th birthday… and beyond.

The advice and wisdom I pass on to you in this letter and in Life Extension Express from some of the world’s geniuses are collected to make you part of the first generation to thrive for decades beyond the time when aging would have normally ended your life. In other words, It’s designed to keep you from being part of the last generation to deteriorate and die from aging.

There is no waste and no regret greater than getting good advice and ignoring it. There’s a price to pay for any improvement, advancement or achievement, and you won’t see progress until you change something. There is no free lunch. But people hate effort and get stuck in mediocrity, obesity, lethargy and sickness.

The sad truth is, people will typically go to the ends of the earth to cure something that goes wrong, but will spend little if any time, money and effort for prevention. There are psychological reasons for this insanity—but no rational reasons. Therefore, my job is a tough sale. But it's a rational one. And it’s a critical one. I could find lots of easier things to do with my life—but nothing more important. I'm totally convinced if you follow the advice in Life Extension Express, you'll extend the quantity and quality of your life—and possibly save it in the process!

Imagine it being years from now, and you ignored all the good advice you get. Imagine lying in a hospital room, staring at the ceiling, connected to machines and with tubes sticking out of you. Think about how you would regret not having exerted a tiny part of the effort Muhammad Ali spent. Or worse, what if your lights went out prematurely?

Now imagine a distant future where you’re fit and lean, jogging on a tropical beach.

Ninety-five percent of people simply do not think of the future very much. Far off events such as cancer, heart disease, death… and extreme longevity seem abstract to most, so they do little to prevent or encourage them today. They’re usually more concerned with scratching itches than planning for tomorrow. So they go through life in a reactive mode rather than in a proactive planning mode. The soothing effects of a cigarette, the extra helping and rich dessert at dinner and the temptation to just kick back are too gratifying to resist. That’s why so many people are sick, fat, out of shape and broke. That’s why so many die before their time.

All too often, and often too late, they get a wake up call. They have (and survive) a heart attack or stroke, get diagnosed with cancer or another killer disease, or a close family member or friend suddenly dies. Then they finally turn to a healthy lifestyle, hoping they can make up for a lifetime of destructive habits.

Do you want to become the driver instead of a passenger on the road to a healthy, vibrant life? I think we both know the answer to that question.

One of my personal quotes is “Life’s easy if you live it the hard way, and hard if you try to live it the easy way.” I’ll admit, Ali’s version is more poetic, but both deliver the same message. Let's see if we really do take the easy way out when we get lazy.

We skip a workout. No big deal. One workout is not going to make or break you, at least physically. What is does do is make it easier to skip the next one, and the one after that. Before you know it, you formed a lazy habit, and that’s what will keep many of us from reaching the century mark. Ditto for eating crappy food, thinking lazy destructive thoughts, skipping stress breaks and ignoring preventative medicine.

Long Life,
David Kekich

P.S. TIME has announced its 2011 TIME 100 Poll. The final poll showed our own Ray Kurzweil ranked 30, edging out Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Steve Jobs, Hillary Clinton, Warren Buffet, Barack Obama, and others.

Congratulations Ray!
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LATEST HEADLINES FROM FIGHT AGING!

A LOOK AT GARAGE BIOTECHNOLOGY Friday, April 22, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/04/a-look-at-garage-biotechnology.php
Small scale efforts by a widespread people outside the academic and industry communities, and open and largely free access to plans and data are the future of biotechnology. It is a data-driven field, and will ultimately look just like the open source software community does today: "Following in the footsteps of revolutionaries like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer in Jobs's garage, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who invented Google in a friend's garage, biohackers are attempting bold feats of genetic engineering, drug development, and biotech research in makeshift home laboratories.

For a few hundred dollars, anyone can send some spit to a sequencing company and receive a complete DNA scan, and then use free software to analyze the results. Custom-made DNA can be mail-ordered off websites, and affordable biotech gear is available on Craigslist and eBay. Biohackers, like the open-source programmers and software hackers who came before, are united by a profound idealism. They believe in the power of individuals as opposed to corporate interests, in the wisdom of crowds as opposed to the single-mindedness of experts, and in the incentive to do good for the world as opposed to the need to turn a profit. Suspicious of scientific elitism and inspired by the success of open-source computing, the bio DIYers believe that individuals have a fundamental right to biological information, that spreading the tools of biotech to the masses will accelerate the pace of progress, and that the fruits of the biosciences should be delivered into the hands of the people who need them the most."

THE PROMISE OF STEM CELL REJUVENATION Thursday, April 21, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/04/the-promise-of-stem-cell-rejuvenation.php
Stem cell function, necessary to maintain tissue, declines with age. This most likely a part of the evolved balancing act between suppression of cancer and the need to keep tissues repaired and working - as you grow older, forms of molecular damage accumulate, increasing the risk of cancer resulting from the normal operations of cellular proliferation. That balance can already be shifted in mice in very beneficial ways, giving both less cancer and longer lives. While these are the early days yet, in our future lies a fusion of the fields of cancer research and stem cell science that will do the same for humans: "Adult stem cells exist in most mammalian organs and tissues and are indispensable for normal tissue homeostasis and repair. In most tissues, there is an age-related decline in stem cell functionality but not a depletion of stem cells. Such functional changes reflect deleterious effects of age on the genome, epigenome, and proteome, some of which arise cell autonomously and others of which are imposed by an age-related change in the local milieu or systemic environment. Notably, some of the changes, particularly epigenomic and proteomic, are potentially reversible, and both environmental and genetic interventions can result in the rejuvenation of aged stem cells. Such findings have profound implications for the stem cell-based therapy of age-related diseases."

TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE Thursday, April 21, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/04/time-waits-for-no-one.php
A reminder: "Biological aging is the greatest health threat to humanity today. It causes more disease and suffering in the world than all infectious diseases (HIV, malaria, etc.) or any other cause (e.g. poverty, war, natural disaster, etc.). The inborn aging process causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, AD, joint pain, vision and hearing impairment, etc. The harms of senescence (even if we exercise and eat a healthy diet) are certain, severe and universal. The diseases of aging afflict both rich and poor, and developed and developing countries. And, unless the biological clocks we have inherited from our Darwinian past are modified, it is highly likely that all future generations of human beings that shall ever live on this planet will suffer one or more of the diseases of aging. In light of the unique health challenges facing the world's aging populations, the most important knowledge humans can acquire today is knowledge about the biology of aging: why do we, as a species, age at the rate we do? why does aging leave our bodies and minds susceptible to disease? And, most importantly, how can we retard or ameliorate the harmful effects of biological aging?"

INVESTIGATING MUSCLE REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE Wednesday, April 20, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/04/investigating-muscle-repair-and-maintenance.php
A number of research groups are looking into ways to manipulate muscle regeneration and maintenance, and an advance here could be useful as a therapy to address age-related loss in muscle mass and strength: "Researchers have long questioned why patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) tend to manage well through childhood and adolescence, yet succumb to their disease in early adulthood, or why elderly people who lose muscle strength following bed rest find it difficult or impossible to regain. Now, researchers [are] beginning to find answers in a specialized population of cells called satellite cells. Their findings [suggest] a potential therapeutic target for conditions where muscle deterioration threatens life or quality of life. ... Suspecting a genetic switch that might turn off satellite cell proliferation in these circumstances, the scientists looked to a gene called Ezh2, known to keep the activity of other genes in check. When they genetically inactivated Ezh2 in satellite cells of laboratory mice, the mice failed to repair muscle damage caused by traumatic injury - satellite cells could not proliferate. Ezh2 expression is known to decline during aging, and the new research in mice suggests that therapies to activate Ezh2 and promote satellite cell proliferation might eventually play a role in treating degenerative muscle diseases. In the elderly, tweaking the gene in satellite cells would not increase their lifespan, but could increase their quality of life by helping to prevent falls and enabling them to move and walk better and go about their daily activities."

THE WORK OF MICHAEL ROSE Wednesday, April 20, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/04/the-work-of-michael-rose.php
A Science 2.0 article looks at the work of researcher Michael Rose over past decades: "Over the years, Rose and his lab have bred fruit flies to live four times the life span of an average fruit fly. Reasoning from those studies, Rose has proposed that, because the life spans of fruit flies have the genetic capability to be extensively prolonged, human life can be manipulated in the same way. Wattiaux was a French scientist working at the University of Leuven in Belgium. His study used the same fruit flies that Rose had been working with.

Wattiaux found that when he made each new generation of fruit flies that were the offspring of old parents exclusively, the flies showed an increased life span after each generation. But Wattiaux didn't know why his fruit flies lived longer. He felt that longevity increased because of a nongenetic effect, but he didn't have any direct evidence. Rose did. Wattiaux's results, he saw, showed the importance of the force of natural selection. He believed that, because natural selection stops working at a late age and fails to eliminate genes with detrimental effects, these bad genes would not be removed by natural selection. Instead, they would accumulate. In populations that reproduce early, natural selection declines early. Alternatively, populations that are old when they reproduce will continue to be subject to powerful selection until they begin to reproduce. Thus, by allowing older flies to reproduce over generations, natural selection would continue to choose the flies that are able to breed at a later age - the fittest flies."

INJECTABLE REGENERATIVE FILLER FOR WOUNDS AND DEFECTS IN TISSUE Tuesday, April 19, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/04/injectable-regenerative-filler-for-wounds-and-defects-in-tissue.php
The use of nanoscale scaffolding material mixed with cells - to spur repair of wounds that would otherwise not heal - is becoming more sophisticated: "scientists have made star-shaped, biodegradable Polymer>polymers that can self-assemble into hollow, nanofiber spheres, and when the spheres are injected with cells into wounds, these spheres biodegrade, but the cells live on to form new tissue. The procedure gives hope to people with certain types of cartilage injuries for which there aren't good treatments now. To repair complex or oddly shaped tissue defects, an injectable cell carrier is desirable to achieve accurate fit and to minimize surgery.

[Researchers have been] working on a biomimetic strategy to design a cell matrix - a system that copies biology and supports the cells as they grow and form tissue - using biodegradable nanofibers. The nanofibrous hollow microspheres are highly porous, which allows nutrients to enter easily, and they mimic the functions of cellular matrix in the body. Additionally, the nanofibers in these hollow microspheres do not generate much [in the way of] degradation byproducts that could hurt the cells. The nanofibrous hollow spheres are combined with cells and then injected into the wound. When the nanofiber spheres, which are slightly bigger than the cells they carry, degrade at the wound site, the cells they are carrying have already gotten a good start growing because the nanofiber spheres provide an environment in which the cells naturally thrive. This approach has been more successful than the traditional cell matrix currently used in tissue growth. Until now, there has been no way to make such a matrix.

REGENERATING BLOOD VESSELS Monday, April 18, 2011 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/04/regenerating-blood-vessels.php

Researchers are making progress in understanding the signals needed to spur specific forms of regeneration: they "have discovered a strategy for stimulating the formation of highly functional new blood vessels in tissues that are starved of oxygen. A biological factor, called fibroblast growth factor 9 (FGF9), is delivered at the same time that the body is making its own effort at forming new blood vessels in vulnerable or damaged tissue. The result is that an otherwise unsuccessful attempt at regenerating a blood supply becomes a successful one. This potential treatment has been termed 'therapeutic angiogenesis'. Unfortunately and despite considerable investigation, therapeutic angiogenesis has not as yet been found to be beneficial to patients with coronary artery disease.

It appears that new blood vessels that form using approaches to date do not last long, and may not have the ability to control the flow of blood into the areas starved of oxygen. [This latest work] provides a method to overcome these limitations. This strategy is based on paying more attention to the 'supporting' cells of the vessel wall, rather than the endothelial or lining cells of the artery wall. The research team found that by activating the supporting cells, new blood vessel sprouts in adult mice did not shrivel up and disappear but instead lasted for over a year. Furthermore, these regenerating blood vessels were now enveloped by smooth muscle cells that gave them the ability to constrict and relax, a critical process that ensures the right amount of blood and oxygen gets to the tissues. olFGF9 seemed to 'awaken' the supporting cells and stimulated their wrapping around the otherwise fragile blood vessel wall."

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