The Life Extension cliche
M5
little movement is taking place! I have read since the days of Durk
Pearson and Sandy Shaw the cliche that we are doubling our knowledge
every year and that in a few short years we will be so knowledgable
that aging will be a thing of the past.
The reality is that in the almost 20 years that I have been involved in
the research and practical application of life-extenstion technologies
I have seen very slow progress. With the exception of caloric
restriction, we have gained few interventions that might (and that is a
painfully truthful word) do us some good. Selenium and perhaps some
other nutrients will be of use, but the picture is far from clear and
the studies on the scale and the magnitude needed to confirm the
assessment of these supplements have not been conducted. Don't bother
to post zillions of citations from MEDLINE. I've read zillions of
studies from MEDLINE posted here and dug up on my own. Unfortunately
they aren't on a scale or focused on the information the life extension
community needs to assess them.
So what is the prognosis for the patient (in the case of Durk Pearson
and Sandy Shaw) not good. The last time I saw Durk at a life extension
convention he looked terrible and that was 8 years ago. Don't get me
wrong I love Durk and Sandy I've owned every book they wrote,
subscribed to there news letter, and found there citations and evidence
to sometimes be a little bit lacking, but they did manage to get the
who idea in the public eye. Roy Walford, died a couple of years ago
from ALS and Durk isn't far behind if looks and the occasional rumour
of prostate cancer is correct. As for the readers of this message, if
your in your 20's your have hope, if your in your 40's caloric
restriction might save you, if your in you 60's and beyond maybe ALCOR
will saw off your head and freeze it if your lucky.
This is not a good situation and one that doesn't speak to the doubling
of knowledge to brush aside the simple problem of aging.
So what are we to do? My first suggestion is that we need to form a
lobbying group. There is no voice in Congress and other countries
pushing for the basic research we need conducted.
My second suggestion, that has come from years of struggling with
caloric restriction, is that we need to form social relationships among
the practioners of Caloric Restriction that will help us support each
other. You know when I first started the caloric restriction mailing
list years ago. I know your shocked, you probably thought Brian
Delaney started it, but that is very inaccurate. Go back to the
earliest archives of the list. You'll see that Brian didn't start the
mailing list that eventually grew into the CR Society, I did. You'll
see it in the first thousand emails or so that were exchanged that I
am the lists creator not Brian Delaney (Brian did eventually take over
the mailing list from me and go on to build a web page and call it the
CR Society), but I started it. Anyway, the point is that I started
this list for a reason, I knew from my own personal experience that it
is very hard to practice Caloric Restriction (CR) in everyday life.
Matter fact it is next to impossible to practice it and win over the
long term. A little know fact that is often overlooked in the CR
Society posting.
Don't believe me? How many of the original 100 or so CR Society
members are still practicing CR. My best guess is that 2 or 3 if that.
I read a little while ago that Brian had given up (I'm sure that was a
short term thing brought on by the fact that you'll tend to find that
women aren't very supportive or attracted to guys who are as thin as
thin can be). I hope that his relationships with Lisa Walford will
lead to some sort of long term relationship that will place him in a
sphere of support where he can revisit CR in a more determined fashion.
But the point is that I realized years and years ago that CR is very
difficult to practice and will really only work if you have a social
network to conduct it in, hence the mailing list.
But after about a year with the mailing list I realized that two things
were being overlooked, a focus on cutting edge research that would
answer basic questions and an understanding of the importance of a
social reason and environment to conduct CR in. Yes debating the
merits of brocolli vs carrots is importance, but winning the game is
far more important.
If we are going to progress. I think we need two things a voice for our
cause so that funds are devoted to it i.e. a lobbying group would be a
good place to start, and place to call home. Not the home that we have
here on the net, but an organization and social structure to support us
in our journey.
In closing let me relate to you the last conversation I had with Roy L
Walford and perhaps you might glean how large the stakes are of what we
are discussing here today. I read Roy's first great work "Maximim Life
Span" almost 20 years ago. It was a pivotal work that introduced to me
to Caloric Restriction. Unfortunately, it didn't really give you any
idea of how to implement it. I went on a crash caloric restriction
diet and to the lowest body weight levels I have ever been at as an
adult, wafer wafer thin. Then several years later while I struggled
with a working implementation of CR Roy came out with his ground
breaking book "The 120 Year Diet". A great work that helped with
understanding how to implement CR. I then had the good fortune to meet
Roy a couple of times at an Anti-Aging conference in Las Vegas. Where
I got the idea to form a CR society mailing list to keep people in
contact after discussing things with Roy (Roy of course didn't want to
be a involved as he didn't want it to be his mailing list, rather a
true society). This caused me to lose contact with Roy for a
considerable period of time. Well many years after that I heard that
Roy had ALS on the net. I was saddened, and I decided to look him up
in the phone book and give him a call to let him know that someone
cared about him. During the course of the brief conversation I relayed
to Roy that his work would live on after him and that could take some
solace in the fact that I and others like me heard and understood the
significance of Caloric Restriction and what he had written about it.
Well Roy tried to put a bright spin on it and told me "It's not all
that bad", they really had overblown it in the media. One year later
Roy L Walford was dead, and it really was all that bad.
Steve M
WR-2731
Benko
Dan
phase of LE. Nutritional therapy is the second phase of LE. Gene
therapy is the future third phase of LE. Nanotechnology is the future
forth phase of LE.
Read 'We will be able to live to 1,000' @
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4003063.stm
Dan Gilliland
http://debunkbigpharma.blognation.us/blog
Dr. Zarkov
Good points, but not too surprising when you consider how little
progress has been made against cancer, even over 30 years after the "war
on cancer" was announced and substantial increases in funding became
available. I've always wondered why the big pharmaceutical companies
aren't putting more effort into what would be a truly enormous market.
st7
>
> Good points, but not too surprising when you consider how little
> progress has been made against cancer, even over 30 years after the "war
> on cancer" was announced and substantial increases in funding became
> available. I've always wondered why the big pharmaceutical companies
> aren't putting more effort into what would be a truly enormous market.
See:
Mechanisms of Ageing and Development
76 (1994) 201-214
Arthur R. Robinson*, Arnold Hunsberger, Fred C. Westall
Suppression of squamous cell carcinoma in hairless mice by
dietary nutrient variation
PMID: 7885065
free full paper
http://nutritionandcancer.org/view/nutritionandcancer/oism_nac.pdf
tcar...@elp.rr.com
If you're as widely read as you claim, I would guess you're
the type of person with rigid beliefs, unaffected by new information.
Such people naturally see little movement. Possibly I'm the opposite
type who sees legitimate movement in every new paper I uncritically
read. A gullible mind, or strong desire to live can easily lead thru
wishful thinking to inappropriate acceptance of spurilous progess.
We know each other's opinions. Here are some facts:
1. Rich Orientals living in the NE of the USA live on average to 90,
Japenese women live to 89.
2. Men who take certain common antioxidants, including vit C have the
same plasma redox levels as women and seven uncontradicted randomized,
placebo controlled, gold standard, intervention trials show them to
live as long. Only one gave mortality results, the others showed
coronary benefits.
3. Epidemiology shows at least a ten year increase in lifespan compared
to the average for certain groups with good life styles.
4. Certain peptides have reduced mortality by 75% in a large
intervention trial, the only one done on them. This promises a 15 year
life extension.
5. Epidemiology shows a 90% reduction of cancer and coronary mortality
for people with proper lifestyles, who get good, regular, preventative
exams.
These data seem to me to give a healthy 60 year old life
extensionist much better than a 50-50 chance to reach 90. 90% of
centenarians die of heart or respiratory disease. Today artificial
lungs are in use in China, and artificial hearts are just around the
corner in the USA. IMO these and other advances give today's 60 year
old life extensionist a fine chance to reach 110 without other
breakthroughs. That's fifty years from now. No one can say what his
chances will be at that time. So get back in line and keep in step. We
may reach the promised land, we may get reaped by the grim one. Play
the cards you're dealt as well as you can. A lack of confidence in
new technology could be cause of the failure of many.
tcar...@elp.rr.com
The reason they don't put more is they are already putting
every possible dime into the development of new medicines. All drug
companies do this because it is their ONLY source of income. It's
what keeps them solvent. All other expenditures are necessary to
exploit their successful previous efforts, and as overhead these are
understandably minimized.
Slow progress on cancer? Sure. The dragons are tuffer than
thought. Four guided arrows have been developed and have had good
success in slaying four of them. Others are under development. Hold
your horses, eat your fruggies, get your check ups, and cross your
fingers.
eighthman
Inquiring minds wanna know...............
tcar...@elp.rr.com
$Date 2002
Adv Gerontol. 2002;10:74-84.
[Geroprotective effect of thymalin and epithalamin]
[Article in Russian]
Khavinson VKh, Morozov VG.
St. Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology, 3, Dynamo
Prospect,
197110, St. Petersburg, Russia. khav...@gerontology.ru
Researchers of the St. Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and
Gerontology of
the North-Western Branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and
the
Research Institute of Gerontology of the Ukrainian Academy of Medical
Sciences
(Kiev) clinically assessed the geroprotective effects of thymic and
epiphyseal
peptide bioregulators (Thymalin and Epithalamin, correspondingly) in
266 elderly
and older persons during 6-8 years (the bioregulators were applied for
the first
2-3 years of observation). The obtained results convincingly confirmed
the
ability of the bioregulators to normalize the basic functions of the
human
organism, i.e. to improve the indices of the cardiovascular, endocrine,
immune,
and nervous systems, homeostasis, and metabolism. The restoration of
homeostasis
in the patients was accompanied by a 2.0-2.4-fold decrease in acute
respiratory
disease incidence, reduced incidence ischemic heart disease clinical
manifestations, hypertension, deforming osteoarthrosis, and
osteoporosis, as
compared to the control group. Such a significant improvement in the
somatic
state of the peptide-treated patients corresponded to a decrease in
their
mortality rate during the observation period: 2.0-2.1-fold among the
Thymalin-treated patients, 1.6-1.8-fold--in the Epithalamin-treated
group, and
2.5-fold--in the patients treated with Thymalin combined with
Epithalamin, as
compared to the control group. A separate group of patients was treated
with
Thymalin combined with Epithalamin annually for 6 years. We registered
a
4.1-fold mortality decrease in this group as compared to the control
level. The
results of our research confirmed the conclusion on the high
geroprotective
efficacy of Thymalin and Epithalamin and the expediency of their
application in
medicine and social care as the means of health maintenance and
age-related
pathology prevention in persons over 60 years old enabling the
prolongation of
the active period of their lives. PMID: 12577695 (This gave them the
same mortality rate as people fifteen years younger)
eighthman
disease and
prions, I hope there's a source that doesn't involve animal glands.
mic...@halltechnology.net
> Has anyone heard of the benefits of Monavie and the Acai Berry,
it was listed as the number 1 food by Dr. Perricone for extending life
and the antioxidant ORAC level is 673.
you should go to http://www.monavieflorida.com and click on the Acai
Berry button at the top.