Longer Healthier Lifespans

A Simple Fun Way to Measure Your Biological Age

posted on April 21, 2009

When you were a teenager, were you like me, did you want to look older?

Most of my friends did too. We all thought it was cool to look and act older than we were. But now!

What would you give to shave a few years off your biological age? How about five years, or ten, or even twenty? Most of us dream about it, and fewer do something about it. The proper combination of diet, exercise and the other five steps in Life Extension Express will certainly do it for you. And by now, you know how that could translate into a longer healthier lifespan, which in turn could position you to take advantage of future radical life-extending technologies.

Have you ever visited www.RealAge.com? It’s a wonderful website that has been operational for years. They offer a free test that let’s you gauge your “real age”. You know what your chronological age is. I get painfully reminded every birthday. But that is not necessarily your biological age. Let’s face it, we age at different rates. Have you attended a high school reunion recently? The last one I went to blew me away. There was at least a twenty year difference between how old some of the youthful ones looked compared to the ones who aged badly. In fact one of our teachers who attended looked younger than most of my classmates.

So why the difference? Genetics? In many cases, sure, but only partially. We can attribute about 25-35% to genetics. The rest is, by far, under your control.

I took Real Age’s test years ago and don’t remember the exact results. Then Phil Sumner, one of my subscribers and fellow Pennsylvania native, sent me a direct link to Real Age’s test. Here’s what Phil said about it:

“This one is absolutely amazing! This will either scare you, elate you, or make you change some habits!! If you answer truthfully it is a cool tool. You may be younger, or much older, than you think! By the way, my numbers when I took the test were 64.1 for a virtual age (biological age) and 99.9 for my Life Expectancy. Since I am 78 calendar wise now, I am rather proud of those numbers. I just might survive until they cure aging.”

Way to go Phil, and thank you for this link to the test:

http://www.sonnyradio.com/realage3.swf

How scientific is this test? They seem to know what they are doing, and it’s a reputable seasoned site. I’d say it’s far from precise but a very good place to start. I’d like to think it’s totally accurate, because at age 65, my score is 43 for my biological age and 102 for my life expectancy. Yahoo! But I know I need to keep monitoring my blood work, take other tests (most showed me as being slightly older than 43), check biomarkers, and most of all… continue to follow healthy habits.

Take the test now, and have fun with it. It can be a great reminder that you are doing the right things, or it can be a wake up call. Either way, you benefit.
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LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES

A View of Cryonics (April 17 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4165
From Singularity Hub, a piece on cryonics that you might not agree with all of, but is well worth the time to read: "Given the exponential rate of modern scientific innovation, cryonics suggests that new technologies may soon be available that can resurrect an individual considered 'dead' by today's standards. Because our personalities and memories have chemical foundations in the brain, they can hypothetically be preserved in the body, so long as neural tissue does not degenerate (as we'll see, that might be a logical jump). One way of preserving tissue is to store it at extremely low temperatures, effectively grinding your molecular chemistry to a halt. To put it bluntly, the cold keeps your body from rotting. But, as every high school student knows, your body is mostly water, which expands when frozen. This is where a process called vitrification enters the picture. Cryonics patients are preserved in vats of liquid nitrogen cooled to temperatures below -200°F. Because ice crystals can damage cells as they form, the water that fills our cells must be partially replaced before the body is cooled. Chemicals solutions called cryoprotectants are circulated through the patient's body, ultimately reaching a concentration greater than 50%. As the body is cooled, the cryoprotectants allow tissues to reach a glass-like solid state that is relatively free of ice crystals, thus preserving cellular integrity." You might also want to look at Alcor's FAQ for Scientists.

Temperature and Lifespan (April 16 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4163
Body temperature is demonstrated to affect life span in lower animals, and now that researchers are digging into how this works, some of the same longevity mechanisms already discovered in other studies are seen to be involved. Via EurekAlert!: "It's true that [nematode] worms don't regulate their body temperature, but they do regulate their response to high temperature, slowing down processes that would otherwise go much faster. In fact, they even use steroid hormones to do this, just as we do to regulate our temperature. This might have been a very early evolutionary link between cold- and warm-blooded animals. The authors suggest that at high temperature, the worm's thermosensory neurons produce a signal that stimulates expression of the daf-9 gene, which produces a steroid hormone that extends lifespan. The researchers propose that this thermosensory system allows C. elegans to reduce the effect that warm temperature would otherwise have on the processes that affect aging, which is something that warm-blooded animals do by controlling the temperature itself. This system may allow the animal to maintain a more normal rate of aging even if the temperature rises. Previous research also has linked the rate of aging in mammals with temperature. If mice are tricked into thinking that they are in a hot climate, they lower their body temperature and live longer."

An Autologous Stem Cell Trial in the US (April 16 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4162
After a good few years of trials in less oppressively regulated regions of the world, a small autologous stem cell therapy trial has started in the US. "For the first time in the United States, a stroke patient has been intravenously injected with his own bone marrow stem cells. The Phase I safety trial [will] enroll nine more patients who have suffered a stroke and can be treated with the stem cell procedure within 24 to 72 hours of initial symptoms. Animal studies have shown that when you administer stem cells after stroke, the cells enhance the healing. We know that stem cells have some kind of guidance system and migrate to the area of injury. They're not making new brain cells but they may be enhancing the repair processes and reducing inflammatory damage. This study is the critical first step in translating laboratory work with stem cells into benefit for patients. If effective, this treatment could be helpful to a huge segment of stroke patients to reduce their disability." Remember, if the FDA didn't exist, this type of therapy would already have been benefiting those patients who decided to take advantage of it. It is disingenuous to pretend that great and novel steps are being taken here - this work has already been proven in other parts of the world, and all that is happening now is make-work and obstruction on the part of government employees who care little about your health.

The Misrepair Accumulation Theory of Aging (April 15 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4160
Here is a twist on the "aging is biochemical damage" viewpoint that theorizes bad repairs to be the important form of damage: "It is now increasingly realized that the underlying mechanisms which govern aging
(aging) are a complex interplay of genetic regulation and damage accumulation. Aging as a result of accumulation of 'faults' on cellular and molecular levels, has been proposed in the damage (fault)-accumulation theory by Kirkwood. However, this theory fails to explain some aging phenotypes such as fibrosis and premature aging, since terms such as 'damage' and 'fault' are not specified. Therefore we introduce here a specification of the underlying mechanism of aging and arrive at a novel theory: aging of the body is a result of the accumulation of Misrepair of tissue. It emphasizes: a) it is Misrepair, not the original damage, that accumulates and leads to aging; and b) aging can occur at different levels, however aging of the body takes place at least on the tissue level, but not necessarily on cellular/molecular level. The novel concept of Misrepair introduced here unifies the understanding of the roles of environmental damage, repair, gene regulation, and multicellular structure in the aging process. The Misrepair-accumulation theory introduced in the present paper gives explanations for the aging phenotypes, premature aging, and the difference of longevity in different species, and is consistent with the point of view of physical theory of complex systems."

NOTE: We are working on an adult stem cell technology which may largely solve this problem.

Update on Induced Pluripotency Research (April 14 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4159
It is impressive to see how rapidly researchers are moving forward with induced pluripotency. Here's another step forward via EurekAlert!: Scientists have "used tiny molecules called microRNAs to help turn adult mouse cells back to their embryonic state. These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, meaning that, like embryonic stem cells, they have the capacity to become any cell type in the body. The findings suggest that scientists will soon be able to replace retroviruses and even genes currently used in laboratory experiments to induce pluripotency in adult cells. This would make potential stem cell-based therapies safer by eliminating the risks posed to humans by these DNA-based methods, including alteration of the genome and risk of cancer. [MicroRNAs] are transient, non-coding molecules that do not incorporate into the genome, but promote self-replication and have the potential to induce pluripotency. They do their thing -- turn a somatic cell into an embryonic stem cell-like one -- and then they're gone. The goal now is to ensure the safety of induced pluripotent stem cells and to differentiate them into cells that can be used to repair damaged tissue and treat disease."

On Preparing For the Future (April 13 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4157
From In Search of Enlightenment: "In the year 2048 the children from my grade 2 class will be the age of many of those in nursing homes today. Globally there will be 2 billion humans alive over the age of 60. And this will bring unprecedented levels of chronic disease (cancer, heart disease, stroke, [Alzheimer's disease], etc.). If there was something we could do to alter this possible future of unprecedented human suffering and disease from becoming a reality, shouldn't we try to avoid it? Instead of feeding the next generation of inquisitive thinkers useless platitudes about the importance of switching off lights to save the world we should encourage them to harness the great potential of [our present knowledge of biology to slow or reverse aging itself]. Given the certainty and severity of the harm of aging you might expect that vast amounts of public funding are being invested in aging research. You might think that the brightest and most talented scientists who long to make the world a better place are being lured into the field. Unfortunately it is very hard to get people to rally behind aging research. This must change. A deceleration of the aging process might make nursing homes a thing of the past. And that would be an enormous achievement that all future generations of humans could enjoy."

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