Forever young: Don't help the Reaper

WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) -- Part 1 of 2. As the Rolling Stones testified, "what a drag it is getting old" -- and that was decades before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards actually began looking like aging rock stars, but at least today's population has access to the best science-based advice on how to live well longer.

The pity is, so many seek exotic fountains of youth while ignoring the simple things. So says Bruce Ames, a biochemist and world leader in aging and nutrition research.

"There's no sense trying to make people live longer if they're shortening their lifespan by smoking or eating lousy diets, and we're talking about a sizable percent of the country," Ames told United Press International.

In 1998, Ames won the prestigious National Medal of Science, and in 2001 he was awarded Oregon State University's first $50,000 Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research. He is a senior scientist at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California and scientific advisory board member of Juvenon.com, which markets an anti-aging supplement he developed.

He also is 77 and going strong. Ames combines plain-spoken reminders to eat right and stay fit with esoteric insights into the nature of the aging process. In this article, Ames talks about the basics of aging and how to keep from aiding and abetting it.

Life expectancy increased about 30 years from 1900 to 2000, and I think it's going to increase at least another 30 years from 2000 to 2100. Science is going like a rocket.

In the old days you knew the dozen people in the world who worked on aging. Now there so many bright young people coming into the field. So I'm an optimist. We don't know where all the breakthroughs are going to come from, but we know there will be ways to intervene.

My interest is mainly diet. It's clear that there are all sorts of ways of aging yourself faster because of bad diet.

Mitochondria are the power plants in every cell. With age what happens is the mitochondria decay. So you look in an old rat or an old person, the mitochondria are less efficient and they're putting out more side product. Byproducts of mitochondrial burning are oxidants. Just the way iron rusts or fat grows rancid, we're all going rancid from these oxygen radicals coming out of our metabolism.

It's like an old car engine -- it's putting out more black smoke and getting less efficient. And so we've been interested in how to tune that up and make it better.

We can do that, but there are lots of things you can do that will age your mitochondria faster, and one of them turns out to be not getting enough vitamins and minerals. So not only do you need fuel in your diets -- the fat and carbohydrates -- it's also 40 different micronutrients. These are the vitamins and the minerals and the essential fatty acids that you need to keep all your biochemistry humming along.

If you don't get enough iron you're in trouble;, if you don't get enough zinc you're in trouble. You look at the population, they're eating this god-awful diet. You drink a sugary soft-drink, you get 10 teaspoons of sugar and no vitamins and minerals, It used to be calories were hard to get and people ate fairly dilute food and got their vitamins and minerals. Now we eat a donut or a sugary soft drink or a glass of wine and you get no vitamins or minerals in that. But it fills you up.

So we're finding all kinds of vitamin and mineral deficiencies age your mitochondria faster. If you don't get enough iron -- and we're talking about a quarter of menstruating women aren't getting enough iron, less than half the requirement -- we showed your mitochondria go to pot. They start pouring out oxygen radicals, byproducts, into the cells. If you don't get enough zinc, the same thing will happen. We're showing it for a number of things.

The poor are eating the worst diets, and the obese are really bad; obesity means you're eating a bad diet almost by definition.

So you need to exercise because it keeps your mitochondria healthy. And you need to eat a good diet. It's what your mom told you a long time ago. If you're eating just calories, then you're going to get fat, I think in part because you're always hungry because the body's craving all these missing ingredients.

People worry about tiny traces of pesticide residues -- that's all irrelevant. The really important thing is what you're eating.

The solution isn't very complicated -- a multi-vitamin-mineral pill that's kind of an insurance pill.

A multivitamin mineral doesn't have enough magnesium and calcium, because they'd make the pill too big. So you should eat some yogurt every day, low fat, and maybe take a little extra magnesium.

And also you need to eat fish a couple of times a week because fish has DHA, which is a long-chain Omega-3 fatty acid and 30 percent of the brain is made of DHA. A lot of people don't eat fish. (Fish oil supplements) do the job.

There's no sense trying to make people live longer if they're shortening their lifespan by smoking or eating lousy diets, and we're talking about a sizable percent of the country.

What we've been doing is looking at rats that get a good diet -- much better than people do -- and trying to see what we can do to make the mitochondria in old rats look like more like young rats.

Next: Cutting edge research in life extension

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?...c-us-aging1.xml

You are really into taken pills to fix things uh, I think if you want to be young or live well, theyou should eat right, sleep and work out, It will do more for you than any pill.

Just 'eating well' doesn't cut it. The only way to extend life at the moment is by reducing your calories by as much as upto 40% while getting optimal nutrition like all your vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, antioxidants etc...

Forever Young: The scientific frontier

WASHINGTON, July 15 (UPI) -- Part 2 of 2. Dr. Bruce Ames is a leading biochemist who specializes in aging and nutrition. In Part 1 of an interview with United Press International, he discussed the importance of good diet in promoting longevity and keeping mitochondria -- the cells' power plants and the key to vigorous good health -- functioning efficiently.

Ames, a hearty and hard-working 76, is a senior scientist at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California and scientific advisory board member of Juvenon.com, which markets an anti-aging supplement he developed. In 1998, Ames won the prestigious National Medal of Science, and in 2001 he was awarded Oregon State University's first $50,000 Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research.

In this article, Ames talks about research aimed at extending healthy lifespans -- after, that is, people have done everything they can to take care of themselves.

"There's no sense trying to make people live longer if they're shortening their lifespan by smoking or eating lousy diets, and we're talking about a sizable percent of the country," Ames said.

What we've been doing is looking at rats that get a good diet -- much better than people do -- and trying to see what we can do to make the mitochondria in old rats look like more like young rats.

Based on some work by Italians and our own advances, we found that if you feed acetyl carnitine, which is a normal biochemical that helps bring fatty-acid fuel into the mitochondria, to old rats, their mitochondria look more like mitochondria of young rats. And the rats function better.

But the one thing we didn't solve is the old rats were still putting out more oxidants in their mitochondria than young rats. So we found another mitochondrial biochemical that solves that problem; it's called lipoic acid. It's an antioxidant for mitochondria that does some other good things.

Both of these compounds have been sold in health food stores for years. We found that with the combination, these old rats had more energy and their brains functioned better, their immune systems functioned better, so we published a series of papers on that.

The university (of California) took out a patent on this combination and I formed a company called Juvenon to sell these pills and use the money for doing clinical trials. All my stock is in a non-profit foundation so I get no money from the company and don't expect to.

We did the work in rats. We need to do it in people. I can't afford to do these huge expensive clinical trials, but the company can.

A lot of the degenerative diseases that come along with aging have been tracked to mitochondrial decay -- Parkinson's and nerve degeneration and diabetes and cancer. So I think when you tackle aging, you're going to tackle all these degenerative diseases that come along with it.

I think if you're an old rat, you can be enthusiastic. If you're an old person, we don't know all the answers yet. But there's lots of evidence these normal biochemicals are pretty safe -- they're not going to hurt you. We have every letter we've ever received from a customer in a database -- we have over 5,000 letters, so we always monitor what people say is good and what people say is bad.

Out of those 5,000 letters there are maybe 25 letters with some possible side effect, mostly rashes, so they're all really pretty minor. Plus, there's previous literature on the individual supplements. So I'm pretty confident that it's not going to hurt you.

A lot of people say they take it and they feel terrific. I take but I didn't feel any different, but I'm pretty peppy.

I'm quite optimistic. In terms of life expectancy, in the early 1930s, when they set up Social Security, people were retiring at 60. So they thought only a small percentage of the population would get to 65.

I don't want to retire. I'm having too much fun. The new New Yorker has a cartoon of the doctor telling the patient, "I see you're 57 years old. I'd like to bring that down a bit."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?...c-us-aging2.xml

That is all I need . . . eat things I don't much like, don't do things I like to do, do things I don't like to do . . . and gain some 6 to 12 extra months of life . . . to be spent in a nursing home somewhere.

larryOldtimer:

The whole point is to add life to years and not just years to life ! Meaning you extend the period of time that you are healthy. HEALTHY EXTRA YEARS! What would be the point in extend failty?

When we extend the lifespan of subjects like MICE we extend healthy life span. I'll explain this in as simplest way I can:

FREE FEEDING MICE

These Mice live a normal life span of around 2.5 / 3 years and they show a decline after 9 months of their life and later on get cancer and other age related diseases. They spend a lot of their time in a health decline. These mice stop running a few km a night at the age of 9 months and run about 1km. These mice could spend many weeks in pain before they die.

CALORIE RESTRICTED MICE

These mice Live around 4 - 5 years ! They show no signs of decline at 9 months. They are still doing back flips at the age of 2.5 - 3 years and still show no signs of aging. These mice are running an average of 9km per night at the age of 9 months and continue to do so even after the free feeding mice have died!

These mice basically live life to the fullest right up untill the final hour. Meaning they keel over and die one day without shown any pain. They have much less signs of age related diseases and are still healthy almost 2 years after the free feeding mice have died.


This is what life extension for humans would be like. You extend the period of healthy life and push DISEASE further out into the future.


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There is also another option that you could get cryogenically frozen untill future technology could revive you. This field is backed up by the science and it shows that it just might be possible... It definitly beats ending up in ashes or rotting in the ground...

There was a Guy in a near by town that Eat Right, and Ran 5 miles every morning before work. He Died at Age 35, Hit by a pick-up Truck While Jogging!

Healthiest dead man I Know!

Now after I am done with my cigaret and coffee, I am going to have some Bacon and Eggs,( Eggs Fried in the bacon grease) and 4 slices of Heavily Buttered Toast!

By then it will be nap time!

So you shouldnt live a healthy life just because of the small chance of getting hit by a truck? That is a pathetic response. How many healthy people get hit by trucks?... not many !

There are plenty of people like you roger and you will die in pain and develop multiple illnesses. Your getting old roger and the clock is ticking. I hope I can express my free speach here...

People like you roger do not deserve the time and effort from doctors and nurses.

My reply to you on the other thread http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum...showtopic=45683

^Well thats just a tad bit harsh, Roger probably just likes his life the way it is and has no real desire to change his lifestyle just to live a tiny bit longer and that is his choice and I do believe he`s just having a bit of a joke!

I think it's sort of ironic that they begin an article touting the merits of living healthy by using a quote from a Rolling Stones song. If there were ever poster boys for NOT living healthy, it's Mick, Keith and the gang. Good grief...they've practically pickled themlseves over the years AND they are still kicking ass on tours around the world. Gotta love 'em.

Whoa, ever heard of the term Respect your elders? So what if Roger doesnt want to jog 8 miles and eat Tofu every day! thats his buisness and his decision. Everybody has their own ways of enjoying life and this is his way,you should respect that.

Besides, Larry Oldguy was right. Tofu taste's bad! Now a Ring of German Farmer Baloney, Ah that Fat oozing around my lips.

Yes guys , I am having a bit of fun. I started life as a Farm Kid, Eating Meat and Potatoes with all the Gravy. But at 51 I see the Doc regularly and She Says I am Fine.

Still hate it when she puts that Glove on though!