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Eat Less - Live Longer
Bates writes "In the New York Times (free reg required) there is an article telling about a gene in fruitflies that when disabled doubles the lifespan of the fruitfly. The gene has been affectionately nicknamed "I'm Not Dead Yet." The gene actually manipulates your metabolism by makeing it so the LESS of your food is converted into calories. The article speculates about the possibility of a pill for humans that will partialy disable the same gene in humans. Maybe someone will beat Methuselah sometime in the future."
Would be to ensure that the body converts none of its food intake to calories. That way, you'd live even longer.
And don't give me any crap about starving to death. If I learned one thing from The Matrix it's that the human body gives off more energy than it takes in.
--Shoeboy
I don't know... I'm kind of leary about that. I know that they will (hopefully) test this a good bit before unleashing it on us. Anything that turns on or off certain genes can have extremely dangerous side effects. Plus, adding to the age without fixing other problems (senility, arthritis, etc.) associated with old age will cause the new old age to become a living hell for people.
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
If it was as simple as turning a single gene on
:) )
or off, I'm sure evolution would already have done
it for us...
Presumably there's some penalty (other than living many years past senility
Whilst this is a great advance for both people with weight problems and in general for extending lifespans it doesn't really solve the underlying social problems that make us as Americans quite so unhealthy. After all, all this pill does is simulate something we can do quite well on our own with a bit of willpower - eat less.
Why do most Americans feel that unless they eat enough to feed a dozen starving African refugees they've somehow been cheated of what is their right? There's no real need for a steak the size of a toilet seat, and yet restaurants make this their proud boast. Quite frankly its disgusting that people are this selfish and greedy, but then again, it's the American Dream to consume as much as possible.
Maybe if we as a nation were less greedy we wouldn't need this pill. Simply having the willpower to live a healthy lifestyle would do wonders for the average lifespan in the US.
In a breakthrough announced today, scientists believe they may have solved one of natures most enduring problems - how to lose weight.
It appears that by actually putting less food into your mouth, and instead taking a little excercise, you can reduce surplus weight to absolutely any level you require.
"We were astonished" said the scientists. "We always thought the answer had to be in the genes somewhere. But apparantly you dont need expensive, patented drugs to solve this problem. Just a little common sense, and the ability to understand that solving some problems takes a little time and effort."
Geneticists, especially Drosophila ones, have a long history of giving genes interesting names.
Several years ago, the Annals of Improbable Research had a story writing contest where the objective was to write a short story using only the names of genes, for instance, like the one below:
Every single one of the capitalized words happens to be a real name of a Drosophila gene.
Next time you walk through a shopping mall food court, make a note of the smells the fast-food joints pump into the air. The corporations have tested what lures people into their restaurants and what sells more products. They don't make too many mistakes, or they go out of business. Then some other company takes that spot, selling even more unhealthy food.
I concur that garden variety overweightness has increased as our population has become more sedentary. But pathological (i.e. dangerous) eating disorders are also on the rise. Is that because American consumers are more greedy than those in other countries, or because our society has more disposable income, more food available, more aggressive marketing of food, and more stress (which is a documented trigger for overeating in some individuals)? I don't think that 'greed' explains why people overeat when they themselves acknowledge on a rational basis that they are harming themselves by doing so.
I get upset when I read a comment by some person without a weight problem that "all you have to do is eat less" to lose weight. While this is certainly _true_ in an absolute sense, there are extreme genetic differences in people, and for some people these differences make it much, much more difficult to do. Appetite is regulated in the brain, and brain chemistry is quite different from person to person. Just as some people are predisposed to other addictions, many of us are brain-chemistry-dictated food addicts. Likewise, there are wide variations in metabolism. I think you might be surprised if you monitored the food intake of fat people - while you'd certainly find a fair share of overeaters, you'd also find a great many with low metabolic rates who consume no more - and even less - than 'normal' people. Storing up the excess calories as fat is an adaptation that was a great advantage in the Ice Age, but it's a real life-threatener in these affleuent times. BTW, you'd have to do more than double your lifespan to exceed Methuselah - he lived to be over 800 years old!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
You may have a point, but you're pointing the greed finger at the wrong Americans. The American corporations which market food may have more to do with it than the American consumers.
Yes, our national "food" industry does indeed have a large role in promoting unhealthy eating habits, but the trend of overconsumption has been in place for a lot longer than the rise of the fast food culture. Whereas most nations have moved away from the gratuitous consumption of vast meals America has indeed moved even futher towards gluttony.
The difference is that Americans have more disposable income and the corporations compete ruthlessly for that income.
Sure, but that doesn't make that much of a difference. It doesn't take a vast amount of disposable income to eat enough to become obese, and fast food corporations like Macdonalds compete worldwide for the attention of customers. So why is it that America is the nation with such a huge problem and such a large amount of consumption?
As I stated elsewhere, Americans believe it is part of their birthright to consume and consume without regard to consequences. It's this attitude that needs to change.
The important news in this article is the finding of the gene that will cause the metabolism to do this automatically! In the words of a doctor whose name I cannot remember, ~"when good food is in front of you, it is damn hard to not eat it if you are hungry." Halving caloric input, unless through some tricking of the metabolism via keytone production ala the Atkins diet (nightmare) will make you hungry. Obviously 98% of the population in the world, not just the US, lacks the willpower to not eat when they are A) hungry and B) yummy food is in front of them. It just appears Americans have worse willpower because we tend to have more yummy food in front of us than almost anyone else in the world (when i first moved to the States from Scotland I noticed portions at restaurants are about 2.5x as large).
In all likelihood a parallel gene will be found in humans, and while tweaking it will have weird side effects, it will be done in the lidetime of the average /. reader. If means are found to reverse or slow the gravity aging effects then the world will become really interesting. Right now, though, this would just result in more frail, stooped, old people running around :)
Frums
It's not a zero-sum game, in that we can produce far more food than we can eat. If we were short on food then yes, it's conceivable that my eating that big steak might mean somebody else couldn't eat, and then I'd agree with you that perhaps I should feel guilty about it. But whether I eat that big, juicy, delicious steak or not, doesn't affect those poor, starving people in the world in the least. The problems are much more complex than that. If they weren't, we could solve the problem by shipping all the unused food (day old bread, out of date food, etc) to the poor.
The first, of course, is simple capitalism. The poor, starving people of the world don't have the funds to pay for food. This is one that both individuals and countries can resolve, if they find it in their hearts to want to.
The second is distribution. Getting the food to those poor, starving people is actually more complex yet. It's not as easy as writing a check, or even sending a ship full of food to their closest city. Remember the scandal in the 80's over all the food sent to Ethiopia and how little of it actually reached the people who needed it most?
And, as you get farther from First World civilization, the problems increase. Sure, you can set up a food bank and a shelter in Chicago and advertise and people will probably hear about it and come. But how do you get the word out to people who don't live in large communities or cities or towns? How does the small family out in the middle of nowhere, desperately trying to eke out a meager existence, learn that they could have free food if they only knew to travel 100 miles to the closest town? You or I eating less doesn't impact that problem in the slightest.
In most places where the diet is primarily vegetarian it's because of food shortages. In the same places the expected life span is considerably shorter than in the wealthier nations. Cancer and Alzheimers are primarily diseases of elderly people. When a relatively small percentage of the population lives to become elderly you wouldn't expect to see much of those diseases.
It's also worth noting that one out of every three people who die in the world die of some form of dysentery. Death by dysentery is almost unheard of in the wealthier nations. When we are able to help the poorer peoples of the world protect themselves from conditions like starvation and dysentery, we will start seeing them die of the same sorts of things we are (in a general sense).
The thing medical people seem to ignore/forget is that you're going to die, and you're going to die of something. They've been working to eliminate the various causes of death on the almost unconscious theory that if you remove all causes of death then people won't die. If they somehow made it so we could live forever, people would still die of suicide, and they would decide that the desire to die is a treatable condition which they should find a cure for.
I don't disagree with the idea that we should eat well, exercise, and all that, but the whole blaming health problems on "bad life style choices" is just another way of blaming bad things that happen to you on the "fact" that you're a bad person. If you get cancer, it's because you did bad things like smoke, hang around people who smoke, eat wrong, or not exercise enough. In the end, no matter what you do, you're going t oget sick and die, and some doctor will say that it's because you made some bad choice earlier in your life.
"Bite me, it's fun!" - Crowe T. Robot
According to the article:
The result, reported today in the journal Science, shows that flies with a mutation in a gene the scientists called INDY, for I'm Not Dead Yet, had average life spans of 71 days rather than the normal 37 days.
Wouldn't it be ironic if they produced the gene therapy or wonder drug to turn off this gene in humans, and all it did was increase our life span by 44 days?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
This article deals with a special kind of "weight loss" that is brought about by calorie deprivation. Many different studies have found that when the human body (and also the rat and now the fruit fly) is routinely denied the amount of calories it is supposed to need, for whatever reason it lives much longer. We are talking say 75% of needed calories, *every day*. I guarantee that anyone who does this *will lose weight*. If my body burns at 3500 calories a day at my current metabolism, and I only eat 2600 a day, it is not able to adjust the metabolism down enough to deal with the difference (normally the metabolism can change as much as 15% or so). My body will then look to process muscle and fat for its energy needs. On an active person (also depending on other nutrition), fat is the first to go.
The new idea that the calorie deprivation theory introduces is that after all the fat and all the excess muscle is consumed (no I am not saying it is healthy to lose this muscle), we don't just die. If we have proper nutrition otherwise (which means enough protein, vitamins, minerals, and fats) our body seems to adapt further to allow for the low caloric intake. How the body does this is still murky in scientific fields, but it has been shown true in countless cases. One side effect of this also seems to be increased longevity. In lab rats lifespan has been incresed by more than 150%; obviously, YMMV ;-).
Also, yes, the brain does regulate the appetite, and many people can't control their appetites. It is simply a matter of discipline. I know this, I have done it. You can tell your body to starve itself, and after it gets used to it you don't even have to try hard. Realize, too, that I am not saying this is necessarily a healthy thing to do. You must consult with a nutritionist to develop a diet that is healthy for you, and I do admit that I had a nutritionist's advice for wrestling. My priorities were also different; I was simply looking for a way to lose massive amounts of weight quickly without getting sick or adversely affecting performance. Most people are looking to enrich their lives.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Mortality is an evil bitch goddess. When I was four years something happened that would forever change me, and profoundly impact my life. I realized that I was going to die. Not believeing particularly in an afterlife, this was a monumentally horrifying thing for my young mind to grasp. Even now, thinking of it fills me with a sense of vast melancholy.
I have been unable to discover any proof whatsoever as to the existance of an afterlife, indeed, all available data seems to strongly indicate that the spark of self and sentience that I treasure within me is a mecahnical product of gene competition, and that when I die, all that I have thought and felt, all that I am, all the rich textures of experience and being encoded in the neuralogical circuitry of my brain will dissapate and rot, fading into entropy and erasure.
Anyway, enough with the mawkish sentiments! I haven't slept in too long. Sure, that's it. Just need to get the day going right, read the morning paper and be about my meary way. heh
Seriously, though. I have been looking into life extension via caloric reduction for a good while now. From what I understand, it has shown to be remarkably effective in creatures as minor as flanaria [mircoscopic flatworms], all the way up to mice, shrews, small mammels. IF started in the human equivilent of the mid-twenties, the projections are that a human being may have a life expectancy of around 120, maybe more [maybe far less, experimental results are hard with people, we're going to have to wait a long while, obviousl].
And it's by no means certain that you would spend that time senile. Animals actually seem quite noticably and verifiably to age more slowly. Thus, you would have the physical form of a 40 year old when you were around 55, etc. In experiments with rheuses monkeys that have been going on for a several years now, the calorie-restricted one's actually had the hormonal balances of much younger ones, and no grey hairs like the control group has begun to develop.
Anyway, take it all with a grain of salt. [Oh wait, that's too much salt, sorry, half a grain!]
The major secret to the technique is to ensure that you recieve wholly adequate nutrition, r.e. vitamins, protein, proper trace minerals, but a lot less calories they your body thinks it needs. This seems to cause the body to slow down.
There is a good source of more information here
Be carefull, this can be dangerous if not done rihgt. I've thought of doing it myself, but I just like food so much! Heh. Actually, my greatest concern is in possibly neurological consequences, I don't want to risk subtly damaging or slowing down my brain in any way. Perhaps this new years resolution will be to flirt with trying it?
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man sig
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the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
Scientific American ran an article in one of their special edition magazines this last June called The Famine of Youth. It's a very informative article with several sub-parts covering the type of diet necessary, as well as the type of lifestyle you can expect to live. Unfortunately the web page doesn't seem to contain everything the magazine article did. The full story of Greg Smith that was in the magazine was eye opening and a little frightening.
After reading this article, it seems to me that the diet involved is quite a bit more severe than is being assumed here. It's not nearly enough just to give up snacking. According to the article It's four or five small meals a day, predominantly vegetables and fruits, and a life in which you are perpetually cold, painfully thin and constantly hungry. Calorie restriction, quite simply, is a Draconian diet and a lifelong one at that. Once you start living this diet, you can lose the ability to produce your own body heat.
The required diet is so small that it would come close to being torture. As an American I can fully appreciate the need to reduce unnecessary calorie intake. I ate enough to feed three people all through my teenage years. I eat fairly small meals now, but I don't know anyone who even approaches this kind of a diet. This is closer to a carefully controlled anorexia with special attention given to nutrient density.
I can appreciate this science for its goal, but it's still in the stage where the cure is worse than the disease. I would definitely take 70 comfortable years of life over 100 years of life on this program. Interesting, yes, and I'd expect that this concept will be the foundation to several new and innovative ideas in health, but it's not ready yet. American or no, I don't see too many people being willing to subject themselves to this kind of a life just to tweak out a few more years.
Seth
Oh man, I'd like to see what you're basing that on. I know plenty of people who flat out insist that they CHOOSE to be homosexual, and could go either way.
If this is based on that one study supposedly showing that gay men have smaller hypothalamus glands or whatever, go back to the drawing board. First of all, the research (to my knowledge) has never been reproduced, causality was not demonstrated, and there was certainly no genetic connection clearly demonstrated. The only good way to go about this would be to measure the size of men's hypo-T glands throughout life and see if guys with the smaller ones go on to be gay. Except I think he had to tear their brains apart to make his "discovery." Plus, how does that explain female homosexuality at all?
In addition, it's a ridiculous argument at this stage in the game. I think it was an effort to align homosexuality with previously successful civil rights campaigns, all of which centered around liberating a group that was repressed based on traits with which they were born (african americans, women). If homosexuality is one of those, we can't really persecute it, can we? But I think America has finally started the more difficult process of realizing that one lifestyle system isn't right for everyone, and we just have to accept other peoples' non-socially-destructive actions, whether they disgust us or not.
What is actually evolutionary encouraged is not your own reproduction, but your descendents reproduction. A child that has no further children is not evolutionarily encouraged.
Historically, individual economic and social power is associated with living longer. It's still true. Compare peasants and kings. Compare europe, south america, and africa.
Since such power tended to derive from muscles and work, women, who are biologically disadvantaged in those areas, have historically lacked power. It is only recently with modern sanitation, medicine, and social equality that the higher 'natural' life expectancy for women has finally become apparent.
The number one thing that would improve average life expectancy on Earth is PROSPERITY! Affluent societies can afford sanitation, child labor laws, much less back-breaking labor, modern machinery, technology, modern medical care, electricity, anesthetics, literacy. All of these lead, directly and indirectly to a healthier populace and longer life expectancy.
Anyone who claims that prosperity and technology are wrong are cursing our world to poverty, cursing our world to starving short-lived miserable people. The world has enough of that already. This is a fate that no moral person could wish on anyone. (Unfortunately, there are millions of people that espouse this horrible vision, this is why I dislike the more radical environmental movements, of which Al Gore is a sympathiser. I further note that only people in affluent societies seem to be against progress. Those that do live in poverty seem to feel different.)
Prosperity has it's flaws, but the benefits far outweigh them.
That's why the offspring of old guys has a better chance of survival and reproduction than young guys.
Old guys are financially better established (in industrialized nations), and therefore, better able to provide for their offspring, send them to private schools, live in rich, exclusive, safe suburbs, send them to college, and get them elected to the presidency of the united states. (which, as President Bill Clinton proved, is like the BEST way to get laid by a whole bunch of young women).
(the daughters become debutantes, and progress to the trophy-wife stage, below. Poor chicks either cannot afford the plastic surgery to become a trophy wife, or can afford BAD plastic surgery, which negatively impacts survival rate).
These young guys though, learn - that getting laid while young is not productive, because you get saddled with wife and kids too early, and either end up divorced or spending your evenings and saturdays at home with the wife and kids instead of working (or playing golf, which, in a career-enhancing sense, is actually working). So they work, and stay childless, until their wives are too old to have kids, they divorce them (pre-nup!) and marry an 18 year old trophy wife, and knock them up. And the cycle repeats.
The thing I can't understand, is that with all of these pressures, why hasn't some rich guy funded a research into a decent male birth-control method so that young male children of rich old fathers and 18 yr old trophy wife mothers can have sex and not risk pregnancy - this makes no sense at all, because getting laid constantly is one of the perks of the rich, but getting some bimbo knocked up is a huge risk, which can suck away a guy's financial future, and therefore severely compromise the survivabilty of his offspring (meaning - guys with healthy libidos are actually less likey to produce financially robust offspring!). Perhaps child-support laws have not been effective enough for long enough of a time to have had an impact on this.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
family tree and identical twin studies have both pointed to the notion that homosexuality is inherited.
Now, I could see a "choice factor" in the family tree argument if "in the closet" gay fathers are indoctrinating sons. But in the indentical twins cases (adopted, to separate families)- *not*.
I am a person who believes in human free-will, but I also believe that there are numerous things that we have no choice in, and many of those things, we may believe that we made a choice - but, in fact, either the choice was made by biological or sociological law, or there was a strong influence or predisposition. And again, in some cases, force of will can overcome the biological predisposition (for instance, disabled athletes). That means that if there is a "gay" trait, sure, not everyone with that trait will adopt a gay lifestyle. They may marry opposite sex, and enjoy fulfilling lives, and may not ever understand or express their same-sex attraction. Many fans of Pro Wrestling are probably in this camp.
The same is probably true for people who are genetically predisposed with strong appetites. (like myself). These urges can be supressed (with drugs, hypnotherapy, or violence), but the urges are there, and they are stronger in those people than in other people. To suggest a lack of willpower, suggests a lack of intelligence and understanding from the person who made such a suggestion. And even smacks of racism or eugenics! (I'll see your ad hominem attack, and raise you Godwin's law!)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
There's a guy who shows up on TV once in a while who claims that restricting your overall coloric intake by nearly half you can extend your life by some large factor -> 20-30% or more. He brings out a mouse which is about twice as old as any other mouse and which has been fed roughly half of what a normal lifespanned mouse eats.