Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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."
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.
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.