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Scientists Discover Possible Anti-Aging Gene
werelnon writes "The BBC is running an article about researchers who seem to have discovered a gene which controls aging. By stimulating this gene, which when malfunctioning causes premature aging, scientists have managed to prolong the average life span of lab mice from 2 to 3 years. Because a very similar gene is present in humans it is quite possible it will do the same thing for people." From the article: "But there may be downsides with Klotho. The long-lived mice in the new experiments tend to be less fertile. And the gene may also predispose people to diabetes. The trick for researchers will be to find ways of getting the life-enhancing results of Klotho while avoiding the drawbacks."
You mean Kolto, from Knights Of The Old Republic. Klotho is from Greek mythology: CLOTHO: Youngest of the three FATES. Known as The Spinner, she spins the Thread of Life that controls your destiny.
In the KoTOR games it's called Kolto, which comes from Manaan. In the Empire period they use Bacta instead.
The Hayflick Barrier, that suggests cells will replicate only a certain number of times.
Hela cells having to do with cancerous "immortal cells" and the length of telomeres and aging.
lysosomes which as the "recycling bins" of cells may overtime become "clogged" with material the cells are unable to recycle and cause cell death.
No matter that there may be a genetic tweak for aging there are other things at play that may impact on the genetic tweak.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
There are a few limitations to our lifespan. The Hayflick limit may be a driving factor. Body cells, with very few exceptions, have a limit on the number of divisions they can make. This may be related to the way that every time a cell divides, one of the daughter cells has a slightly shorter copy. The ends of the chromosome are telomeres, the aglets on our gene shoelaces.
Of course, many of our tissues divide more than others, and we're vulnerable to a weak point of failure, whether it be skin tissue (definitely a point of infection), blood supply, blood vessels or what have you.
There have been two major schools of thought about aging, and many points in-between. On one side, some think that aging is caused by an incredible number of small failures from separate causes, and to try to beat aging is doomed to fail on this alone. On the other side of the issue, there are those who believe one or perhaps two major items are at fault for aging, and that we can close to an Elixir of Youth. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
I still highly recommend Michael D. West's book The Immortal Cell for an inside account of one search for a cure for aging. (He's also one of the co-authors of the hefty tome Principles of Cloning). Fascinating stuff, and definitely not the stuff of 'fringe' science.
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
I think what the parent meant is that processed foods are known to cause diabetes. Organic foods are know to reduce the risk of cancer, so theres reasons why eating organic is good or even vital for life long health.
I also do not see how natural organic sugar is going to affect us in any way. Sugar is sugar, our bodies process the sugar from apples the same as the sugar from coke and pepsi, however apples contain many benneficial antioxidants and far less sugar than soda pop. It's just like natural sea salt, it's still just salt.
I have a degree in nutrition, and from what you are saying you seem to know know anything at all about how the human body works. High fructose corn syrup is not digested in the same way as cane sugar. The glycemic index is different, the body simply was never designed for liquid sugar. If you create liquid salt, the body is not designed for liquid salt. The body is designed to slowly digest sugars in the form of packaged foods like fruit, veggies, and from natural sources. High fructose cornsyrup was made in a lab somewhere.
Eating less fast food is healthy, but its not that simple. Not all fast food is unhealthy, and not all slowly cooked food is healthy. Most products you have in your house have high fructose cornsyrup and cancer causing agents inside them, and depending on how you cook the food decides your cancer risk.
What people need to do is just go back to the cave man diet, if its packaged don't eat it. If you can see what it is and you know what each ingredient on the back of the package is, then go ahead and eat it. Never eat processed foods and you wont have to worry so much about diabetes or heart disease. The problem is its almost impossible to find foods which arent processed in a normal supermarket.
I suggest you take a class on nutrition, and learn more about high fructose corn syrup and the dangers of certain kinds of salts, mercury, and other chemicals which are neurotoxic. Everything you eat influences your body in some way. Your health is based on what you eat, not how much, not where, not how long it takes to cook. Excercise won't cure diabetes or heart disease, it will delay it. Bill Clinton has heart disease, he jogged every day.
The name is based on mythology. Slight spelling variation, but here's your basic info. THe first link is the better of the two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moirae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotho
The majority of cases of diabetes these days has nothing to do with age. In fact there is an epidemic of type 2 diabetes ( formerly know as "adult onset diabetes ) among children called "diabesity".
As the name implies people are eating themselves into it.
A large number of fertility issues have also been linked to pollutants in our environment.
Sorry, but that is just wrong. Many factors from hygeine to nutrition are actually making people live longer (not just he bump to the average cause by the decrease in infant mortality you mention). That is before we even consider late adult health care that makes heart attacks and strokes survivable.
Our health is massively improved due largely to hygiene and nutrition because despite the damage that diet can do, the benefits of the improved nutrition of the last 50 - 100 years has lead to larger fitter bodies with almost no incidences of malnutrition in the developed world. The proof is in the life expectancy of the under developed world where both these factors do not exist.
I cannot get the stats to hand but if you take out mortality in the first five years (which would eliminate the skew you mention from neo/post natal care) then the expected age of a developed world human is vastly greater than it was.
Further evidence of this is the graph of resting pulse rate vs life expectancy of mammals. It is a remarkable fact that "apart from humans" all mammals exhibit a direct correlation between heart rate and life expetancy to the extent that mammals all seem to have the same number of heartbeats in their life (statistically speaking) apart from humans who are way off the graph with many many more heart beats than normal mammals. Such a contrary position is hard to explain from simple physiological differences.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."