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Reducing One Amino Acid Could Increase Lifespan
John Bryson writes "Eating less of one amino acid might lengthen your life. There have been lots of previous studies showing that many species live long on highly restricted calories, but a lot of this benefit may be possible by only restricting one amino acid. Amino acids that have shown this have been tryptophan and methionine. A recent study, published online December 2 in Nature, a highly respected journal, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets."
As a subscriber to Nature I find it interesting that when we're talking about amino acids Nature is a highly respected international weekly journal of science but.... when we're talking climate science it's the nexus of an evil, duplicitous, Socialist, Marxist, environmentalist cabal bent on destroying the fabric of American society.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
TFA: "“The idea that only calories are important is basically falling apart,” Fontana says."
Perhaps one should consider that in complex systems there is no such thing like 'only'.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
If anything, TFA says that you should restrict all amino acids except methionine. If you are fruit fly, that is.
TFA also says nothing about tryptophan in particular.
Or am I totally confused?
For the same reason one buys "low fat" food that has 300% the sodium content.
The answer? People are idiots.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
We all know how this goes. If it feels good, we do it. If it feels bad, we don't do it or we avoid whatever causes it. Salt? Good... what does it matter that too much causes health problems? Sugar? Good... what does it matter that...? You get the idea.
Oooh, so naive.
I don't know about you, but just about every old person I've known has reached a point somewhere or other where they have said "I'm ready to go, I'm tired, I've had enough".
Now I'm not advocating euthenasia or anything so extreme, but with age comes degeneration, both physical and mental, and for a lot of people, they are prisoners in their own bodeis, wracked with pain and only their daily cocktail of pills keep them functioning even to a limited degree.
But hell yes, Mr 23-Year-Old-I-Know-It-All thinks we should all "live forever". Wait till you've experience an elderly releative with Alzheimers who gets confused and frustrated because they can't remember what they were doing 5 minutes ago ... or takes an hour to get up because every joint is locked in pain.
When I read that last paragraph, it seemed that they were saying that, rather than try to find the correct sort of diet, they were going to direct the research toward a drug therapy. Something a little easier to monetize, perhaps?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I want you to think about how expensive a drug to extend life would end up being. You think world and economic leaders want to see the lifespan of all humans suddenly extended? Regardless of the research and input costs involved in developing a longevity drug, I believe it would probably end up only available to, let's say, a certain "class" of people. I mean, we wouldn't want "those people" to have longer lives, which means they become more numerous, am I right?
Even a sudden jump of 10 years to human lifespan would cause some social disruption. 20 years or more and the ground starts to shift under our social institutions.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Taking a drug is a little easier to do then changing your lifestyle. If these guys can come up with a pill that makes people stay "young" and live 120 years, why shouldn't they get rich?
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Ol' Dad was 92 when the cancer got him, and I still feel the humiliation of that last time we went hiking, when he left me behind, dizzy and panting, on the climb back to the car. He was a moderate with his eating, (coffee, bacon, and eggs every morning) and refused medication up to his last days. I don't know how much is genetic, but the Kentucky Mountaineer lifestyle, minus tobacco, seems to have been beneficial.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
It would cause a lot less social disruption if we didn't have programs like social security that benefit the elderly at the expense of the young. If those extra years of life were spent working, then it wouldn't be a social disruption at all. It would be a societal benefit.
"I'm ready to go, I'm tired, I've had enough"
Hah, that's fucking stupid (no offense). You are talking about people that don't have a choice in the matter, you are talking about acceptance. You are talking about a brave face in front of family. You are talking about a lifetime of preparing for this eventuality.
If there were a pill that extended their life 10years and increased the quality of life. They'd be fucking horrified of not having that pill. Proof? If they really wanted to die they wouldn't be such pussies about it (srsly, old people are not pussies), and they'd end it themselves. Old people have tons of drugs they could do themselves in with in their sleep.
You are assuming a 95yrs old extensions. That doesn't have to be the case, might be that 35yrs lasts 5yrs more. I understand that it is easier to deal with death by saying it was his time. Or that he lived a full life. But people in the 1500s said 'he lived a full life' to people dying in their 20s (in the bronze age, a mere 15 yrs old). So our definition of a full life is pretty damn flexible.
What you are experiencing isn't rational, it is a rationalization, a way of handling with death. Don't use it to make decisions for the future please.
A substance that would extend life by ten years for everyone would be enormously popular. Politicians that attempted to prevent its general availability would find themselves out of office, or find their lifespans shortened.
Most substances that have been found to enhance health and/or extend the life of people not suffering some severe disease are natural compounds or close analogs. When the formula or source is known, the same sorts of people that now make illegal drugs would be able to make the life extending compound(s). So if the compound is politically suppressed or made too expensive by a monopoly, the black market will step in and make it widely available.
Even now, countries outside of the country that develops a drug use the threat of manufacturing it themselves to force down the price. There's no reason this pratice won't continue
A widespread increase of lifespan by 20 years means people can be productive much longer. While greater widespread wealth can possibly be seen as disruptive, it's hardly something to complain about. A greater portion of old people will also cause a greater accumulation of wisdom (good), a balance toward political conservatism (mixed), and more old people trying to steal from the young by political processes (bad). Most of the "social institution" problems are government related, and it's a sure bet that politicians and "social scientists" are going to see and make more trouble than there is trouble inherent to increased lifespans.
Furthermore, "a sudden jump of 10 years to human lifespan" is absolutely impossible. Even if nobody dies, it takes ten years for lifespan to increase by ten years.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Nor is tryptophan's involvement a myth
The myth is not that tryptophan is involved. The myth is that tryptophan is the cause, and that Turkey causes sleepiness because of it. The fact that there is a small grain of truth in the myth does not make it any less of a myth. The common everyday belief is incorrect.
By the way, there is one pill these days that can help a lot with life-extension for most US Americans. Vitamin D3 gelcaps 5000 IU, with this treatment protocol including blood testing:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Human lifespan in hunter-gather times past infant mortality might have been into the 60s or older.
The following is from something I wrote elsewhere:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
Humanity used to live in relative abundance with a few people with limited wants living on a big planet.
"The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times."
Let us call this time "pre-scarcity". Because of the very success of hunter-gatherers, their populations grew, and they got harder to feed. That was the beginning of scarcity. In desperation, people turned to agriculture. But it had problems. Humanity had to suffer the resulting worse nutrition from less diversity of sources. Human skeletons actually were shorter from the advent of agriculture until only reaching hunter-gatherer stature about this century.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6812.html
"For instance, the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago has commonly been seen as a major advancement in the course of human evolution. However, as Larsen provocatively shows, this change may not have been so positive. Compared to their hunter-gatherer ancestors, many early farmers suffered more disease, had to work harder, and endured a poorer quality of life due to poorer diets and more marginal living conditions. Moreover, the past 10,000 years have seen dramatic changes in the human physiognomy as a result of alterations in our diet and lifestyle. Some modern health problems, including obesity and chronic disease, may also have their roots in these earlier changes."
Populations grew even further and militaristic bureaucracies arose like hurricanes on a warming ocean.
As Marshall Sahlins suggests, then comes along "Modern Times":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)
"Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his famous Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization."
Let's call this time "scarcity" times. Those are what our recent ancestors lived through, and to an extent we are still living in now. All the things you have read about how certain things have gotten better from the 1800s and early industrialization are probably true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens
But, they miss the big picture of the phase change transition from pre-scarcity hunter-gatherers (like the Hmong or Iroquois in older times) to
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"But people in the 1500s said 'he lived a full life' to people dying in their 20s (in the bronze age, a mere 15 yrs old)."
Where's the evidence of this? I know that in Iron Age Greece males in their teens and even early twenties would be called ephebes -- not quite fully grown men. Plato suggested in the Republic that only people over 50 years old should rule, and that women should breed from 20-40 and men from 28-55, because these are their "prime" reproductive years. Was he expecting almost no one to breed? He himself lived to 84 years old, and there was nothing particularly spectacular about it. I doubt the Bronze age would be much different.
Perhaps you are confusing average life expectancy with what is regarded as a "full" life span?
It's not me who disapproves, it's nature. -- Nature disapproves of each and everyone of us eventually.
Apparently you already have something similar in the sense that it's illegal for the US government to use its buying power to secure lower drug prices - as this would 'disadvantage' the drug companies. This is in direct opposition to the stated goal of healthcare.
Requiem for the American Dream
That's valid only if you think that jobs is a zero-sum game... or that jobs is a limited resource. I don't subscribe to that view.
They are most definitely a limited resource. There are a finite amount of jobs, typically based on the amount of money an employer has. Creating a new job requires economic growth, which requires banks to loan more money and I don't believe they are at the moment.
Currently, drug companies only fund research that is guaranteed to develop drugs that can be patented, ignoring completely commonly available substances that could be beneficial.
They don't ignore the commonly available alternatives - as you already stated, they discredit, undermine or suppress the cheap alternatives.
The information is available on the internet, the hard part is finding genuine information amongst all the crap.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Patents expire.