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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."
Tryptophan, isn't that the sleep inducing post Thanksgiving Feast drug of the ritual Turkey meal?
What's methionine found in? Don't tell me, pumpkin Pie...
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Now I can live longer and get a flat stomach by following ONE simple rule.
TFA directly addresses that point:
Piper and his colleagues don’t know what the correct amino acid balance might be for humans, and he says it would be a nearly impossible feat to adjust people’s diets to get just the right mix. Instead, the team is investigating how tweaking amino acid content in the diet affects cells. If the researchers can identify pathways affected by amino acid imbalances, they might be able to design drugs or other therapies that could give the benefits of caloric restriction without cutting calories.
RTFA indeed, if you read as far as the third paragraph you'd know that it was also proven on mice, dogs, and baboons. That makes this pretty likely to apply to humans as well. Though I'm confused as to why the summary says that tryptophan also has this property, as the article doesn't even use the word. I couldn't find the original Nature article, but the linked one certainly said nothing about it.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08619.html for the actual study
So... what they discovered is that limiting diets reduce reproduction at the expense of lifespan?
Color me skeptical, but this is not exactly new. It's well known that limited diets reduce reproductive metabolism in favor of survival. After all, what good is reproduction if you don't live to do it.
Now, I'm not saying this is all bunk. I don't know. What I am saying is that all this really proves is that methionine is necessary for egg-laying and lifespan in Drosophila. That's a far stretch from saying that reducing methionine increases lifespan in well-fed humans. In fact, what TFA says is that there is a discrepancy in studies. In fact, TFA doesn't even mention tryptophan, so I don't know where the submitter got that.
Unfortunately, I can't access the Nature article right now. However, I'll definitely be taking a look at it tomorrow, because I am extremely skeptical of these claims.
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)
I am the one slashdotter that reads TFA (the full article) before posting. I even did a search for tryptophan. Nope, it's not there. Maybe the submitter forgot a link, but tryptophan is never mentioned in the sciencenews.org article.
``Ideally, if giving up Trytophan is beneficial with no negative side effects, they'd create a pill that prevents your body from digesting it.''
Interestingly, there are actually pills that contain tryptophan. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid and is one of the precursors to serotonine. Serotonine is a neurotransmitter, and low serotonine levels are associated with such conditions as depression and anxiety disorders. So people take extra tryptophan (or, more commonly, 5-HTP, the direct precursor to serotonine) to boost serotonine levels.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
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.
"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.
So what this essentially means is that we can choose between shorter lives and not wanting longer ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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It's not politicians that would attempt to prevent the general availability of a longevity drug. It's much more probable that the drug company that held the patent would restrict it's use by keeping the price artificially high.
Look at the case of ulcer drugs. At one time, anti-ulcer medications were the top money-makers for drug companies. Even long after research showed that ulcers were caused by bacteria, and could be easily cured by cheap generic antibiotics, drug companies tried to suppress that research in order to maintain their profits. Even after it was widely known and accepted by health providers, drug companies spent tens of millions trying to convince doctors that this simple fix was somehow not in their patients' best interest. It's one example of how a profit motive does not favor the public good.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"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?
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