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Cellular Compound May Increase Lifespan Without the Need For Strict Dieting
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Every day, our cells manufacture small amounts of a molecule that, in higher doses, might be the key to leading a longer, healthier life. A team of researchers has found that this molecule boosts the lifespan of worms by more than 50%, raising the possibility that it will increase human longevity. Dietary supplements that contain the molecule and allegedly build muscle are already on the market. The study drops a barbell on their use, however, by suggesting that the molecule may actually thwart muscle growth."
which dietary supplements contain the molecule?
-ketoglutarate (-KG), an intermediate in a metabolic cycle that helps a cell extract energy from food -how hard is it to put a little more information in the summary?
oh right, this is about clickbait, not information...
This is as bad as the local news 'Tune in tonight to find out which foods could kill you'.....
-I'm just sayin'
Humans live insanely long lives for mammals: twice the average. The average mammal lives a billion heartbeats, humans live two billion. "Heartbeats" are a convenient normalization that accounts pretty well for differences in size, etc.
There are fairly plausible evolutionary reasons for this. Grandparents are the primary mechanism by which culture is transmitted, so if your grandparents (or the grandparents of your close kin) lived a long time you would have a better chance of reproducing yourself, assuming cultural knowledge is useful in your local environment. And people with long-lived grandparents tend to be long-lived themselves, so the trait gets selected for.
As such, animal models for human aging are extremely hard to come by, and ones as distant as worms are very unlikely to produce results that are generalizable to humans. This is why so many things cure cancer in rats but have no effect on humans: rats will get cancer from a dirty look, so their cancers tend to be relatively easy to knock over. Cancers that survive all the clever molecular tricks humans throw at them are much harder nuts to crack.
We don't even know if calorie restriction works in humans (not enough people have been starving themselves for long enough to tell) so this article is way, way out on a speculative limb. Good science, I'm sure, but the hook should be "Scientists learn something about metabolic control pathways" and not "You may live forever!"
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
From TFA:
By studying the mitochondria from cow heart cells, the researchers found that -KG blocks ATP synthase, thus turning down the cell’s metabolism.
Funny. You know what happens when you turn a cell's metabolism? It burns few calories. If you don't reduce calorie intake you get fat and suffer from a variety of obesity related illness that might kill you earlier than if you had not started taking the medication.
So in exchange for a possibly longer life you get to eat little and do little. Surprise, surprise! That is just like Calorie Restriction, albeit without the consistency requirement. That means you might actually achieve some benefit for the sacrifice rather than making the sacrifice, not getting it quite right, and getting no benefit.
Still, this doesn't sound like the fountain of youth. More like a prolonged living death.
People who are eating this dietary supplement find all kinds of worms living in their guts living 50% longer.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
nature doesn't want anything.
Yes it does. Plastic.
Don't anthropomorphise nature, he hates that.
Not so. Nematodes are used because they have a very fast life cycle and you can study multiple generations. Perfect for mitochondrial studies such as this and mitochondria are pretty much mitochondria no matter the species.
The summary is bad because its a c&p of TOA summary which seems to be just a pulp piece on various ageing research topics. That's not what the original paper was about. The original paper in Nature was kinda cool in itself. Simple summary - Nematodes lasted 70% longer when fed a ton of ÃZ±-KG. Some new areas to be studied, but nothing much to see here.
I'll stick with the blood of the young, thank you very much.
the problem is rather that people live way too long already to keep the current pension system running. So living longer also means you have to work longer (asuming you get to be 150, at least until 110).
quantities in every cell in your body. It is one of the tricarboxylic acid cycle (Kreb's cycle) intermediates produced from either the amino acid glutamate, or from isocitrate. It is not a limiting molecule in the Kreb's cycle, and giving it to humans will not have any effect on human longevity. As noted already, many bodybuilders take it every day because they think it will give them more energy. Worms and humans do not have similar life cycles. Many things that don't affect the longevity of humans increase the lifespan of worms. The research into making geriatric worms is really a waste of time and money.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Well, most slashdotters look kinda like Jabba already...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.