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Cellular Compound May Increase Lifespan Without the Need For Strict Dieting

Posted by samzenpus on from the do-you-want-to-live-forever? dept.

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."

5 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. which by faldore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    which dietary supplements contain the molecule?

  2. TFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    -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'

  3. Worms are a poor model by radtea · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  4. Worms are a poor model by Eris13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. The Old Ways are the Good Ways by PvtVoid · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'll stick with the blood of the young, thank you very much.