Could An 'Elixir Of Life' Really Increase Your Lifespan?

From New Scientist:

A chemical elixir can add 10 years to your life! According to the media, anyway. How much of the claim that an amino acid cocktail can boost longevity should be taken with a pinch of salt?

For starters, the study was carried out in mice. Giuseppe D'Antona at Pavia University in Italy and his colleagues added a cocktail of three branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) - isoleucine, leucine and valine - to the feed of young nine-month-old mice.

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What Makes Us Age? Ticking of Cellular Clock Promotes Seismic Changes in Chromatin Landscape Associated With Aging

Each time a cell divides, the protective "caps" at the tip of chromosomes (red and green dots) erode a little bit further. As telomeres wear down, their DNA undergoes massive changes in the way it is packaged. These changes likely trigger what we call "aging." (Credit: Image: Courtesy of Dr. Jan Karlseder, Salk Institute for Biological Studies)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2010) — Like cats, human cells have a finite number of lives: once they divide a certain number of times (thankfully, more than nine) they change shape, slow their pace, and eventually stop dividing -- a phenomenon called "cellular senescence."

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Who Wants To Live For Ever?

Who Wants To Live For Ever? A Scientific Breakthrough Could Mean Humans Live For Hundreds Of Years -- The Independent

By tweaking our DNA, we could soon survive for hundreds of years – if we want to. Steve Connor reports on a breakthrough that has the science world divided.

A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. It is the greatest extension of longevity yet achieved by researchers investigating the scientific nature of ageing.

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A Cellular Secret To Long Life

From Science News:

Just as proper storage keeps a loaf fresh longer, adequate packaging may be a key to cellular longevity, reports a study of the organisms that make bread rise.

New research on aging in baker’s yeast suggests that proper packaging of DNA can halt aging and lead to longer life. The study, published September 10 in Molecular Cell, shows that a decline in levels of DNA-packaging proteins called histones is partially responsible for aging, and that making more of the proteins can extend the life-span of yeast.

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Doctors Seek Way To Treat Muscle Loss

Participants in a University of Florida study use ankle weights to increase strength and balance. Researchers say muscle deterioration is a major reason some of the elderly lose mobility and cannot live independently. Steve Johnson for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

Bears emerge from months of hibernation with their muscles largely intact. Not so for people, who, if bedridden that long, would lose so much muscle they would have trouble standing.

Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists, drug and food companies, let alone aging baby boomers who, despite having spent years sweating in the gym, are confronting the body’s natural loss of muscle tone over time.

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Bad Habits Can Age You By 12 Years

Smoking is among one of the four behaviors that can dramatically lower life expectancy.
Hemera Technologies/Getty Images

From Discovery News:

Smoking, excessive drinking and other bad habits can dramatically shorten your lifespan.

Four common bad habits combined -- smoking, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet -- can age you by 12 years, sobering new research suggests.

The findings are from a study that tracked nearly 5,000 British adults for 20 years, and they highlight yet another reason to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

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Book Review: 'The Roadmap To 100'

From L.A. Times:

What if you could live to 100 and not just survive but thrive -- even in your elder years? Dr. Walter M. Bortz II and Randall Stickrod, authors of "The Roadmap to 100," say it's not only possible but probable that many of us will do so.

There will be as many as 6 million centenarians in the world by the middle of this century -- most of them healthy, functional and largely independent, Bortz and Stickrod write. But conversely, there's also a large population that may die at a younger age than the previous generation and be in poorer health while alive, putting a strain on healthcare resources, they say.

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Smell Your Way to a Longer Life? Odors That Represent Food or Indicate Danger Can Alter An Animal's Lifespan

New research reveals that specific odors that represent food or indicate danger are capable of altering an animal's lifespan and physiological profile by activating a small number of highly specialized sensory neurons. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jodi Jacobson)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2010) — What does the smell of a good meal mean to you? It may mean more than you think. Specific odors that represent food or indicate danger are capable of altering an animal's lifespan and physiological profile by activating a small number of highly specialized sensory neurons, researchers at the University of Michigan, University of Houston, and Baylor College of Medicine have shown in a study in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology.

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Calorie Restriction Leads Scientists To Molecular Pathways That Slow Aging, Improve Health

Healthful cooking. Organisms from yeast to rodents to humans all benefit from cutting calories. In less complex organisms, restricting calories can double or even triple lifespan. It's not yet clear just how much longer calorie restriction might help humans live, but those who practice the strict diet hope to survive past 100 years old. (Credit: iStockphoto/Diane Diederich)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2010) — Organisms from yeast to rodents to humans all benefit from cutting calories. In less complex organisms, restricting calories can double or even triple lifespan. It's not yet clear just how much longer calorie restriction might help humans live, but those who practice the strict diet hope to survive past 100 years old.

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Can Common Herbs Extend Your Life?

From ABC News:

Cinnamon and Ginseng Stretch Life of a Worm; Will They Stretch Yours?

Most Americans have used herbal drugs during the past year, even though in nearly all cases there is no clear scientific evidence that they work. Now, an international team of scientists has found a way to collect that evidence, and even determine which components of very complex compounds are doing the work, and which aren't.

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Who Wants To Live For Ever?

From The Independent:

By tweaking our DNA, we could soon survive for hundreds of years – if we want to. Steve Connor reports on a breakthrough that has the science world divided.

A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. It is the greatest extension of longevity yet achieved by researchers investigating the scientific nature of ageing.

If this work could ever be translated into humans, it would mean that we might one day see people living for 800 years. But is this ever going to be a realistic possibility?

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For A Long Life, Smile Like You Mean It

Duchenne or not Duchenne? (Image: Archive Holdings Inc./Getty)

From The New Scientist:

If you want to live to a grand old age, then smile – and make sure you mean it. Pro baseball players in the 1950s who genuinely beamed in their official photographs tended to outlive more sullen-looking sportsmen and those who put on fake smiles.

Players from the US major league with honest grins lived an average of seven years longer than players who didn't smile for the camera and five years longer than players who smiled unconvincingly, conclude Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

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Health Checkup: How to Live 100 Years

Six of the eight Hurlburt siblings live in New England, including Peggy (79), Helen (88), Millie (93), Peter (80), Agnes (96) and Muriel (89). Jason Grow for TIME

From Time Magazine:

A century of life was once a rare thing, but that is changing. Science is slowly unraveling the secrets of the centenarians
Don't write that down! Put your pencil away!" Agnes Buckley is trying in vain to head off an entertaining story her sisters are telling me about how she used to sneak out of the house as a teenager. (She favored boys with motorcycles.) When their father hid her shoes to keep her at home, Agnes simply bypassed the front door and leaped out the window.

"Everyone is going to think I was a troublemaker," she laments.

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We Are Happiest At 74, Says New Report

From The Telegraph:

Seventy-four year-olds are the most contented people in the population, according to new research.

Fewer responsibilities, financial worries and more time to yourself leads to contentment previously unknown in earlier life.

According to the report from the teenage years until 40 happiness declines. It levels off until 46 and then starts to increase until peaking at 74.

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British Scientists Discover 'Secret To Ageing' Bringing New Hope To Old-Age Sufferers

Scientists said the discovery would unlikely provide an elixir of eternal life in the near future.

From The Telegraph:

The secret to ageing appears to have been solved by British scientists, bringing new hope to sufferers of old age-related illnesses such as heart disease.

The international team of researchers based Newcastle University have reportedly unlocked the secret as to how and why living cells grow old by discovering the biochemical pathway involved in ageing.

The study, together with German experts from the University of Ulm, could lead to a “much better chance of making a successful attack on age-related diseases”.

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Scientists Get Closer To Understanding Why We Age

Biologists have observed that people's cells often age at different rates.
Image Source / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Time waits for no man, the old truism goes, but in recent years scientists have shown that it does seem to move more slowly for some. Molecular biologists have observed that people's cells often age at different rates, leading them to make a distinction between "chronological" and "biological age."

But the reason for the difference remains only vaguely understood. Environmental factors such as smoking, stress and regular exercise all seem to influence the rate at which our cells age. Now, for the first time, researchers have found a genetic link to cellular aging — a finding that suggests new treatments for a variety of age-related diseases and cancers.

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Scientists Discover The Secret Of Ageing

From The Financial Times:

One of the biggest puzzles in biology – how and why living cells age – has been solved by an international team based at Newcastle University, in north-east England.

The answer is complex, and will not produce an elixir of eternal life in the foreseeable future.

But the scientists expect better drugs for age-related illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, to emerge from their discovery of the biochemical pathway involved in ageing.

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Genes Reveal 'Biological Ageing'

Photo: Telomeres at the end of chromosomes shorten with age.

From The BBC:

Gene variants that might show how fast people's bodies are actually ageing have been pinpointed by scientists.

Researchers from the University of Leicester and Kings College London say the finding could help spot people at higher risk of age-related illnesses.

People carrying the variant had differences in the "biological clock" within all their cells.

The British Heart Foundation said the findings could offer a clue to ways of preventing heart disease.

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Scientists Identify First Genetic Variant Linked to Biological Aging in Humans

Scientists announced they have identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological ageing in humans. (Credit: iStockphoto/Anne De Haas)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 8, 2010) — Scientists announced they have identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological ageing in humans. The team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants which are located near a gene called TERC.

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Ageing Gene Found By Scientists Could Be Key To Longer Lifespans

Scientists say that by testing for the gene when some one is young could identify whether they have to alter their lifestyle accordingly. Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

A longevity gene has been identified for the first time in a breakthrough that could eventually help people live longer, a new study suggests.

The researchers have located a gene which determines whether or not a person will biologically age quickly or slowly.

They think that by testing for the gene when some one is young could identify whether they have to alter their lifestyle accordingly.

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