Fascinating stuff.
Maybe add anti virals to our regimens
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What anti-virals would be practical to add to our life extension regimen?
âYou are up to 8% virus, at least as far as your genome is concerned. Up to 100,000 pieces of ancient viral DNA live among our genes, yet their functionâif anyâhas long been unclear. A new study suggests that some of this foreign genetic material may boost our immune systems, even protecting us from other viruses.â
Or some may be killing us.
âMany of these genes turn out to be benign or even helpful. âBut some of the things are full-on parasites,â Hammell says, like infections embedded within our own DNA. All it takes to set these bad actors loose, she is finding, is a slip-up in the bodyâs mechanisms that normally prevent the genes from jumping around and causing harm.â
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Scientists like Dr. Gudkov aim to move the cliff to 150, 180 or beyond. He says the current knowledge will not extend lifespan. But it ensures that âyou will die healthyâ.
But to benefit from any breakthrough that Dr Gudkov and other scientists will unearth, we need to reach the cliff; not drop off at 91 or 92. So there is benefit in the incremental interventions that ensure that people âdie healthyâ.
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Itâs hard to grasp. Why would people die if they are healthy?
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Just his wisecrack. He meant, if you cannot move the maximum lifespan, and only improve your healthspan, then you will âdie healthyâ.
He wants to go beyond extending healthspan, that has its max at 120. He wants to move the maximum lifespan. I believe he thinks there is enough effort in the healthspan interventions.
I believe we need both. Even if Dr. Gudkov gets to move the max to, say 150, but people drop out at 91 or 92, then they cannot benefit from any breakthrough in lifespan. We have to ensure we reach the cliff, to benefit from the cliff being moved.
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There are a lot of people in this field that believe that they can only extend healthspan and not lifespan. But that would be enough. I think itâs like Queen Elizabeth.
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Yes, it was a wisecrack, but many believe that people die of frailty and old age. We donât just drop from old age even at 120. Itâs always some disease that ultimately gets us. Weâre just not able to fight off diseases beyond a certain point, possibly due to immunosenescence.
If weâre indeed perfectly healthy at 120 then weâre not just dropping dead from â nothing â.
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Iâve been looking into/analysing aging since a teenager and I believe theres a few points worth clarifying.
It isnt hard to trade-off extend lifespan (including maximal lifespan). Rapamycin is a form of trade-extension meaning it signals a restricted state in order to reduce damage longterm. Extreme extensions or indefinite can only be done by non-trade off ways (such as by repair)
@desertshores The main reason why all the âdifferent regional variablesâ dont seem to create extreme lifespans is because they arent strongly maintaining the original information of the body.
Gene editing wont solve the real problem.
People have always sought a short cut way or trick to cure aging but theres no shortcut you have to basically maintain the system at every level down to cell and smaller. This requires a extremely complex protocol, that we can only begin to get minor pieces of depending on the research and understanding out there.
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Dr Blagosklonny has a paper that Iâm not able to find at the moment looking at the causes of death of supercentinarians and came to the conclusion that a large number of them could have lived far beyond the ages they died if they had only received standard of care, but as people who had so far exceeded normal lifespan, they are commonly not given the usual treatments.
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I am a fan of Dr. Blagosklonny but I am not sure I agree on this point. It is a little more complicated. I am 81 and older than Dr. Blagosklonny and have seen many of my friends and relatives die of âold ageâ natural causes, but I never observed any of them denied âusualâ treatments. In fact, some of them preferred to go without treatments and die.
The reason I say it is complicated is; that besides the physical factors, mental state of mind, etc come into play. As we approach that âcliffâ do we still have the will to live? Many people I have known did not want to continue to live with reduced mental and physical capacity. For that reason, I think we have to stay in the best physical and mental state that we can so that when any big breakthroughs that come along we will want to take advantage of them.
What I really want is age reversal. Unfortunately, I donât see that coming along anytime soon.
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What I was referring to in the gene editing protocol is the removal of errant viruses that reside in our genes that may be the activator of the death spiral we seem to experience as we approach the cliff. The genes of the mole rat for example are the main cause of its longevity, not lifestyle.
Modification of genes would be effective down to the cellular level.
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Rapamycin, in and of itself, is a delay mechanism by slowing cell proliferation and inhibiting senescence. Itâs delaying the usual suspects like CVD and cancer. Thatâs not the final answer.
We need to know if the programmed people like the Conboyâs are right and we just hit the end of a program at a certain age
Or
Are the cumulative damage people right and itâs a matter of additive damage and inadequate repair mechanisms?
If itâs programmed then we just need to identify the signal/ signals.
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They didnât die of old age, they died from something like CAD or a hidden cancer that wasnât revealed due to a lack of a biopsy being performed.
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today I saw a patient, sheâs 86 but still oozes life, vitality and energy but she told me she got admitted to the hospital for some locomotor problem (Iâm sorry didnât get the exact problem) and in the hospital she got deprescribed her anti-hypertensives and ended up on a checkup a few months later with a systolic BP over 216 mmHg. That could have been lethal but if she would have died her death certificate would probably have said old ageâŚ
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The old die of frailty too, most have very little to no reserves when something happens to them
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Genes determine the trade offs and strategy that a animal uses to maximize its effectiveness. They strongly depend on the phenotype and characteristics of the species.
No genes in a warm blooded animal (which creates countless damage on a daily basis) allows for it to live forever. Because the whole system isnt built that way. People keep thinking genes are like some add-on thing. Unless someone plans on turning into a tortuoise they wont age like a tortoise by inserting some âtortoise geneâ
Also the overall cellular machinery and lifestyle of naked mole rat is completely different from mice, theyre semi-cold blooded operate similar to colony insects. Its lifespan is not some add-on feature you can just give to a house mouse.
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I would say that frailty predisposes to other illnesses. Like the frail are more likely to fall, sustain a hip fracture, and have an embolism. Itâs the embolism thatâs actually the cause of death.
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The one-year mortality rate after a hip fracture is shockingly high.
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Iâd recommend reading Aging and immortality: quasi-programmed senescence and its pharmacologic inhibition - PubMed, " Aging and immortality: quasi-programmed senescence and its pharmacologic inhibition" by Mikhail Blagosklonny, along with his classic Rapamycin for longevity: opinion article - PMC, " Rapamycin for longevity: opinion article". The idea of an ongoing developmental âprogramâ from embryo to adult that never stops, and ultimately becomes hyper-functional and damaging, is gradually gaining credibility. Evolutionary selection pressure greatly diminishes after an organism reaches the age of reproduction, so there isnât much to stop this âprogramâ. But we might learn how to intervene in the program with our modern scientific tools.
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AFAIK, there has never been a centenarian taking rapamycin. Iâd love to see that study: do you still have a 50/50 chance of dying in a given year after age 105 if you are taking rapa? Maybe you tip the balance to 20/80, who knows? Regardless, I think there is ample animal evidence that rapa increases maximum lifespan, but perhaps not by much in humans.
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