It wasn't so long that we were talking about the uncertain longevity of lobsters, but for today it's the turn of the humble clam:

A British scientific team discovered the 405-year-old clam, named after the Chinese dynasty and not the former Liberal Democrat leader, at the bottom of the ocean, and hope its longevity will reveal the secrets of ageing.

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The record-breaking shellfish, 31 years older than the previous oldest animal, another clam, was caught last year when scientists from the Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences were dredging the seabed north of Iceland.

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Richard Faragher, a gerontologist at Brighton University working with the Bangor team, said: "Most of what we know about the ocean quahog is what it tastes like. We need to find out how it retains muscle strength, remains cancer-free and keeps its nervous system intact over such a long period of time."

As for the lobster (and the bowhead whale, for that matter) this is a good illustration of the limits of present knowledge, for all that the biotechnology revolution is well underway. There's an awful lot of trees in this forest.

Another potentially useful consequence of scientific examination of species of extreme longevity is an increase in public understanding of the range of life spans in the animal world. As scientists demonstrate specific biochemical reasons for differences in longevity between species, that work helps to generate support for medical engineering research aimed at increasing the healthy life span of our own species.

The Lifestyle Lift has recruited dozens of surgeons across the country to form their self-named facelift procedure.  The tremendous marketing success of the branded-facelift has received plenty of notice of rival facial plastic surgeons.  

Competing with Lifestyle Lift means going up against a company with the pooled resources to conduct local TV advertising and to deploy a dedicated sales staff.  Just today I found 2 ads on Craigslist for Lifestyle Lift "Physician Consultants" who

maximizes traffic flow of the Lifestyle Lift centers through relationship building activities to include personal consultations, follow-through Client-contact, and interacting with Clients and Patients in a way that exudes the Lifestyle Lift brand.

Perhaps this explains why everywhere I turn there's another plastic surgeon creating a trademarked facelift.  The latest: the Westport Face Lift, created by Connecticut plastic surgeon Joel B. Singer, M.D.  From Dr. Singer's press release:

...Dr. Singer is the first and only Connecticut plastic surgeon to offer the Westport Face LiftTM, which instead focuses on tightening the skin on the cheeks.

"Minimally-invasive face lifts are a great choice for many patients," says Dr. Singer, founder of Imperial Plastic Surgery. "Most local residents considering cosmetic procedures to improve the appearance of their mid face area are only given the option of a full face lift or temporary improvement with injectable fillers. With Westport Face LiftTM, I offer a better choice for many patients."

The Westport Face LiftTM combines the best of surgical and medical spa treatments, providing patients with lasting improvement to wrinkles and sagging skin in the mid face area without requiring an extensive recovery period.

I can't tell you if or how the Westport Face Lift is different from either the Lifestyle Lift or any other lift.  And that's where I see trouble.  While I believe someone should protect their intellectual property, the branding of surgical treatment merely for marketing sake creates a barrier to consumers feeling fully informed about their treatment choices. 

Would love it if someone could tell me if this procedure by Dr. Singer is truly a unique treatment that deserves it's own name and recognition.

Read this disturbing news at TrendHunter:

Now that tattoos can be removed through laser surgery, people wanting to permanently modify their bodies are turning to branding. Using an ultra-hot iron, people are literally sizzling their skin to create burns so deep, the scars will remain for life.

Warning: Video is not for the faint-of-heart

The color of your skin is a deciding factor in which treatments to opt for at the dermatologist. Dr. Susan Taylor has a new book out entitled, Brown Skin, as well as a new product line called Dr. Susan Taylor’s Rx for Brown Skin. She is shedding light on the fact that beauty can be skin deep when it comes to your skin tone.

Taylor is interviewed in this month’s Elle Magazine wherein she reveals that brown skinned people, of whom range from Asians to African Americans, should visit a dermatologist who specializes in treating patients with darker skin tones. She shares, “We tested one of the new fractionated lasers for hyperpigmentation and found that it didn’t significantly remove discoloration in brown skin. Ablative lasers, like the CO2, can cause hyper-or hypopigmentation in all skins, but the risk is greater for nonwhites."

Considering your individualized needs based on your skin color is a great insight that should be heeded before undergoing any cosmetic procedures.

Advanced glycation end-products, AGEs, are a wide variety of inconvenient biochemical waste products produced by the operation of your metabolism (and, to a much lesser degree, eaten as a part of your diet). AGEs gum up important biomolecular machinery and disable essential macromolecules by glueing them together. Some AGEs can be broken down by your cells, but accumulate faster than they can be removed. Others cannot be broken down at all, and the slow accumulation renders vital functions in your cells ever more hampered and faulty.

So far, there's nothing radical that can be done about this process - no working, sort-the-problem-out AGE-breaker therapies for humans. The best advice is to try and avoid metabolic disease - exercise, keep fit, eat a calorie restriction diet and don't pack on the fat, in other words - because that condition and the diabetes that follows ramps up the rate of AGE accumulation.

Here's a closer look at some of the details.

Cross-link breakers as a new therapeutic approach to cardiovascular disease:

Fibrillar proteins, such as collagens type I and III, and elastin are components of the extracellular matrix. They form an intricate widespread network that provides a basis for maintaining the physical structure of the heart and vessels and also play an important role in determining cardiovascular function.

Physiologically, collagen and elastin fibres are enzymatically cross-linked to form [the] matrix. In addition to these enzymatically formed cross-links, collagen fibres may be linked non-enzymatically, most notably by formation of AGEs (advanced glycation end-products). AGEs are formed by a reaction between reducing sugars and body proteins; they are formed increasingly in diabetes mellitus and hypertension and they accumulate with aging.

There are several mechanisms whereby AGEs may affect cardiovascular structure and function. These include increased myocardial and vascular stiffness and (upon reaction with their receptors) inflammatory reactions, release of growth factors and cytokines, and increased oxidative stress. Therefore breaking AGEs appears as a promising tool in the therapy of cardiovascular injury related to diabetes, hypertension and aging.

Nothing radical to be done at present: that's a pretty grim picture, considering the widespread suffering caused by AGE buildup. Work is presently underway on AGE-breaker and AGE inhibitor drugs, but it's a small, slow-moving field in comparison to regenerative medicine or other well-funded initiatives.