SAGE Crossroads has added a couple of new podcasts since the last brace of material on biomarkers of aging. Take a look and see what you think.

Should longevity science be a priority?

Humanity faces many challenges this century. There are three important considerations that can help us distinguish between the challenges that are truly the biggest problems from those that are less pressing. The first is the magnitute of the harms in question. Second, is their certainty of happening. Last, is the likelihood that we could do something about them. Aging scores very high on all three of these issues.

The sheer number of humans that will suffer the diseases of aging this century is staggering and unprecedented. Aging scores very high on the magnitude of the harm criterion. Secondly, aging scores high on the certainty factor. The scientific consensus is in, senescence causes disease and death. Thirdly, we must ask what is the likelihood that we could actually do something to remedy the situation. The greater the likelihood that we could successfully mitigate the harms in questions, the stronger the case for taking action. We know that aging is not immutable, and thus longevity science could provide us with effective and efficient strategies for dealing with the many problems that the aging populations face.

A great many people within the scientific community do in fact share this view - the most important present debates are over the strategies by which progress is made. What is efficient, what is plausible, how will funds be raised and research prioritized? Meanwhile, outside the scientific community, a great deal of work remains to be done in education and raising awareness: the assignment of resources to specific research goals depends upon a broad base of popular support and understanding. Think of cancer science, for example, or Alzheimer's research. That level of public understanding, appreciation for what is a plausible rate of progress, and support for funding of longevity science is a good goal to aim for.

Is resveratrol the key to unlocking longevity?

KYLE JENSEN: A lot of headlines have been coming out of NIH studies that you’ve been involved in that state resveratrol improves health in mice but not longevity. Do you think there is a chance that resveratrol can increase human longevity?

LEONARD GUARENTE: Absolutely. I think we aren’t going to know that for a very, very long time. In mice so many things have been [improved] by sirtuin activators, and the fact that longevity hasn’t been observed yet I think it just a matter of time before one has the right strain.

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KYLE JENSEN: Now do you think this approach, going after drugs like resveratrol, will hold the key to defeating age-related disease and increasing lifespan?

LEONARD GUARENTE: I don’t think we will defeat them, but I think we have a chance to hold them at bay longer and increase the period when we are healthy and disease free. Perhaps as much by a decade. Which, you know, will make a huge difference.

Supporters of drug-based metabolic manipulation will spend staggering sums of money over the next two decades pushing various drugs through the present hideously inefficient system of medical regulation. These are all aimed at slowing aging by inducing metabolic changes discovered in biochemistry of calorie restriction, exercise, and the like. This is the grand, slow, inefficient way forward. Slowing the rate at which age-related damage accumulates does nothing for the old.

It is frustrating at times to see the research community just as close to truly impressive methods of completely repairing specific types of age-related damage as it is to more metabolism-tweaking drugs that can only slow that damage down - and yet all the resources are going to the slower path of drug development that will in all likelihood produce less effective therapies in the end.

Not exactly a laser, but this new LED Light Treatment called Tanda is very similar in the way it works.

Tanda Regenerate is an anti-aging repair device, using light therapy.

It combines proven light therapy and botanically based, light-optimized topicals to provide natural, non-invasive, scientifically proven solutions for common unwanted skin conditions. A 660nm Red light LED treatment encourages collagen production to help repair skin texture, color, and tone while diminishing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

I have been trying this out for quite some time. I like the way that this head is much bigger than other light treatments that I have used. I will admit that while I have used it for a few months, my use of it is far from regular. I am going to dedicate a time for this everyday to see what happens. I have a few friends who have tried this and other LED light therapy systems and they have told me that they see results in only a few weeks when using the device for 15 - 20 minutes, twice a day. Not twice a week like I have been using it.

Check Tanda out at Sephora, and let me know if you have tried any of the at-home light treatments. Hopefully I will get back to you in the next month or so with some better results from using my Tanda a bit more on schedule.

image credit: Sephora.com

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Radical egalitarianism is an impossible ideal: that a utopian society could exist in which everyone is equal in some important way - in possessions, ability, or access to resources. Lesser arguments for egalitarianism are usually heard alongside the blandishments of green-eyed socialism: calls for a levelling brought upon anyone with greater wealth or better access to medicine. That type of egalitarian can often be seen speaking out against research into engineered longevity, on the - mistaken - grounds that it will be "for the rich" or otherwise benefit some small group before it benefits everyone. Death for everyone before inequality for everyone is the mantra there:

I find it very strange that apparently intelligent people can field this sort of argument. Replace working anti-aging medicine with, say, working heart transplants, or working kidney dialysis and see how far you get in trying to convince people that suppliers in the developed world are keeping such technologies out of the hands of others, or that we must stop using medicine that is not universally available. Quite aside from the glaring failure to understand simple economics, it is deeply depressing that we live in a world in which people argue for the enforcement of large-scale, preventable suffering and death.

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Creating "equality" by taking from the successful ruins the creation of wealth - very much a non-zero sum game - for all. It takes away the vital incentives and rewards for success. At the end of the process, as demonstrated by all that transpired in the Soviet Union, you are left with the same old inequalities, but now taking place amongst ruins, starvation and disease.

In any case, I thought you'd be interested to see the fundament of the equalitarian position turned to support research into ending aging and extending healthy life for a change. Consider this another installment in seeing how mainstream pro-longevity bioethicists think:

Why should the aged have a much greater risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, AD, infection and death? The aged do not deserve the cellular and molecular damage that accrues over time; and thus we should seek to mitigate these vulnerabilities. And so I think the aspiration to retard human aging is actually a requirement, not violation, of equality. And this is what I argue at greater length in my paper "Equality and the Duty to Retard Human Aging"

The trouble with radical equality is that the "right" to possess more than you presently own - be it possessions, resources, or young cells - is what's known as a positive right.

Within the philosophy of human rights, some philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between negative and positive rights. According to this view, one's positive right imposes an obligation on another to do something for someone, while a negative right obliges others to refrain from doing something to someone.

A positive right for one person always implies enforced servitude for another person: where do the labor and resources to supply that positive right come from, after all? A system of government that grants positive rights is a system that must be backed up by coercion - taxes, public service, prison, police, and guns. Just try suggesting that you won't supply labor and materials for the postive rights written into law by those who will benefit from them, and see what happens. That is never ethical ... unless you happen to be one of the silent majority who believe it is acceptable to force other people to do what you want them to do. Sadly, if you look outside, you will probably find you live under such a government.

Anyway. It is interesting to see the emergence of attempts to restructure various restrictive philosophies of life to be in favor of engineered longevity, now that the prospect of actually engineering greater human longevity is more plausible. That in and of itself is a sign of progress, I think. Follow the incentives: when people think that they could possibly benefit from a future of rejuvenation therapies, then they will work on the roadblocks they know best. Articles like the one quoted above are a form of vote of confidence in longevity science.

I am not too sure if I would shell out $320 for an at-home facial, but as I am loving so many of the products coming from the La Mer line, it is worth considering. And seeing that this promises “The appearance of age spots, freckles and uneven pigmentation is quickly and radically diminished, dramatically evening the complexion”, makes me want this even more.

The Radiant Facial from La Mer is a two-part system that works together - in just eight minutes - to reveal more clear, luminous and bright skin.

In the kit are eight treatments along with a pure cotton mask that actually helps to drive the ingredients quickly and evenly into the skin.

At the heart of this express system is an exclusive White Sea Ferment with the power to visibly transform the skin. The treatment includes The Radiant Primer which utilizes an anti-irritant marine complex to calm and sooth the skin. The Radiant Mask immerses skin in a triptych of activity: super brightening action, super anti-oxidants and super anti-irritants, delivering unprecedented benefits.

So, after hearing about this facial, would you spend this amount on an at-home treatment or take the money and indulge in a spa facial (or two!)?

image credit: LaMer

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You might think of autophagy as a form of self-maintenance for your cells: it is the destruction of damaged and older cellular components such that newly built components can take their place. It is an attractive, intuitive idea that an increased level of autophagy leads to consistantly better function in cells, which in turn leads to longer-lived animals. Over the past years, researchers have demonstrated strong links between autophagy and healthy longevity:

The better known life extension mechanisms in lesser animals are all driven by changes in autophagy - or so say the autophagy specialists. It's true that the various hyperspecialized communities of modern biology are overly cloistered and ignorant of one another's research, but the autophagy researchers are assembling compelling evidence for this position.

Some of the most interesting work has been published this year and last. If you want a primer on why autophagy is important, and why it is that some damaged cellular components take a heavy toll of life and health, then look back in the Fight Aging! archives :

• On Autophagy
• Autophagy Required For Calorie Restriction Benefits?
• The Prospects for Enhancing Autophagy to Combat Age-Related Degeneration
• All Roads Lead to Autophagy?

What should I find today while meandering through PubMed but another longevity mechanism tied to increased autophagy. You might recall that researchers are achieving impressive results in mice by manipulating p53 - even managing to break the link between cancer protection and aging to give both added longevity and added cancer protection, not one at the cost of the other. In the paper I noticed today, we see that manipulating p53 is another way of manipulating autophagy for beneficial results on health and longevity:

The effects of p53 on whole organism longevity are mediated by autophagy:

The tumor suppressor protein p53 has a major impact on organismal aging. Recently it has become clear that p53 not only controls DNA damage responses, senescence and apoptosis but also plays a major role in the control of autophagy. Thus, deletion, depletion, or inhibition of p53 induces autophagy in human, mouse and nematode cells.

We therefore tested the hypothesis that the mutation of the p53 orthologue CEP-1 might increase the life span of Caenorhabditis elegans through an increase in baseline autophagy. For this, we evaluated the survival of nematodes lacking cep-1, alone or in combination with RNA interference with the autophagy gene bec-1 (which encodes the orthologue of Atg6/Beclin 1).

cep-1 mutants exhibited a prolonged life span. While BEC-1 depletion during adult life did not cause significant modification of the life expectancy of wild type controls, it did reduce the increased life span of cep-1 mutants down to approximately normal levels. These results indicate that the life span-extending effect of the cep-1 mutation is mediated by autophagy. These results lend support to the hypothesis that autophagy has a broad positive impact on organismal aging.

Given the level of funding and interest in calorie restriction mimetics, I imagine that the development of autophagy-enhancing drugs will proceed in the much the same way over the next few years.