Moles 'good indicator to ageing'

A sign of slower ageing?

The number of moles may offer an indication of how quickly the body ages, a study suggests.

King's College London scientists compared key ageing DNA with the number of moles in a study of 1,800 twins.

They found the more moles a person had, the more likely their DNA was to have the properties to fight off ageing.

The study, in the Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention journal, contrasts with the link between a high mole-count and high skin cancer risk.

Moles appear in childhood and disappear from middle age onwards.

When present in large numbers they can increase the risk of melanoma, a rare form of skin cancer. Moles vary significantly in numbers and size between individuals.

It's important people know that having a large number of moles can increase your risk of skin cancer Dr Kat Arney, of Cancer Research UK

The average number of moles in people with white skin is 30 but some people may have as many as 400.

The reason for such differences between people is unknown as is the function of moles.

Since moles disappear with age, scientists looked at the relationship between the number of moles and telomere length in cells, which is a good indicator of the rate of ageing in organs such as the heart, muscle, bones and arteries.

Telomeres, which get shorter as we age, are bundles of DNA found at the end of chromosomes in all cells and assist in the protection, replication, and stabilisation of the chromosome ends.

They have been compared with the plastic tips on shoelaces because they prevent chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other.

'Exciting'

In the study, researchers found those with more than 100 moles had longer telomeres than those with fewer than 25.

The difference between the two mole groups was equivalent to six to seven years of ageing.

Lead researcher Dr Veronique Bataille said: "The results of this study are very exciting as they show, for the first time, that moley people who have a slightly increased risk of melanoma may, on the other hand, have the benefit of a reduced rate of ageing.

"This could imply susceptibility to fewer age-related diseases such as heart disease or osteoporosis, for example. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings."

Dr Kat Arney, of Cancer Research UK, said: "While this is an intriguing finding and deserves further investigation, it's important people know that having a large number of moles can increase your risk of skin cancer.

"It's especially important to enjoy the sun safely if you have lots of moles or burn easily."

Longevity Science

This Scientific Blog represents research efforts aimed to understand the mechanisms of aging and longevity in order to extend healthy and productive human lifespan.

reposted from: Longevity Science
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

The Calorie Restriction Society - for people trying to live longer by eating fewer calories

Welcome to the Calorie Restriction (CR) Society

Our goal is to help people of all ages live longer and healthier lives simply by:

• eating fewer calories
• maintaining adequate nutrition

Since the 1930's extensive scientific research has shown that calorie restricted (CR) diets improve health and extend lifespans of nearly every species tested, including worms, spiders, rodents, dogs, cows and monkeys. We believe it is likely that people who carefully adopt a CR diet will see similar results.

The CR Society supports the efforts of people who practice CR for future longevity, current health, or other benefits; those curious about or interested in understanding the effects of the diet; and those interested in the development of related, science-based life-extension and health-enhancing technologies. Our mailing lists provide a rich forum for such topical discussions.

Calorie Restriction...the only proven life-extension method known to modern science.

reposted from: http://www.calorierestriction.org/Home
my highlights / emphasis / edits

The Scent of a Calorie: Whiff of Food Cancels Longevity from Caloric Restriction

February 01, 2007 The Scent of a Calorie: Whiff of Food Cancels Longevity from Caloric Restriction Diet-restricted fruit flies start acting like they are eating when they smell nutrients By Nikhil Swaminathan

reposted from: Scientific American
my highlights / emphasis / edits

Image: © STOCKBYTE/CORBIS LIFE-SHORTENING AROMA: In fruit flies, scientists have determined that the smell of food can have a negative effect on caloric restriction diets, generally designed to impart a longer life.

Evidence began mounting as long as 70 years ago that restricting calories while consuming necessary amounts of sustenance could increase one's life span. Since then, a group called the North Carolina-based Calorie Restriction Society has sprouted whose 1,800 members routinely down about half of the daily caloric intake recommended by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the hope of living to the ripe old age of 120.

New research may prompt the organization to send out nose plugs with its next newsletter.

A team of scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, New Mexico State University at Las Cruces and the University of Houston found that the average life span of fruit flies on restricted diets decreased when they were exposed to food odors. The findings, according to lead researcher Scott Pletcher of Baylor's Huffington Center on Aging, suggest that the flies are "actually perceiving the environment," thinking they are in a nutrient-rich place and then their bodies are "adaptively responding to it." The results imply there is likely some olfactory component affecting humans on caloric restriction diets as well.

Pletcher's group exposed two lab strains of fruit flies on caloric restriction to smells created by live yeast, an important constituent of the fly's diet. These flies died three to 10 days sooner—a 6 to 18 percent reduction in life span—than flies on the same diet that did not get a whiff of the yeast. Their life spans were further shortened if the flies actually ate the yeast paste.

Pletcher says the smell of yeast only had an effect on the life spans of dieting flies and not on those that were fully fed and likely already perceived their immediate environment to be nutrient-rich. "If you're in what might be considered an alternative physiological state that is associated with long life span under diet restriction, then the foods have some effect," he says, noting "that suggests that there's some interaction because the odorants aren't having the same effect in all environments."

To determine if smell alone has an effect on longevity, Pletcher's team created a fruit fly strain that had a particularly sensitive olfactory receptor inhibited. Fully fed female flies with an impaired sense of smell exhibited an average life span increase of 56 percent compared with unaltered wild females. Males also lived longer than their wild counterparts. Pletcher says this indicates that odor-mediated aging and dietary effects on aging probably share some of the same physiological pathways.

Brown University ecologist Marc Tatar says the current study, published in this week's Science, provides "really profound evidence" that longevity is controlled not by actual resources but rather by hormones that are cued to resources (such as the way plants sense winter by sunlight changes). "It's like the whole system doesn't actually function on the currency of resources anymore, it all functions on virtual data about what the resources should be like," he says. "It's mind over matter."

Pletcher agrees with that analysis, at least in part. "Some component is due to perception," he says, "and another large component is actually consumption." But given the effect that eating versus smelling yeast had on longevity, he says, "Overall, I would guess consumption has a bigger effect than perception, that's for sure."

RELATED LINKS: Being Cool Could Be the Key to a Longer Life Caloric Restriction and Aging How Low-Cal Diet Lengthens Fruit Fly Life Span Benefits of Diet Can Kick in Late in Life

New Prospects of Immortality

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_16.html
my highlights in blue

MARVIN MINSKY
Computer Scientist; 1st Generation Artificial Intelligence Pioneer, MIT; Author, The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind

New Prospects of Immortality

Benjamin Franklin: I wish it were possible... to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But... in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection.
—Letter to Jacques Dubourg, April 1773

Eternal life may come within our reach once we understand enough about how our knowledge and mental processes are embodied in our brains. For then we should be able to duplicate that information — and then into more robust machinery. This might be possible late in this century, in view of how much we are learning about how human brains work — and the growth of computer capacities.

However, this could have been possible long ago if the progress of science had not succumbed to the spread of monotheistic religions. For as early as 250 BCE, Archimedes was well on the way toward modern physics and calculus. So in an alternate version of history (in which the pursuit of science did not decline) just a few more centuries could have allowed the likes of Newton, Maxwell, Gauss, and Pasteur to anticipate our present state of knowledge about physics, mathematics, and biology. Then perhaps by 300 AD we could have learned so much about the mechanics of minds that citizens could decide on the lengths of their lives.

I'm sure that not all scholars would agree that religion retarded the progress of science. However, the above scenario seems to suggest that Pascal was wrong when he concluded that only faith could offer salvation. For if science had not lost those millennia, we might be already be able to transfer our minds into our machines. If so, then you could rightly complain that religions have deprived you of the option of having an afterlife!

Do we really want to lengthen our lives?

Woody Allen: I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

In discussing this prospect with various groups, I was surprised to find that the idea of extending one's lifetime to thousands of years was often seen as a dismal suggestion. The response to my several informal polls included such objections as these: "Why would anyone want to live for a thousand hundred years? What if you outlived all your friends? What would you do with all that time? Wouldn't one's life become terribly boring?"

What can one conclude from this? Perhaps some of those persons lived with a sense that they did not deserve to live so long. Perhaps others did not regard themselves as having worthy long term goals. In any case, I find it worrisome that so many of our citizens are resigned to die. A planetful of people who feel that they do not have much to lose: surely this could be dangerous. (I neglected to ask the religious ones why perpetual heaven would be less boring.)

However, my scientist friends showed few such concerns: "There are countless things that I want to find out, and so many problems I want to solve, that I could use many centuries." I'll grant that religious beliefs can bring mental relief and emotional peace—but I question whether these, alone, should be seen as commendable long-term goals.

The quality of extended lives

Anatole France: The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.

Certainly, immortality would seem unattractive if it meant endless infirmity, debility, and dependency upon others—but here we'll assume a state of perfect health. A somewhat sounder concern might be that the old ones should die to make room for young ones with newer ideas. However, this leaves out the likelihood that are many important ideas that no human person could reach in, say, less than a few hundred well focused years. If so, then a limited lifespan might deprive us of great oceans of wisdom that no one can grasp.

In any case, such objections are shortsighted because, once we embody our minds in machines, we'll find ways to expand their capacities. You'll be able to edit your former mind, or merge it with parts of other minds — or develop completely new ways to think. Furthermore, our future technologies will no longer constrain us to think at the crawling pace of "real time." The events in our computers already proceed a millions times faster than those in our brain. To such beings, a minute might seem as long as a human year.

How could we download a human mind?

Today we are only beginning to understand the machinery of our human brains, but we already have many different theories about how those organs embody the processes that we call our minds. We often hear arguments about which of those different theories are right — but those often are the wrong questions to ask, because we know that every brain has hundreds of different specialized regions that work in different ways. I have suggested a dozen different ways in which our brains might represent our skill and memories. It could be many years before we know which structures and functions we'll need to reproduce.

(No such copies can yet be made today, so if you want immortality, your only present option is to have your brain preserved by a Cryonics company. However, improving this field still needs further research — but there is not enough funding for this today — although the same research is also needed for advancing the field of transplanting organs.)

Some writers have even suggested that, to make a working copy of a mind, one might have to include many small details about the connections among all the cells of a brain; if so, it would require an immense amount of machinery to simulate all those cells' chemistry. However, I suspect we'll need far less than that, because our nervous systems must have evolved to be insensitive to lower-level details; otherwise, our brains would rarely work.

Fortunately, we won't need to solve all those problems at once. For long before we are able to make complete "backups" of our personalities, this field of research will produce a great flood of ideas for adding new features and accessories to our existing brains. Then this may lead, through smaller steps, to replacing all parts of our bodies and brains — and thus repairing all the defects and flaws that make presently our lives so brief. And the more we learn about how our brains work, the more ways we will find to provide them with new abilities that never evolved in biology.

Corrective Goggles for Our Conceptual Myopia

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_15.html
my highlights in blue

COREY S. POWELL
Senior Editor, Discover Magazine; Adjunct Professor, Science Journalism, NYU; Author: God in the Equation: How Einstein Transformed Religion

Corrective Goggles for Our Conceptual Myopia

Broadly speaking, I am optimistic that the world's current crises look terrifyingly large mainly because of our conceptual myopia. It is practically a truism to say that every era tends to regard its troubles as uniquely daunting, but I think that accelerating news cycles make the current generation particularly prone to this error of judgment. Making my best attempt to put on corrective goggles and take the longer view, I see a half-dozen areas where we are on the verge of major advances in our ability to expand our control over our environment and ourselves, in way that will be largely or entirely beneficial.

• I am optimistic that technology will soon show practical ways to eradicate the twin problems of carbon emissions and fossil-fuel scarcity. In the nearer term, carbon dioxide will follow the path of CFCs, acid-rain-causing sulfur oxides, and nearly all automobile tailpipe emissions. Nay-sayers warned that all of these would be difficult and economically disruptive to tackle; in every case, the nay-sayers were roundly proven wrong. Carbon sequestration is the most obvious technology for offsetting carbon emissions. Here's a firm prediction: If the world's leading economies set tough emissions standards for CO2, or establish a serious carbon tax, industry will find astonishingly inexpensive ways to comply within a few years.

• Farther ahead, new energy sources will begin to make serious contributions to the world economy long before fossil fuels run out. My bet is still on fusion energy, despite its perfect, five-decade record of never fulfilling any of its promises. I seriously doubt, though, that commercially viable fusion energy will look anything like the huge and hideously expensive magnetic-confinement test machines (like ITER) now being built or planned. More likely it will take the shape of a compact, laser- or radio-driven linear accelerator using exotic nuclear reactions that spit out protons, not neutrons; send the protons flying through a copper coil and you have direct electricity conversion, with no boiler, no steam, no turbine, no dynamo.

• I am optimistic that we are on the verge of developing the tools to program biological systems as effortlessly as we program digital ones. Synthetic biology, a field spearheaded by George Church, Drew Endy, and Jay Keasling, will be key to attaining this goal—and it is now in transition from theory to reality. Rather than snipping genes from one creature and clumsily inserting them into another, future biotechnicians will consult a master database of DNA sequences and specify the traits they want, whether to insert into an existing organism or to create in a brand-new one designed from the ground up. (A corollary is that these tools will finally allow effective stem-cell therapy, which leads to a related prediction: Thirty years from now, the current agonies over the ethics of stem-cell therapy will look as quaint as the hand-wringing over "test tube babies" in the 1970s.) Synthetic biology in its fully realized form will also be a dangerous weapon. A related part of my optimism is that it—like electricity, like radio, like all genetic research so far—will prove far more useful for positive applications than for negative ones.

• I am optimistic that young adults today will, on average, live to 120 and will remain healthy and vigorous until their final years. Researchers like Leonard Guarente, David Sinclair, and Cynthia Kenyon are zeroing in on the chemical and genetic basis of aging. Immortality is a long way off, but drugs and genetic therapies that hold back age-related diseases are coming soon. Treatments that slow the aging process as a whole will follow closely behind. Ultimately these will lead to a wholesale reordering of the pace of life and the social structures based around certain biological milestones.The child-bearing years may extend into the 60s; people may routinely continue working into their 80s or beyond. With this expanded timeline will come all kinds of new possibilities, including vastly expanded periods of intellectual creativity and a softening of the irrational behaviors that arise from the universal fear of death.

• I am optimistic that the longer life of the body will be accompanied by enhanced powers of the brain. We already live in world where it is getting harder and harder to forget. A simple Google search often revives long-lost trivia, historical experiences, even the names of long-dead relatives. What we have today is but a tiny taste of what lies ahead. Computing power is now so cheap, and wireless communication so effortless, that a person could easily wear a microphone (or even a low-res video camera) at all times and compile a digital database of every word he or she uttered.

In the future, many people will choose to do so; we will all have personalized, searchable databases at our commands. Rapid advances in brain prostheses mean that soon we will be able to access those databases simply by the power of thought. Within a couple decades, the information will be beamed back in a form the brain can interpret—we will be able to hear the playback in much the manner that deaf people can now hear the world with cochlear implants. Vision is slightly more difficult but it too will be reverse engineered. That will undoubtedly give space exploration a tremendous boost. Earthbound scientists will be able to "inhabit" robotic explorers on other worlds, and any interested participant will be able to log on passively to experience the adventure. Humans will venture into space physically as well but at first that will happen primarily for sport, I expect.

• I am optimistic that researchers, aided by longer careers and computer assistance, will crack the great twin mysteries of physics: the nature of gravity and the possibility of other dimensions. Here I'm talking not just about theoretical advances, as may occur at the Large Hadron Collider after it revs up in late '07, that could bolster the theory that gravity, unlike the other forces, has the ability to transmit out of the three dimensions of human experience. I am also talking about a kookier optimism that our discoveries will have practical consequences. It may be possible to build instruments that can sense universes lying outside of our dimensions. It may be possible to manipulate gravity, turning it down where convenient (to launch a rocket, for instance) and cranking it up where desired. It may even be possible to create a new universe as a laboratory experiment—the ultimate empirical investigation of the Big Bang that started our universe.

• Finally, I am optimistic that with all of these intellectual and material achievements will come a science-based spiritual awakening. Back in the 1930s Albert Einstein spoke of a "cosmic religious feeling" and tried to convince the public (with painfully little success) that scientists are every bit as spiritual as are the world's religious leaders. It may not look that way now, but I think Einstein will soon be vindicated. Longer, more connected lives will eat away at the religion of fear, the rudimentary form of faith rooted in anxiety about loneliness and the apparent absoluteness of death.

More important, the next round of scientific discoveries promise a powerful new sense of our connection to the rest of the universe, and even to universes beyond our own. One of the most potent knocks on science is that it, unlike religion, offers no sense of purpose. That has never been true—what greater purpose is there than intellectual exploration, the key trait distinguishing us from the other animals—but now more than ever science has a chance to make its case. It needs to develop more of a communal structure. It needs to develop a humane language, expressing its findings explicitly as triumphs of human achievement. It needs to celebrate our ever-expanding dominion over nature while articulating a humble appreciation that nature is, indeed, where we all came from.

Above all, science needs a face, a representative (or representatives) as charismatic as Pope Benedict XVI or, er, Tom Cruise, who can get rid of all those "it"s in the pervious sentences. Right now, the faces of science are selected by book sales, television specials, and pure self-promotion; its elected leaders, like the heads of scientific societies, rarely function as public figures. Surely there is a better way. Any suggestions?

Energy crisis will be solved, disease & aging will be reduced, world poverty will decline, bioterrorism is controllable

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_5.html
my highlights in blue

RAY KURZWEIL
Inventor and Technologist; Author, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

I'm Confident About Energy, the Environment, Longevity, and Wealth; I'm Optimistic (But Not Necessarily Confident) Of the Avoidance Of Existential Downsides; And I'm Hopeful (But Not Necessarily Optimistic) About a Repeat Of 9-11 (Or Worse)

Optimism exists on a continuum in-between confidence and hope. Let me take these in order.

I am confident that the acceleration and expanding purview of information technology will solve the problems with which we are now preoccupied within twenty years.

Consider energy. We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than we need to meet all of our needs falls on the Earth) but we are not very good at capturing it, but that will change with full nanotechnology based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within 20 years, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet all of our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano engineered solar panels, and store the energy in highly distributed (and, therefore, safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing one part in a thousand of our energy needs but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by a thousand in 20 years. Almost all of the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences such as global warming fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology based solutions to solve this problem. This development will be motivated not just by concern for the environment, but by the $2 trillion we spend annually on energy. This is already a major area of venture funding.

Consider health. As of just recently, we now have the tools to reprogram biology. This is also at an early stage but is progressing through the same exponential growth of information technology, which we see in every aspect of biological progress. The amount of genetic data we have sequenced has doubled every year and the price per base pair has come down commensurately. The first genome cost a billion dollars, NIH is now starting a project to collect a million genomes at a thousand dollars a piece. We can turn genes off with RNA interference, add new genes (to adults) with new reliable forms of gene therapy, and turn on and off proteins and enzyme at critical stages of disease progression. We are gaining the means to model, simulate, and reprogram disease and aging processes as information processes. These technologies will be a thousand times more powerful than they are today in ten years, and it will be a very different world in terms of our ability to turn off disease and aging.

Consider prosperity. The inherent 50 percent deflation rate inherent in information technology and its growing purview is causing the decline of poverty. The poverty rate in Asia, according to the World Bank, declined by 50 percent over the past ten years due to information technology, and will decline at current rates by 90 percent in the next ten years. All areas of the world are being affected, including Africa which is now undergoing a rapid invasion of the Internet. Even Sub Saharan Africa had a 5% growth rate last year.

Okay, so what am I optimistic, but not necessarily confident, about?

All of these technologies have existential downsides. We are already living with enough thermonuclear weapons to destroy all mammalian life on this planet, which incidentally are still on a hair trigger. Remember these? They're still there, and they represent an existential threat.

We have a new existential threat which is the ability of a destructively minded group or individual to reprogram a biological virus to be more deadly, more communicable, or (most daunting of all) more stealthy (that is, having a longer incubation period so that the early spread is not detected). The good news is that we do have the tools to set up a rapid response system, like the one we have for software viruses. It took us five years to sequence HIV, but we can now sequence a virus in a day or two. RNA interference can turn viruses off since viruses are genes albeit pathological ones. Bill Joy and I have proposed setting up a rapid response system that could detect a new virus, sequence it, design an RNAi medication (or a safe antigen-based vaccine) and gear up production in a matter of days. The methods exist, but a working rapid response system does not yet exist. We need to put one in place quickly.

So I'm optimistic that we will make it through without suffering an existential catastrophe. It would be helpful if we gave the two existential threats I discuss above a higher priority.

And, finally, what am I hopeful, but not necessarily optimistic, about?

Who would have thought right after September 11, 2001 that we would go five years without another destructive incident at that or greater scale? That seemed very unlikely at the time, but despite all the subsequent turmoil in the world, it happened. I am hopeful that this will continue.

We Will Lead Healthy and Productive Lives Well Past Our Tenth Decade

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_5.html
my highlights in blue

LEO CHALUPA
Ophthalmologist and Neurobiologist, University of California, Davis

We Will Lead Healthy and Productive Lives Well Past Our Tenth Decade

I am optimistic that by the middle of this century, it will not be uncommon for people to lead healthy and productive lives well past their tenth decade. This means that the high school kids of today who believe they will be forever young might well have their fantasy fulfilled, albeit in modified form. My optimism is based on three factors.

First, there is a clear trend for life spans in developed countries to be getting progressively longer; so-called senior citizens are now engaging in activities previously reserved for those yet to reach what was once considered middle age. The current mantra that today's 60 is the 35 of previous generations is more than just advertising hype. The reasons for this are complex, but certainly the psychological state of the today's seniors — their refusal to simply accept old age — is a prime contributor.

The other two factors fueling my optimism stem from recent advances in biomedical sciences that offer not just hope, but a virtual guarantee, that we'll soon be living longer and better lives. What are those recent advances? They come from two major research fronts.

There are some very exciting results showing that manipulations of basic cellular functions can prolong longevity. The literature on this topic is too extensive to summarize here, but one example will suffice. A molecule produced by a variety of plants called resveratrol (think red wine) has been found to significantly improve the lifespan of many different organisms, as much as by 59%, and this even occurs in obese animals! The significance of the latter point is that until recently it was thought that the only way to increase longevity is by going on a strict starvation diet, but now it seems that you can eat your cake and expand your lifespan!

The other relevant scientific breakthroughs come from neurobiology, my field of expertise. We used to think that with age there is a progressive deterioration in brain cell structure and function. But that widespread assumption has proved wrong. New nerve cells have been found to be generated in the brains of old animals, and we're learning more and more how this amazing property of the aged brain can be manipulated. Low levels of regular exercise, for instance, have been found to significantly enhance neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a brain structure that deals with memory. Moreover, a recent study from my laboratory showed that certain nerve cells in the eyes of old mice are capable of growing new processes. We have also found such growth of nerve cells in the eyes of old people. And then there is the tremendous promise of stem cell research that is still in its infancy for replacing damaged or dysfunctional body organs.

Taken together, the implications of these and many other findings in the biomedical sciences are clear. We will be able to regenerate parts of the brain that have been worn out or damaged during the course of a lifetime, providing renewed capabilities to those who are currently considered old folks. So better start thinking what you'll be doing with all those extra years of life.

Life beyond 120

Reposted from: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_4.html

PETER SCHWARTZ
Futurist, Business Strategist; Cofounder. Global Business Network, a Monitor Company; Author, The Long Boom

Growing Older

I am very optimistic about growing older. I turned 60 this year and several decades ago I would have looked forward to a steady decline in all my physical and mental capabilities, leading into a long and messy death. The accelerating pace of biological and medical advances that are unfolding in front of us are heavily focused on reducing the infirmities of aging and curing or transforming the diseases of old age from fatal to chronic. It means that ninety really will be the new sixty and there is a good chance that I will be among the vigorous new centenarians of mid century, with most of my faculties working fairly well. Vision, hearing, memory, cognition, bone and muscle strength, skin tone, hair and of course sexual vigor will all be remediable in the near future. Alzheimer's may be curable and most cancers are likely to be treatable if not curable. And regenerative medicine may truly lead to real increase in youthfulness as new custom grown organs replace old less functional ones. And within a few decades we are likely to be able to slow aging itself, which could even lead to life beyond 120.

No religion and an end to war: how thinkers see the future

Chris Street edits in bold

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday January 1, 2007
The Guardian

People's fascination for religion and superstition will disappear within a few decades as television and the internet make it easier to get information, and scientists get closer to discovering a final theory of everything, leading thinkers argue today.

The web magazine Edge (www.edge.org) asked more than 150 scientists and intellectuals: "What are you optimistic about?" Answers included hope for an extended human life span, a bright future for autistic children, and an end to violent conflicts around the world.

Philosopher Daniel Denett believes that within 25 years religion will command little of the awe it seems to instil today. The spread of information through the internet and mobile phones will "gently, irresistibly, undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance".

Biologist Richard Dawkins said that physicists would give religion another problem: a theory of everything that would complete Albert Einstein's dream of unifying the fundamental laws of physics. "This final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue death blow to religion and other juvenile superstitions."

Part of that final theory will be formulated by scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator at Cern in Geneva, which is to be switched on this year. It will smash protons together to help scientists understand what makes up the most fundamental bits of the universe.

Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University, highlighted the decline of violence: "Most people, sickened by the bloody history of the 20th century, find this claim incredible. Yet, as far as I know, every systematic attempt to document the prevalence of violence over centuries and millennia (and, for that matter, the past 50 years), particularly in the west, has shown the overall trend is downward."

John Horgan, of the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, was optimistic "that one day war - large-scale, organised group violence - will end once and for all".

This will also be the year that we get to grips with our genomes. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, believes we will learn "so much more about ourselves and how we interact with our environment and fellow humans".

Simon Baron-Cohen, a psychologist at Cambridge University, focused on autistic children, saying their outlook had never been better. "There is a remarkably good fit between the autistic mind and the digital age," he said. "Many develop an intuitive understanding of computers, in the same way other children develop an intuitive understanding of people."

Leo Chalupa, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Davis, predicted that, by the middle of this century, it would not be uncommon for people to lead active lives well beyond the age of 100. He added: "We will be able to regenerate parts of the brain that have been worn out. So better start thinking what you'll be doing with all those extra years."

We may sequence an individual's genome for $1000 and live to 100

Francis Collins forecasts the future

• 18 November 2006

Fifty years from now, if I avoid crashing my motorcycle in the interim, I will be 106. If the advances that I envision from the genome revolution are achieved in that time span, millions of my comrades in the baby boom generation will have joined Generation C to become healthy centenarians enjoying active lives.

How do we get from here to there? For starters, we must develop technologies that can sequence an individual's genome for $1000 or less. This will enable healthcare providers to identify the dozens of glitches that we each have in our DNA that predispose us to certain diseases. In addition, we need to unravel the complex interactions among genetic and environmental risk factors, and to determine what interventions can reduce those risks. With such information in hand, new treatments will be developed, and our "one-size-fits-all" approach to healthcare will give way to more powerful, individualised strategies for predicting and treating diseases - and, eventually, preventing them.

The challenge doesn't stop there. We are already setting our sights on the ultimate nemesis of Generation C: ageing. Genomic research will prove key to discovering how to reprogram the mechanisms that control the balance between the cell growth that causes cancer and the cell death that leads to ageing. It is possible that a half-century from now, the most urgent question facing our society will not be "How long can humans live?" but "How long do we want to live?"

Turning on protective systems in people should create centenarians who are vigorous and productive

Richard Miller forecasts the future

• 18 November 2006

In ageing research, the key breakthrough will be the elucidation of the molecular pathways that render cells from long-lived animals - whales, people, bats, porcupines - resistant to many forms of injury. Studies in worms have shown that mutations that extend lifespan do so by making them resistant not merely to one kind of stress (DNA damage, say, or oxidative injury) but to multiple forms of harm. Biologists are gradually showing that similar protective pathways also slow ageing in flies and mice, and that these cellular circuits date back further than the evolutionary branch point between yeast and us.

Figuring out how this "injury protection package" is turned on by evolution in long-lived animals, and by ultra-low-calorie diets and dwarfing mutations in mice, dogs, horses and probably people, will be the key step towards development of authentic anti-ageing pharmaceuticals that turn the same trick. It is now routine, in laboratory mammals, to extend lifespan by about 40 per cent. Turning on the same protective systems in people should, by 2056, be creating the first class of centenarians who are as vigorous and productive as today's run-of-the-mill sexagenarians.

'Longevity gene keeps mind sharp'

The gene variant alters blood cholesterol transport

A gene variation that helps people live to a ripe old age also appears to preserve memory and thinking power, US work suggests.

The "longevity" gene alters the size of fatty cholesterol particles in the blood, making them bigger than normal.

This stops them causing the fatty build up in blood vessels that is linked with brain impairment, and deadly strokes and heart attacks, Neurology reports.

The study involved nearly 300 Ashkenazi Jews in their 70s, 80s and 90s.

In studying these centenarians, we hope to learn what factors lessen their risk for diseases Lead researcher Nir Barzilia Bill still keeps busy, aged 100

The nonagenarians who possessed the longevity gene were twice as likely to have good brain function than those who did not have the gene variant.

Their performance on tests of memory and concentration was far superior.

Also, those who had reached a century were three times more likely to have the longevity gene variation than their 70-year-old counterparts.

Lead researcher Nir Barzilia, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said the same gene variation might also protect against Alzheimer's dementia.

He said: "In studying these centenarians, we hope to learn what factors lessen their risk for diseases that affect the general population at a much younger age."

He said as well as the gene having a favorable effect on the vascular integrity of the aging brain, it could also have a positive action on the brain tissue itself.

The brain relies on a good blood supply to keep its functions and processes in top order.

Long life

About one person in every 10,000 reaches the age of 100.

Researchers have known that genes play a role because longevity often runs in families.

Scientists are working to develop drugs that can mimic the effect of the gene CETP.

An American woman is officially recognised as the world's oldest person, dying at the age of 116 earlier this month.

She assumed the title of world's oldest person following the death of Esther de Capovilla of Ecuador in August - also at the age of 116.

Her successor looks set to be Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico, who is 115, according to Robert Young, adviser to Guinness World Records.

Restricting Methionine might add years to life?

Article edited, my highlights in bold.

Can Ageing be stopped?
Gerontologists consider the maximum lifespan for humans to be about 120 years. But with rising evidence for a genetic "death programme," which in principle could be amended, some researchers are starting to believe the limit could be extended

Philip Hunter, The author is a science writer, specialising in biology and medicine

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Old age hardly exists in wild animals. Accident, illness or predation usually kill long before the potential lifespan has been reached. Humans, though, especially in the developed world, are pushing in ever larger numbers towards the maximum lifespan, thought by most gerontologists to be around 120. (The world longevity record is held by the Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days.)

In Britain in 1901, life expectancy at birth was 49 for women and 45 for men. By 2002, this had risen to 81 and 76 respectively. This rapid increase in longevity has created hopes among gerontologists not just of an extended "quality of lifespan" well into the nineties, but of lifting the 120-year limit.

Recent experiments have extended the life expectancy of mice from around two years to three, with some reports of up to five. Such progress is unlikely in humans, for whom evolution has already boosted maximum lifespan well beyond comparably sized mammals—including great apes—but the work sheds valuable light on some of the mechanisms involved. The recent progress in mice was made by the application of the discovery, dating back to the 1930s, that lifespan could be increased dramatically in almost all animals by a diet low in calories but comprising all vital nutrients. This remains the one proven strategy for boosting life expectancy and slowing down ageing across a wide range of species.

Ageing is also closely linked to growth. Small members of mammalian species tend to live longer, as has been observed in dogs, mice and horses. It seems that retarded growth is associated with an overall slowdown in the processes that lead to ageing. It should certainly delay the process of cellular senescence, or apoptosis, the point at which cells stop dividing. Each time a cell divides, the DNA of the daughter cells is usually slightly shorter than the DNA of the parent, as a result of deficiencies in the copying process. Evolution has added disposable buffers called telomeres to the DNA to allow for some shortening. However, after a certain number of divisions, these buffers are spent, after which further copying eats into the active DNA sequence. Put simply, some cells can only divide a certain number of times before they die, and so if the time intervals between divisions are increased by slower growth, this aspect of ageing will be delayed.

It turns out that a low-calorie diet is not the only way to extend the lifespan of a mouse. The same effect can be obtained on a diet with normal calories but reduced protein. Moreover, it seems that it is not the protein that matters, but one specific component: the amino acid methionine. The finding is surprising because methionine is one of the nine essential amino acids. A diet totally deficient in methionine would kill a mouse in a few weeks. Yet the optimum level for longevity seems to be lower than is taken in a normal diet.

It is not known exactly how methionine restriction extends lifespan, but the answer could be linked to the oxidative or free radical theory of ageing. This states that the primary cause of ageing lies in the toxic by-products of energy metabolism within our mitochondria (the sub-units of the cell that produce energy). These by-products—chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide—oxidise parts of nearby cellular components, in particular proteins and DNA. The process is akin to the rusting of metals upon exposure to air. Many of these toxic, oxidising substances are called free radicals because they are electrically neutral and therefore stable, but also highly reactive because they have an unpaired electron seeking a mate from any neighbouring molecule.

Methionine is the amino acid most prone to losing electrons through oxidation, and so perhaps in some way restricting it within the diet persuades the organism to use another amino acid where possible, thus reducing its overall susceptibility to oxidation. Whether this is true or not, a recent Spanish study found that methionine restriction decreases oxidative damage to crucial mitochondrial DNA and proteins.

Is there a death programme?

But even this may not be the final answer to the methionine riddle, for some researchers argue that free radicals are merely mediators of ageing rather than the underlying cause, with their role ultimately controlled by genes orchestrating a "death programme."

There is some evidence that free radicals are manipulated by death programmes in those animals where ageing kicks in suddenly. One of the best studied examples is the salmon, many varieties of which appear to age suddenly and die aged about three, after one glorious orgy of reproduction. Free radicals increase rapidly during this period, but the fact that they seem to be held at bay until the salmon has done its reproducing suggests that there is an underlying programme at work. Perhaps the effect of methionine restriction might be to "edit" such an ageing programme in mammals, postponing its instructions.

Not all gerontologists agree with the death programme theory. Tom Kirkwood, one of the leading figures in the field, argues that the sudden post-reproductive death of the Atlantic salmon is not evidence of programmed ageing but the natural consequence of an extreme evolutionary phenomenon called "semelparity," meaning having all your offspring at once. The argument is that semelparous organisms invest all their life energy in a single reproductive event, after which there is no point being able to resist ageing.

But a finding in 2005 appears to have swung the argument decisively in favour of an ageing programme. A study at the Russian Academy of Sciences found that salmon can live much longer and continue reproducing when infected by pearl mussel larvae. In some cases, infection by this parasite extends life fourfold, to 13 years. It seems that the parasite has evolved a mechanism to avert the salmon's abrupt death so it can continue providing shelter and food for the parasite's development and reproduction. For a parasite dependent on the survival of its host, this is a sensible strategy. While the mechanism for this effect is not yet fully understood, it seems that the larvae produce a small protein that helps to mop up free radicals.

The study more or less confirms the existence of some form of death programme. If there were no programme, the salmon's abrupt death after reproduction could only be the inevitable result of wear and tear, in which case there would be limited scope for the mussel larvae to intervene. The fact that the larvae can increase the salmon's lifespan by such a huge factor by release of particular compounds indicates that there must normally be some mechanism hastening the ageing process.

This raises the question of why the salmon has evolved this type of ageing programme. One explanation is that it reproduces in rivers where food is scarce, and that therefore it is in the interests of the species for individuals to die and cease competing for resources once their reproductive energies are spent. The dead parents may even provide food for the fish upon which their young feed.

Immortal animals

But other questions remain. Although ageing is kept slow in the salmon until reproduction occurs, it still takes place. As in many animals, including humans, the ageing process starts at birth, but is kept in check until reproductive life is over. So can ageing ever be stopped altogether? At first sight this might seem unlikely, but all animals have immortal germlines—sequences of sex cells, like the sperm or ova—and we do not pass on the artefacts of ageing to our offspring. Evolution brought this about because any animal whose offspring were born old would soon become extinct. Immortal reproductive cells are kept separate from the body's somatic cells, which only need to survive one reproductive generation.

So the question arises: has any animal exploited the immortality of its germline to resist ageing indefinitely? The answer is yes. A few examples have been found among simpler organisms, one of the best studied being the hydra, a small freshwater animal up to 20mm long. Hydra appear to be able to regenerate endlessly with none of the recognised signs of ageing. This is possible because their bodies are permeated by germ cells whose primary purpose is to form buds that break off to yield offspring. These germ cells also create new tissue within the body, which in effect is the offspring of itself, constantly forming new cells to replace old ones. The line between reproduction and regeneration is blurred.

Although higher animals lack such regenerative powers, there are plenty of examples of individual organs being replaced in this way. Some sharks replace their teeth several times over their lifespan in order to continue feeding and to prolong their reproductive lives.

So why has evolution not used regeneration more ambitiously to extend reproductive lifespan? The answer lies in the high risk of death by accident or predation. In an animal such as the mouse, death by misadventure becomes almost inevitable after a few years, so there is little selective pressure in favour of long-lived individuals. Instead, evolution selects those organisms that are highly reproductive during their short lives.

But the equation changes abruptly for animals that have evolved the power of flight. When predators can be left on the ground, it becomes reproductively advantageous to live significantly longer. This is almost certainly why flying birds and bats live between four and ten times longer than non-flying mammals and birds of the same size. Flight itself, with its huge energy demands, may also have led to the development of efficient respiration and metabolism that, as a side-effect, reduces the production of damaging free radicals.

Research on birds and bats is shedding light on the genes involved in extending maximum lifespan as well as the biochemical mechanisms that bring it about. Along with research in non-flying mammals such as mice, this is helping to identify candidates for intervening in the ageing process. In particular, there is growing hope that aspects of ageing can be tackled by targeting specific metabolic pathways with therapies that mediate hormonal or other factors known to be involved. Work in mice over the last three years has also shown that lifespan can be extended by directing antioxidants specifically at mitochondria.

It has also been shown, in some animals, that the effects of calorie or protein restriction can be obtained via drugs without actually dieting. The effects of diet on ageing appear to operate particularly through the production of insulin and related enzymes with their role in growth and maintenance of correct blood glucose levels. The primary metabolic pathway involved, IGF-1, is known to be involved in ageing, and decreasing the activity of the protein receptor involved in IGF-1 has been shown to extend lifespan in mice. The case is still unproven for humans, but a number of studies are assessing whether there is reduced insulin signalling in long-lived people.

Human ageing has a separate dimension that becomes ever more relevant as people live longer. In animals, the various ageing processes seem to progress in tandem. For humans, there is evidence that ageing of the brain is partly uncoupled from the other organs. The evidence for this comes from observations of people suffering from premature ageing conditions, such as Werner's syndrome.

The implication is that if it becomes possible to extend human lifespan, it cannot be assumed that mental deterioration will automatically be postponed. So it is important to continue the distinct study of brain ageing, including factors such as accumulation of tangled protein, or plaques, associated with some forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's.

Extending lifespan and quality of life

Ageing in humans, as in other mammals, appears to be a co-ordinated process orchestrated by a relatively small number of genes. If this is the case, then it makes sense to tackle many age-related diseases through this genetic core rather than treating each one as a separate case—with the possible exception of some brain conditions.

There is potential for humans to mimic the biologically immortal hydra, by exploiting our stem cells in the regeneration of organs damaged by age-related diseases. The ability of adult stem cells, which remain in the body throughout life, to regenerate heart muscle cells has already been demonstrated in mice. Organs regenerated this way would in effect be brand new, and "younger" than all the other tissues and organs. Such regeneration might not immediately boost life's span, but should greatly improve its quality in old age.

Indeed, for humans the principal target should be quality of lifespan rather than absolute longevity. For now at least, few of us want to live beyond 120, but we would like to continue enjoying the good life for as long as possible within that ultimate span.

World's oldest person dies at 116

An American woman officially recognised as the world's oldest person has died at the age of 116.

Elizabeth "Lizzy" Bolden died at a nursing home in Memphis, Tennessee.

Born in 1890, she married at 19 and was widowed in the 1950s. She suffered a stroke in 2004 and spoke little after that.

Mrs Bolden had 40 grandchildren, 75 great-grandchildren, 150 great-great-grandchildren, 220 great-great-great grandchildren and 75 great-great-great-great grandchildren.

She assumed the title of world's oldest person following the death of Esther de Capovilla of Ecuador in August - also at the age of 116.

Her successor looks set to be Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico, who is 115, according to Robert Young, adviser to Guinness World Records.

Sharon will live to 88

On 29th November Sharon's total cholesterol level was 4.97 mm/L. (target <5.0), Glucose (diabetes test) 4.9mm/L (target <6.0).

Sharon took the 10minute Eons.com test to see how long she could live.

Sharons' Calculator age is:

88

personal

+0.25 years

People who are optimistic about their aging fare much better. Turn your attitude around about your aging and you could add a quarter of a year to your life

lifestyle

+1.0 year

Minimizing or cutting out your caffeinated coffee consumption completely could provide you with about a year more in life expectacy

+1.0 year

If it is ok with your doctor, taking an 81 mg aspirin every day improves your heart and brain health and could help you delay or escape a heart attack or stroke. Taking an aspirin each day, perferably in the evening, could add 1 year to your life expectancy.

+0.5 years

Ultraviolet rays present in sunlight and tanning beds greatly increase your risk of skin cancer, including melanoma. They also increase wrinkles. Minimizing your sun exposure could add half a year to your life expectancy

+0.5 years

There is a clear link between the inflammation of gum disease and heart disease. Do a good job of flossing daily and you could add half a year to your life expectancy.

nutrition

+0.5 years

You are already making an effort to cut back on your carbs. Further cutting back the carbs in your diet (basically anything white and French fries) to a serving every other day could add half a year to your life expectancy

+1.0 year

Changing your daily dietary intake so that you get to and maintain a healthy weight could add 1 year to your life expectancy (though you probably will gain more years, depending on how heavy you are and this is taken into account when we calculate your body mass index)

+0.5 years

Increasing your exercise regimen (more than 30 minutes a day) to at least 4 days a week could add half a year to your life expectancy

medical

+0.5 years

Being in touch with your health care provider annually is very important for screening and preventing illness. Getting the appropriate blood tests on a regular basis could add a half a year

+0.5 years

Getting your blood pressure checked annually could add half a year to your life expectancy

PERSONAL

Gender

Being female gives you a head start in the longevity marathon. Women usually have heart attack or stroke about 10 years later than men and 85% of centenarians are women and 15% are men. After menopause (average age 51 years), this advantage seems to diminish and therefore some scientists speculate that estrogen plays a role in this advantage. Another theory holds that chronic iron deficiency (due to menstruation) gives a woman her advantage. Iron is critical to our cells' ability to produce age-accelerating free radicals that also predispose to heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease and cancer.

Next steps

• Explore this LifeDream: Eat healthy
• Visit the group: Fitness Over 50

The following actions and potential problems to be checked for are general guidelines for the general public. There may be instances where a particular recommendation does not pertain to a particular patient because of their unusual circumstances. Furthermore, in some cases something might need to be checked or examined at a younger than usually recommended age because of a familial predisposition or predisposing environmental exposure or behavior. The following is not meant to be an all-inclusive list and it is wise to have a detailed discussion with your health care provider to come up with a plan of prevention and screening that fits your particular circumstances.

1. Each year, with your heath care provider, be sure to cover the following.
   • Medical history and physical exam
   • Tobacco use
   • Diet and exercise counseling
   • Alcohol and substance abuse
   • Sex-related concerns
   • Vision screen and hearing test
   • Depression screen
   • Osteoporosis prevention counseling and calcium and vitamin D intake
   • Self examination counseling (e.g. skin and breast exam)
   • Driver safety counseling (e.g. seat belt use, assessment of driving safety record)
2. And, have the following checked by physical examination and/or laboratory evaluation annually:
   • Obesity screening and counseling (body mass index and waist size)
   • Blood pressure
   • Breast exam and mammogram
   • Stool for any blood (requires a special test to detect trace, invisible amounts)
   • Total blood cholesterol (and specifically HDL and LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels)
   • Electrocardiogram (ECG) if you are at increased risk for heart disease (increased risk would be the case if you have two or more of the following: a family history of heart attack, elevated cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes or smoking)
   • Pap smear for women who have a cervix (testing can be less than annual if recommended by physician)
   • Screen for sexually transmitted diseases (STD) if you are at risk. Risk factors include history of prior STD, new or multiple sex partners, inconsistent use of barrier contraceptives, use of injection drugs. STD tests may include HIV, syphilis, and gonorrhea.
3. Be sure that the following is performed regularly at the recommended intervals:
   • Check for osteoporosis with urine test and DEXA scan. Determine the frequency of this test with your physician
   • Colorectal cancer screening
   • Flexible Sigmoidoscopy, every five years
   • Complete colon examination by colonoscopy, every 10 years (no need to perform sigmoidoscopy in the tenth year when colonoscopy also examines the sigmoid colon)
   • Tuberculin skin test (PPD) every 1-3 years depending upon your risk of being exposed to tuberculosis
   • Exercise treadmill test (ETT) if at increased risk for heart disease (for example: family history, smoker, high blood pressure, diabetes, or poor cholesterol profile) or if otherwise felt to be warranted by your health care provider
   • Screen for ovarian cancer using transvaginal ultrasound and rectovaginal pelvic exam for women who are at risk for ovarian cancer (can include (a) having a family history with at least one first-degree relative with ovarian cancer or a first-degree or second-degree relative with breast, ovarian, or colorectal cancer.

Next steps

• Explore this LifeDream: Stay healthy

Marital Status

Interestingly, New England Centenarian Study data suggest that marriage or having a partner in your life has different effects upon your life expectancy depending upon whether you are a man or woman. In the case of a woman, being or having been married does not provide a distinct survival advantage, at least in the ability to achieve exceptional old age. An unusual proportion of the female centenarians never married (about 15%). Perhaps personality features that lead to perseverance, independence, and assertiveness provide a survival advantage. Such women may also be particularly good at managing stress. On the other hand, nearly 100% of the male centenarians are married or were only recently widowed.

Next steps

• Read up on it: Getting it on again
• Read up on it: Tell your love story

Proximity of Family

Having reasonably frequent contact with family or friends who are like family to you can be an important feature of your ability to manage stress well and is probably a life expectancy extender. Extended family cohesiveness and frequent contact is a notable feature of centenarian families. Researchers have noted that people who do not belong to cohesive families have fewer coping resources and increased levels of social and psychological stress. Psychological stress is associated with heart disease, various cancers and increased mortality risk.

Next steps

• Read up on it: Staying together while living apart
• Explore this LifeDream: Have a family reunion
• Explore this LifeDream: Connect with my grandchildren

How Do You Cope With Stress?

Excellent! Managing your stress in such a way that it doesn't eat away at you, and in your case actually acts as a motivator is tremendous. Your ability to manage stress effectively will substantially improve your life expectancy and increase the number of healthy years ahead of you.

Next steps

• Read up on it: Which yoga is right for you?
• Read up on it: All you have to do is breathe
• Read up on it: Do you know your early warning stress signals?

Sleep Habits

It is terrific that you are getting adequate and quality sleep. Adequate sleep is also a sign of good health.

Education

Those added years of education will likely increase your life expectancy for obvious reasons such as your being a more informed consumer of health care and your being more likely to partake in healthy behaviors such as not smoking and having a healthy diet. Regarding your brain health, continue to participate in cognitively challenging activities, exercising parts of your brain that haven't been used so much - new activities that are difficult (what neuropsychologist Paul Naussbaum terms .novel and complex.). Learn a new language or musical instrument; if you don't have time for these most potent activities, try crosswords, Scrabble, bridge, sculpture or painting, but when you get good at something, move on to another cognitively challenging activity. Cognitively challenging activities as an adult, have been shown to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease and to slow its progression.

Next steps

• Explore this LifeDream: Get a college degree
• Explore this LifeDream: Learn to play piano
• Explore this LifeDream: Learn Spanish

Hours on the Job

A recent Japanese study of the relationship between work hours and heart attack risk revealed that men who worked, on average, 11 hours or more a day had twice the risk of heart attack. Interestingly though, those who worked less than 7 hours a day were also at increased risk. If you find your current workload comfortable and that you are taking advantage of your leisure time to perform healthy and enjoyable activities, good for you and keep up the good work!

Next steps

• Money: Career Center
• Read up on it: Turn your hobby into a job
• Read up on it: Reset your retirement clock
• Read up on it: A new way of job-hunting
• Explore this LifeDream: Retire
• Explore this LifeDream: Start my own business
• Visit the group: Career Focused
• Visit the group: Work at Home
• Visit the group: Careers for Boomers and 50 Plus

Brain Strengthening

Excellent! Your brain strengthening activities can help you delay or escape memory loss and perhaps Alzheimer's disease.

Next steps

• Fun: Brain Builders
• Read up on it: The science behind Brain Builders
• Visit the group: Brain Builders
• Explore this LifeDream: Keep my brain sharp

LIFESTYLE

Smog

Ahhh. Take a deep breath of that clean fresh air! It is wonderful and life expectancy-enhancing that you live in a smog-free environment.

Coffee

You are drinking too much coffee. You may have many reasons for this degree of consumption including trouble with sleep, withdrawal headaches, the taste, and so on. Gradually replacing your coffee with tea is one method of weaning yourself off. There are effective methods for the majority of people and the effort is worthwhile in improving quality and quantity of life. Excessive coffee can be a sign of increased stress. Stress can lead to a hormonal imbalance, which can physically stress and age numerous organs. In addition, coffee predisposes the stomach to chronic inflammation of the stomach and ulcers. Such chronic inflammation leads to release of substances that raise the risk of heart disease. Tea, and especially green tea, on the other hand, has been noted for its significant antioxidant content, and tea drinkers in general appear to be healthier.

Tea

Try to give tea a chance. You may find that it grows on you. Regular tea consumption is a healthy habit that may actually be life extending. The antioxidants in tea may decrease your risk of heart disease and cancer. Tea contains a powerful class of antioxidants known as polyphenols. It is controversial whether green tea has more bioavailable polyphenols than black tea. Either way however, you can't go wrong.

Second-hand Smoke

Avoiding second hand smoke is a very important habit. Because second hand smoke is even more toxic than the filtered smoke that smokers inhale, it takes less of a 'dose' or exposure to be toxic to your lungs and your body in general. Thus, keep avoiding the secondhand smoke as you have been doing. Second hand smoke is more toxic than what the smoker gets because it is unfiltered. Such exposure is clearly a substantial cause of cancer, heart disease, asthma and other lung diseases.

Aspirin

Perhaps you cannot tolerate an aspirin a day because it hurts your stomach, you get ringing in your ears, or you have a propensity for bleeding. On the other hand, if you really don't have a reason to not take an aspirin a day, consider taking one daily. 81 mg of Aspirin per day has been noted to significantly decrease heart disease risk. This benefit may be due to the anti-blood clotting effects of aspirin. Chronic inflammation may also play a role in heart disease and therefore, aspirin's effect on inflammation may also be helpful.

Sunscreen

You are doing a poor job of protecting yourself from the sun and therefore from accelerated aging of your skin as well as from deadly skin cancers such as melanoma. But you could do better. You should regularly apply sun block, at least SPF 15 or higher when you are out in the sun. Some dermatologists recommend reapplication every two hours. You should also have a regular skin (dermatology) check-up and perform a monthly self-examination for changing, new or growing lesions of your skin. For guidance on a self-exam, see [http://www.skincheck.com/]. The association between sun exposure and accelerated skin aging are clear. The ultraviolet rays in sunlight directly damages DNA. More sun means more wrinkles sooner. It also means a higher risk of deadly skin cancer. Excessive sun exposure may also have toxic consequences for the body in general.

Flossing

You need to floss your teeth. There are benefits that go far beyond better breath, but don't underestimate the benefits of good breath! Diligent and regular flossing means keeping your teeth and very possibly reducing your risk of heart attack. Recent scientific evidence reveals that chronic gum disease leads to the release of inflammatory, toxic substances and certain bacteria into the blood stream which potentiate plaque formation in arteries and ultimately lead to heart disease. This process probably also increases the risk of stroke and accelerated aging.

Next steps

• Read up on it: Floss your way to a healthy body

NUTRITION

Your Weight

Your calculated body mass index would indicate that you are likely a bit overweight. If you are in fact lean and this calculation is off because of your unique build and greater than expected amount of muscle, then this assumption is incorrect and you should add a few years to your calculated longevity (with our apologies!). However, if to be honest, you are a bit overweight, then you should do what you can to get down to a lean (as little fat as possible) body weight. Even being just a bit overweight significantly increases your risk for diseases that markedly impact upon your longevity, including heart trouble, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, stroke and dementia. You are almost at a good weight. As you age, you may find it more challenging to keep the weight off. You will find, if you aren't doing it already, that getting into a regular regimen of weight training to maintain or build muscle mass will be very helpful in keeping the weight off. Of course diet is also important and lowering your consumption of carbohydrates is helpful. Diet advice is covered by the questions related to carbohydrates and sweets.

Fast Food

Your answer suggests that you avoid fast food restaurants and preserved meats. You are already going a long ways towards a healthy diet. Keep it up! Fast food, generally fried foods and hamburgers, are high in calories and saturated fats. These will make you gain weight and they increase your risk for heart disease, stroke and perhaps cancer. Some studies suggest that 90% of all human cancers are environmentally induced, 30-40% of these by diet. Preserved and cured meats (bacon, sausage, lunch meats, etc.) are the largest source of nitrites in our diet. Nitrites lead to the formation in our bodies of nitrosoamines, which are important environmental oxidants and probable carcinogens. For instance, there is a suggestive association between nitrosamines and stomach cancer.

Next steps

• Visit the group: Cooking

Calcium Intake

Continue to do your best to insure that you are getting plenty of calcium from your diet and if needed, from a vitamin or calcium supplement. The recommended amounts of calcium and vitamin D are 1,500 mg calcium and 1,000 IU of vitamin D per day. Supplements vary according to their efficacy and side effects. The following is a summary:

• Calcium Citrate, more on the expensive side, can be taken with and without food and is generally not associated with gas or bloating.
• Calcium carbonate (like Tums) is less expensive but is more difficult to absorb and can be associated with gastrointestinal upset and is better to take with food.
• Oyster shell, bone meal or dolomite should generally be avoided since they can be associated with toxic metals.
• Calcium gluconate, calcium lactate, calcium phosphate and other calcium compounds generally have lower amounts of calcium and thus you have to take greater volumes of the supplement.

In addition to dairy products, calcium-fortified juices, breads and cereals are also excellent sources. On the other hand, large quantities of salty foods and meat can significantly increase the amount of calcium lost in the urine. Some foods high in calcium also contain oxalic acid, which interferes with calcium absorption. Spinach is such a food. Do know that even adequate amounts of calcium intake cannot guarantee prevention of osteoporosis. Strength training is also a very helpful measure. All women going through menopause should get their bone density checked by their doctor to check if they have osteoporosis or appear to be heading in that direction. Vitamin D is necessary for the body to absorb the calcium we get in our diets. Our skin naturally makes vitamin D in the presence of sunlight. As we get older, our skin becomes less able to manufacture vitamin D. Also, people who live in areas that get less sunlight during the winter months and/or stay indoors a lot are more likely to be vitamin D deficient. As a result, vitamin D deficiency is actually common. Besides lower calcium levels, vitamin D deficiency can cause annoying symptoms like aches and muscle weakness. Vitamin D deficiency can be avoided by taking in 1,000 IU per day of a vitamin D supplement.

Meat Intake

Good for you. A diet that minimizes meat is healthier. Less meat in the diet is conducive to less heart disease and risk for heart attack and stroke. Furthermore, there are nutritional sources of antioxidants in foods that replace meat in a person's diet especially the polyphenols present in certain vegetables and fruits and the omega-3 fatty acids in fish that help lower LDL cholesterol and raise HDL cholesterol thus decreasing their risk for heart attack and stroke. Weighing red meat against vegetables and fish or skinless poultry, red meat loses out when it comes to your health. The American Heart Association recommends a diet that minimizes meat in the diet and emphasizes these alternatives. Vegetarian dishes, in addition to being an alterative to meat, also have antioxidants that protect the heart and brain. Interestingly, the vascular risk associated with red meat may be related to the fact that it is the major source of iron in our diet. The iron present in vegetables, like spinach, is relatively bio-unavailable. As you will read in greater detail, under the topic of iron supplements, iron plays a critical role in our cells' ability to produce harmful free radicals that likely potentiate aging and age-related illnesses.

Dessert

You are doing much better than the average person in demonstrating restraint from eating those desserts and candy bars. By staying away from these foods that have little in the way of nutritional value and yet significantly increase propensity for obesity and therefore heart attack, stroke, cancer and diabetes, anyone will make great gains in their life expectancy and the proportion of their lives spent in good health. Most desserts and certainly candy bars are high in saturated fats and calories. Both are terrible for you predisposing for weight gain, heart disease, stroke and diabetes. By helping you become obese, they also increase your risk of various cancers.

Carbohydrate consumption:

Not only are the number of calories you eat important, but the type of calories are important as well. Grains, pastas, fruits, and starchy vegetables like potatoes are the most common carbohydrate foods. Simple carbohydrates like white bread, potatoes (especially French fries), pasta, white rice and sugar as well, cause the body to produce insulin in response to elevated levels of glucose in the blood. The insulin in turn induces the storage, instead of burning, of fat. Other foods like fats, protein, and more complex carbohydrates like whole grain foods and fiber are less prone to turn on the production of insulin. The glycemic index of food is a ranking of foods based on their immediate effect on blood glucose (blood sugar) levels and thus the production of insulin. Carbohydrate foods that breakdown quickly during digestion have the highest glycemic indexes causing blood sugar and insulin to rise fast and high. Carbohydrates that breakdown slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the blood stream, have low glycemic indexes. The lower the glycemic index, the less likely that food is going to contribute to the production of fat. There are numerous books and websites that provide the glycemic indices for foods and drinks. However the general food groups noted above are a good start in your education.

Diet and Your Weight

Cutting down on the amount you eat is one of the most important interventions you can do to have a dramatic impact on your health. For many people, eating too much is the main reason they are overweight. For others, it is more difficult than just not eating so much and a consultation with a diet expert may be warranted. Be conscientious about how much you eat. Become a calorie counter. Don't eat till you are full. Stop before you get there. There are also several helpful websites on the internet that are dedicated to helping people lose weight and then maintain a healthy weight. See: ShapeUp America!Obesity is associated with inefficient energy production and an increased production of oxygen free radicals within cells, thus leading to an increased risk of various cancers, heart disease and accelerated aging. It may also lead to diabetes.

Next steps

• Explore this LifeDream: Eat healthy
• Read up on it: Living to 100: It helps to be thin

Iron Intake

It is probably good to continue to stay away from iron supplements and foods that are high in iron content, specifically red meat, if you can. Taking an iron supplement might potentiate your aging and risk for age-related diseases. There is growing evidence from animal and human studies that iron levels are related to aging and age-associated diseases. As a critical component of mitochondrial free radical generation, iron has been proposed by some to be a key modulator of rate of aging and susceptibility to age-related diseases. The available epidemiological evidence suggests that elevated iron levels are involved in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Menstrual blood loss and resultant iron deficiency might be protective against vascular disease and even contribute to the premenopausal survival advantage of women over men. Further studies are needed to determine whether there are cardiovascular benefits or risks associated with blood donation. Men may have the opportunity to be more female-like in their risk for vascular diseases by regularly donating blood, which could induce an iron deficiency. Blood donation has actually been associated with a decreased risk of atherosclerosis. The primary source of iron in our diet is red meat and this should be avoided as well.

Exercise

Good Job. You are already making a great effort at getting that exercise into your daily routine. If you can increase the frequency even one day to three times a week, the added benefits to your physical and mental health could be substantial. Don't forget to be balanced in how much aerobic exercise you do versus strength training. Both are very important. Also, if you are doing a lot of high impact workouts, gauge how much wear and tear you are putting on your weight-bearing joints so that you don't set yourself up for premature osteoarthritis. Exercise leads to more efficient energy production by your cells and less oxygen radical formation (which speeds up aging and increases your risk for heart disease, stroke and cancer). Muscle is a tremendously efficient burner of fat and maintaining muscle mass has many benefits. Therefore, strength training is important. Depending upon how much one weighs, we generally loose a third of a pound of muscle every year after age 30, which is replaced by fat. The great news is that for most people, muscle loss can be completely reversed no matter what your age, by regular strength training.

Next steps

• Explore this LifeDream: Exercise more
• Visit the group: Workout Tips and Encouragement
• Read up on it: Swimming is lifelong fitness skill
• Checklist: Preventing exercise injuries
• Visit the group: Balance and Stability
• Visit the group: Weight Training for Seniors

MEDICAL

Bowel Movements

Having a bowel movement at least once every two days may be associated with decreased risk of colon cancer. Keeping gut transit time under 20 hours seems to decrease the incidence of colon cancer, probably by decreasing the contact time between the gut lining and cancer-potentiating substances in the diet. These substances influence DNA damage and repair and therefore probably also influence the rate of aging as well. Epidemiological studies in humans and animal studies suggest that increasing dietary fiber will reduce the risk of certain cancers perhaps by increasing the frequency of bowel movements. On the other hand, recent reports indicate that the association may not be as clear as once believed. In addition to increased transit time and therefore less contact between carcinogens and the bowel wall, perhaps other factors that increase transit time such as regular exercise might be the real reason for decreased cancer risk.

Self-Examination for Cancer

Excellent. Early detection of breast cancer is so critical and monthly self-examination is an important step in catching the disease early enough. Please refer to the American Cancer Society's website on breast cancer which discusses many aspects of the disease including how to detect it early with monthly self examination (they have a very clear set of instructions on how to do the exam) and other steps women need to take including an annual mammogram from age 40 on (or earlier, if you are at increased risk).

Next steps

• Offsite link: American Cancer Society

Cholesterol Tests

Not knowing what your HDL level should be considered a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. It means you are not availing yourself of some key information to decrease your risk for these diseases. HDL cholesterol is known as the "good" cholesterol because a high level of HDL cholesterol appears to protect against heart attack. Medical experts think that HDL tends to carry cholesterol away from the arteries and back to the liver, where it is processed, dumped in the intestine and then passed from the body. Some experts believe that excess cholesterol is removed from blockages in our arteries by HDL, thus slowing the build-up. However, low HDL cholesterol levels (lower than 40 mg/dL) may result in a greater risk for heart disease and stroke. For more information about cholesterol, other risk factors and treatment, go to the American Heart Association's website.

Next steps

• Offsite link: American Heart Association

It is apparent you are interested in your health and future well-being because you are taking this questionnaire. Now you need to take the next steps that include diligent screening. Get your cardiovascular disease risk factors, including your LDL cholesterol level, checked. A high level (higher than 130 mg/dL) of low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, reflects an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. That's why LDL cholesterol is often called "bad" cholesterol. When too much LDL cholesterol circulates in the blood, it can lead to the formation of plaque in the blood vessels that feed the heart and the brain. When enough of this blockage occurs, a heart attack or stroke can occur.

High blood pressure, otherwise known as hypertension is a silent killer. Unless the pressure is very, very high, you may not have any symptoms. Hypertension if caught early and before it gets to high is curable in many cases through pharmacological and non-pharmacological means. Thus, it behooves you to get your blood pressure checked. Please don't put this off.

Diabetes

Of course, it is great that you don't have diabetes. Lower your risk by losing weight if you are overweight. Get your blood sugar checked at least every three years and watch for some of the more common symptoms of diabetes including excessive and persistent thirst, voiding large amounts of urine frequently with normal amounts of fluid intake, and/or unexplained weight loss.

Heart Attack

It is great news that you have not had a heart attack. Hopefully you have been avoiding or minimizing the risk factors for heart attack (also called heart disease or coronary artery disease). Here are the typical risk factors that you can modify: high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes (improve your sugar control), being overweight, lack of exercise or cigarette smoking. 90% of heart attack victims have at least one of these risk factors so you might be setting yourself up for a heart attack in the future if you have one or more of these risk factors.

Next steps

• Offsite link: American Heart Association

Check-Ups

Regular checkups are so important. The frequency of checkups depends on your age and what if any medical or other clinically relevant problems you might have. Generally, anyone age 40 or older should be having annual checkups. Please set up an appointment for a checkup as soon as possible. A conscientious program of screening and prevention are key to living into old age in good health.

Next steps

• Read up on it: Why do we lie to our doctor?

FAMILY

Family History of Heart Attack of Diabetes

You are lucky to not have heart attack or diabetes running in your family. Now do a good job of taking advantage of those genes and don't do things that could predispose you to the disease nonetheless, such as being obese, smoking and not exercising regularly.

Family History of Cancer

You are lucky to apparently not have cancer running in your family. Now do a good job of taking advantage of those genes and don't do things that could predispose you to cancer nonetheless, such as being obese, smoking, etc.

Family Longevity

Your family history is telling you that you should be extra diligent in entering into a program of prevention and screening with your doctor. Do what you can to prevent various age-related problems and illnesses and screen for these while you have a chance of either curing them or minimizing their impact upon you.

We use maternal age (when you last had a child) to gauge how slowly and well your reproductive system is aging, which tells us something about how the rest of you is doing. If you don't have children in the future, then perhaps the age at which you go through menopause will be a good marker, though there have been no studies thus far linking older age at menopause with exceptional longevity.