Forever young, part II

Do you want to prevent premature aging and postpone for as long as possible today’s chronic diseases? Then you may try to modify your diet.  Max Lugevere’s YouTube channel is mostly dedicated to this topic. 

Max has also a website with more information on the topic.
 
Here are some of his YouTube videos:
 
Preventing Alzheimer's disease with FOOD

12 Easy and Powerful Holiday Health Hacks 

By watching some of these presentations, I learned that I should eliminate the carbohydrates from my breakfast. Why? Because carbohydrates spike up the insulin levels. Insulin, combined with the daily highest levels of cortisol (these are the levels when we wake up), “re-distributes” the weight from muscle to fat. I am still thinking how to reconcile this advice with my carbohydrate-rich breakfast!
 
For all of us, who want to be “forever” young and die in a nearly perfect condition from a painless cause, here is what Max recommends: Can We Reverse Aging?  The brief presentation is a good message, except for the statement that we can lengthen our telomeres, and therefore, reverse the aging process. In fact, the only thing we can accomplish in our normal cells is to not accelerate the telomere shortening (and therefore, speed up the aging process). 

Forget about telomere lengthening! Only cancer cells lengthen their telomeres.  But then, there is so much in common between the process of “keeping forever young” and cancer development! Think about it. Cancer cells are immortal; in the labs, we still grow cancer cells from individuals long dead.

By the way, if you are still unclear about what the telomeres are, I have previously written on this topic:

“Our genes are made of DNA, and this DNA forms the chromosomes in the cells ... Each of our chromosomes is protected at both ends with sequences called telomeres. As our cells duplicate (divide), the telomeres shorten. Shortening of the telomeres is equivalent to aging …, once the telomeres are of critical length, our cells stop dividing (this period is called senescence). However, changes (mutations) in a few genes may allow the cells to continue dividing. During such divisions, the chromosomes without their protective telomeres are subject to damage. The loss of chromosomal integrity may lead to the birth of cells with abnormal growth, and eventually, to cancer.”

Only our adult stem cells (which are normal cells), have an enzyme called telomerase. When functional, this enzyme counteracts to a certain extent the telomere shortening. All other normal cells seem to lack even this enzyme, therefore, the telomere length in such cells is not maintained.

There are certain conditions that may diminish the enzyme’s activity, and therefore, speed up the aging process. For instance, stress hormones slow down the activity of telomerase, making it more ineffective in preventing the telomere shortening. 

The fact that psychological stress shortens the telomeres faster than expected for a particular age was demonstrated with two groups of mothers: mothers of healthy children (low-stress group) and mothers of children with chronic illnesses (high-stress group). The study established that compared to the low-stress group, the high-stress group of mothers exhibited shortening of the telomeres that was equivalent to 9 – 17 additional years of age. Therefore, high stress may bring people closer to the catastrophic event when the chromosome integrity is endangered. 

Anyway, no normal cells can increase the length of its telomeres. At least, it has not been reported yet.

 To learn more about longevity, watch the lecture of Peter Attia, Reverse engineered approach to human longevity. 

Dr. Attia is taking a more reasonable approach to the dietary recommendations. When talking about healthy diets, he discusses the specific outcomes (biomarkers) we should aim at. He does not harp on us about any specific diets.

From all the confusing messages about diet/health I have heard, I could extract two conclusions:

1. If you already enjoy a healthy, balanced diet and your biomarkers are at the expected levels (see Attia’s talk), just go on with your current diet. If, however, you find it difficult to change your SAD (standard American diet), then try to limit your calorie intake or go on intermittent fasting (e.g., eat for eight hours a day and fast for 16 hours).

2. Do resistance training. I found this video. Probably, I may try the exercises soon.

By the way, the shortest description of a healthy diet is this: "Eat only the food that you great-grandma would have recognized as food". Well, this would exclude the majority of any supermarket offerings. And yes, it means that you need to start cooking.

Forever young versus the self-destruction of the body

The Daily Beast named 2015 "The Year We Decided to Live Forever". Why? Because the rich people (e.g., Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.) would like to live if not forever, for a very, very long time, and therefore, are ready to fund research on extending human life with millions of dollars.

However, increasing the quality of the years, rather than the number of years, we live might be a better goal. For example, can we increase dramatically the quality of life beyond age of 50? To achieve this, we need to know exactly what causes aging and the associated conditions.


Artistic representation of human age
 
A 2015 study based upon 1554 individuals (including centenarians), established that among all physiological markers, the inflammation score was the best predictor of successful aging at extreme old age (Arai Y, et al. Inflammation, But Not Telomere Length, Predicts Successful Ageing at Extreme Old Age: A Longitudinal Study of Semi-supercentenarians. EBioMedicine. 2(10):1549-58; 2015.) This study confirmed the already established consensus that chronic inflammation is a defining feature of aging, and that inflammation is present in many, if not all age-associated diseases and conditions: Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, etc. The increase in pro-inflammatory factors with age has been well documented. Plasma levels of the complement protein C1q were shown to increase with age and to promote age-related MuSC decline by activation of the Wnt signaling pathway (A. S. Brack et al., Science 317, 807–810 (2007) A. T. Naito et al., Cell 149, 1298–1313, 2012). Similarly, beta 2-microglobulin, a component of the major histocompatibility complex, was found to be elevated in the blood of aged mice and to contribute to the age-related decline of the organism (L. K. Smith et al., Nat. Med. 21, 932–937, 2015).

There are many hypotheses about the association between age and inflammation. However, scientists are still unsure whether inflammation causes aging, or vice versa, aging causes inflammation.

One of the best explanations (with most logic in it) is that inflammation does cause aging, and inflammation is the result of the immune response to the mutations that we accumulate with age. The more we live, the more mutations we accumulate. Some of these mutations could  contribute to cancer development, but some do not. However, all mutations that change our proteins sufficiently to induce immune response may contribute to the increasing levels of inflammation in the body. As a result, our own immune system starts attacking and damaging our own body.

To slow down, but not eliminate entirely, the accumulation of mutations (and therefore, the ensuing inflammation and aging) one needs to live a life free of mutagens (as a part of a healthy lifestyle). Of course, we cannot be entirely free of mutagens, but we can eliminate the most obvious ones (e.g., smoking, alcohol, processed meat, etc.).   

Another complimentary approach of evading fast aging is this of slowing down the division of the adult stem cells in our bodies. This is important, since most mutations accumulate during stem cell divisions (by the way, the attrition of telomeres also happens during cell division), and these stem cells can give rise to many other cells (stem cells, progenitor and differentiated cells of the body). 

Drosophila (fruit fly)

The only way that we might be able to slow down stem cell divisions in our body is through periodic fasting and calorie restriction. The more we eat, the faster the adult stem cells divide, and the faster we age. There is a direct evidence that well-fed state results in more stem cell divisions at least in studies of fruit flies.