Slowing Down Aging in Humans!
This is the first of a series of articles on slowing down aging. I named this site Slow Aging and Delay chronic disease development deliberately three years ago. Chronic diseases and aging are related. That is a central focus of this site—helping you understand that relationship and so that you can use it to prolong your healthy life.
This reminds me of an event in my family some years ago. My younger son is good at math, he likes the idea of innovation, and when he was a teenager, he was always doing things like trying to put a new radio in the old pickup. When he went to college, he studied engineering. Well, engineers must choose their specialty after their freshman year. Jay was torn between mechanical and electrical engineering. I had no idea what to tell him, but I had a friend who had retired in the area who was the chief engineer for RCA Victor. He had invented the stereo record. I told him what Jay was deciding, and asked if he would talk with him. So, we went to his house.
My son explained that he was trying to decide between mechanical and electrical engineering. My friend had a great answer for him. “Let’s start with mechanical engineering. Everything that can be done with a spring, gear, or pully has already been done. There is very little opportunity for innovation there. It is all worked out. Electrical engineering is entirely different. That is where there is great opportunity for innovation and discovery. That is the new frontier” He was absolutely right. My son went into electrical engineering and did postgraduate studies in computer engineering. Now he specializes in voice over the internet and has several patents himself. You know that my friend was spot on. Electronics and computers are the new frontier in engineering.
That conversation happened nearly 30 years ago. Just think about all advances that have happened in electronics since that time. Long ago, my son told me, we won’t have just a few networks deciding what you can watch on television. You will be able to watch anything that you want any time you want. That day is truly here. In medicine, aging and chronic diseases are like that. That is the medical topic where “there is great opportunity for innovation and discovery. That is the new frontier.”
The body of science on aging and chronic disease has advanced in the last thirty years as much as electronics has advanced and we could experience the same benefits in medicine that we have seen in cellphones and choice of what we watch on television. We have just begun. If a freshman in college wanted to know about the new frontier in biology and medicine, aging and the related diseases of aging are the topics that offer the greatest opportunities for innovation.
Let me help you understand the potential of what I am talking about. If you would like to age more slowly and be fully functional longer— if you would like to extend your youthspan — you owe it to yourself to watch this 15 minute TED talk by Cynthia Kenyon. It begins like this: “Have you ever wanted to stay young a little longer and put off aging? This is a dream of the ages. But scientists have for a long time thought this just was never going to be possible. They thought you just wear out, there's nothing you can do about it -- kind of like an old shoe. But if you look in nature, you see that different kinds of animals can have really different lifespans. Now these animals are different from one another, because they have different genes.”
I am not talking about living longer to be in assisted living or a nursing home. I am talking about aging more slowly so that we retain the appearance and function of youth longer. This is not as much about about extending lifespan as it is about extending youthspan. That is truly the promise.
Cynthia Kenyon discusses mutations in the Daf-2 gene that could double the lifespan of a very small worm. A mutation changes the DNA in a gene and those changes usually mean a decrease in gene function as occurred in this case. In mammals like humans daf-2 is most closely like insulin. Mice that get medication that block the aging effects of insulin live longer. Mice are mammals like us.
Cynthia gave her TED talk in 2011. That is 12 years ago. In 2015, Cynthia participated in writing an article with many other scientists who study aging on the state of knowledge at that time. That was 8 years ago, and this science has been moving very rapidly since. Perhaps most exciting is the finding that a specific combination of diet, exercise, and generic medications in 55 year-old humans who were already ill with type 2 diabetes complicated by chronic kidney disease resulted in an eight year extension of healthier life compared with usual care— the care that most people receive. The promise is here and now.
The study that extended human life began over 20 years ago. We have learned so much more since then. There is no one thing that will increase your youth span. The Daf-2 gene is part of a final common genetic pathway that brings together the effects of increased oxidant production, related increases in inflammation, growth factors like insulin, and master metabolic genetic switches. That is the most fascinating story in medicine now and we will review this in the next several posts. I am confident that you will be able to understand it.
Dr. B, thank you for this article and the upcoming series. I look forward to it.
My diet has long been one that wards off type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc. That's been a priority from youth. One thing for me to do more of: walking. My very much loved dog died 2 years ago - such a great motivator to go for a walk on all but the nastiest days (when he also did not want to go for a walk). A second benefit from the walks: the pleasure of watching him jumping down into ditches, coming back up muddy, even when slowing down, learning where he could (and where he could no longer) climb out of the 6-foot-deep ditch.