Prime Time: A New Look At Aging

Aubrey de Grey--the man who wants to defeat aging

Here's an introduction for a man you will see appear often in this weblog. His name is Aubrey de Grey. First, I really want to say that I like his beard very much. Second, his continuing focus on overcoming the separate processes that combine to cause aging and the decay of physical processes is certain to be a significant contribution to whatever progress is made in advancing longevity. I'll keep this short--here's what Wikipedia has to say about him.

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aubrey de Grey
Aubrey de Grey, 2008
Born	April 20, 1963 (age 46) London, England
Residence	Cambridge, England
Nationality	British
Ethnicity	England
Fields	Biogerontology
Institutions	University of Cambridge
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Known for	SENS, Methuselah Mouse Prize

Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (born 20 April 1963 in London, England) is an English biomedical gerontologist.

De Grey is the author of the mitochondrial free-radical theory of aging, and the general-audience book Ending Aging, a detailed description of how regenerative medicine may be able to thwart the aging process altogether within a few decades. He works on the development of what he has termed "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS) - a tissue-repair strategy intended torejuvenate the human body and thereby allow an indefinite lifespan. To this end, he has identified seven types of molecular and cellular "damage" caused by essential metabolic processes; SENS is a proposed panel of therapies to repair this damage.^[1]

De Grey has been interviewed in recent years in many news sources, including CBS 60 Minutes, BBC, the New York Times, Fortune Magazine, the Washington Post, TED, Popular Science and The Colbert Report. His main activities at present are as Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation^[2] and editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research.

Seniors know the knack of napping

Since retiring, Peggy Blake enjoys a daily 20-minute siesta after lunch. “I love naps,” she says. “I put a small pillow under my neck, cross my arms on my chest and stretch out. It’s a light sleep; I guess that’s why they call it a cat nap.”

This is the type of nap consistency and appreciation William Anthony extols in The Art of Napping (Larson Publications). It offers some “naptitudes”—skills and techniques that stand nappers in good stead. Which rhymes with bed, but the bed isn’t at all necessary for nappers.

Herny Riechmann, for example, completed a morning Hawaiian dance class at the Walnut Creek Senior Center, stretched out at home for half an hour on the sofa, then dashed back for her family history writing class. What about lunch? “Oh, I ate a big breakfast, so I wasn’t hungry,” she says. So there’s another possible benefit. You can slim down by napping through an occasional meal.

Six out of ten adults nap at least once a week, says Anthony, who directs Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation when he isn’t snoozing. Despite this ratio, prejudice exists. Certain nap police rouse people or make them feel guilty even though scientific studies reveal many Americans are “sleep deprived.” He notes that in the Bible it says that “on the seventh day. . .God rested.” What better role model could we ask for?

Arliss Harmon likes “a little nap” of 20 minutes. “Any more than that and I feel groggy,” she says. It refreshes her to the degree that she can recall, while waiting for a class to start, pithy sayings like “The trouble with doing nothing, you don’t know when to stop.”

A little inertia after a nap is nothing to worry about, Anthony says. The grogginess disappears within 15 minutes at the most.

“I zonk out for 20 minutes to a half-hour after lunch,” declares Dean Chapman, a senior who lives in Concord. “Then I get up and have a cup of tea with Elsie and we chat for a bit.” Elsie is Dean’s wife and, since “she’s so much younger,” she doesn’t require daily rest. But if she’s really pooped, she’ll go into a trance-like state for an hour or so. 

In his book, Where Was I When Time Went By?, Chapman’s essay on napping advocates redesigning our schools so children can stretch out for 20 minutes of shut-eye. Businesses could chart the circadian rhythms of employees to ensure the maximum rejuvenation rate of their naps, he suggests. You can help by donating, say, $3,000 for his new organization, Save American Naps. “Donations will be recognized in your dreams,” he adds.

Nappers score the highest points when, for example, they drift off at the dentist’s, even with a hand and several instruments in the mouth. 

Mary Rizzo, naps, but not too often. Her husband, Carmen, rates as a true aficionado. “He’d be lost without his naps,” she declares, then recalls that she dozes while watching TV. “I never see how anything ends,” she confesses. During one interval, her head fell back and her mouth dropped open, and that’s the time a visiting relative snapped her picture. She’s still making weekly payments to keep it out of circulation. Well, that last part is conjecture.

Anthony’s book debunks the view that napping reduces one’s ability to sleep at night. “A good nap and a good night-time sleep can go hand in hand,” he says. Another tip: groups and families should try synchronized napping. And if you’re searching for a gift to give a napper, consider a napsack for napnomic devices such as a pillow, or a tape of sea sounds.

 

'Spectrum' delivers a lifestyle wallop

In his book Spectrum, Dr. Dean Ornish gently takes you be the lapels, shakes you, looks you in the eye, and, in effect, says, “Get with it!” One point he emphasizes: doctors receive payments for surgeries and medicine instead of preventive measures.

His calm, reasoned report ranges from advice to results of three decades of research by his nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute (www.pmri.org) and other study groups. The cumulative impact is noteworthy.

Clint Eastwood, for example, says, “I’ve been following Dr. Dean Ornish’s program for more than a decade, and I feel younger now than I did ten years ago. Dr. Ornish’s style of eating and living is always delicious and never boring.”

You’ve read or heard about the lifestyle changes Dr. Ornish recommends: eat more fruits and veggies and less red meat; exercise; meditate; drink green tea and less booze; use less salt and eat more fiber; alleviate stress; quit smoking; and socialize. What happens? In groups of people with developing heart and stroke problems, high blood pressure, and at-risk prostate cancer candidates, a large majority of them showed dramatic health improvement.

Walnut Creek resident Paul Hed discovered he had prostate cancer nearly a decade ago, and joined a Dr. Ornish study group. He lost 15 pounds and lowered his blood pressure 20 points in the first three months. His lifestyle changes included a low-fat diet, yoga, stress reduction steps, and weekly sessions with others in the test group, in addition to the changes mentioned above.

For the general population, Dr. Ornish suggests two approaches. You can make small, gradual changes. “Over time, small changes add up and are often sustainable,” he says.
Or “make comprehensive lifestyle changes all at once.” The benefit of this is you’ll experience big improvements—and quickly.

Spectrum (Ballentine Books) includes recipes and tips by noted chef Art Smith plus a CD on guided meditations.

When Second Prize is Good Enough

When a scientist says something can be done, believe him or her and add about 15 years to the timeline they give you for completion. But when a scientist says something cannot be done--they are (so far) almost always wrong.

So when Massachussetts Institute of Technology writes that it is 'absurd' to think that aging can be 'cured' in the way a disease might be cured, you don't have to be convinced just by their stellar reputation. Although they are probably right, science has a way of getting in through the back door when the front door is locked, and may find a way to prolong lifespans without finding a cure.

What MIT offers as a consolation prize is almost equally as welcome--and startling. Current research is on the way to treatments and technologies that will 'compress morbidity'--that is, shorten the amount of time people are unhealthy prior to their deaths. Or as MIT put it,

"While it is highly unlikely that aging can be permanently halted at the cellular level, antiaging science might allow doctors to "compress the morbidity" of their patients: that is, reduce the amount of time geriatric patients suffer from the chronic diseases of old age like heart disease, macular degeneration, senile diabetes, or dementia. Such therapies would also extend human life -- at least a little bit, anyway. Human beings could live beyond the age of 80 or 90, and in relatively good health. And while that's not immortality, it offers something like happiness on a reasonable, human scale."

That's a second prize I can live with--at least for now.

Technology and seniors--this week

It used to be that companies and innovators concentrated on the young and all but ignored seniors. That no longer seems to be the case. Here's one week in technology for seniors:

June 17, 2009

At the Boomer Venture Summit in Santa Clara, CA, firstSTREET and MyGait today unveiled a "failure-free and fear-free" computer especially conceived for and by seniors over an eight-year period of hands-on research at senior centers and assisted living communities around the country. The "designed for SENIORS GO Computer™" was developed down to the last detail, from its large-letter keyboard to its fool-proof operating system, to accommodate the needs and wishes of a demographic that has traditionally resisted the world of computers or had the hardest time accessing it. "And these are the very people," says Gordon, "who may well benefit most from email and Internet access."

June 17, 2009

Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) and Providence Health and Services (PH&S) have signed a three-year agreement for Varian to provide PH&S treatment centers with advanced radiotherapy technology for treating cancer. The agreement covers Varian's state-of-the-art equipment and software.

June 15, 2009

Remote cardiac monitoring company LifeWatch inked an exclusive carrier agreement with Verizon Wireless for its mobile phone-based service for cardiac patients.

June 15, 2009

MedApps: Remote wireless telemonitoring vendor MedApps received clearance from the FDA this past week for its HealthPAL product. HealthPAL is the small, portable dedicated device that MedApps uses to collect data from connected glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters and weight scales. The data is then sent over a secure server to an online portal like Microsoft’s HealthVault or Google Health for caregivers, physicians or the patient themselves to view.

June 15, 2009

Apple unveiled its latest iPhone model at the annual World Wide Developers Conference last week, the iPhone 3GS, and showed off the new iPhone operating system 3.0. The new OS includes specifications that allow connected medical device makers to pair their devices with the iPhone via Bluetooth. Johnson & Johnson's LifeScan unit demonstrated a concept of just such a product earlier this year with a connected blood glucose monitor that interfaced with an iPhone application for diabetes management. At a WWDC event earlier this week, Apple invited AirStrip Technologies on-stage to demonstrate its cardiac monitoring application for clinicians

June 10, 2009

Rocky Mountain Marketing, after 5 years of marketing, research and development has released to the public, their state-of-the-art rehabilitation aid, the Shoe & Boot Valet(TM). The Shoe & Boot Valet(TM) delivers, in one innovative product, a tool that can put on and take off footwear with just one hand. The Shoe & Boot Valet(TM) is perfect for maintaining an active, healthy and independent lifestyle while providing comfort to those with limited mobility.

Designed for easy use in the home, in outpatient rehabilitation clinics, and in assisted-living settings, this nonprescription breakthrough device represents a significant advance for people with difficulty putting on and taking off their footwear due to either acute or chronic pain conditions that arise from illness, inflammation, injury or surgery or as a result of aging. At last, a product comes along that offers unprecedented flexibility for both the user and the caregiver alike.

Preserving Domesticated Tranquility

Domesticated animals live much longer than their counterparts in the wild. Cats, dogs, even birds live two to three times longer--as long as they stay close to man.

It's true for us, too. Our lifespan began to climb dramatically as we moved further away from the 'nasty, brutish and short' lifestyles of our ancestors. As recently as 2,000 years ago, the average lifespan was about 21.

Now that the average lifespan in the developed world is pushing 80, what more can we expect? Life expectancy rose from 48 to 78 in between 1900 and 2000 in this country--is it reasonable to hope that it will reach 108 by 2100? Is it possible that that's an underestimate? Cats generally live to be 4 in the wild, but can reach 16 in captivity...

At Sage, Chris Mooney summarises recent research:

"All things being equal, these are pretty good days to be an elderly American. Not only has average life expectancy been rising steadily since 1950, but, over the past 2 decades, surveys have shown a steady decline in disability among older Americans, a trend that continues unabated. "We haven't seemed to reach a plateau yet," says Harvard University health economist David Cutler, who studies disability among the elderly. And the good news doesn't stop there: Scientists have discovered a number of ways to slow aging in creatures as different as yeast and mice. This ongoing research into aging and longevity has "immense potential to prevent late-life illnesses and prolong active life" in humans, wrote gerontologist Richard A. Miller of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, last November in the health care policy journal The Milbank Quarterly."

"...The discovery over the past decade of a large number of genetic changes that can prolong life in a variety of animals has spurred scientists to look deeper for explanations of what they're seeing. So far, however, there's a raft of ideas but no clear winner.

Consider just one example out of many. Martin Holzenberger of the French biomedical research agency INSERM is the lead author of a recent study showing that mice genetically engineered to respond poorly to the hormone insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which controls growth and cell division, live 26% longer on average than do normal lab mice (see "All Together Now"). In flies and worms, related genes have a similar effect, an evolutionary commonality that researchers find intriguing."

But you may have to fight for the chance to see your second century.

"...Whether one mechanism or many drive the aging process, most scientists in the field agree that the research has already shown its medical promise and deserves better federal funding--particularly because, as Miller points out, putting the brakes on aging would also reduce the incidence of a wide range of illnesses that plague the elderly. Because of the potential payback, "it's terribly important to invest more on fundamental research in the processes of aging," says George Martin, a pathologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who studies aging and Alzheimer's disease. "It will be very cost effective. You might not find a unitary mechanism for everything, but you might find some very important ones that you can deal with for a large segment of the population."

Despite the immense implications of new findings about the biology of aging for humans, Miller argues that basic research in this area remains drastically underfunded and neglected by policymakers. Miller notes in his piece in The Milbank Quarterly that research on aging "receives such a small proportion of government research funding that it cannot be seen in [the] pie chart." The overall budget of NIA is $1 billion a year, approximately 20% of which goes to basic research into the biology of aging, according to NIA's Warner. In comparison, the National Cancer Institute has a budget of roughly $4 billion a year. According to Warner, many promising research proposals in the biology of aging remain unfunded with the institute's current budget. But that's probably true of every part of the National Institutes of Health: "There's probably not a biomedical constituency that doesn't believe that it's underfunded," he points out.

Why does research into the biology of aging receive such a meager amount of funding? Miller has several ideas. First, he says, politicians tend to be most responsive to voter demands for research into specific diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's, a nearsightedness shared by pharmaceutical companies. Further complicating matters is the phenomenon of "gerontologiphobia," a fear of the social consequences of life span extension that has been on prominent display by some members of the President's Council on Bioethics and particularly its chair, Leon Kass."

Seniors get a boost from weight lifting

Seniors who build and preserve muscle lessen the risks of falls, diabetes, hypertension and osteoporosis. They also feel better about how they look
 
“If you can lift a weight 15 times, it’s too light,” says William Evans, a co-author of Biomarkers: The 10 Determinants of Aging You Can Control. He suggests starting at about 60 to 80 percent of your maximum lifting capacity and lifting the weight eight times or until the muscle feels fatigued. After working up to 12 repetitions, increase the weight by 10 to 25 percent and drop back to eight reps. A set of ten exercises will take about 30 minutes to complete. Before lifting, however, take a brisk walk or jog in place for 6 or 7 minutes, then stretch those muscles. Repeat this after a workout too.

When lifting, breathe out at the time of maximum exertion. Do not hold your breath or you may end up with that expression frozen on your beet-red face. Forget that saying, “No pain, no gain.” If it hurts, stop. A little muscle soreness the next day is not unusual, however. Give those muscles at least one day’s rest between workouts, but do continue your walking, swimming or biking on the alternate days.

Weight lifting is not advisable for people with high blood pressure or heart disease, and a doctor’s okay is recommended, especially for anyone with a chronic illness.
 “By helping you build muscle tissue and lose body fat, strength training revs up your metabolic rate, so you burn more calories whatever you’re doing, even when sitting and sleeping,” says Jane Brody, a New York Times columnist. “More muscle and less fat also mean fewer inches and smaller sizes, because fat takes up more room than the same weight of muscle tissue.”

 

The other ways technology helps vision

It's nice to know that science is working on improving our eyesight. But it doesn't work for everyone, and it isn't available to all, even for those for whom it would work. And useful as they are, Braille and talking books are substitutes for vision, not enhancements.

So the other trick is to make things easier to see. There are now cell phones with big buttons, websites have standards for accessibility, including options for larger typefaces, etc. Road signs can be made clearer using technology (who knew paint could be so high-tech?) and computer studies of eye movements can help us put signs in places where people actually look.

But for me, the best technology is still under construction. Head mounted displays or goggles still aren't ready for prime time. But when they get the bugs worked out, you will be able to put on something that looks like a pair of sunglasses, but will essentially open up an almost magical world, showing enhanced pictures of what's in front of you--or a normal computer screen, or television or film. It will have the capability of adding text information near the pictures, such as the name (and age, and personal details) of the person walking towards you. It will also warn you of obstacles and challenges--much like the technology that is being introduced in modern cars. And, also like in cars, it will come with maps.

Yes, it'll take getting used to and will feel wildly new and different. But that's part of the fun, right?

Trouble brews when seniors overdo booze

Ninety-seven percent of the alcoholics in America are people like your neighbors. Only 3 percent of them live on skid row. Twenty-five percent of those of us who drink become addicted, and older people are most susceptible. With age, our capability to metabolize alcohol diminishes. If we’re taking prescription drugs, it decreases even more. About 20 million Americans today are addicted.

These are among the findings of Dr. Earle Marsh. He knows the subject of addiction intimately; he is an alcoholic who beat the habit years ago. 

Seniors experience major changes that make the bottle attractive, he said. A spouse dies. Men especially feel at loose ends after retirement. Self-esteem suffers from the outward signs of aging, and chronic pain becomes too tough to bear for some.

The symptoms of increased, unhealthy levels of drinking include gulping down concoctions, hiding a bottle for secret belts, and blackouts—intervals of the night before that cannot be recalled. The alcoholic feels remorse, experiences shakes and the sweats, says Dr. Marsh, a professor emeritus at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco. The emotions may range from self-pity to delusions of God-like qualities.

As an indicator of the results of significant chemical changes caused by alcohol, he said that about 10 percent of American couples are infertile, but the rate jumps to 50 percent for couples affected by drinking. If you drink to excess your tolerance increases, which means you must drink more to achieve the same buzz as before. 

To help someone in denial, Dr. Marsh says an intervention might prove helpful. Typically, family members gather with the drinker, describe their concern for the person and define, in a kind way, the price the alcoholic must pay if he or she continues drinking. 

Alcoholics Anonymous helped him turn his life around, and he recommends the program. “If someone in your house has a problem, write AA," he says."They’ll send you information in a plain brown wrapper with no return address. Then you might place it where someone else can pick it up and make use of it.”

 

Technology and vision

One of the most rapidly evolving areas of technological progress is in optics. It's happening for a variety of reasons--companies want to make better computer games, the military wants to provide better equipment to its soldiers, movie makers are working on 3D technology to get people back in the cinemas, and virtual reality may change the way we experience the world.

So it's no surprise that the number of patents filed in optics is growing at 5% a year, which is really robust. But what are the likely ramifications for seniors?

Stem cell experiments improved the vision of elderly, umm, rats in experiments. The aim of the research is to combat macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness for people over the age of 55.

The principal reason seniors abandon driving motor vehicles is deteriorating eyesight. So cars that drive themselves (yes, really) may help mobility for seniors, and improved parking technology and cameras replacing mirrors might go even further.

Audio books can be a bit bothersome, but text to speech software allows you to choose what you want to listen to. It works both ways, if you're tired of writing--or even tired of hitting computer keys.

And the world of implants continues to improve and expand. More and better retina implants will help millions.