Lifeboat Foundation

Desiccants kill more than plants. Herbicides like glyphosate also kill bacteria. You could just as easily call them “antibiotics.” Our gut bacteria are sensitive to antibiotics, which is why we should avoid eating herbicides. When our microbes are healthy, our immune system is stable. But when microbes are disturbed, diseases like obesity, Alzheimer’s, or celiac disease can result.

Driving down a grid road in central Saskatchewan, a machine that looks like a giant insect approaches me in a cloud of dust. The cab, hanging 8 feet above the road, is suspended by tires at least 6 feet tall, with wing-like appendages folded along each side. Should I drive around it or under it?

It is harvest season, and the high-clearance sprayer is on its way to desiccate a field. Desiccation may be the most widespread farming practice you’ve never heard of. Farmers desiccate by applying herbicide to their crops; this kills all the plants at the same time, making them uniformly dry and easier to cut. In essence, desiccation speeds up plant aging. Before desiccation, crops would have to dry out naturally at the end of the season. Today, almost all conventional crops are desiccated in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Chances are that most of what you ate today was harvested using a desiccant, but you’d never know.

Continue reading “Herbicide Is What’s for Dinner” »

We wanted to bring your attention to a recent publication that discusses the topic of cellular senescence and the contributions of senescent cells to aging and disease [1].

What is perhaps the most interesting part of this paper is the section covering the potential future directions that researchers may take in managing senescent cell populations in order to mitigate age-related disease.

The author writes not only about the direct destruction of senescent cells via senolytic drugs but also about the modulation of the harmful secretions these cells produce, which are called the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP).

Continue reading “Senescent Cell Therapies and Future Directions” »

On January 29–31, 2019, the Longevity Therapeutics Summit is happening at the Argonaut Hotel in San Francisco, California. The conference is a great networking opportunity with some leading names in aging research giving talks during the event.

This will be a two-day conference plus a pre-conference workshop hosted by our good friend Kelsey Moody from Ichor Therapeutics. During the workshop, Kelsey will be giving his personal insights into launching and developing a successful biotech company, particularly the challenges faced in the field of rejuvenation biotechnology. This is sure to be a highly informative workshop and well worth your time, especially if you are interested in launching your own company in this field, but even if you are not, it may still prove interesting to learn about this challenging industry.

This conference aims at bringing together leading figures in biology, biotechnology, omics, investment, and other fields in order to discuss how to further accelerate progress in aging research so that the time between basic research and clinical use is as short as possible.

! A new review on the positive effects on lifespan and health of fasting and calorie restriction.

Nutrient composition and caloric intake have traditionally been used to devise optimized diets for various phases of life. Adjustment of meal size and frequency have emerged as powerful tools to ameliorate and postpone the onset of disease and delay aging, whereas periods of fasting, with or without reduced energy intake, can have profound health benefits. The underlying physiological processes involve periodic shifts of metabolic fuel sources, promotion of repair mechanisms, and the optimization of energy utilization for cellular and organismal health. Future research endeavors should be directed to the integration of a balanced nutritious diet with controlled meal size and patterns and periods of fasting to develop better strategies to prevent, postpone, and treat the socioeconomical burden of chronic diseases associated with aging.

The worldwide increase in life expectancy has not been paralleled by an equivalent increase in healthy aging. Developed and developing countries are facing social and economic challenges caused by disproportional increases in their elderly populations and the accompanying burden of chronic diseases. Geriatricians and gerontologists have contributed greatly to our understanding of the consequences and processes that underlie aging from clinical, social, mental, physical, and biological perspectives. The primary goal of aging research is to improve the health of older persons and to design and test interventions that may prevent or delay age-related diseases. Besides socioeconomic status, energy, environmental quality, and genetics are the most powerful determinants of health and longevity. Although environmental quality and genetics are not under our direct control, energy intake is.

At the Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing, we had the opportunity to interview Sven Butlerijs of the Healthy Life Extension Society (HEALES). Some of our regular readers may recall seeing Sven join us for some of the monthly episodes of the Journal Club and he is an active figure in the rejuvenation biotechnology field.

During the interview with Nicola Bagalà, Sven discusses the extracellular matrix, its role in human biomechanics, what happens when it ages and stiffens, the role of cross-linking in collagen, and the possibility of interventions.

How close is science to achieving immortality?

https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=P-wiCEov7oQ&u…ture=share

Michael B. Fossel, M.D., Ph.D. (born 1950, Greenwich, Connecticut) was a professor of clinical medicine at Michigan State University and is the author of several books on aging, who is best known for his views on telomerase therapy as a possible treatment for cellular senescence. Fossel has appeared on many major news programs to discuss aging and has appeared regularly on National Public Radio (NPR). He is also a respected lecturer, author, and the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine (now known as Rejuvenation Research).

Prior to earning his M.D. at Stanford Medical School, Fossel earned a joint B.A. (cum laude) and M.A. in psychology at Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in neurobiology at Stanford University. He is also a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy. Prior to graduating from medical school in 1981, he was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship and taught at Stanford University.

In addition to his position at Michigan State University, Fossel has lectured at the National Institute for Health, the Smithsonian Institution, and at various other universities and institutes in various parts of the world. Fossel served on the board of directors for the American Aging Association and was their executive director.

Continue reading “Michael Fossel — Defeating Aging” »

A tiny transparent worm could be the key to finding out how to stop the frailty and ill health which often comes with old age.

British scientists are sending tens of thousands of worms into space in a government backed project to see if two drugs can prevent or slow down muscle wasting brought on by microgravity.

In space, the 1mm long c-elegans worms have nothing to push against to maintain their muscle mass and so quickly start losing strength, mirroring the effect experienced by elderly people back on Earth or those with conditions like muscular dystrophy.

Continue reading “How blasting worms into space could help slow down the ageing process” »

More information on the search for natural senolytics (that clear the senescent cells and potentially make us younger)- on ficetin, found in abundance for example in strawberries, a newly published study and discussion in the blog of Josh Mitteldorf. But we still would have to consume around 20 kg strawberries for two consecutive days to reach the dose used in the happy longer living mice!

Senolytic drugs have been the most promising near-term anti-aging therapy since the ground-breaking paper by van Deursen of Mayo Clinic published in 2011 . The body accumulates senescent cells as we age, damaged cells that send out signal molecules that in turn modify our biochemistry in a toxic, pro-inflammatory direction. Though the number of such cells is small, the damage they do is great. Van Deursen showed that just getting rid of these cells could increase lifespan of mice by ~25%. But he did it with a trick, using genetically engineered mice in which the senescent cells had a built-in self-destruct switch.

After that, the race was on to find chemical agents that would do the same thing without the genetically engineered self-destruct. They must selectively kill senescent cells, while leaving all other cells unharmed. It’s a tall order, because even a little residual toxicity to normal cells can be quite damaging. Before last week, the two best candidates were FOXO4-DRI and a combination of quercetin with dasatinib .

Continue reading “Fisetin—a new senolytic” »