You are what you eat: Old food shortens lifespan in animals

[xkm1948]

Basically the Harvard researchers have tested single cell eukaryotes, invertebrates and vertebrates for the effect of old food on organism aging.

Link to paper published in Science Magazine:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/2/e1601833

Quick Read if you hate reading primary research journals:
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ou-eat-old-food-shortens-lifespan-in-animals/

This is not the first time similar results have emerged. Previous research has shown that blood from younger mice is able to prolong the life span of older mice.

As a molecular biology researcher, the method and results are pretty credible in this paper. Kinda scary at the same time if people try to take the information out of context.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Vampires

 

[xkm1948]

Paper on how younger mice blood renews old mice:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/young-blood-renews-old-mice

NCBI full article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4215333/


@Ferrum Master As bad as it sounds, some old legends might be true after all.

 

[the54thvoid]

Got to be careful, people will take your good info, regurgitate it (no pun intended) and by chinese whispers, it'll soon be a million dollar nutrition industry.

It also reminded me (and the New Scientist link did mention it) of the numerous validated studies that show lower calorie diets promote longevity. The metabolic system tends to 'repair' on low intake (especially on a proportionally low protein intake) and on a high intake it embarks on cellular growth (which would be where replication errors are more likely to occur.

 

[xkm1948]

Got to be careful, people will take your good info, regurgitate it (no pun intended) and by chinese whispers, it'll soon be a million dollar nutrition industry.

It also reminded me (and the New Scientist link did mention it) of the numerous validated studies that show lower calorie diets promote longevity. The metabolic system tends to 'repair' on low intake (especially on a proportionally low protein intake) and on a high intake it embarks on cellular growth (which would be where replication errors are more likely to occur.

biogerontology is a huge untapped field as of right now. We are still pretty much at primitive research stage for this field. Hell it took us 30+ years to fine tune the study of Microbiology at yet we can still only culture/study 1% of Mircrobes on earth. At this point there is a pretty strong suggestion that aging and death are evolutionary beneficial to all multicellular organism. We passed on our genetic information, we provide some mutations to our offsprings for evolution to play with and then we die to open up space and resources for future generations. Or to be simple: Our cells are programmed to die basically.

 

[Black Panther]

Or to be simple: Our cells are programmed to die basically.

I guess that's it. Tbh I'm sceptic of claims stating that certain foods can increase or decrease our life-span. They can but only by a small margin like 5 years or so. Nothing impressive.

Scientists have to try to find out what is the essential difference in the cells of humans who rarely live beyond 100 years, and the cells of for example the galapagos tortoise and tuatara reptiles which live for 200 years. There's also a species of clam known as Ocean Quahog which live between 400-500 years!

I also believe that once scientists manage to crack what causes progeria in humans a lot of progress will be made on this topic.

 

[xkm1948]

I guess that's it. Tbh I'm sceptic of claims stating that certain foods can increase or decrease our life-span. They can but only by a small margin like 5 years or so. Nothing impressive.

Scientists have to try to find out what is the essential difference in the cells of humans who rarely live beyond 100 years, and the cells of for example the galapagos tortoise and tuatara reptiles which live for 200 years. There's also a species of clam known as Ocean Quahog which live between 400-500 years!

I also believe that once scientists manage to crack what causes progeria in humans a lot of progress will be made on this topic.

Do we really wanna live 500+ years though? I know I wouldn't if I am fused to a bio-mechanical apparatus. The key word is aging. If we can increase the range of our best years it would be way better than living to the life span of turtles.

Imagine it for a second. Women and men in their 70s still look good and function well as they are in their 20s. We will still die but we get a way longer period of physically capable years. To achieve this it would be a lot easier than we previously thought. As a matter of fact simply improving nutrition and hygiene we have already done part of that. With precise genomic editing I believe we can get there in our life time. Then we can dream about living a luxury 500 yrs or 1000 yrs life span.

 

[Black Panther]

Then there are small animals, like dogs and cats whose biological similarity to humans is much closer than that of a turtle yet they have a lifespan of 14 -18 years and would be quite old even at age 10.

My point was that a turtle with a lifespan of 200 years would still be in the best of life at age 100. Nobody would want to live 500 years if 400 of them are in what we know today as a 100-year old body. But imagine where we become teens at 100, adults at 200, middle-aged at 300 and only start suffering the effect of aging at 400+ like the ocean quahog clams? Also that's why I'm interested in the process which causes progeria, where children literally get old by the time they're 8-10 years.

I'd hate to imagine the resulting impact on the world population though...

 

[xkm1948]

Then there are small animals, like dogs and cats whose biological similarity to humans is much closer than that of a turtle yet they have a lifespan of 14 -18 years and would be quite old even at age 10.

My point was that a turtle with a lifespan of 200 years would still be in the best of life at age 100. Nobody would want to live 500 years if 400 of them are in what we know today as a 100-year old body. But imagine where we become teens at 100, adults at 200, middle-aged at 300 and only start suffering the effect of aging at 400+ like the ocean quahog clams? Also that's why I'm interested in the process which causes progeria, where children literally get old by the time they're 8-10 years.

I'd hate to imagine the resulting impact on the world population though...

It is pretty easy to work on blocking human reproduction. Plus we need reasons to send people off to explore the galaxy.

 

[FireFox]

Do we really wanna live 500+

It would be too boring

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

This puts cans of beans right out in the cold, soo regardless of being scientifically consistent I refuse to believe it, beans cannot be bad.

 

[Jetster]

duh, diet is everything

 

[xkm1948]

This puts cans of beans right out in the cold, soo regardless of being scientifically consistent I refuse to believe it, beans cannot be bad.

Plants don't accumulate cellular damage as bad as we animals do. I'd say plants are more advanced than us animals.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Plants don't accumulate cellular damage as bad as we animals do. I'd say plants are more advanced than us animals.

I'd agree just because no dafodill or cabage is going work tomorrow

 

[Black Panther]

It would be too boring

Hmm... imagine the type of computers and games there'd be in 500 years time...

 

[the54thvoid]

Hmm... imagine the type of computers and games there'd be in 500 years time...

BF 500 would still have camping snipers and invisible trees.

 

[Vario]

Then there are small animals, like dogs and cats whose biological similarity to humans is much closer than that of a turtle yet they have a lifespan of 14 -18 years and would be quite old even at age 10.

My point was that a turtle with a lifespan of 200 years would still be in the best of life at age 100. Nobody would want to live 500 years if 400 of them are in what we know today as a 100-year old body. But imagine where we become teens at 100, adults at 200, middle-aged at 300 and only start suffering the effect of aging at 400+ like the ocean quahog clams? Also that's why I'm interested in the process which causes progeria, where children literally get old by the time they're 8-10 years.

I'd hate to imagine the resulting impact on the world population though...

Then theres 'Syndrome x'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Greenberg

 

[droopyRO]

I have bigger worries like earthquakes, car accidents, fights, slipping on wet floor after taking a shower, death by snu snu etc.

I'd hate to imagine the resulting impact on the world population though...

Eating healthy food is expensive, living a stress free life is also expensive, young blood is expensive.

 

[cdawall]

There is no such thing as living stress free... Stress is required for human life.

 

[the54thvoid]

There is no such thing as living stress free... Stress is required for human life.

HG Wells book the Time Machine shows very well a life of no stress or worry - the degeneration of our species into intellectually feeble and physically flimsy, child adults. Stress is good in small manageable amounts - it powers invention and physical adaptation.

Too much though......

But then, that's what beer is for.

 

[unsmart]

does it matter how you cook the baby? not sure I could eat them fresh.

 

[BiggieShady]

death by snu snu

If it's meant to be, there are worse ways to go ... if you're over 80 this translates into death by careless use of erectile dysfunction medicine

 

[twilyth]

You've still got the telomere issue to deal with. Every time a cell divides the telomeres get shorter until you hit the Hayflick limit and the cells go into senescence. Senescent cells seem to be a major cause of unhealthy aging since they contribute to inflammation, metabolic syndrome and a host of other issues. So the first thing you'd want to do is find a way to prevent the shortening of telomeres.

After that, you want to be able to read the entire genome and fix all of the coding errors you've accumulated. That should be possible in the not too distant future with CRISPR/CAS9 based gene editing, although that will initially be targeted at specific mutations. After all, if your cells are going to live forever, you want them doing their jobs correctly.

 

[RejZoR]

Well, it's not exactly a rocket science to figure that out. Take car analogy. Which car would perform better over time, the one using same oil the whole time which just gets filtered by highly efficient oil filter and pouring in extra fresh oil for the one that got consumed or the one which regularly gets fresh oil and is entirely replaced? Blood stream is an enclosed system and while it regenerates and filters blood through liver and kidneys, it can only do as much and over decades, it will deteriorate.

 

[the54thvoid]

Well, it's not exactly a rocket science to figure that out. Take car analogy. Which car would perform better over time, the one using same oil the whole time which just gets filtered by highly efficient oil filter and pouring in extra fresh oil for the one that got consumed or the one which regularly gets fresh oil and is entirely replaced? Blood stream is an enclosed system and while it regenerates and filters blood through liver and kidneys, it can only do as much and over decades, it will deteriorate.

I'd say bad analogy. We are very unlike cars.