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| What are the secrets of the superagers? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 19 Dec 2017, 02:46 AM (64 Views) | |
| skibboy | 19 Dec 2017, 02:46 AM Post #1 |
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What are the secrets of the superagers? Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent @BBCFergusWalsh on Twitter 7 hours ago What will you be like in your 80s? Living independently, robust in body and mind, with a wide social circle? Manage that and you will be a superager. It is a worthy aspiration, but the reality is rather different for most of us. Although we are living longer, more of those extra years are being spent in ill health, often with multiple chronic conditions. Of the 65 million people in the UK, 8.45 million are projected to live to 100, according to analysis from the Office for National Statistics. That's around one in eight of the population and a timely reminder that many of us will spend a third of our lives in old age. Ageing is a global issue - the number of people aged 65 and older is projected to almost triple to 1.5 billion by 2050. California is one of the key centres for ageing research - and it's where I met both scientists and superagers. Let's start with Irene Obera. She's 84 and the fastest woman on earth for her age. Irene has been breaking world records in Masters athletics for four decades. ![]() She has the poise and physique of someone in their prime and makes age look like an irrelevance. Her philosophy is simple: "A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits - and I want to be a winner." Being a winner involves grit, determination and relentless effort. I met Irene and her coach Alan Kolling at Chabot College, near San Francisco, where they train three or four times a week. Then there are the gym sessions, tennis and bowling - Irene is on the go all day. "You gotta use it, or you lose it," she says with a smile. Her only period of ill-health was self inflicted - when she dropped a weight on her toe in the gym. As with all the superagers I've met, Irene retains a positive attitude - her horizons have not narrowed as she has aged. She is socially connected; as well as all the people she meets through sport, Irene volunteers in her local community. Ageing well is about exercising the mind as well as the body. It's thought that one in three cases of dementia could be prevented if more people looked after their brain health throughout life. I joined a French literature class at the Alliance Française in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco. All the students were in their 70s, and retained the same curiosity and positive attitude which seem to be hallmarks of superagers. Pamela Blair, 76, a retired psychologist, told me: "I love the French language and its literature. But I'm also here to exercise my mind - my mother had Alzheimer's". ![]() The Buck Institute for Research on Aging The idea that ageing itself can be targeted is gaining momentum, in part as a result of the work of scientists at the Buck Institute for Research On Aging. Clad in white Italian marble, with the same architect as the Louvre pyramid, the institute sits in the hills above Silicon Valley. It has nearly 300 scientists, spread across 18 laboratories, who investigate the connection between ageing and chronic disease. What is it that cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia and osteoarthritis all have in common? The fact that your chances of getting any of them increase as you age. Prof Judy Campisi, one of the lead scientists at the Buck, told me: "It's not a coincidence that all these diseases occur at the same time - we think there are basic ageing processes that cause all of them." Like others at the Buck Institute, Prof Campisi is convinced that science will be able to help us age more healthily. She said: "We predict there will be drugs that will treat ageing, and as a consequence we will be able to extend healthspan, the years of healthy life. "This would mean people could look forward to the last decade of life being vibrant and engaged - their brains and bodies working optimally." As part of this series of reports on superagers I'll be looking at two drugs which some scientists believe could target the ageing process. Source: .com
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| skibboy | 20 Dec 2017, 02:12 AM Post #2 |
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Could drugs delay the diseases of ageing? Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent 7 hours ago ![]() Hilda Jaffe is still working at 95 Imagine having to ask a 95-year-old to slow down - well, I did. Hilda Jaffe was walking so fast there was a risk that the small group following her would be left behind. We had just met in the lobby of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, where Hilda is a volunteer tour guide, and she was escorting us to the vast, elaborately decorated Rose Main Reading Room. Hilda doesn't walk so much as stride. I know people 60 years her junior who are less nimble on their feet. In common with other super-agers, Hilda has retained her zest for life and knowledge. Hilda completes the New York Times crossword each day, belongs to two book clubs, goes to the opera, classical music concerts and the theatre. She also goes everywhere by foot, describing New York as a "great city for older people". ![]() Hilda on honeymoon with her late husband Gerry I asked Hilda what was the secret of her long and healthy life? She said: "Pick your parents; my father died at 88, my mother at 93, so it has to be genetic." Samples of Hilda's DNA are stored in a freezer at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. She is among more than 600 people aged over 90 who are part of the Longevity Genes Project. ![]() The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, which opened in 1911 and where Hilda Jaffe is a tour guide Dr Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging, said what was striking about the group was what unhealthy lives many had lived. He told me: "Almost 50% of them were overweight. Many were heavy smokers, did not exercise and had unhealthy diets - they did not do what their doctors said they should." His research found several genetic variants among the group that appeared to confer protection against the diseases of ageing. He says only about one in 10,000 people is lucky enough to have these protective super-ager genes, but believes science could help the rest of us. Some pharmaceutical companies are exploring whether these genetic traits could be used to create anti-ageing drugs. For more than 60 years metformin has been used as a very cheap first-line treatment for diabetes. Now, trials in a variety of animals have shown they live healthier, longer lives. Exactly how metformin might delay the diseases of ageing is not well understood, but it appears to reduce oxidative damage and inflammation in cells. In humans, studies have linked metformin to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes and cognitive decline. Dr Barzilai, who is also deputy scientific director of the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), is planning a randomised study of 3,000 adults aged 65-79 - half will take metformin tablets each day and half a placebo or dummy pill. About half the $70m dollars needed has been raised; it is hoped the six-year trial will start in 2018, but this may depend on the support of one or more wealthy philanthropists. At present, the US medicines regulator, the FDA, does not recognise ageing as a medical condition. But Dr Barzilai says if the metformin trial was successful it would provide a proof of principle that ageing can be targeted. And he believes better drugs will come in the future. Another promising area of ageing research is cellular senescence - the process by which cells stop dividing. Most human cells can reproduce a limited number of times - this protects against cancer as the more cells divide, the greater the chance they will accumulate errors. Cellular senescence helps keep humans predominantly free of cancer in the first half of life. But as we age, the senescent cells accumulate, secreting inflammatory molecules that can damage neighbouring tissue and help trigger several diseases of ageing. Senescent cells congregate in tissue affected by ageing, such as the joints and eyes - and are implicated in both osteoarthritis and age-related macular degeneration. Unity Biotechnology, in California, is planning to begin human trials next year of a drug to clear senescent cells from the knee. Dr Jamie Dananberg, chief medical officer, told me: "Osteoarthritis is a key reason why it hurts to get old. Our hope is that a single injection will alleviate pain, halt and perhaps even begin to repair the knee." Even if the drug, which might need to be injected every few months, was partially successful, it could have huge implications for improving quality of life for those affected. Unity is also targeting eye, lung and kidney disease. These drugs are not designed to make us live longer, but to make old age less painful and more healthy - to put more life in our years. If they work, then more of us could emulate Hilda Jaffe and become super-agers. Source: .com
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| skibboy | 21 Dec 2017, 01:35 AM Post #3 |
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How long could we live? Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent 6 hours ago How long do you want to live - to 85, 90, 100 or beyond? More important than how long we live is the state of our health in old age. The oldest verified person to date was Jeanne Calment of France, who died in 1997 aged 122. Now scientists in the United States believe drugs could be on the horizon that delay the diseases of old age and increase the healthy years of life. But could such treatments also mean we live longer? Undoubtedly, according to Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist and probably the world's leading advocate of life extension - the belief that medical advances will enable humans to live for hundreds of years. He has ploughed millions of pounds of his own money into ageing research, and is chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, which has laboratories in Silicon Valley, California. He told me: "I've yet to meet someone who wants to get Alzheimer's - ill health as a result of ageing is the biggest problem facing the world." He believes medicine is close to solving the problem: "There will certainly be no limit on how long people might live when we bring ageing under control. "People will still die - there are still trucks to be hit by - but the fact is people will on average live much longer unless some bizarre thing happens like we get hit by an asteroid." Crucially, Dr De Grey believes medical advances will mean we will spend those extra years in robust good health. ![]() Aubrey de Grey believes people could live for hundreds of years The idea that ageing can be vanquished is a minority view. But if there is anywhere in the world that it could gain ground, it is Silicon Valley. The billionaire tech entrepreneurs there are used to thinking outside the box and challenging accepted wisdom. In 2013 Google set up Calico, the California Life Company, whose mission is to "enable people to live longer and healthier lives". Calico does not court publicity for its research and is based in an anonymous building, without even so much as a nameplate. In 2016 Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg vowed to "cure, prevent or manage all disease" by the end of the century. Laura Deming, a venture capitalist in California, set up the Longevity Fund, which invests in companies trying to solve the problems associated with ageing. She told me: "Silicon Valley is driven by curiosity - the same curiosity that drives a 14-year-old to programme computers in their bedroom, drives someone in their 20s and 30s to apply their minds and cash to what makes us age and die and what can we do about it to reverse the process." Extending lifespan is certainly possible in simple organisms like yeast, fruit flies or worms. But it gets harder as you climb the evolutionary ladder. Prof Gordon Lithgow of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging runs a lab that studies how to lengthen life in microscopic worms and in human cell cultures. He told me: "Ageing is really plastic in simple lab organisms - we can increase lifespan by 500%. "In more complex animals like the mouse we've been able to increase lifespan by 20-30% but we don't know what's possible in humans." The Buck Institute regards speculation about increasing longevity as a distraction from its main goal - to enable more of us to live a healthy old age. Of course, we should not expect medicine to solve all our health problems but try to meet science halfway. There are things we can already do to increase our chances of a healthy old age. Near the top of any to-do list is exercise - if it were a drug it would be a blockbuster medicine. All the superagers I met had some physical activity they enjoyed. The Sun City Poms in Arizona perform acrobatic dance routines and have a parade marching unit. Peggy Parsons, 76, told me: "I ache every morning, but when you march you forget about it - the more exercise I do, the better I feel." Ginger Price, 84, said: "I love the Poms - it keeps me physically active and keeps my brain working. You have to learn the dance routines and that helps my memory." It also helps the women stay socially connected - another important aspect of healthy ageing. Keeping the mind active is vital: this can build "cognitive reserve" and reduce the chances of developing dementia. A balanced diet will also help. There is no guaranteed formula for a healthy old age but follow that advice and you too might become a superager. Source: .com
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3:25 PM Jul 11