Posts Tagged “biology”

People have an amazing capacity to suspend logic while maintaining that life makes sense.

Sundays for instance.  All week everyone requires proof….receipts, contracts, documentation, follow ups, passwords, meetings, blah, blah, blah….but then on Sunday they go to Church and praise somebody that is plainly not there.  They sing songs about the justice, love, and compassion while ignoring the death, disease, war, destruction and plain bad luck that makes up most people’s lives.  I’m not saying they’re wrong on Sundays…..I’m just saying it doesn’t make sense.

Which brings me to my first point:  There is no superfood that will keep you young.   All these people are drinking 40 dollar concentrated acai juice, eating wild salmon for omega-3s, touting blueberries, and free-range beef or whatever.  It doesn’t help.  How do I know?

Japanese women are the longest lived group on the planet at slightly over 85 years.  Vilcabamba Valley in Ecuador is said to be the healthiest environment on the planet with people regularly living over 100.  Barbados (along with Japan) boasts the most Centenarians per capita.

What do these places have in common?  Honestly, other than perhaps generally healthy lifestyles and maybe a diet rich in seafood…..nothing.

The point isn’t that something isn’t making them live longer…its that Japanese women at 85 are not THAT much different than the USA at 77.

If there were some lifestyle/diet change that would make us live significantly longer, someone would’ve adopted it, and it would be so apparent that soon everyone would be doing it, and then we’d be back to the same situation:  Everyone living approximately the same life span.

In fact, there WERE lifestyle/diet changes that made people healthier and presumably live longer.  We are the descendants of those people.

In short, if you like the amazonian fruits, eat them.  But they aren’t going to make you live longer.  If they did, the jungle people eating them naturally would have abnormally long life spans.  They don’t.  They die sooner than we do.

Next point:  ESP.  It doesn’t exist.  Not in anyone.  You know why?  Easy.

It would be SO advantageous to be able to know other people’s thoughts or tell the future or any other ESP-like skill, that whoever had the skill would get so rich and bang so many women, that their descendents would soon outnumber everyone else…..then everyone would have ESP.  The fact that everyone doesn’t have ESP strongly suggests that it doesn’t exist.

So…go to church, drink Acai juice, and try to bend spoons….it can’t hurt.  You never know these days.

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I’ve read a fair amount lately about resveratrol (found in red wine, said to slow aging), and other related compounds that affect SIRT1 and SIRT2 gene expression, as well as people trying to mimic the effects by caloric restriction (something found to increase life spans pretty dramatically in lab animals). Then there are those chasing drugs that lengthen telomeres, bind free radicals, repair mitochondrial DNA, etc., etc…..blah, blah, and so on.

I’m not going to comment about whether or not I think any of it works currently…since I don’t know; however, I do know that whether or not we are genetically programmed with a clock that runs out, or we die simply because we wear down…..you can slow, and perhaps stop the process of aging. It will happen. It is definitely possible. Its not even worth arguing.

What puzzles me is how short sighted people have been about the importance of the research. We pour billions and billions and billions of dollars into cancer research, heart disease prevention, obesity treatments, Alzheimer, Diabetes, Parkinson’s, Strokes etc., etc.

Guess what? Those (and many more I couldn’t think of off the top of my head) are all diseases of aging. I can cure 8 of the top 10 causes of death in the US with ONE DRUG, one that stops aging.

This is the f#cking mother load of drugs. It is a literal cure-all. It will also cure or slow wrinkles, improve fitness, decrease chronic pain…..I could go on and on. It is the single most important thing to ever happen to medicine, perhaps to mankind.

It will extend productive working years. Think of how much more inventive our greatest minds will be if they don’t age?? Einstein could’ve kept on thinking, more sharply, for decades. The economy will prosper like never before. It will be a literal golden age. (yes, overcrowding will become a problem…but people living in space will happen more quickly.)

In short, pretty much ALL money currently being spent on medical research should be diverted to the study of aging. The government should be handing out grants in flocks; its in their best interest to keep us alive, healthy, and working.

Why try to beat stroke, cancer, heart disease, obesity, Alzheimer’s and diabetes???….when its plain that young people do not suffer from these ailments to nearly the same degree as the elderly. ONE DRUG….cures them all.

Anyway, mark my words…..Nanotechnology, cold fusion, gene therapy, stem cells, quantum computers, whatever….they’re all bunk. Anti-aging medicine will be the biggest thing to hit mankind….like, pretty much ever.

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