age reversal pill

[gib65]

Have scientists invented an age reversal pill yet? Or some equivalent technology? Is it likely we'll see such a technology within, say, the next 50 years?

[IanH]

I don't know about reversal but you can slow your aging down. Eat sub-caloric requirement and exercise regularly. You could also make sure you have an optimal blood level of vitamin D (around 40ng/ml or 100nmol/L). Why vitamin D? because it regulates more genes than any other nutrient.

[DrP]

13 minutes ago, IanH said:

Eat sub-caloric requirement and exercise regularly.

Surely you cannot survive on 'sub-caloric' requirement. If you require those calories then it suggests that they are needed for the sustaining of your life and you can't do without them. Surely if you did not get enough calories then you would eventually waste away and die. Maybe I am missing the point, but you can't extend human life by diet alone without current knowledge. This pill the OP talks about won't just be a diet supplement  -  he is talking about  stopping the degradation of the teleomeres on DNA strands to prolong life beyond what we currently see as possible regardless of diet.

 

Edited April 19, 2018 by DrP

[StringJunky]

1 minute ago, DrP said:

Surely you cannot survive on 'sub-caloric' requirement. If you require those calories then it suggests that they are needed for the sustaining of your life and you can't do without them. Surely if you did not get enough calories then you would eventually waste away and die. Maybe I am missing the point.

Originally, Okinawans lived on 2/3 (1500 calories) of the Western recommendation. Their average lifespan is 89 and produce rather a lot of centenarians. We eat too much.

[DrP]

5 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Originally, Okinawans lived on 2/3 (1500 calories) of the Western recommendation. Their average lifespan is 89 and produce rather a lot of centenarians. We eat too much.

But he said 'requirement'...  not what we calculated and give as a recommendation. Every person will have a different minimum requirement for the amount of calories they will need to survive compared to their activities. If you daily take less than this then eventually you will waste away....  you can't extrapolate that Okinawans thing back and conclude that even less calories will prolong your life further...  if you get too few then the health effects will surely be wasting away to death, not prolonged life. 

 

And even if you DO optimise you calorie intake - this is optimization of what we already have  -  not extending life in the way the OP was suggesting.

Edited April 19, 2018 by DrP

[IanH]

You assume this: " If you daily take less than this then eventually you will waste away.."  Depends on what you mean by waste away! When you reduce your caloric intake your requirement reduces.  Caloric requirement is not a fixed number, the body is more flexible than that. (As you said "minimal requirement") I suppose my choice of the word "requirement" is causing a problem here. However I still see "requirement" as the best way I can phrase it can you think of another?

[DrP]

14 minutes ago, IanH said:

You assume this: " If you daily take less than this then eventually you will waste away.."  Depends on what you mean by waste away! When you reduce your caloric intake your requirement reduces.  Caloric requirement is not a fixed number, the body is more flexible than that. (As you said "minimal requirement") I suppose my choice of the word "requirement" is causing a problem here. However I still see "requirement" as the best way I can phrase it can you think of another?

OK - But again - you are talking about optimizing your life span within what we already know to be possible. The OP wants a pill that can make him live to 375+....  you won't do that with diet controls and exercise alone. You need to look at the reasons we die of old age even when we have kept to a perfect diet, kept away from exposure to cancerous causing things, lived a balanced life of the right amount of exercise....  we are still going to die at the end of it because of what happens to our telomeres in our DNA. The pill will have to fool them into not realizing how old they, are or something like that, so that they keep going.

I am not holding my breath for a pill. I'd love it -- would love to live for longer  -  I feel though that even if we had this pill already it would be for the rich and privileged only and we probably wouldn't even hear about it until they thought we could afford to pay it to make them richer. We are reaching overpopulation anyway - why would we extend life spans? Maybe the answer would be to have fewer offspring and choose them wisely  - maybe inoculate them against death from old age when they are born, something like that.
For us though, I feel it might be too late.

 

[StringJunky]

3 hours ago, DrP said:

OK - But again - you are talking about optimizing your life span within what we already know to be possible. The OP wants a pill that can make him live to 375+....  you won't do that with diet controls and exercise alone. You need to look at the reasons we die of old age even when we have kept to a perfect diet, kept away from exposure to cancerous causing things, lived a balanced life of the right amount of exercise....  we are still going to die at the end of it because of what happens to our telomeres in our DNA. The pill will have to fool them into not realizing how old they, are or something like that, so that they keep going.

I am not holding my breath for a pill. I'd love it -- would love to live for longer  -  I feel though that even if we had this pill already it would be for the rich and privileged only and we probably wouldn't even hear about it until they thought we could afford to pay it to make them richer. We are reaching overpopulation anyway - why would we extend life spans? Maybe the answer would be to have fewer offspring and choose them wisely  - maybe inoculate them against death from old age when they are born, something like that.
For us though, I feel it might be too late.

 

Who wants to live a perfect life? I knew a woman that says she didn't grin because it gave laughter lines. She was in her fifties and had no lines on her face. I want to run my body into the ground. 70 -80 years is plenty.

[Duratan]

they found out that when a cell divides it cuts of three codons on one of the dna strands this is thought to be one of the causes of aging it only happens on one DNA strand per division because the other side has an enzyme called telemorase which preserves the other DNA strand.  When I was in undergrad my professor said when he was in undergrad scientists studying this used to say they are about 5 years away from stopping the aging process, when my professor said this he also said currently they say that they are about 5 years away from this being possible.  Currently the scientist studying they say they are 10-15 years away from this being possible, the problem seems to be when you put telemorase on both sides of DNA it significantly increases risk of cancer.  Fun thing to note if you are a fan of the mass effect series it explains that the reason the alien race, "Asari" live for about a thousand years is that they are born with telemorase on both sides of there DNA. 

[John Cuthber]

Be careful what you wish for.

As far as I know, the only immortal human cell lines are cancers.

[YaDinghus]

On 5/18/2018 at 7:50 AM, John Cuthber said:

As far as I know, the only immortal human cell lines are cancers.

Aside the fact that I really would like to boost my life span by at least one order of magnitude, I wouldn't want to look like Deadpool. 

 

On 5/17/2018 at 9:03 PM, Duratan said:

they found out that when a cell divides it cuts of three codons on one of the dna strands this is thought to be one of the causes of aging

 

On 5/17/2018 at 9:03 PM, Duratan said:

the problem seems to be when you put telemorase on both sides of DNA it significantly increases risk of cancer.

So, what are the other suspected reasons for ageing, and how can we 'hack' those to increase life span?

Are there animals that naturally have telomerase on both strands that we could study? Or do we rely on genetically modified lab rats? If there are animals which naturally have telomerase on both strands, we could possibly identify genes that help them keep cancer in check better, though I'm asking on an off chance since I'm thinking this isn't likely. 

[Endy0816]

That is really garbled... The shortening is due to replication for us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Shortening

Stem and reproductive cells have access to telomerase, which can lengthen telomeres again. The code itself exists in all of our cells' DNA though.