Saturday, October 20, 2007

Why Live Long, Only To Face A Bitter End?

When senior Americans were asked about the prospect of an anti-aging pill in an online poll by AARP Magazine, some time ago, most said they would not take such a pill. In their minds, living longer equated with living more years in a senile, debilitated state. Longevity is not the objective for most, maintaining youthfulness is. Most want to retain thick hair, smooth skin, keep up their bedroom performance, and hopefully stay active mentally. Who wants to live beyond 100 years and wake up to look in the mirror the last 30 years of their lives to a wrinkled face covered with thinning hair?

Guy Brown at the University of Cambridge has authored a new book about the molecular mechanisms of cell death and degenerative disease. The book, The Living End: The future of death, aging and immortality, published next month by Palgrave Macmillan, says we all face the fate of Tithonus, who in Greek mythology was granted immortality by Zeus, but not eternal youth. Tithonus became increasingly debilitated and demented.

Brown says the average lifespan has been increasing at the staggering rate of 2.2 years per decade (or 5 hours a day) for the last 100 years. Relatively soon there will be millions of people living beyond the age of 100. "We are voyaging into a new realm of human life that has hardly existed before and about which we know very little," says Brown.

Brown goes on to say: "Unfortunately this increase in lifespan has not been matched by an extension of health. The years we gain are mostly spent with disability, disease and dementia. Between 1991 and 2001, life expectancy in the UK increased by 2.2 years, but healthy life expectancy increased by only 0.6 years; people experienced ill health for an extra 1.6 years of their lives. This is because we have not been able to slow the ageing process."

For example, the prevalence of Alzheimer's is about 1 per cent at 65 years of age and approximately doubles every five years after that, to around 25 per cent for 85-year-olds. In the US, 46 per cent of people over 85 years of age are thought to have Alzheimer's.

We'll let Brown explain another problem. Drug companies are drooling at the prospect of developing more pharmaceuticals. Says Brown: "Another unfortunate factor is that it is much more profitable for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs that keep patients alive but uncured, rather than curing the disease, which loses the customer. The situation is not helped by the charities and funding agencies that focus on preventing death rather than disease or ageing."

Brown continues: "The root cause of the impending Tithonus crisis, therefore, is our failure to tackle ageing. Yet we are doing absolutely nothing about it. Death, dying and dementia are nowhere on the political agenda. We are too afraid to think about the three Ds, and that suits the politicians fine because they are not easy problems to solve." Instead, says Brown, we fight imagined terrorists and global warming. [New Scientist Oct. 13, 2007]

Uh, so why do we get old? To oversimplify, we calcify and rust. Humans don't age in the first 18 years of life. Living cells at age 1 and age 18 look the same. But in the third decade of life, once full growth is achieved, cells begin to show the first sign of aging --- the accumulation of cellular debris called lipofuscin. Living cells can no long efficiently expel debris because cellular bodies called lysosomes, which produce cell-cleaning enzymes, begin to rust and calcify. Ditto for the mitochondria inside cells. The mitochondria produce cellular energy. By age 80 maybe 5% of the mitochondria are working.

What causes calcium and iron to accumulate within aging cells? During childhood growth all the calcium and iron that is consumed is being shuttled to making new bone and red blood cells (hemoglobin). Once full growth is achieved, there is an excess of these minerals. Human populations that have shorter life expectancy have iron and calcium-rich diets. (The dairy and meat industry won't like hearing this.)

Fortunately, nature has some powerful mineral-chelating molecules, the chief molecule being IP6 phytate found in bran, that can reverse the clock-hands of biological time. IP6 phytate binds to loose iron in the body and removes it and prevents calcium from crystallizing. A vegetarian diet will provide about 1500 mg of IP6 phytate, while a carnivorous diet provides ~750 mg and a processed food diet ~250 mg per day. IP6 phytate is also available as a dietary supplement.

Other good anti-calcifying molecules are magnesium, vitamin K, vitamin D and arginine or citrulline amino acids. Other iron-binders are quercetin, grape seed, or polyphenols found in grapes, olives and berries. Resveratrol, known as a red wine molecule, chelates copper, another metallic metal that accumulates in human tissues over time.

Note here that cholesterol is not included as a major factor in aging. Cholesterol phobia was created by the pharmaceutical industry as a distraction while disease and mortality rates remained the same, ensuring a market for their products. Hardening of the arteries is a well established phenomenon of aging. Yet how would soft, waxy cholesterol harden arteries? It doesn't. Calcium does. Calcium deposits turn the human body into a statue over time -- stiff joints, arteries and muscles.

Public health authorities are bought off by the commercial interests in health care. You'll have to find your own pathway to healthy longevity. For those who do, birthdays will be something to look forward to. Copyright 2007 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.

Link:  http://www.knowledgeofhealth.com/report.asp?story=Why%20Live%20Long%20Only%20To%20Face%20A%20Bitter%20End&catagory=General%20Health,%20Iron