[HN Gopher] Longevity study across 5 species found a new pathway...
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       Longevity study across 5 species found a new pathway to reverse
       aging
        
       Author : Brajeshwar
       Score  : 89 points
       Date   : 2023-04-23 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (singularityhub.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (singularityhub.com)
        
       | markus_zhang wrote:
       | I have read quite a few longevity research paper on HN alone. Is
       | there anything we can put to use other than common sense (no
       | smoke, alcohol, etc)?
        
         | halfjoking wrote:
         | Get good at fasting. Caloric restriction is the only thing
         | proven to increase longevity, other than basic things like
         | healthy eating and exercise.
        
           | markus_zhang wrote:
           | Yeah I did read about those and tried a couple of times
           | without much success, totally my fault though.
           | 
           | It's a bit tough for me at the moment as I WFH and $wifie is
           | horrified by the idea of fasting, but well if I don't get
           | fired over next two weeks I'll start going into the office.
        
             | nikhilsimha wrote:
             | It does get easier with repetition (mentally and socially).
             | 
             | I do a water fast on thursdays (~36 hrs). I find that to be
             | much easier than intermittent fasting mentally somehow.
        
         | probablynish wrote:
         | Other than no smoke, alcohol, the basics to aim for would be:
         | good quality 8 hours sleep every day, a few hours exercise a
         | week (mix of strength and cardio), healthy-ish diet (minimize
         | sugar and processed foods), look after your mental health.
         | 
         | For more detail, Peter Attia's new book 'Outlive' is a good
         | introduction to some of the more involved steps you can take
         | (wear a CGM to fine tune your diet for metabolic health, do
         | more exercise and target it more specifically).
         | 
         | Attia does have some recommendations on protein (eat a lot, eat
         | meat) that conflict with other longevity researchers'
         | suggestions ( https://www.valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet-
         | for-adults/ ) so take that with a pinch of (metaphorical) salt.
        
           | lottin wrote:
           | I don't know why sugar intake needs to be minimized. Sugar is
           | simply a carbo-hydrate, I don't think it's special in this
           | regard. But maybe I'm missing something.
        
             | gdy wrote:
             | High glycemic index
        
             | xenonite wrote:
             | Some argue that all carbohydrates can be problematic. If
             | you like, you may read literature on low-carb high-fat keto
             | diets.
        
           | kccoder wrote:
           | I've always wondered about the 8 hours of sleep thing. I
           | rarely get more than 5.5 hours a night, but I'm not tired.
           | I'm a healthy weight, eat reasonably, and work out 10-15
           | times a week (cycling, running, lifting, and playing the
           | drums (which is surprisingly good low-level cardio (avg hr
           | 125ish (resting hr normally in the 40s))). No, I'm not a lisp
           | programmer.
           | 
           | Do you think I should be aiming for more sleep?
        
             | Kuinox wrote:
             | It's very difficult to know if you are tired or not.
             | 
             | When you feel tired, it means you are _very_ tired right
             | now.
             | 
             | People who are sleep deprived and rate themselves as not
             | tired shows poorer intellectual performance in tests.
        
         | etiam wrote:
         | This one looked interesting and is probably quite actionable.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18252469
        
         | justrealist wrote:
         | Almost certainly get on Metformin, and preponderance of
         | evidence is that NMN helps too. Most everything else is
         | guesswork.
        
           | Teknoman117 wrote:
           | The major problems with Metformin are that it frequently
           | makes people nauseous, it causes sperm damage in men (effects
           | go away when you cease taking it + about 3 months), and in
           | rare cases can cause lactic acidosis if you consume alcohol.
           | 
           | Admittedly, I got put on it because my blood work wasn't
           | going in the right direction, but it has noticably increased
           | my ability to lose weight. Not exactly scientific, but in my
           | first 5 months of trying to lose, I was down 30 pounds, in
           | the next 5 months after starting it, I lost about 50 and was
           | less strict about my diet. I was even doing less cardio
           | because I had primary shifted to lifting weights.
           | 
           | Now I'm down a full 100 pounds, admittedly with another ~100
           | to lose, but I really can't describe how much better I feel.
           | Combine that with moving to have a regular social life, I
           | feel like my life is headed in the right direction for the
           | first time since college.
        
           | AnimalMuppet wrote:
           | Can you explain how metformin is supposed to help? And NMN
           | (maybe start by defining it, as I've never heard of it)?
        
           | CommanderData wrote:
           | Metformin has a pretty bad side effects with low term use,
           | induced Vitamin B deficiency being the notable.
        
       | falcor84 wrote:
       | > Scientists have long suspected that transcription may go awry
       | with aging, but the new study offers proof that it doesn't--with
       | a twist. In all five of the species tested, as the organism grew
       | older the process surprisingly sped up. But like trying to type
       | faster when blindfolded, error rates also shot up.
       | 
       | I got incredibly annoyed at this piece of writing, and the
       | article as a whole, trying to make it "fun and exciting" to the
       | detriment of being clear. In the case of this particular problem,
       | the short of version is "as individuals grow older, transcription
       | speeds up, which leads to increased error rates". There is no
       | "twist" - the process does indeed go awry.
        
         | SanderNL wrote:
         | My plebeian mind finds it interesting the process quality
         | itself is still the same, only the speed changes. This changes
         | the problem from "change fundamental quality of the process" to
         | "change the speed of the process", which, again to my unwashed
         | and illiterate eyes, seems like an useful and possibly exciting
         | distinction.
        
           | GenerocUsername wrote:
           | But it might not be that simple. Perhaps it's 'faster'
           | because it's doing less error checking.
        
             | derefr wrote:
             | My understanding of how the development of cancer works is
             | that all the error-checking mechanisms in a cell have to
             | become damaged, before a cell can be damaged in such a way
             | that it mutates into a cancer cell, because if they _aren
             | 't_ all damaged before that, then one of them will find the
             | "error" going on, and self-destruct the cell.
             | 
             | Cancer itself, then, is a constructive proof that DNA
             | damage can disable DNA-transcription-time error-checking
             | mechanisms.
             | 
             | The question in my mind, then, is whether those safety
             | mechanisms are "blocking" / "synchronous" steps done during
             | DNA transcription, such that disabling them would make DNA
             | transcription occur faster. _If_ they are, that would
             | neatly explain the observed effect.
        
         | CSSer wrote:
         | Plus the whole point of touch typing is that seeing the
         | keyboard doesn't matter...
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Do it
        
       | helph67 wrote:
       | Some may care to consider this 2015 article.
       | https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/mediterranean...
        
       | hbarka wrote:
       | How? Article was hand-wavy I couldn't get a conclusion.
        
       | aantix wrote:
       | I brought this up in an earlier discussion..
       | 
       | >In one test, the team tapped into two well-known treatments for
       | delaying aging: inhibiting insulin signaling and caloric
       | restriction.
       | 
       | Does this mean that the newer diet medications like Semaglutide
       | could be accelerating aging since they increase the secretion of
       | insulin from the beta cells?
        
         | mentos wrote:
         | My laymen's guess is the insulin is correlation and not
         | causation. It's probably just that eating more food leads to
         | more cell turn over and aging.
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | My understanding is that a eukaryotic cell is a state machine
           | with multiple major "modes", where various
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosine_kinase -es act as
           | "transition functions" between those modes.
           | 
           | You can almost think of a cell "switching modes" in this way
           | as it "booting into a different OS": the DNA of the cell gets
           | re-phosphorylated, which means different sections of the DNA
           | become active and begin being transcribed into proteins.
           | 
           | And it's this re-phosphorylization process during each
           | cellular "mode switch" that is the primary contributor to the
           | consumption of telomere end-caps on the ends of your DNA; and
           | so is the primary driver of cellular senescence.
           | 
           | Which means that the more frequently you do things that make
           | your cells switch modes, the sooner those cells will break
           | down.
           | 
           | I'm not sure what-all set of "modes" cells switch between --
           | it's probably different per specialized cell type.
           | 
           | But I would hypothesize that "glucose metabolism" vs "ketone
           | metabolism" is a pretty universal mode switch for most cell
           | types; which would, if true, neatly explain the life-
           | extending benefits of intermittent fasting (your cells stay
           | in the ketone mode for longer, rather than flapping
           | constantly between the ketone and glucose modes); and also
           | the negative impact of insulin (insulin being the signal
           | observed by cells that causes them to trigger a mode-switch
           | into the "glucose metabolism" mode, if they're not already in
           | it.)
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-23 23:01 UTC)