Weight Loss Slows Aging

Switching to a diet full of fresh veggies and low in processed foods could do wonders for your brain's biological age, new research shows.

According to the international team of researchers who ran the study, eating a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables, seafood, and whole grains – or even just following dietary guidelines – appears to slow the signs of accelerated brain aging typically seen in obesity with as little as 1 percent loss in body weight.

Brain scans taken after 18 months showed the participants' brain age appearing almost nine months younger than expected, compared to estimates of their brain's chronological age.

Like the participants in the clinical trial, you might not feel as old as the years you've lived, or perhaps your body feels like it's aging faster than you are – this is the difference between biological and chronological age.

Either way, research shows your body's biological age is much more than a feeling: Signs of biological aging can be found dotted along your DNA, etched onto the ends of your chromosomes, or as this study suggests, in the loosening connections of your brain.

While a growing body of research suggests that biological aging brought on by stressful events could be reversible, this new study shows that improving your diet may be one of the simplest options to improving body condition, irrespective of the years.  READ MORE...

Seafood Reverses Signs of Aging

Researchers discovered that supplementing a diet with the sea organisms Ascidiacea, also known as sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging in an animal model.

Supplementing your diet with the sea organisms Ascidiacea, also known as sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging, according to a new study using an animal model.

While the Fountain of Youth, the mythical spring that restores youth to anyone who bathes in it or drinks its waters, is clearly fantasy, scientists are hard at work looking for ways to combat aging. Some of these scientists just had a breakthrough: they discovered that supplementing a diet with sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging.

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See benefits, risks, & safety information of an enhanced flu vaccine for 65+ at flu360.com Boost the immune response this flu season for adults 65+.  While more research is needed to verify the effect in humans, as the study was conducted using mice, the findings are very promising.

If you’ve ever glanced in the mirror and seen greying hair and wrinkles, or if you’ve forgotten the name of a close friend, you may desire a medication that might halt or even reverse the effects of aging.

According to a new study, this may not be such a silly idea. Researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Stanford University, Shanghai Jiao tong University, and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered that supplementing a diet with the sea organism Ascidiacea, also known as sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging in an animal model.  READ MORE...

Reversing Aging

Summary: Transplanting fecal microbiota from young mice to older mice reversed hallmark signs of aging in the gut, brains, and eyes. Transplanting the fecal microbiota from old to young mice had the reverse effect, inducing inflammation in the brain and depleting a key protein associated with healthy vision.

Source: University of East Anglia

In the search for eternal youth, poo transplants may seem like an unlikely way to reverse the aging process.

However, scientists at the Quadram Institute and the University of East Anglia have provided evidence, from research in mice, that transplanting fecal microbiota from young into old mice can reverse hallmarks of aging in the gut, eyes, and brain.

In the reverse experiment, microbes from aged mice induced inflammation in the brain of young recipients and depleted a key protein required for normal vision.

These findings show that gut microbes play a role in the regulating some of the detrimental effects of aging and open up the possibility of gut microbe-based therapies to combat decline in later life.

Prof Simon Carding, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School and head of the Gut Microbes and Health Research Program at the Quadram Institute, said: “This ground-breaking study provides tantalizing evidence for the direct involvement of gut microbes in aging and the functional decline of brain function and vision and offers a potential solution in the form of gut microbe replacement therapy.”

It has been known for some time that the population of microbes that we carry around in our gut, collectively called the gut microbiota, is linked to health. Most diseases are associated with changes in the types and behavior of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microbes in an individual’s gut.  READ MORE...

Living to 150

Humans could live until the ripe old age of 150 years according to recent research – and scientists are racing to work out how.

Harvard geniuses, biohackers and internet billionaires are all looking for ways that humans can crack the code on aging.

WaitButWhy blogger Tim Urban writes “the human body seems programmed to shut itself down somewhere around the century mark, if it hasn’t already”.

And Urban is right! There are no verified cases of a person living to be older than 122, though the oldest living person is on their way at age 119.

Researchers at GERO.AI concluded the “absolute limit” of the human lifespan to be between 100 and 150 – they came to this conclusion by analyzing 70,000 participants up to age 85 based on their ability to fight disease, risk of heart conditions and cognitive impairment.

The Conversation reported that not a single participant showed the biological resiliency to live to 150 – but notes the study is limited by today’s medical standards.

Will improvements in medicine, environment and technology to drastically lengthen the average lifespan and make 150 a reality?

Humans could live until the age of 150, according to a new study.  Shutterstock  Brutal biology

The human body is made up of about 30 trillion cells. Cells are constantly dying and being replaced by replicants.

Within the cell body there are chromosomes – these are DNA strands with the code written for humans within them.

At the end of a DNA strand is a microscopic bundle of non-crucial DNA, so that none of the important stuff gets snipped off when the cell divides.

A cell can divide itself about 50 times before it’s lost its ability to replicate.

As more and more cells become ineffective and die, the signs of aging start to show in gray hair, weaker bones and vision loss.

Some theorize this process can be stopped or reversed.  READ MORE...

Our Legs

When we are old, our feet must always remain strong.

When we age, we should not be afraid of hair turning grey (or) skin sagging (or) wrinkles.

Among the signs of *longevity,* as summarized by the US Magazine "Prevention", *strong leg muscles* are listed on the top, as *the most important and essential one*

Do not move your legs for two weeks and your leg strength will decrease by 10 years.

A study from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark found that both old and young, during the two weeks of *inactivity,* the legs muscle strength got weakened by a third_ which is 
*equivalent to 20-30 years of ageing.*

As our leg muscles weaken, it will take a long time to recover, even if we do rehabilitation exercises, later.

Therefore, regular exercise like walking, is very important.

The whole body weight/load remain on legs.

The feet are a kind of *pillars,* bearing the weight of the human body.

Interestingly, 50% of a person's bones and 50% of the muscles, are in the two legs.

The largest and strongest joints and bones of the human body are also in the legs.

Strong bones, strong muscles, and flexible joints form the "Iron Triangle" that carries the most important load on the human body.

70% of human activity and burning of energy in one's life, is done by the two feet.

Do you know this? When a person is young, his *thighs have enough strengths, to lift a small car!

The foot is the *center of body locomotion.

Both the legs together have 50% of the nerves of the human body, 50% of the blood vessels and 50% of the blood flowing through them.

It is the large circulatory network that connects the body.

Only when the feet are healthy then the *convention current of blood* *flows, smoothly, so people who have strong leg muscles will definitely
have a *strong heart.*

Aging starts from the feet upwards.

As a person gets older, the accuracy and speed of transmission of instructions between the brain and the legs decreases, unlike when a person is young.

In addition, the so-called *Bone Fertilizer Calcium* will sooner or later be lost with the passage of time, making the elderly more prone to bone fractures.

Fractures in the elderly easily triggers a series of complications, especially fatal diseases such as brain thrombosis.

Do you know that 15% of elderly patients will die within a year of a thigh-bone fracture.

Exercising the legs, is never too late, even after the age of 60 years.

Although our feet will gradually age with time, exercising our feet is a life-long task.

Only by strengthening the legs, one can prevent further aging.

Please walk for at least 30-40 minutes, daily to ensure that your legs receive sufficient exercise and to ensure that your leg muscles remain healthy.

Our Metabolism

Blaming those extra pounds on a slowing metabolism as you age? Not so fast.

A new international study counters the common belief that our metabolism inevitably declines during our adult lives. Well, not until we’re in our 60s, anyway.

Researchers found that metabolism peaks around age 1, when babies burn calories 50 percent faster than adults, and then gradually declines roughly 3 percent a year until around age 20. 

From there, metabolism plateaus until about age 60, when it starts to slowly decline again, by less than 1 percent annually, according to findings published Thursday in the journal Science.

To tease out the specific impact of age on metabolism, the researchers adjusted for factors such as body size (bigger bodies burn more calories overall than smaller ones) and fat-free muscle mass (muscles burn more calories than fat).

“Metabolic rate is really stable all through adult life, 20 to 60 years old,” said study author Herman Pontzer, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University and author of “Burn,” a new book about metabolism. 

“There's no effect of menopause that we can see, for example. And you know, people will say, 'Well when I hit 30 years old, my metabolism fell apart.' We don't see any evidence for that, actually.”

Pontzer and colleagues studied a database of more than 6,400 people, ages 8 days to 95 years, from 29 countries worldwide who had participated in “doubly labeled water” tests. 

With this method, individuals drink water in which some of the hydrogen and oxygen have been replaced with isotopes of these elements that can be traced in urine samples.  READ MORE