6 ms·

Delayed aging is better investment than cancer, heart disease

72 points by ph0rque 13y ago

drpgq 13y ago
This seems to be one of those things that are easier said than done.
didgeoridoo 13y ago
In other news, unicorns considered a better investment than puppies, ponies. Seriously though, I wouldn't want to live much longer if two major sources of pain and fatigue are still haunting us in our later years.
- heurist 13y ago
  you would be 'young' longer and wouldn't have to worry as much about age related diseases at an age we currently consider old. So you might get aging related cancer when you're 120 instead of 60, sure, but those 60 years might also be enough time to fix those diseases then you'd never have to worry about them.
- gcb1 13y ago
  i too would love if that article started with some definition for those terms.
photorized 13y ago
Except delayed aging will increase the occurrences of cancer. Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough.
- PeterWhittaker 13y ago
  Everyone dies if they live long enough. Since practical immortality is pretty much out of the question, for now, I'll quite happily accept deferred aging, which would seem to imply generally good health longer and later in life, followed by one or more catastrophic illnesses in the terminal phase... ...which hopefully will be brief. As to pain, why do you think we have painkillers and euthanasia? (Well, we "don't" have the latter, in Canada, really, but we will by the time I need it.) I would much rather live longer and be generally healthy then die horribly and suddenly that live generally healthily for a shorter time then waste away for years and years and years....
- exratione 13y ago
  Actually delaying aging implies also delaying the root causes that lead to the rise in cancer risk with age. E.g. calorie restriction induces an altered state of metabolism that delays aging, reduces cancer risk alongside extending life, and lowers measures such as nuclear DNA damage levels thought to drive cancer risk.
- ye 13y ago
  > Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130731093255.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130731093255.ht...
- ekianjo 13y ago
  >Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough. Not true. There are tons of people above 100 years old who die of causes unrelated to cancer. Obviously there are well known mechanisms that link cancer to aging but it does not mean there's a probability of 1 to get cancer as you get older.
  - photorized 13y ago
    Cancer isn't linked to "aging", but rather to the nature of DNA replication. That process results in gradual accumulation of inaccuracies. Enough mutations -> cancer.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      Nope, it's not about the number of mutations you get. It's also about the repair mecanisms of your DNA not working as well anymore. That's why cancer occurs more frequently with aging. I forgot the actual source link, but I remember seeing a publication showing how autopsies on young people who died of accidental circumstances showed tiny cancer tumors in their bodies even in their 20s-30s, and that simply these would not grow further because of the repair mechanisms being highly effective in younger organisms. So basically you get mutations in your body the whole time. Not just when you age.
      - photorized 13y ago
        That's interesting - thanks for the explanation. I will check on that research study.
      - photorized 13y ago
        reading about tumor suppressor genes... fascinating stuff. Those do seem to get worse with aging.
    - inkyoto 13y ago
      The statement is pretty much entirely incorrect apart from the gradual accumulation of "inaccuracies". Living cells constantly attempt to repair "the inaccuracies" occurring over the course of life of a cell. Reaching a beyond repair stage leads to apoptosis, or genetically programmed cell death; in other news, the cell commits suicide. A cell turns into a cancerous cell when some of the oncogenes (namely, p53 and, likely, p16) responsible for upregulating apoptosis become silenced, and the cell continues to live in a dysfunctional state as a cancerous cell. We do not know yet what excatly causes the gene silencing. At any point in life, the human body contains a number of cancerous cells that it methodically gets rid of or neutralises, which is a normal process of life. Not every cancerous cell turns into a tumor and leads to cancer We do not know yet what causes it. Many people die of an old age and do not have cancer.
jamie_ca 13y ago
Reminds me of http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
exratione 13y ago
Delayed aging looks much harder to achieve than rejuvenation. A couple of billion dollars and ten years or so have gone into trying to just replicate the effects of calorie restriction, in which you have state A (short-lived) and state B (long-lived) of metabolism clearly laid out for you. So far a lot has been learned, but it's clear that that is just a starting point. People in the field expect it to take decades more to get to a point of safely adjusting human metabolism to slightly slow down aging. Funnily it should be far easier to rejuvenate the old (very useful) than to slow their rate of aging (pretty useless). Aging is damage, and rejuvenation is just damage repair. See the SENS Research Foundation outline, for example. The research community already knows exactly how it could be done, since the root forms of damage that cause aging are well-enumerated, and it would only take a decade and a billion dollars to demonstrate that in mice. Full understanding isn't needed, only the understanding of what to target and how to repair it: a fraction of the knowledge needed to slow aging. Unfortunately this is a radical departure from running a drug development pipeline. The therapies look like infusions of bacterial enzymes, mitochondrial gene therapy, and more exotic things. So it remains a minority position in the research community simply because of inertia, I think - it's so much easier to raise funds when you can point to every existing Big Pharma project and say "it'll be like that." This is how incremental, expensive projects that add little value continually suck up the majority of funding in any field.
- Udo 13y ago
  Can you point me to some research that indicates caloric restriction leading to a higher life expectancy in humans (compared to normal nutrition, not obesity of course)?
  - exratione 13y ago
    Here's a starting point to summarize thoughts on that question from some of the better known researchers involved in human studies. http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html "Whether or not CR will extend lifespan in humans is not yet known, but accumulating data indicate that moderate CR with adequate nutrition has a powerful protective effect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and reduces metabolic risk factors associated with cancer." My summary of calorie restriction research is that it (a) produces similar-ish short term changes in metabolism and measures of health in mammals tried so far, and (b) is expected to have much smaller effects on life span in humans than in mice. The present consensus is that 5 years in humans would be on the high end, as I recall. The most interesting thing to resolve with certainty in this subfield is how the short-term measures can be so similar, how the expected reduction of age-related disease in humans can be so large, and yet the life expectancy outcome be so small. Should be interesting, in a post-facto sort of a way, as the time taken to figure that out will place us well into rejuvenation therapy territory, achieved through means that have nothing to do with CR or CR mimetics.
BIair 13y ago
Ironic that Google wants to essentially extend the useful life of workers, given that the average Google employee is 29-30 years old (depending on source). Among the youngest of any industry.
- ericd 13y ago
  Maybe they'll find a way to delay the onset of decreased neuroplasticity, and make it so old engineers can learn new things as quickly as young ones. At least that's my hope :-)
janameri 13y ago
Immortals? Not quite yet there, but with combining the digital revolution we may live forever.
tokenadult 13y ago
As usual, I prefer reporting by professional journalists to the press-release recycling service ScienceDaily, the source of the link kindly submitted here. On a drive today, I heard a report on this newly published study on National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/08/230175345/delaying-aging-may-have-a-bigger-payoff-than-fighting-diseases http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/08/230175345/delayin... and the strength of that report, brief as it is, is that other researchers were interviewed besides those with the new publication in Health Affairs. The Health Affairs study, at bottom, is an argument for a change in public policy to have more funding of basic research on slowing aging. And maybe that is a good idea. (My bias would be to support that kind of research, as I am a good bit older than most participants on Hacker News.) Whether doing a lot of that kind of research will actually result in safe and effective means to slow aging and thus prolong healthy lifespans is the $7.1 trillion question.
kayoone 13y ago
But isnt one of the biggest problems the overpopulatin of the planet ? So living longer doesnt really make that better.
- MarkTee 13y ago
  No. Overpopulation is a myth: http://overpopulationisamyth.com/ http://overpopulationisamyth.com/
- JabavuAdams 13y ago
  Because we'll have the imagination, will, science, and technology to cure aging ... and then we'll just turn that imagination and drive off and live in cages?
  - kayoone 13y ago
    It might be unethical to prolong our lives in a way nature didnt intend us to...then again we are already doing that for decades. Im just saying we also should look onto the consequences of something like this.

72 points by ph0rque 13y ago

drpgq 13y ago

This seems to be one of those things that are easier said than done.

In other news, unicorns considered a better investment than puppies, ponies. Seriously though, I wouldn't want to live much longer if two major sources of pain and fatigue are still haunting us in our later years.

heurist 13y ago
you would be 'young' longer and wouldn't have to worry as much about age related diseases at an age we currently consider old. So you might get aging related cancer when you're 120 instead of 60, sure, but those 60 years might also be enough time to fix those diseases then you'd never have to worry about them.
gcb1 13y ago
i too would love if that article started with some definition for those terms.

photorized 13y ago

Except delayed aging will increase the occurrences of cancer. Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough.

PeterWhittaker 13y ago
Everyone dies if they live long enough. Since practical immortality is pretty much out of the question, for now, I'll quite happily accept deferred aging, which would seem to imply generally good health longer and later in life, followed by one or more catastrophic illnesses in the terminal phase... ...which hopefully will be brief. As to pain, why do you think we have painkillers and euthanasia? (Well, we "don't" have the latter, in Canada, really, but we will by the time I need it.) I would much rather live longer and be generally healthy then die horribly and suddenly that live generally healthily for a shorter time then waste away for years and years and years....
exratione 13y ago
Actually delaying aging implies also delaying the root causes that lead to the rise in cancer risk with age. E.g. calorie restriction induces an altered state of metabolism that delays aging, reduces cancer risk alongside extending life, and lowers measures such as nuclear DNA damage levels thought to drive cancer risk.
ye 13y ago
> Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130731093255.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130731093255.ht...
ekianjo 13y ago
>Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough. Not true. There are tons of people above 100 years old who die of causes unrelated to cancer. Obviously there are well known mechanisms that link cancer to aging but it does not mean there's a probability of 1 to get cancer as you get older.
- photorized 13y ago
  Cancer isn't linked to "aging", but rather to the nature of DNA replication. That process results in gradual accumulation of inaccuracies. Enough mutations -> cancer.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Nope, it's not about the number of mutations you get. It's also about the repair mecanisms of your DNA not working as well anymore. That's why cancer occurs more frequently with aging. I forgot the actual source link, but I remember seeing a publication showing how autopsies on young people who died of accidental circumstances showed tiny cancer tumors in their bodies even in their 20s-30s, and that simply these would not grow further because of the repair mechanisms being highly effective in younger organisms. So basically you get mutations in your body the whole time. Not just when you age.
    - photorized 13y ago
      That's interesting - thanks for the explanation. I will check on that research study.
    - photorized 13y ago
      reading about tumor suppressor genes... fascinating stuff. Those do seem to get worse with aging.
  - inkyoto 13y ago
    The statement is pretty much entirely incorrect apart from the gradual accumulation of "inaccuracies". Living cells constantly attempt to repair "the inaccuracies" occurring over the course of life of a cell. Reaching a beyond repair stage leads to apoptosis, or genetically programmed cell death; in other news, the cell commits suicide. A cell turns into a cancerous cell when some of the oncogenes (namely, p53 and, likely, p16) responsible for upregulating apoptosis become silenced, and the cell continues to live in a dysfunctional state as a cancerous cell. We do not know yet what excatly causes the gene silencing. At any point in life, the human body contains a number of cancerous cells that it methodically gets rid of or neutralises, which is a normal process of life. Not every cancerous cell turns into a tumor and leads to cancer We do not know yet what causes it. Many people die of an old age and do not have cancer.

jamie_ca 13y ago

Reminds me of http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

exratione 13y ago

Delayed aging looks much harder to achieve than rejuvenation. A couple of billion dollars and ten years or so have gone into trying to just replicate the effects of calorie restriction, in which you have state A (short-lived) and state B (long-lived) of metabolism clearly laid out for you. So far a lot has been learned, but it's clear that that is just a starting point. People in the field expect it to take decades more to get to a point of safely adjusting human metabolism to slightly slow down aging. Funnily it should be far easier to rejuvenate the old (very useful) than to slow their rate of aging (pretty useless). Aging is damage, and rejuvenation is just damage repair. See the SENS Research Foundation outline, for example. The research community already knows exactly how it could be done, since the root forms of damage that cause aging are well-enumerated, and it would only take a decade and a billion dollars to demonstrate that in mice. Full understanding isn't needed, only the understanding of what to target and how to repair it: a fraction of the knowledge needed to slow aging. Unfortunately this is a radical departure from running a drug development pipeline. The therapies look like infusions of bacterial enzymes, mitochondrial gene therapy, and more exotic things. So it remains a minority position in the research community simply because of inertia, I think - it's so much easier to raise funds when you can point to every existing Big Pharma project and say "it'll be like that." This is how incremental, expensive projects that add little value continually suck up the majority of funding in any field.

Udo 13y ago
Can you point me to some research that indicates caloric restriction leading to a higher life expectancy in humans (compared to normal nutrition, not obesity of course)?
- exratione 13y ago
  Here's a starting point to summarize thoughts on that question from some of the better known researchers involved in human studies. http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html "Whether or not CR will extend lifespan in humans is not yet known, but accumulating data indicate that moderate CR with adequate nutrition has a powerful protective effect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and reduces metabolic risk factors associated with cancer." My summary of calorie restriction research is that it (a) produces similar-ish short term changes in metabolism and measures of health in mammals tried so far, and (b) is expected to have much smaller effects on life span in humans than in mice. The present consensus is that 5 years in humans would be on the high end, as I recall. The most interesting thing to resolve with certainty in this subfield is how the short-term measures can be so similar, how the expected reduction of age-related disease in humans can be so large, and yet the life expectancy outcome be so small. Should be interesting, in a post-facto sort of a way, as the time taken to figure that out will place us well into rejuvenation therapy territory, achieved through means that have nothing to do with CR or CR mimetics.

BIair 13y ago

Ironic that Google wants to essentially extend the useful life of workers, given that the average Google employee is 29-30 years old (depending on source). Among the youngest of any industry.

ericd 13y ago
Maybe they'll find a way to delay the onset of decreased neuroplasticity, and make it so old engineers can learn new things as quickly as young ones. At least that's my hope :-)

janameri 13y ago

Immortals? Not quite yet there, but with combining the digital revolution we may live forever.

tokenadult 13y ago

As usual, I prefer reporting by professional journalists to the press-release recycling service ScienceDaily, the source of the link kindly submitted here. On a drive today, I heard a report on this newly published study on National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/08/230175345/delaying-aging-may-have-a-bigger-payoff-than-fighting-diseases http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/08/230175345/delayin... and the strength of that report, brief as it is, is that other researchers were interviewed besides those with the new publication in Health Affairs. The Health Affairs study, at bottom, is an argument for a change in public policy to have more funding of basic research on slowing aging. And maybe that is a good idea. (My bias would be to support that kind of research, as I am a good bit older than most participants on Hacker News.) Whether doing a lot of that kind of research will actually result in safe and effective means to slow aging and thus prolong healthy lifespans is the $7.1 trillion question.

kayoone 13y ago

But isnt one of the biggest problems the overpopulatin of the planet ? So living longer doesnt really make that better.

MarkTee 13y ago
No. Overpopulation is a myth: http://overpopulationisamyth.com/ http://overpopulationisamyth.com/
JabavuAdams 13y ago
Because we'll have the imagination, will, science, and technology to cure aging ... and then we'll just turn that imagination and drive off and live in cages?
- kayoone 13y ago
  It might be unethical to prolong our lives in a way nature didnt intend us to...then again we are already doing that for decades. Im just saying we also should look onto the consequences of something like this.