Author Archives: admin
The Birth of Applied Gerontology
Gerontology, the study of aging, has long seemed a field of basic research that’s only tangentially related to the nitty-gritty world of geriatrics, the medical specialty devoted to ills of the elderly. But as gerontologists have delved deeper into the molecular roots of aging, they’ve increasingly found themselves shedding light on what gives rise to [...]
Posted in Cancer and aging, Diet and aging, Osteoporosis and aging Comments closed
Yet another twist on sirtuins—with leaping ant queens
It’s not often that 33 scientists jointly pen a public complaint that an article in Science got things wrong. But in this week’s issue of Science nearly three dozen researchers working on sirtuins, the enzymes thought by many scientists to help induce the health- and longevity-promoting effects of calorie restriction (CR), complain in a letter [...]
Posted in David Sinclair, Resveratrol, Sirtuins Tagged aging, Resveratrol, Sinclair, SIRT1, Sirtris, Sirtuins Comments closed
Two new twists on resveratrol
A couple of significant developments in the resveratrol story occurred this week, but so far the media has focused only on the less important one of the two. I’ll get to the truly important news in a moment. First, here’s the story that hit the wires yesterday: The Healthy Lifespan Institute, a nonprofit cofounded by [...]
Posted in David Sinclair, Resveratrol, Sirtuins Tagged aging, GlaxoSmithKline, lifespan, Pfizer, Resveratrol, Sinclair, SIRT1, Sirtris, Sirtuins, Westphal Comments closed
On resveratrol and the beautiful mindset of Michael Faraday — Part 2
If I’m conversant with apparently sound research that conflicts with the Sinclair/Sirtris take on resveratrol and sirtuins, you might ask, why haven’t I joined the skeptics who dismiss that take as a house of cards? It’s simple: There are a lot more studies—including a number of compelling in vivo experiments by researchers with no ties [...]
Posted in David Sinclair, Resveratrol, Sirtuins Tagged aging, Pfizer, Resveratrol, Sinclair, SIRT1, Sirtris, Sirtuins Comments closed
On resveratrol and the beautiful mindset of Michael Faraday — Part 1
In recent months, life-science blogs and journals have pulsated with negative vibes about resveratrol, the red-wine ingredient reported to show anti-aging effects in various animal species. The bad vibes have also been directed at sirtuins, the enzymes thought to mediate resveratrol’s benefits and at David Sinclair, the Harvard scientist who first reported that resveratrol can [...]
Posted in David Sinclair, Resveratrol, Sirtuins Tagged aging, Pfizer, Resveratrol, Sinclair, SIRT1, Sirtris, Sirtuins Comments closed
Of meat, aging and the backyard grill
Is eating red meat hazardous to your health? If you’ve tracked recent conflicting studies on this question, you might think nutrition researchers have nothing intelligible to say about it. But before throwing up your hands, consider some light that aging science has shed on the question. First, the contradictory findings: In March, a major report [...]
Posted in Diet and aging Comments closed
And They Lived Pretty Happily Ever After
The sages of yore have generally held that later life is a time of miserable decline. “How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete,” lamented the Roman poet Juvenal. After youth’s ripening, “we rot and rot,” Shakespeare famously wrote. The almost laughably gloomy Schopenhauer added that “as we [...]
Posted in Happiness and Aging Comments closed
Will Anti-Aging Drugs Compress Morbidity? – Part 2
In 1980, Stanford University professor James Fries proposed a radical idea: Despite the rising prevalence of chronic diseases of aging as people live longer, he argued, the period of disabling disease typically experienced toward the end of life would get shorter. Now an emeritus professor, Fries reached this startling conclusion based on the idea that [...]
Posted in Compression of Morbidity Comments closed
Will Anti-Aging Drugs Compress Morbidity? – Part 1
When I tell people about progress toward developing anti-aging drugs, they often come back at me with what I think of as the Struldbrugg question: “Won’t such drugs make lots of old people endlessly linger in a physically incapacitated or, worse, demented state?” (The Struldbruggs were a group of immortals in Gulliver’s Travels who aged [...]
Posted in Compression of Morbidity Comments closed
One for the Record Book