Ссылки на тему долгожительства/бессмертия/молодости

[Иеро]

SiberianTiger

Хирургия и медикаменты.
Короче, вживление электродов в мозг и непосредственное воздействие на опредлённые его участки.

[SiberianTiger]

Мда, "Эликсир Бессмертия" от Великого Иеро на мышах не протестируешь ...

Ведь именно осознанные (воз)действия изнутри, через психику, не только на мозг действуют ...

[SiberianTiger]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...nintiptopshape

↓↓ аглицкая статья

A Dutch woman who reached 115 years of age and remained mentally sharp throughout life also had a healthy brain when she died, a new study finds.

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The woman's brain showed almost no evidence of Alzheimer's disease. The finding suggests Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia are not inevitable, as had been suspected.


"Our observations suggest that, in contrast to general belief, the limits of human cognitive function may extend far beyond the range that is currently enjoyed by most individuals," said lead researcher Gert Holstege, a neuroscientist at the University Medical Center Groningen, in The Netherlands.


The results are detailed in the August issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.


At age 82, the Dutch woman made arrangements to donate her body to science after death. She contacted Holstege when she reached age 111, worried that her body was too old to be useful for research or teaching purposes. The neuroscientists reassured her that, contrary to her belief, they were particularly interested due to her age.


"She was very enthusiastic about her being important for science," Holstege and his colleagues write in the journal article.


Neurological and psychological examinations were performed when the centenarian was 112 and 113 years old. The results were essentially normal, with no signs of dementia or problems with memory or attention. Her mental performance was above average for adults aged 60 to 75.


When the woman died at age 115, her body was donated to science. Holstege's team found no signs of narrowing of the arteries, called atherosclerosis, and very few brain abnormalities. In fact, the number of brain cells was similar to that expected in healthy people between 60 and 80 years old.


The woman's brain showed little or no evidence of Alzheimer's disease. The neuroscientists found almost no deposits of so-called beta-amyloid, which are characteristic in Alzheimer's brains. The other abnormalities present, including "neurofibrillary tangles," were very mild, and would not have caused significant mental impairment.


Currently, there are more than 80,000 Americans 100 years of age or older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That number is expected to rise to more than 580,000 centenarians by 2040.


A recent study of a man who lived to age 114 found a combination of genes and lifestyle play a role in longevity, though the long-life recipe is far from clear.


As the number of people living to age 100 and beyond continues to increase, the researchers say, deterioration of the brain is not inevitable.

Вкратце - мозг недавно умершей 115-летней голландки практически не содержал следов Альцгеймера (считавшегося раньше неизбежным). Он большей частью напоминал мозг 60-80-летних. Да и атеросклероза у нее не было.

Да и по тестам интеллекта и памяти, проведенным пару лет назад, она была выше среднего уровня людей в интервале от 60 до 75.

[SiberianTiger]

Две статьи:

1) http://news.mail.ru/society/2047311 - показалось интересным упоминание про новые лекарства.

2) http://smi.marketgid.com/news/282#more-282 - привожу по приколу. "Страшилка" для малограмотных личностей ...

[SiberianTiger]

Что-то мне начали попадаться сайты, посвященные идеям бессмертия/нестарения и т.п.:
1) http://c-b-y.ru/ - найдено по рекламной ссылке в Кофейне. Нужно зарегистрироваться, - и они для начала вышлют 5 писем с рекомендациями .

2) Через сайт vkontakte.ru мне прислали группу:
http://vkontakte.ru/club2895664 (когда впервые прислали, там было 6.5 тысячи членов, сегодня - уже 9 тыс).

Их основной сайт: www.starenie.ru - "наука против старения".
Сайт неплохо подготовлен, и его стоит почитать (я еще не все прочитал).

Научные ссылки - на Рея Курзвела, Скулачева, Обри де Грея.

[Лара]

Интересный вариант обретения бессмертия (даже два варианты бессмертных индивидуумов) описан у Айзека Азимова, только вот окончание рассказа очень печальное. Оно нам надо?

[Лара]

На рускоязычном сайте Айзека Азимова http://azimov.h15.ru/stories.htm, я не нашла этого рассказа. В электронной версии сборника "Путь марсиан" тоже.

На тему бессмертия есть рассказ у Сергея Снегова "Сверхцентр бессмертия" http://www.fantlab.ru/work13845

[SiberianTiger]

↓↓ Старение Президентов

The graying of the presidents
Some researchers believe Oval Office stress accelerates aging process
By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | January 4, 2009

Presidents of the United States, it seems, age right before our eyes.

Their faces, creased and drawn, are road maps of wars and natural disasters and economic calamity. Tufts of gray hair bear testament to a job framed by unremitting pressure and unrelenting criticism.

A vibrant Jimmy Carter beamed with optimism when he assumed the post in January 1977. As he departed four years later, he was wan and pinched, the legacy of hostages in Iran and energy shortages at home - a cautionary tale for President-elect Barack Obama.

But is accelerated aging in the Oval Office inevitable?

Almost certainly, say some specialists in aging and politics. The pounding stress of the job can unleash biological forces that translate into wrinkles, gray hair, weight fluctuation - and sometimes even premature death, although there is far from universal agreement on the long-term health effects of the presidency.

Dr. Michael Roizen, who has written extensively on aging, said a formula he helped develop suggests that for every year in office, the average president ages two years.

"It doesn't matter if they're Democrats or Republicans, it doesn't matter if they've been athletes or not beforehand, it doesn't matter if they were smokers or not," said Roizen, chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic. "For eight years in office, they age 16 years."

Roizen's analysis, which examines presidents from Theodore Roosevelt forward, relies on medical documents presidents made available before being elected and details from annual checkups while in office. It includes medical factors such as blood pressure and weight and behaviors such as smoking and exercise.

Using his widely publicized "Real Age" formula, Roizen then calculated each president's risk of death and disability before he was elected and after his term had ended. The results showed a consistent acceleration of aging among presidents, said Roizen, who has sometimes faced criticism from peers for his outspoken views on human aging.

Others measure the health toll of the presidency not in gray hairs and wrinkles, but in life expectancy. In his book "The Mortal Presidency," Northeastern University political scientist Robert E. Gilbert reports that presidents, on average, have shorter life spans than members of Congress or the Supreme Court.

And when he examined the ages at which presidents from Washington to Nixon died, Gilbert concluded that 25 of 36 died earlier than would have been predicted using the sort of life expectancy data that insurance companies rely on.

To reach his findings, Gilbert did not look simply at life expectancy from birth. Instead, he mined actuarial life tables to compute how much longer a man of a given generation could be expected to live assuming he made it to certain milestone ages.

Consider Theodore Roosevelt. It was expected that his contemporaries - men born in the late 1850s - would live to be almost 75 if they had survived childhood scourges and war to make it to at least 60. Roosevelt saw his 60th birthday, but no more. So Gilbert concluded Roosevelt died nearly 15 years prematurely. Woodrow Wilson, he calculated, lived roughly seven years less than actuarial tables would have forecast for someone of his generation.

"To be president, you have a position where you are really the focal point of attention," Gilbert said. "Whereas with a Supreme Court justice, you're one of nine. And if you're a member of Congress, you're one of 535. When justices go to their homes, the reporters don't bother them. If they go to the beach, who would even know them?"

Not all doctors agree that presidents are doomed to an early grave. Just look at the longevity of our most recent batch of past presidents, one specialist said; Carter, especially, continues to hopscotch the world deep into his 80s. Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan substantially outlived their contemporaries.

"It's true that when people have the weight of the world on their shoulders, they may get more wrinkles," said Dr. Leo Cooney, chief of geriatrics at Yale School of Medicine. "But the data that this impacts their health is not there."

History is pocked with nonpresidential examples of intense stress fueling aging and early death - among humans and animals, including gorillas.

Dr. Ken Minaker, chief of the Geriatric Medicine Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, cited the fate of some who survived Nazi occupation during World War II and, after years of privation and fear, experienced higher rates of Alzheimer's disease and premature death.

When humans endure levels of pitched stress, a dangerous cascade of hormones - such as cortisol - begins flowing.

And while younger people can easily reset their hormonal response system once acute stress subsides, older adults don't respond with the same suppleness. In such circumstances, the human body becomes like an engine that is constantly revving.

"It's a good thing that older people can have stress responses, but it's a bad thing that your stress responses stay active for a longer period of time," Minaker said. "It's sort of burning you up."

And all that stress, Minaker said, consumes plenty of fuel, which can cause nutrition and even blood flow to be redirected from relatively unimportant tasks such as producing new hair. As a result, longer-lasting gray hairs proliferate.

Rampaging stress hormones also cause more sugar to spill into the bloodstream, which, in turn, damages blood vessels, paving the way for heart attacks and strokes, said Dr. Michele Bellantoni, a geriatrics specialist at Johns Hopkins University.

"I've seen the stories where you show a photograph of the president at Inauguration Day and then a picture later on, and you see aging and you say, 'Was that person under a sun lamp every day?' " Bellantoni said.

"Well, no. They were under stress."

Dr. Burton Lee witnessed the rigors of the presidency from inside the White House. He served as physician to George H.W. Bush during his entire term in office.

"You can watch presidents age in office," Lee said in a phone interview.

Bush's health, he said, was robust until he was diagnosed with a thyroid condition called Graves' disease. When he recommended at one point that Bush take a vacation, Lee said, he was ridiculed. But, aging specialists said, that's exactly what presidents sometimes need, along with enough sleep and exercise.

The Cleveland Clinic's Roizen said that his analysis of presidential aging - as well as insights he gained in conversations with several former presidents - shows the biggest liability was a lack of real friends. Presidents, he said, tend to become isolated, wary of even their closest advisers.

"It takes about six close friends or social groups where you can let your hair down for you to be able to relieve the stress you have," Roizen said.

The next occupant of the Oval Office has pledged to foreswear one particularly dangerous vice: smoking. And in an interview with the magazine Men's Health, Obama indicated that he plans to stay fit. The small outdoor basketball court at the White House "may need an upgrade," he said.

Still, with two wars and a flagging economy awaiting, there's no guarantee that a commitment to exercise will be enough to keep wrinkles from burrowing or gray hairs from sprouting.

"You take a look at someone going into office and then look at someone coming out of office, and they all look beat up," said Dr. David Reuben, chief of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It is as stressful as it gets."

Некоторые исследователи оценивают старение президентов, и считают, что в этой роли "год за два идет".

Стресс и давление нередко приводят к ускорению старения.
Проблема - еще и в том, что состояние напряжения и стресса не так быстро "отключается" после включения, особенно у пожилых людей.

Гормоны стресса (например, кортизол) приводят к тому, что в кровеносные сосуды попадает больше сахара, повреждая сосуды и приводя к инсультам и инфарктам. Также во время стресса могут отключаться вторичные функции, типа регенерации неседых волос.

Так что президентам периодически нужен полноценный отдых с упражнениями и достаточным количеством сна. Еще один фактор, на который жаловались многие бывшие президенты (в беседах с исследователями), - отсутствие реальных друзей, ощущение одиночества.

[SiberianTiger]

Нервные клетки таки восстанавливаются?

Израильские ученые восстановили мозг, разрушенный героином

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
02.01 22:25 MIGnews.com

Эксперимент, проведенный израильским ученым из Еврейского университета, показал, что благодаря пересадке стволовых клеток можно восстановить мозг, разрушенный героином.

Стволовые клетки были введены в гиппокамп мышат, родившихся от "подсаженных" на наркотик матерей. При этом основную работу выполнили "местные" клетки, которые в результате произведенной трансплантации начали активно делиться, восстанавливая поврежденную структуру мозга.

Нервная ткань плода сильнее других страдает от нездорового образа жизни матери, она более восприимчива к ядам, наркотикам и т.п.

Эксперимент, проведенный Иосифом Янаем и Тамиром Бен-Хуром, показал, что восстановление поврежденных нервных структур возможно, и детей, возможно, удастся избавить от ответственности за ошибки родителей.



http://www.mignews.com/news/health/w...207_33641.html

[SiberianTiger]

Have a Purpose in Life? You Might Live Longer
TUESDAY, June 16 (HealthDay News) -- If you have a purpose in life -- lofty or not -- you'll live longer, a new study shows.

It doesn't seem to matter much what the purpose is, or whether the purpose involves a goal that's ambitious or modest.


"It can be anything -- from wanting to accomplish a goal in life, to achieving something in a volunteer organization, to as little as reading a series of books," said study author Dr. Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center and an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.


"We found that people who reported a greater level of purpose in life were substantially less likely to die over the follow-up period -- only about half as likely to die over the follow-up period -- as compared to people with a lower level of purpose," Boyle said. The follow-up period averaged nearly three years.


Boyle and her colleagues studied 1,238 older adults already participating in two ongoing research studies at Rush, the Rush Memory and Aging Project and the Minority Aging Research Study. The participants were all dementia-free when the study began and averaged 78 years old.


At the start of the study, the participants answered questions about their purpose in life, rating themselves on different areas meant to measure the tendency to derive meaning from life and to feel that one is working toward goals.


The average score on the sense-of-purpose evaluation was 3.7 of a possible 5, Boyle said.


When comparing scores, Boyle found that those with a higher sense of purpose had about half the risk of dying during the follow-up period as did those with a lower sense of purpose. And that was true, she said, even after controlling for such factors as depressive symptoms, chronic medical conditions and disability.


"What this is saying is, if you find purpose in life, if you find your life is meaningful and if you have goal-directed behavior, you are likely to live longer," she said.


Though much other research has found that having a purpose in life is crucial to maintaining psychological wellness and can be important for physical health as well, Boyle said she believes the new study is one of the first large-scale investigations to examine the link between life purpose and longevity.


The finding follows another recent study, done by others, in which the researchers found that retirees older than 65 who volunteered had less than half the risk of dying during about a four-year follow-up period as did their peers who did not volunteer their time.


What's the link? Boyle can't say for sure. But it could be that having a greater sense of purpose helps multiple systems of the body function better, conferring protection in the face of illness.


The findings make sense to Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He said he often sees the effects of not having a purpose among older patients. "I see a number of people who have lost that purpose," he said. "Their health declines."


Still, he said, ''it's not clear there is cause and effect" between a sense of purpose and longevity. Perhaps the longevity could be explained by another variable the researchers did not examine, he said.


Boyle said that in future research they hope to find out if people can be inspired to have purpose in life, perhaps by being taught to set goals and work toward them.



Если у вас есть смысл жить, - проживете дольше.
Брали пожилых людей (в одном исследовании - около 65, в другом, - со средним возрастом 78 лет).

Определяли коэффициент наличия смысла жизни, и потом наблюдали их в течение нескольких лет. Вероятность смерти была в два раза ниже у тех, у кого смысл был.