New study on humans suggests eating less may delay aging

Well you sure don't need to tell our April Smith at Mprize this news. See her blog here: She's been following a youth extending caloric restriction diet for a while already. Many people have for years simply based on results for other mammals. The Mprize gave one of it's first prizes to a study on mice.

Look it's all good no matter what your goal. Less food means less bulk and more energy. This is because like a light weight race car you need less ummph to push it down the road. So less toxic exhaust in the air, equate that to less junk in your cells helping to age you. So go to it people, eat less, eat right to live better and longer!

Study: eating less may delay human aging

Jan. 15, 2006
Courtesy American College of Cardiology and World Science staff

A new study is the first to associate a low-calorie diet with delayed signs of aging in humans, its authors say.

The hearts of people who follow a low-calorie, yet nutritionally balanced, diet resemble those of younger people when examined by sophisticated ultrasound function tests, the study found. They also tend to have more desirable levels of some markers of inflammation and excessive fibrous tissue, it concluded.

The study appears in the Jan. 17 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

“Eating less, if it is a high-quality diet, will improve your health, delay aging, and increase your chance of living a long, healthy and happy life,” said Luigi Fontana of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri and the Italian National Institute of Health in Rome, Italy.

“This is the first report ever to show that calorie restriction with optimal nutrition may delay primary aging in human beings.”

Please see the original article here.

Maybe The Most Exciting Breakthrough Yet! The Magic Mouse

This is so excitng I'm simply hopping! Here we go people! If this get's developed further and in human beings, well it's almost incalculable the number of good things it will do. Imagine losing a limb to an accident and rather than long and painful rehabilitation and then getting fit for a prosthetic device, even the really cool new bionic limbs in development, you instead have your limb regrown!

Oh don't stop there! Got a bad kidney, a liver rotted to the core, panacreas gave you diabetes? Grow new ones! I'll go so far as to hazard a guess that one could grow the new one along side the old -- how else would it work for certain organs after all that you can't live without-- and if so then maybe to catch up on health one could have two of something. That may be wild speculation but so was even considering this just a few years ago. It might be possible to target areas of an organ and therby rejuvenate the old ones like maybe the heart. Sound good? I can't wait for it myself.

The Sunday Times - Britain

August 28, 2005

'Miracle mouse' can grow back lost limbs

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

SCIENTISTS have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail.

The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.

Please visit here for the rest of this excellent article.

I happen to be a quadriplegic and I also just happen to suffer the world's worst case of a very rare bone disease. That disease has totally destroyed my pelvic area, hip joints and heads of my femurs. For that matter both my legs are pretty much shot from this disease. It is called Heterotrophic Ossification where bone material just goes nuts and deposits everywhere randomly but mostly in the joints locking them up solid. My right knee is shot too from it so basically. If there ever is a cure for spinal injury it won't likely immediately help me walk. In fact though I'd want to try it just to get my fingers and hands back and control of certain daily needs, it might actually make the chronic pain I already suffer much worse.

However, maybe one day there'll be a way to regrow all these areas so badly damaged and give me a shot at regaining the life I lost. I can't wait to run pell mell through a field as fast as I can and feel the wind rush past my face once again.

Exciting Yet Cautious Hope For Parkinson's Sufferers

We are beginning to see the very first attempts at gene manipulation therapies for curing dieases. It this therapy for Parkinson's a retro virus, sort of an intelligent nanoscopic pair of scissors, find's it's way into the exact correct spot to alter a gene. Let's hope it works. Parkinson's is an age related disease but can affect the young. Michael Jay Fox is widely known to suffer from the disease.

Gene-Therapy Tried for Parkinson's

BY LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

4 hours ago

WASHINGTON - Mike Castle lay motionless as surgeons drilled two holes into his skull and injected a virus deep into his brain. The virus carries a gene and a tantalizing hope: that just maybe it could stall the Parkinson's disease slowly crippling him.

The Illinois man is among a few dozen patients enrolling in the first attempts at gene therapy for Parkinson's, a milestone in the quest to better treat the degenerative brain disease.

It's a time of mixed excitement and caution: These first three studies are to see if gene therapy is safe to try, not to prove whether it works. Yet studies in monkeys suggest at least one of the approaches has the potential to finally target the underlying disease, not merely tame its symptoms.

"It's this delicate balance between giving (patients) hope but making it clear to them, and to the world, that this is still highly experimental," says Dr. William J. Marks Jr. of the University of California, San Francisco, who is leading the most closely watched approach _ using a nerve growth factor to rescue dying brain cells.

"It's a gamble," agrees Dr. Leo Verhagen of Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, a co-researcher in the project who treated Castle.

"This is the first trial that, if it works, could slow down the disease's progression," he explains.

Yet to stress the experiment's unknowns, he bluntly told Castle, "We are happy if we don't make you worse."

Parkinson's disease gradually destroys brain cells that produce dopamine, a chemical crucial for the cellular communication that controls muscle movement. As dopamine levels drop, symptoms increase: tremors in the arms, legs and face; periodically stiff or frozen limbs; slow movement; impaired balance and coordination. It afflicts about 1.5 million Americans.

Please visit here for the rest of the original article.


Gene therapies remain controversial and may for quite some time. It's partly from misunderstanding the science and partly from personal differences held regarding what is ethical to do in changing genes that could possibly affect future generations. This is not that kind of therapy as I understand it. Hopefully people will reserve judgment until some positive results may be witnessed spread large and wide. Perhaps then people will calm down some and consider the fact that there but for the grace of chance or whatever, they too could need such a radical intervention. It's always easy to pontificate while one is young or healthy and the bad things only happen to others.

Old news is good news and come around again

I've reported in Rejuvenation Engineering News a couple of times before, once for heart attack victims and once for children, about the benefits of cold for preserving the brain and other tissues. It halts damage and increases the span of the "Golden Hour" spoken of for trauma victims that best recover if dealt with promptly within the first hour from injury.

Minn. Hospitals Chill Heart Attack Victims

Wed Jan 4, 10:14 AM ET

MINNEAPOLIS - A handful of Minnesota hospitals are now chilling some heart attack patients in an effort partly to protect their brains, a therapy that has produced results one doctor called "breathtaking."

Take the case of Robert Kempenich, 52, of Little Falls. On Dec. 5, he collapsed at a SuperAmerica store and was rushed to a St. Cloud hospital where he was hooked up to a machine that lowered his body temperature to 92 degrees.

Under normal circumstances, only about 5 percent of patients who collapse after a sudden heart attack survive. Even if emergency workers get the heart started again, the brain damage is often permanent.

Yet two days after Kempenich collapsed he awoke from a coma and gave the "thumbs up" sign. His wife, Mary, was there. The sign meant, "He knows," she said. "He knows what he's doing."

Less than a week later, Kempenich went home from the hospital. He was back at work at the SuperAmerica last week. His doctors say there are no signs of lasting brain damage. (cont.)

It is wonderful to see a good idea spreading across the country. Hopefully soon every hospital will get on the bandwagon and be better prepared for cool measures that save clever brains and their owners. See the rest of the article here.