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SUMMARY:

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In the Sequetus Series, the latter volumes question human longevity.  

Throughout the last three miniseries, there its the struggle of the fast populating short-lifer from Earth, versus the slow breeding long-lived galactic humanity.  Only in the last few volumes of the series do we start to see a solution as to why they are different.

So, is it possible to live hundreds of years with today’s technology?  To answer that, please read on.

What the author found was that mammals have a gene or enzyme and when present inhibits the cellular ageing of the cells, or DNA.   The data on this below is fairly easy to understand, though technical.  There is also another enzyme in the body, that is programmed to be manufactured later in life, and it speeds ageing, inhibits healing, restricts weight loss. It can be curbed however, with other natural products.

We see there are a very few people who age at a speed a quarter of the rest of us. We see some birds living four times the length of others in the same tree. We see even a jelly fish that ages, and before it dies it reverses the ageing and gets younger, and reverses the cycle again. In other words, it is potentially immortal. You have seen how some people age quick, and other fast. You have possible read that in Japan, the oldest nation in the world by age of population, is declining in population, despite the fact that people there live the longest. All these are answered below.

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ANIMALS:

BIRDS

The subject came up in the author’s mind when he noticed age anomalies around him.  For example, in the author’s home country one could find birds of similar sizes all living different ages.  There was the currawong living 13 years; the magpie living 25 years; Australian ravens living 13 years; galahs living about 70 years; parrots 70 years, and the cockatoo living up to 100 years.  The difference was not the size of the bird or their geographical location.  They lived often in the same trees, in the same location.  While the longer living birds (cockatoos, parrots and galahs) were obviously grain eaters, eating meat was not the cause of the difference.  After all, vegetarian humans did not live four times the lifespan of their animal-eating equivalents.  So there had to be other reasons for this age difference.  It was not that little birds lived short lives, and the bigger ones lived longer.  They were more or less similar in size.  If anything, parrots were slightly smaller.

The species itself shows no major reason for length of life.  There are examples of turtles living hundreds of years, while some live shorter times.  Whales are the same.  Some trees can live thousands of years, whereas other trees are short lived.  While most people will not question why, this author wanted to know why did different sub-species live longer than others.  Why do cats live thirteen years, but a same size cockatoo lives a hundred years.  There is no apparent pattern.

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JELLYFISH

The most intriguing in the species of jellyfish known as Turritopsis Nutricula, which was found in the Mediterranean in 1884, but in 1990 found to have immortal qualities.  It has the ability to reverse its ageing and become physically young again.  What was this mechanism?  How does its happen?  Normally the jellyfish, which is only four or five centre meters across, propagates asexually and divides.  But when it is threatened with starvation, something triggers inside of itself and it reverses the ageing process, and its cells go backwards.  There is more to this, but for this page, this is enough.  Other species do not do this, that we know of, so why does it happen?

Some have said that the jellyfish may not be immortal as when it gets older, it seems to get weaker with each cycle, and the entire stock of jellyfish may be weaker, similar to our own chromosomes as we age.  Be this as it may, if there was a mechanism inside a living organism, that allowed itself to be triggered under true right circumstances and then reverse the growth cycle, it behooves us to understand it.

Somehow, if this small creature was able to cheat the cycle of life, which is simply to be able to be born, survive and then die, it is a vital clue to something.  And then, once we understood it, could it be applied to humans, so they could also undertake a rejuvenation of their cells?

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SYNDROME X:

The next anomaly is what some humans have what is termed Syndrome X.  Their bodies age at a quarter of the natural rate. By the time they are twenty, they appear five years old.  By the time they are forty they look as ten.  There seems to be no more than twelve of these cases alive in the world at any one time.

Many seem to fall prey to body part failure. Different body parts age at different rates.  There is little data on the condition.  The cognitive development of the sufferers also seems to develop as slow as the body does.

There are about twelve people at any given time who might have this condition around the world.  They can have complications.  In the case of Brook, from the USA, she developed a brain tumor, but it vanished by the time she work up.

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PITUITARY GLAND

The body part which might be able to explain more is the pituitary gland. It has two areas.  The front gland controls the longevity of the body.  Here is the main clue.  This extremely small pea-sized gland runs the other glands and their hormones.  This gland controls the length of age of the body, and how fast it dies.  It controls the fertility of the body, and it controls the sexual urge to propagate.

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POPULATION – EXPLOSION OR IMPLOSION?

Some people suggest that if the body was to live to 325 years then the population explosion would be so great we would all perish from lack of food and so on.  However the exact opposite is postulated.

Animals which live the longest have the slowest repopulation rates.  We are not living on a planet that is being overpopulated with blue whales, galahs, dolphins, Galapagos turtles, or elephants.  Animal plagues seem to come from the short lived animals, like rodents, rabbits, and insects.  We do not seems to suffer plagues of lions and bears.

The reason for this is postulated as such:  When an animal is threatened with no future, or a  short lived future it will push out hormones to reproduce in abandon, and it will become excessively sexually active.  It will become very fertile.  This is seen much amongst humans in drought stricken areas or where the environment is very harsh.  The country with the worlds longest living people, Japan, has negative population growth, and thus follows the model.

The theory is that when the body sees its own future as long lived, it will cut down on the sexual hormone output and become less sexually driven.  Of course some people will not want this, and would prefer short lives.  Others, would trade their shorter life for a longer life.  Perhaps a long lived person could have several children over perhaps two hundred years instead of twenty years.  In doing so the population pressure on the planet could drop and the environment might get back into balance.

There are texts that indicate that mankind once lived a long life.  There is the obvious reference to Adam, Noah and others of this line living over nine hundred years.  There is Gilgamesh, King of Iraq, who reigned for over a hundred and twenty years and lived obviously longer.

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WHAT GOVERNS BODY AGE?

So what makes up the ageing process?  Can the cells in our body theoretically reproduce perfectly, forever, like that jellyfish? Every human has stem cells and they do not seem to have reproductive limits.  However, the main chromosome cells in the body, can replicate only a dozen or so times, and then death.  There is a difference with the broken cells, which we call cancer.  Cancer cells are no longer whole and they do not die.  They replicate for as long as there is nourishment to feed them, and space to expand into.

Our cells are more or less enclosed and the substance that seems to enable cells to completely regenerate is an enzyme called telomerase.  When a cell is broken this telomerase can totally saturate the cells.  But in normal condition, cells prohibit this enzyme from entering.

The cells have extensions, or caps, on them called telomeres.  These shorten with each replication.  These caps appear to protect the chromosome from deterioration.  As these caps get shorter and shorter the cells show signs of ageing.  As explained some cells do not have this phenomena, such as stem cells.

As the cell caps diminish, we get older, wrinkle, cells are less elastic, cell walls appear thinner and so on.  We become prone to disease.  There are some foods that can slow this phenomena down.  There are nutritional products that help prevent fast ageing.

Longer telomeres are hypothesized to correlate with improved longevity and reduced disease burden.  Several pharmaceutical and biotech companies are developing drugs that target telomeres, and a growing number of botanical nutritional products act as preservers.

There have been fundamentally two schools of thought.  One was to work out a way to shorten the telomeres.  The other was to find out what was shortening the telomeres and address that.

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RESVERATROL AND SIRT 1:

SILENT INFORMATION REGULATOR TWO ORTHOLOG 1 (SIRT1)

Resveratrol is one such natural product of the latter solution.  It was first found in red grape skins, but more recently in Japanese knot wood, beetroot and many deep red vegetable food.  It is claimed by some to activate the SIRT1 ‘longevity gene’, provide rapid cell rejuvenation and offer maximum antioxidant protection.  SIRT1 is a gene in all animals that is used by the body to inhibit ageing.  It less produced less as we get old, and thus we age and die.  SIRT1 is also known as the “skinny gene” as it also causes the body to store fewer fat cells and increases metabolism.  Resveratrol was a natural substance searched for to trigger SIRT1.

An early study was a 2003 paper by Harvard Medical School which showed that resveratrol could boost the lifespan of yeast by about seventy percent.

SIRT1 is now known to be produced when the body experiences calorie restriction such as starvation and fasting.  Another way of turning on SIRT1 is through consuming amounts of resveratrol.

It seems that SIRT1 remains almost dormant in most people.  However, once activated it will rescue cells from ageing.  It also it acts as an antioxidant. SIRT1 protects cells from free radical damage, inhibits inflammatory substances, and lowers tumor necrosis.

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MORE ON TELEMERES:

The protective regions of DNA shorten with repeated cell division, in somatic cells, showing that telomere length is a marker for aging.   Shortened telomeres reach a point where they cannot support the normal division of chromosomes, resulting in cell arrest (cell death) and chromosomal disfunction (sickness).

The enzyme telomerase seems to extend telomeres, and reduce their attrition.  If telomere shortening means aging and disease, and telomerase can sustain or lengthen telomeres, then it can be suggested that intervention into the telomeres and telomerase might be a way to inhibit ageing.

Logic though does not always work with physiology and medicine.  While manipulating telomeres and telomerase may be encouraging, there is likely more.

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TELOMERE MANIPULATION

It might be true that telomeres shorten with age, and that shortened telomeres tend to encourage cell death.  Telomerase reverse transcriptase, or TERT, is an enzyme found that prevents oxidants from reducing the length of the telemeters when they replicate.  It was observed, that stem cells, which have an abundance of TERT almost have no diminishing size of telomeres, and so do not suffer through the ageing process..

The gene that regulates telomerase expression is “silenced” in healthy cells.  Some anti-aging clinicians hold that telomeres can be lengthened, and by logical extension, cellular aging delayed by “switching on” telomerase activity by administration of certain compounds.  Extracts of the herb Astragalus is one example.  This is a Chinese herb that can help with heart problems and stimulates the immune system, and may even be linked to cancer remissions.  Here is the US government site on the herb.  The herb first became popular in the 1980s.

Resveratrol is produced in plants naturally to handle fungus and ultra violet light. It is also found in eucalypt trees.  Remember at the top of this article it was mentioned that several birds live in the same trees in Australia.  The meat eaters lived short lives of 20 years or so, while the vegetable eaters would live up to a hundred years.  Those vegetable eaters would eat the fruit of the eucalyptus trees, and would possibly eat copious amounts of resveratrol, this extending their life spans by 400% over their cousins.

Resveratrol is also found in cocoa beans, and in dark chocolate to some degree.

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WHERE IS THIS GOING?

In the Journal of American Medical Association June 3 1998 is a milestone article: Telomerase and The Ageing Cell – Implications for Human Health.  It states, “Recent research has shown that inserting a gene for the protein component of telomerase into senescent human cells re-extends their telomeres to lengths typical of young cells, and the cells then display all the other identifiable characteristics of you, healthy cells.”

There are products that have been aiming at extending the length of telomeres.  TA 65 is one such of those.  Understand that there is an enormous pharmaceutical market in keeping people from ageing.  We spend more taking care of our bodies in the last ten years than all the preceding years.  If the length of a person’s life was to be multiplied four fold, then obviously the market of the declining years is also opened up to a four fold increase as well.  There is a huge pharmaceutical market opportunity in extending life, and that goes beyond just the products that are anti ageing. But aside from that, those who hold the power to long life also hold the power over life.

Today, genetic manipulation can be patented.  New tree strains, and new plant varieties can be patented.  They will be the ones used by pharmaceutical companies to make patented anti-aging compounds.

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CYCLOASTRAGENOL – TA 65

For a decade companies have focused on shortening telemeters.  They can hold the patents to the products they sell, as distinct to resveratrol, a natural product, which cannot be patented.

One such product is TA 65.  The claims to these new products is that they lengthen telomeres.  The product and claims of TA 65 and its working component cycloastragenol are mired in controversy.  There are claims that the molecule, which comes from the astragalus herb plant makes one more healthy, but maybe does not extend life.  However, astragalus is recognized by some as extending telomeres.

It was noticed in cancer, which is a broken DNA, that the natural enzyme telomerase, was able to get into the cells and the cancer cells did not die.  In 1998 a clinical experiment was done whereby telomerase was forcefully injected into DNA.  Due to the shape of DNA – being encapsulated – the enzyme would otherwise not be able to go inside it.  But once injected into the DNA, the cells replicated with no apparent reduction of shortening of the telomeres.  They replicated many times past their due date of when the cells should otherwise die.

TA 65 is one of those products getting telomerase inside the DNA chromosome.  TA stands for Telomerase Activation.

In 2009 three doctors were awarded the Nobel prize for discovering this.  Their names are Elizabeth Blackburn – Australian, Carol Greider – US, and Jack Szostak.  They also went on to show that the enzyme telomerase actually built the chromosome itself, so that having that enzyme inside and around the chromosome would enable the chromosome to continually rebuild telomeres.

Blackburn’s work goes back to 1989 on the subject.  See nature.com. See the Nobel prize press release.  To see how the telomerase works diagrammatically, see here.

It should be noted that telomerase produced by our bodies gets less as we get older.  There is another regulator making the telomerase less and less as we age.  Thus, these supplements would be a stop gap until the finger holding down the stop button on the telomerase production is found and removed.

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ASTRAGALARUS

Astragalus is a herb.  It is prevalent around the world as a weed.  It is linked to prolonging life through extending telomeres.  It is considered to be the most promising longevity compound after Resveratrol.  Studies indicate that it may have telomere protective properties. It also supports the immune system, and may increase the body’s resistance to common viruses.  It works alongside of resveratrol, but in a different way.

Patton Protocol is another supplement that from the astragalus plant.  A recent study of people taking it showed they had a lower percentage of short telomeres, and they had immune systems up to twenty years younger.

However, not all long-life agents are mutually working together.  Quercetin is linked to suppressing resveratrol action.

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RESVERATROL AND HGH:

SIRT1 affects the pituitary gland in such a way as to inhibit this gland’s production of Human Growth Hormone.  For exact data go the above link by Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich Faculty of Biology.  By directly giving resveratrol was to thus increase SIRT1 and that in turn reduced the secretion of HGH.

Resveretrol has also been found to increase mineralization weight, slow down body weight, improve bone structure as well as extend life spans of mice.

There are two main sources of resveratrol for commercial use in the natural foods industry.  The first is the red grapes and their seeds used in red wine.  This is reportedly amounting to up to 8-15% pure by mass and appears as brown in the capsules.  France is a source, and is obviously where a lot of red wine is produced. along with red grapes.  The next source is in Japan, which is the home to the longest living female population in the world, and home to the oldest person in the world.  The men do not rank so high, and perhaps could be understandable noting their extraordinary heavy drinking and smoking.

Japanese knotweed root is high in resveratrol, and has a significantly higher percentage of resveratrol than the red grape.   While it is reported that the Japanese knotweed root has up to 99% pure resveratrol, the red grape, along with its stems and seeds is much less.

Japan, with its high source of resveratrol is the highest longevity for women, and for decades has had the longest living population in the world.

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Top 10 Countries for Female Life Expectancy

• Japan: 87.0 years
• Spain: 85.1 years
• Switzerland: 85.1 years
• Singapore:  85.1 years
• Italy: 85.0 years
• France: 84.9 years
• Australia: 84.6 years
• Republic of Korea: 84.6 years

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Top 10 Countries for Male Life Expectancy

• Iceland: 81.2 years
• Switzerland: 80.7 years
• Australia: 80.5 years
• Israel: 80.2 years
• Singapore: 80.2 years
• New Zealand: 80.2 years
• Italy: 80.2 years
• Japan: 80.0 years

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It should also be noted that the Japanese are strong eaters of seaweed, which has been found to have anti-obesity compounds such as fucoxanthin, which is also an SIRT1 stimulator.

SIRT1 has no bearing on the fertility of the body, and possibly it enables it to be more fertile.  This would make sense, as the SIRT1 gene appears to be not only stopping again it heals the body.

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VITAMINS AND SIRT 1

There is a new vitamin, called Niagen, and it contains nicotinamide riboside, and it also stimulates the SIRT1 gene, and works against metabolic decease.

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (known as NAD+) is an essential metabolite in all human cells. It plays a key role in cellular metabolism within the “powerhouses of the cell”, the mitochondria.  Mitochondria have long been known to perform important cellular functions related to converting nutrients such as fats, proteins and carbohydrates into energy, but researchers have begun to further study the broader role of mitochondria in protecting against a wide range of adverse health conditions.  However, NAD+, it is claimed, cannot be directly assimilated into the body, even if taken as a supplement.  Thus, the Niagen was developed and had patents pending. Note that Nicotinamide may be toxic to the liver at doses exceeding 3 g/day for adults.

Nicatinic Acid also triggers SIRT1 into action, as it creates the NAD+ needed.  It is the original B3 vitamin.  However, through its depletion in our diets, it now has side affects such as flushing of the skin when used in reasonable doses.  However, it is still valuable as a natural method of creating NAD+ naturally.  But like all things these days, if one experiences any ill affects, consult a physician.  It is fond in brown rice, soy.   A lack of niacin can bring about various illnesses, including depression.

Nicatinic acid, in high doses, has also been shown to treat skin cancer from radiation in laboratories.  It is found naturally in brown rice and other dietary products.

Niacin is found in variety of foods, including liver, chicken, beef, fish, cereal, peanuts, and legumes.  Pharmacological doses of niacin (1.5 – 6 g per day) lead to side effects that can include dermatological conditions such as skin flushing and itching, dry skin, and skin rashes.

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NATURAL AND PREVENTION OF ATHEROSCLEROSIS

Herbal treatment that is anti-inflammatory, anti-cholesterol and stimulant on the immune system may be used alone or in combination with statins and niacin (and anticholesterol supplements e.g. ezetimibe and others) is recommended.

In severe cases of atherosclerosis (arterial diseases) research shows that Vitamin B3 (Niacin, Nicatinic acid) could be beneficial at a high dose viz. 1-3g per day.  It is recommended this is supervised by a professional as there can be side effects.

For preventative purposes to get niacin from natural sources you will find niacin in all meat and poultry and fish, also in liver and kidney; you will also find niacin in brown rice, eggs, cheese and nuts (especially peanuts); niacin is also in soya beans, peas and beans, also in brewers yeast, dried fruit and wheatgerm.  In herbs you will find niacin in alfalfa (medicago), burdock (arctium lappa samen), fenugreek seed, parsley, and watercress.  Eating these foods will help protect your arteries.

Vitamin C also is known to induce SIRT1 and taken in larger doses can be very beneficial.  Vitamin C is an essential nutrient for living organisms to protect itself from oxidative stress.  It shows potent anti-tumor activity through the enhancement of the immune system.  However, again there may be side affects from excessive vitamin C mega doses, as kidney stones are known to source from excess vitamin c.

Vitamin D acts to increase the expression of SIRT1.  While H202 will suppress SIRT1, the introduction of Vitamin D can counter the down affect of H2O2.

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WHAT ARE SURTUINS:

Below are direct quotes of two paragraphs from the following paper called Dietary Activators of Sirt1.  Please review the full paper for more details.

Joanne S. Allard, Ph.D., Evelyn Perez, Ph.D., Sige Zou, Ph.D., and Rafael de Cabo

Evidence has accumulated implicating Sirt1 in the lifespan-extending effects of CR (Calorie Reduction) (Cohen et al. 2004;Leibiger and Berggren 2006).  CR is known for decreasing incidence of age-related disorders, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer (Bordone and Guarente 2005).

Levels of Sirt 6 are increased upon nutrient deprivation in cultured cells. Sirt6, like Sirt1 levels, are also increased in the brain, kidney and heart of mice after a 24hr fasting period.  In addition, mice lacking Sirt6 develop a degenerative disorder that in some respects mimics models of accelerated ageing (Mostoslavsky, et al. 2006).

Sirt7-deficient mice undergo a reduction in mean and maximum lifespan and develop heart hypertrophy and inflammatory cardiomyopathy (Vakhrusheva, et al. 2008).  Sirt7 has also been shown to be an essential regulator of tissue homeostasis in the heart.

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ORGANIC CHEMICALS HELPING LONGEVITY

Polyphenols are the most abundant antioxidants found in food.  They are known to have a protective effect against cardiovascular diseases (Basu and Lucas 2007) and cancers (Bracke, et al. 2008; Kampa, et al. 2007) and there is some evidence of neuroprotective effects (Singh, et al. 2008; West, et al. 2007).  Sinclair and colleagues examined a set of plant polyphenols for their effect on Sirt1 catalytic rate.  These sirtuin-activating compounds (STACs) included butein, piceatannol, fisetin, quercetin and resveratrol.  Butein is a major biologically active component of the stems of Rhus verniciflua Stokes.  It has been shown to have anti-inflammatory (Lee, et al. 2007), blood-pressure-lowering ((Kang, et al. 2003), and anti-cancer effects (Wang, et al. 2005).  Piceatannol is a naturally occurring, hydroxylated analog of resveratrol and has long been used as a food additive and as a herbal medicine throughout Asia (Gerhart-Hines et al. 2007; Wolter, et al. 2002;Yokozawa and Kim 2007).  It has been shown to have anti-cancer properties (Potter, et al. 2002).

Fisetin (a flavoid) is commonly found in strawberries and other fruits and vegetables and has been shown to stimulate signaling pathways that enhance long-term memory (Maher, et al. 2006).

Quercetin (a falavonol) is the active component of many medicinal plants.  Foods rich in quercetin include capers, lovage, apples, tea, onions, citrus fruits, green vegetables and most berries.  Quercetin has been demonstrated to be a significant anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agent (Shaik, et al. 2006) and has been shown to have protective properties against a number of diseases (Knekt, et al. 2002).

Resveratrol was first known for its antioxidant and antifungal properties.  It is found in raspberries, blueberries, grapeskins, peanuts and some pine trees.  Resveratrol has been shown to have a wide range of biological effects, including anti-platelet, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-mutagenic and protection from atherosclerotic disease. Each of these polyphenols was shown to have a stimulatory effect on Sir2 activity in yeast.

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HOW IS RESVERETROL PRODUCED WITH GRAPE VINES?

CQ 10

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