Weight Battle

Lab chain Metropolis Health Services, offering services from the north to the south, has completed two acquisitions in Ahmedabad.

Health 24 reports that an analysis of the data from a large cancer study suggests that exercise helps lower the risk of Parkinson's disease: "The researchers looked at exercise levels and tried to determine if they affected the rate of Parkinson's disease after adjusting the numbers to reflect the possible influence of factors such as age, gender and smoking. People who exercised more than 75 percent of their fellow study participants were 20 percent less likely to develop Parkinson's, compared to those who didn't exercise. The risk of the disease was 40 percent lower in those who took part in the highest levels of moderate to vigorous activity, defined as exercise such as jogging, lap swimming, tennis and bicycling, the study found." This sort of analysis is never as robust as the results of a study specifically designed to produce the data you're after, so treat with caution. We already know that exercise is strongly correlated with resistance to most common age-related conditions, however. It's almost as good as calorie restriction! Even if Parkinson's isn't one of these conditions, that's no reason to skimp on keeping up with the health basics.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.health24.com/news/Brain_Neurological/1-896,40170.asp
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

One logical outgrowth of the quest to control cell state as a part of regenerative medicine is an initiative to control the state of cancerous cells. From EurekAlert!: researchers "discovered that aggressive melanoma cells (but not normal skin cells nor less aggressive melanoma cells) contain specific proteins similar to those found in embryonic stem cells. This groundbreaking work led to the first molecular classification of malignant melanoma and may help to explain how, by becoming more like unspecialized stem cells, the aggressive melanoma cell gained enhanced abilities to migrate, invade and metastasize while virtually undetected by the immune system. ... Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they are able to differentiate into any of the more than 200 cell types in the adult body. Which type of cell they become depends on the signals they receive from their microenvironment. Similarly, during cancer progression, malignant cells receive and release signals from their own microenvironment, cues that promote tumor growth and metastasis. ... scientists can change human metastatic melanoma cells back to normal-like skin cells - by exposing the tumor cells to the embryonic microenvironment of human embryonic stem cells."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-04/nu-rcc042507.php
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

A dose of common sense from calorie restriction (CR) practioner April Smith: "First, no one I know thinks that true immortality is a possibility. There will always be accidents ... However, there are some very reasonable people who believe that it is possible that technology will advance enough to defeat many of the mechanisms that cause aging. If we could repair the damage of aging, then we could dramatically extend life and health. I believe that would be a very good thing. ... Before I got involved in the CR Society, I wasn't aware that these perspectives existed. I was hopeful that CR could help me look forty at fifty-five, or at least help me not feel like total crap at 29, but I didn't even think about radical life-extending biomedicine. ... but there are quite a few who hope that by pursuing vigorous CR, we might live and be in good health at a time when more advanced medical technologies are available to extend healthy life further. For those who dismiss this as childish fantasy, I ask on what basis they make that determination. ... I can attest that I was quite unaware of the real progress that has been made in recent years, and when I found out more, my perspective changed."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.mprize.org/blogs/archives/2007/04/unusual_means_t.html
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

An interesting position paper from Aubrey de Grey via the Annals of the NYAS: "The early days of biogerontology were blessed with an undiluted forthrightness concerning the field's ultimate goals, epitomized by its leaders. Luminaries from Pearl to Comfort to Strehler declared the desirability of eliminating aging with no more diffidence than that with which today's oncologists aver that they seek a cure for cancer. The field's subsequent retreat from this position garnered a modicum of political acceptability and public financial support, but all biogerontologists agree that this fell, and continues to fall, vastly short of the funding that the prospect of even a modest postponement of aging would logically justify. The past 20 years' discoveries of life-extending genetic manipulations in model organisms have weakened the argument that a policy of appeasement of the public's ambivalence about defeating aging is our only option; some of the biogerontologists responsible for these advances have espoused views of which our intellectual forefathers would be proud, without noticeably harming their own careers. With the recent emergence of a detailed, ambitious, but practical roadmap for the comprehensive defeat of aging, this process has moved further: our natural and most persuasive public stance is, more than ever, to reembrace the same unassailable logic that served pioneering biogerontologists perfectly well."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://dx.doi.org/10.1196/annals.1395.046
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/