Topics of Interest - Fight Aging!

01

Nov

2001

Calorie Restriction Explained

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Calorie restriction (usually abbreviated to CR) is a strategy proven to extend healthy and maximum life span in rodents and primates. Some animal studies conducted over the past 20 years have shown up to a 40% increase in maximum life span. Calorie restriction also provides numerous secondary benefits, such as a greatly lowered risk for most degenerative conditions of aging, and improved measures of general health. In recent years, human studies have demonstrated that these same secondary health benefits are available to you and I, not just to laboratory animals. Many researchers believe that the evidence to date shows the...

01

Nov

2001

The Importance of Activism

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Activism is very important. Persistent and vocal advocacy for a cause directly influences the amount of money flowing into that cause: think of the fight to cure AIDS, cancer research, Alzheimer's research and now healthy life extension. Productively framing, placing and keeping a problem front and center in the mainstream of our culture is hard work, but that education and persuasion unlocks purses far and wide. Government money is usually the least of these resources. Far more funding comes from venture, charitable and corporate concerns. Corporations and venture capitalists see mainstream culture explicitly in terms of needs and markets for...

01

Nov

2003

Stem Cells, Regenerative Medicine, and Tissue Engineering

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Regenerative medicine helps natural healing processes to work faster and better. These technologies and techniques create an environment in which missing or damaged tissue that would not ordinarily regrow in fact regenerates fully. Strategies presently under development include transplants of stem cells, the manipulation of the patient's own stem cells, and the use of scaffold materials that emit biochemical signals to spur stem cells into action. Regenerative therapies have been demonstrated (in trials or the laboratory) to heal broken bones, bad burns, blindness, deafness, heart damage, nerve damage, Parkinson's disease, and a range of other conditions. Work continues to bring...

01

Nov

2003

The Role of Research Prizes

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Historically, prizes awarded for scientific progress have had tremendous beneficial effects on the advancement of science and human progress. Research prizes in other fields are currently proving very beneficial, so perhaps it is time for a prize for aging and healthy life extension research. The Ansari X Prize was perhaps the best known prize of recent years: $10 million was awarded to Burt Rutan's team for safely launching a reusable suborbital spacecraft twice in two weeks. The Ansari X Prize received so much press attention because it worked - more than twenty serious attempts were made to win the prize...

01

Nov

2004

The Healthy Life Extension Community

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The healthy life extension community is discussed and referenced in many Fight Aging! posts. Understanding a new community can be a fairly slow process for newcomers, however - it certainly took me a few years to find my way around and come to some understanding as to how it all fits together. The following chart is intended to be a rough guide to the territory, showing alignments, overlaps, and groups surrounding the healthy life extension community. Overlapping balloons in the visualization indicate areas of common interest and communities that share a sizeable number of members. It is interesting to note...

01

Nov

2001

Cryonics

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Death is not a topic that people like to think about, and that is just as true of healthy life extension advocates as anyone else. We have to recognise, however, that the future of healthy life extension (regenerative medicine, stem cell therapies, understanding the biochemical processes of aging, and nanomedicine, to name a few fields) will not arrive soon enough to benefit everyone. Many people are too old, or suffer from other conditions that will kill them before cures can be developed. This is an unpleasant reality that we must face. Do we just write these people off and forge...

01

Nov

2004

Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence

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The Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, or SENS, is the name given to a research and advocacy program that aims to develop a cure for aging. This will take the form of a package of therapies and biotechnologies capable of repairing the known forms of cellular and molecular damage that accumulate in our bodies with age, and are thus most likely the root causes of aging. This may sound ambitious indeed, but read on: you'll find that the research community is closer to being able to realize this goal than you might imagine. An Introduction to SENS At present the...

01

Nov

2001

What is Anti-Aging?

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Anti-aging can be a difficult topic to address. A war is currently being fought over the meaning of "anti-aging" (as research, medicine, brand, or simply adjective) and thus even mentioning the term is likely to prejudice many readers. We will try to put this all into context while being as neutral as possible. Defining Anti-Aging Like it or not, "anti-aging" now has a number of quite different common meanings and connotations. Each is championed by a particular group or loose coalition of interests, but advocates for these groups have a way of diving into the fray without defining their terms....

01

Nov

2001

Transhumanism and Healthy Life Extension

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You may have noticed references to transhumanism and transhumanists in posts here at Fight Aging! What is transhumanism, and how is it relevant to longevity science and the work of extending the healthy human life span? Read on for a short overview: transhumanism in a nutshell. Transhumanism is a cultural movement and philosophy of action that builds upon humanism, so we should look at humanism first of all. Humanism is an influential, time-honored philosophy that argues for rationality and certain fundamental human rights, freedoms, and responsibilities. Humanist thinkers have for centuries discussed and advocated the existence of humane societies, human...