If we really want to slow our aging we have to understand how we age. This page will be a collection of thoughts about aging in an attempt to harness the ability to control our aging.
"How and why we age" Leonard Hayflick's brilliant book is a good place to start.
One focus Hayflick has is the length of telomeres where telomeres shrink as we age and that these telomeres are counting cell divisions. When the telomeres have frayed down to nothing the cells stop dividing. Hayflick's number is the number of cell divisions permitted per cell.
Is life span determined by the number of divisions? Are the divisions a life "counter" representing the stage of our life?
Circadian clocks and cell division
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047750/
Two clocks: the cell division cycle (CDC) and the daily (circadian) biological clock
The circadian clock is the intertwining of the solar clock with the biological hormone clock so that biological processes occur at the right time and in the right season. (for example spring mating or melatonin triggering our sleep)
Hormone cycles might be determined by number of divisions not just solar. We can see years of hormone cycles.
For girls:
Estrogen burst in teens at 15 causing development (average)
Estrogen burst at 30 in woman (migraines etc) a second cycle
Estrogen at 45 missing and it is the lowest : menopause begins
Estrogen replacement studies
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/estrogen-study-uncovers-role-of-age-in-outcomes/
Breast cancer risk increased but that could be the epstein barr (a herpes virus) using the estrogen receptor. If we remove this virus and we could remove this risk.
Should we instead of estrogen replacement be creating an estrogen burst at the age of 45?
What are the cycles in men?
Melatonin stops being made when testosterone is being produced which causes the sleepless nights of teen boys around 15 years of age.
While women have monthly cycles, men have yearly cycles peaking in the spring and tanking to low testosterone levels in the fall.
Do men have a burst of testosterone at 30? A window of sleepless nights then? Studies show a slowly decreasing testosterone level from the teens on. No obvious burst. Is this correct or is it short like the migraines of women at that age and the daily levels remain the same and decreasing?
Should we assume that men have 15 year hormone bursts too which stop at 45 ? Andropause?
Now that we have looked at hormones and cell cycles what else controls the cell cycle?
How closely tied is the functioning of the mitochondria and cell cycle?
ATP is the energy currency so limiting ATP would slow the process down.
We know that occasional fasting can increase life span in mice
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.extract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466591/
Does high levels of ATP speed division up?
We are suspicious that high sugar intake in children, specifically girls, causes earlier puberties.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26868-do-sugary-drinks-trigger-early-puberty-in-girls/
In plants they are beginning to discover that it is not ATP levels that effect cell cycle rather the sugar itself that interacts with the hormones speeding the cycle up. How this works is still unclear.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667240/
At this point I think limiting our sugar intake and testing our hormone levels, keeping them average or higher, might improve our life span.
Further note that the Co-carcinogenesis hypothesis is supported by the telomere hypothesis in that the virus produces telomere stabilizing proteins that could set the cell up to be immortal...as cancer cells are.
HeLa are the immortal cancer cells take from one woman which have been dividing immortally ignoring Hayflick's number. (currently being used for cancer research)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
"How and why we age" Leonard Hayflick's brilliant book is a good place to start.
One focus Hayflick has is the length of telomeres where telomeres shrink as we age and that these telomeres are counting cell divisions. When the telomeres have frayed down to nothing the cells stop dividing. Hayflick's number is the number of cell divisions permitted per cell.
Is life span determined by the number of divisions? Are the divisions a life "counter" representing the stage of our life?
Circadian clocks and cell division
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047750/
Two clocks: the cell division cycle (CDC) and the daily (circadian) biological clock
The circadian clock is the intertwining of the solar clock with the biological hormone clock so that biological processes occur at the right time and in the right season. (for example spring mating or melatonin triggering our sleep)
Hormone cycles might be determined by number of divisions not just solar. We can see years of hormone cycles.
For girls:
Estrogen burst in teens at 15 causing development (average)
Estrogen burst at 30 in woman (migraines etc) a second cycle
Estrogen at 45 missing and it is the lowest : menopause begins
Estrogen replacement studies
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/estrogen-study-uncovers-role-of-age-in-outcomes/
Breast cancer risk increased but that could be the epstein barr (a herpes virus) using the estrogen receptor. If we remove this virus and we could remove this risk.
Should we instead of estrogen replacement be creating an estrogen burst at the age of 45?
What are the cycles in men?
Melatonin stops being made when testosterone is being produced which causes the sleepless nights of teen boys around 15 years of age.
While women have monthly cycles, men have yearly cycles peaking in the spring and tanking to low testosterone levels in the fall.
Do men have a burst of testosterone at 30? A window of sleepless nights then? Studies show a slowly decreasing testosterone level from the teens on. No obvious burst. Is this correct or is it short like the migraines of women at that age and the daily levels remain the same and decreasing?
Should we assume that men have 15 year hormone bursts too which stop at 45 ? Andropause?
Now that we have looked at hormones and cell cycles what else controls the cell cycle?
How closely tied is the functioning of the mitochondria and cell cycle?
ATP is the energy currency so limiting ATP would slow the process down.
We know that occasional fasting can increase life span in mice
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.extract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466591/
Does high levels of ATP speed division up?
We are suspicious that high sugar intake in children, specifically girls, causes earlier puberties.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26868-do-sugary-drinks-trigger-early-puberty-in-girls/
In plants they are beginning to discover that it is not ATP levels that effect cell cycle rather the sugar itself that interacts with the hormones speeding the cycle up. How this works is still unclear.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667240/
At this point I think limiting our sugar intake and testing our hormone levels, keeping them average or higher, might improve our life span.
Further note that the Co-carcinogenesis hypothesis is supported by the telomere hypothesis in that the virus produces telomere stabilizing proteins that could set the cell up to be immortal...as cancer cells are.
HeLa are the immortal cancer cells take from one woman which have been dividing immortally ignoring Hayflick's number. (currently being used for cancer research)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
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