Lifeboat Foundation

A recent newspaper article under the headline “High street eye test can provide early indication of dementia” highlighted yet another complex connection between the eye and the brain.

This important eye-brain interface is still being researched and many disciplines are now working together to make fresh findings. But while most of us know that regular physical activity and eating healthily can help maintain or improve our well-being, few are aware of the importance of feeding our eyes with the right kind of light. Indeed, not experiencing the right quality and quantity of light could have adverse effects on hormonal changes, sleep patterns and may even be linked to obesity.

NAD+ therapy can supposedly increase your energy, focus, and metabolism, improve your cardiovascular health, and help you detox from alcohol and drugs. All this, of course, sounds incredibly unlikely—so I thought I’d see for myself.

Could this finally help suppress and maybe even eliminate MS, Dystonia, Parkinson and other central nervous system disfunctions?

Last year, a team of Harvard University researchers revealed that they created a wire mesh doctors can inject into the brain to help treat Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases. They already successfully tested it on live mice, but now that technology is ready for the next stage: human testing. The mesh made of gold and polymers is so thin, it can coil inside a syringe’s needle and doesn’t need extensive surgery to insert. Once it’s inside your head, it merges with your brain, since the mesh has spaces where neurons can pass through.

A part of it needs to stick out through a small hole in your skull so it can be connected a computer. That connection is necessary to be able to monitor your brain activity and to deliver targeted electric jolts that can prevent neurons from dying off. By preventing the death of neurons, which triggers spasms and tremors, the device can be used to combat Parkinson’s and similar diseases. Eventually, the wire mesh could come with an implantable power supply and controls, eliminating the need to be linked to a computer.

Continue reading “Brain-fixing injectable wires will soon be tested on humans” »

In mental health research, clinical studies deserve more funding.

Researchers have made the breakthrough of couch potatoes’ dreams with a new drug that mimics some of the most important effects of exercise. Scientists from Deakin University in Melbourne published their findings in Cell Reports earlier this week, showing that overweight mice who were given the drug no longer showed signs of cardiovascular disease.

The first of 50 patients to complete a trial for a new HIV treatment in the UK is showing no signs of the virus in his blood.

The initial signs are very promising, but it’s too soon to say it’s a cure just yet: the HIV may return, doctors warn, and the presence of anti-HIV drugs in the man’s body mean it’s difficult to tell whether traces of the virus are actually gone for good.

That said, the team behind the trial – run by five British universities and the UK’s National Health Service – says we could be on the brink of defeating HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) for real.

Continue reading “A new treatment appears to have erased HIV from a patient’s blood” »

There are two kinds of people in Washington, DC, says entrepreneur Dean Kamen. There are the policy experts, whom he calls cynics. And there are the scientists, whom he deems optimists.

Kamen, speaking at the White House Frontiers Conference at the University of Pittsburgh, places himself in the latter camp. Unlike policy wonks and politicians who see diseases like Alzheimer’s or ALS as unstoppable scourges, Kamen points out that previously terrifying diseases were all toppled by medical innovation. The plague, polio, smallpox — all were civilization-threatening epidemics until experimental scientists discovered new ways to combat them.

If that sounds like the kind of disruption that the tech industry has unleashed across the rest of the world, that’s no accident. Kamen, the founder of DEKA, a medical R&D company, says that the same trends that have empowered our computers and phones and communication networks will soon power a revolution in health care. He says that medical innovation follows a predictable cycle. First we feel powerless before a disease. Then we seek ways of treating it. Then we attempt to cure it.

Continue reading “Engineering a Better Body and the End of Disease” »

In the first controlled clinical trial of nicotinamide riboside (NR), a newly discovered form of Vitamin B3, researchers have shown that the compound is safe for humans and increases levels of a cell metabolite called NAD+ that is critical for cellular energy production and protection against stress and DNA damage.

Levels of NAD+ (first discovered by biochemists in 1906) diminish with age, and it has been suggested that loss of this metabolite may play a role in age-related health decline.

Continue reading “First human clinical trial for nicotinamide riboside” »

Follow along with the Exponential Medicine 2016 livestream, presented by Guidewell. Join Singularity University as we explore the convergence of health and technology to catalyze the future of medicine.

Join us on Twitter @ExponentialMed and with #xmed.

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