Lifeboat Foundation

At least in the developed world, cancer, heart diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases are among the greatest causes of mortality. One emerging and very promising way to prevent or cure these diseases is through bio-nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology is the design, synthesis and application of materials or devices that are on the nanometer scale (one billionth of a meter). Due to the small scale of these devices, they can have many beneficial applications, both in industry and medicine. The use of nanodevices in medicine is called nanomedicine. Here, we will look at some applications of nanomedicine in curing or preventing the diseases that are most likely to kill us.

Today we will be taking a look at some of the stories people tell themselves to help them pretend aging is not a problem.

If you ask most people what they think about aging, they will shrug their shoulders and say that it is a natural process. With complete tranquility on their faces, they will agree that, yes, in old age, we are haunted by many diseases, but nothing can be done about it, so it makes no sense to worry about it while you are young and healthy. Just live your life.

Then, the conversation will turn towards an even stranger direction: they will start looking for something good about aging – for example, that it ensures a change of generations, prevents society from becoming stuck in obsolete ideas, and, in general, is the engine of evolution. They’ll explain that the notion of death gives meaning to life and makes us accomplish as much as possible in the little time we have.

Continue reading “Is aging not scary? The children’s tales that are killing us” »

It seems reasonable that people would want to maximize various aspects of life if they were given the opportunity to do so, whether it’s the pleasure they feel, how intelligent they are, or how much personal freedom they have. In actuality, people around the world seem to aspire for more moderate levels of these and other traits, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“Our research shows that people’s sense of perfection is surprisingly modest,” says psychological scientist Matthew J. Hornsey of the University of Queensland, first author on the research. “People wanted to have positive qualities, such as health and happiness, but not to the exclusion of other darker experiences—they wanted about 75% of a good thing.”

Furthermore, people said, on average, that they ideally wanted to live until they were 90 years old, which is only slightly higher than the current average life expectancy. Even when participants imagined that they could take a magic pill guaranteeing eternal youth, their ideal life expectancy increased by only a few decades, to a median of 120 years old. And when people were invited to choose their ideal IQ, the median score was about 130—a score that would classify someone as smart, but not a genius.

Continue reading “Around the world, people have surprisingly modest notions of the ‘ideal’ life” »

Glorious news! Undoing Aging 2019 has been announced today hosted by Forever Healthy and the SENS Research Foundation. We loved being there last year and bringing the community all the news and interviews from the event and we are delighted to see it is making a return in 2019.

We are very pleased to see that there will be a return of the successful Undoing Aging Conference in 2019. We attended the conference earlier this year, and as we reported at the time, it was a really positive experience.

This was, from the outset, a serious conference focused on the rapid science and research going on in the field and was just the kind of conference that the community needed. The conference was a superb mixture of respected researchers, investors, and thought leaders from the community, and it had no hint of the snake oil that has plagued our community in past years.

Continue reading “Undoing Aging 2019 is Confirmed” »

Exciting news smile

Mountain view, california / berlin, germany.

After the incredible success of the 2018 Undoing Aging Conference with 350 participants from 36 countries and over 40 brilliant speakers, SENS Research Foundation (SRF) and Forever Healthy Foundation (FHF) are pleased to announce that Undoing Aging 2019 will take place in Berlin at the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz from March, 28 to 30.

Continue reading “The 2019 Undoing Aging Conference will take place March 28 — 30 in Berlin, Germany” »

Glossing over the fact ageing is a chronic decline in function won’t help with anything, let alone ending ageism.

At times, I think that I have written enough rejuvenation advocacy articles and that every time I write a new one, I’m just repeating myself. I sometimes say to myself that I’ve written about concerns and misconceptions from so many angles that I’ve probably exhausted all the options. However, from time to time, there comes the bittersweet reassurance that I’m not going to be out of a job any time soon.

The culprit

Continue reading “Sugarcoating aging won’t fight ageism” »

Investigators at Harvard Medical School have identified the key cellular mechanisms behind vascular aging and its effects on muscle health, and they have successfully reversed the process in animals.

The scientists used a chemical compound that’s an NAD+ booster called NMN which plays a critical role in repairing cellular DNA as well as maintaining cell vitality to test what would happen.

Could reversing the aging of blood vessels hold the key to restoring youthful vitality? If the old adage “you are as old as your arteries” reigns true then the answer is yes, at least in mice.

Continue reading “Harvard Rewinds the Biological Clock of Time” »

Today, we want to draw your attention to an open-access review that focuses on the role of senescent cells in sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength that leads to frailty.

KANSAS CITY, MO — Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have captured the one cell that is capable of regenerating an entire organism. For over a century, scientists have witnessed the effects of this cellular marvel, which enables creatures such as the planarian flatworm to perform death-defying feats like regrowing a severed head. But until recently, they lacked the tools necessary to target and track this cell, so they could watch it in action and discover its secrets.

Now, by pioneering a technique that combines genomics, single-cell analysis, flow cytometry and imaging, scientists have isolated this amazing regenerative cell – a subtype of the long-studied adult pluripotent stem cell – before it performs its remarkable act. The findings, published in the June 14, 2018, issue of the journal Cell, will likely propel biological studies on highly regenerative organisms like planarians and also inform regenerative medicine efforts for other organisms like humans that have less regenerative capacity.

“This is the first time that an adult pluripotent stem cell has been isolated prospectively,” says Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Ph.D., an investigator at the Stowers Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute and senior author of the study. “Our finding essentially says that this is no longer an abstraction, that there truly is a cellular entity that can restore regenerative capacities to animals that have lost it and that such entity can now be purified alive and studied in detail.”