A Manhattan Project to “Cure” Aging

On June 24^th and 25^th, 2000, Maximum Life Foundation sponsored its first international anti-aging scientific conference in Manhattan Beach, California.

 

Its purpose was to brainstorm ideas that could lead to breakthroughs in extreme life extension medicine. It held conferences the next two years and worked with the dozen participants and other scientists since to develop a scientific roadmap to reverse the aging process. This all-out assault on aging was dubbed the “Manhattan Beach Project”.

 

We now know what needs to be developed to deliver open-ended youth to you and to your loved ones. And we know how to eventually rescue many of the 100,000 people who die every day from aging. We even have an idea as to what it will cost and about how long it might take once we raise the funds.

 

On November 13^th-15^th, we are going to launch the Manhattan Beach Project.

 

The Project will marshal the best forces of the capitalistic system to not only conquer aging, but it will also lead to full age-reversal. That means, transforming the elderly into twenty-something versions of themselves.

 

Recent breakthroughs tell us this is real—we will reverse the aging process, and researchers have proven the concept with several new scientific approaches.

 

Radically increased lifespans depend mostly on how soon real anti-aging medicine is developed and commercialized.

 

Fourteen of the leading life extension scientists will meet in Manhattan Beach to put the finishing touches on the scientific roadmap to conquer aging. It will not only showcase all the various technologies that need to be developed, but we will fine tune real timelines and real budgets to do it, mostly within the private sector.

 

But that’s just the beginning.

 

The last day of the session will be closed to all except the movers and the shakers of the world.

 

At that private session, successful entrepreneurs; business management experts; ultra wealthy individuals; publicists; marketing gurus; prominent members of the entertainment industry, including athletes; venture capitalists; money managers; politicians and industry leaders will participate in a Longevity Summit master mind session to successfully launch what promises to be one of the most influential events in medical history. We already have a good lineup and are looking for more fabulously successful creative participants. Please let me know right away if you have any candidates. Send an email to info@maxlife.org with your recommendations.

 

I can prove to them that the last nine years of research have shown we are on the verge of either being part of the last generation to suffer and die from aging… or part of the first to enjoy open-ended youth and vitality.

 

Launching this project will mean tomorrow’s age-reversing medical miracles could mature in your lifetime.

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LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES

 

THE END OF AGING: AN EVENING WITH AUBREY DE GREY (August 21 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4345

Here is something for those of you who will be in the New York area this time next month: “The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is co-sponsoring a program on ending aging with gerontology researcher Aubrey de Grey and the New York Academy of Sciences, on the evening of Tuesday, September 22nd in New York City. Could it be possible for humans to live hundreds of years in the very near future? Is aging a curable disease? Iconoclast Aubrey de Grey predicts it’s only a matter of decades before regenerative medicine extends human life expectancy indefinitely. This event is one of five events in the 2009 Provocative Thinkers Series presented by Science & the City, a program of the New York Academy of Sciences. Cosponsored by the Singularity Institute.” A large number of de Grey’s past presentations to groups large and small can be found at YouTube – you might want to take a look.

 

NOTE; Aubrey will be one of our key presenters at the November conference.

 

TRENDS IN MINIATURIZATION OF FUNCTIONAL ORGAN REPLACEMENTS (August 21 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4344

A dialysis machine, intended to replace the function of damaged kidneys, might weigh 55kg. Researchers now have that down to 5kg in a wearable form, a machine which does a better job to boot. Looking ahead, we’d expect even more effective implants or bracelets worn over surface veins in the 2020s – essentially viable artificial replacements for the function of an organ. This is an important trend to watch, as I believe it will ultimately contribute to enhanced longevity just as greatly as regenerative medicine: “Our vision of a technological breakthrough has materialized in the form of a Wearable Artificial Kidney, which provides continuous dialysis 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The device – essentially a miniaturized dialysis machine, worn as a belt – weighs about 10 pounds and is powered by two nine-volt batteries. Because patients don’t need to be hooked up to a full-size dialysis machine, they are free to walk, work, or sleep while undergoing continuous, gentle dialysis that more closely approximates normal kidney function. We believe that the Wearable Artificial Kidney will not only reduce the mortality and misery of dialysis patients, but will also result in significant reduction in the cost of providing viable health care.”

 

CATALASE IN THE MITOCHONDRIA VIA VIRUS (August 20 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4343

Mitochondrially-targeted antioxidants – such as catalase – have been shown to extend life span in mice. Here is a method of using catalase that employs a viral vector: “Earlier studies have found that mice would live longer when their genome was altered to carry a gene known as mitochondria-targeted catalase gene, or MCAT. However, such approaches would not be applicable to human. Duan and Dejia Li [took] a different approach and placed the MCAT gene inside a benign virus and injected the virus into the mice. Once injected, Duan and Li tested the mice and found that they could run farther, faster and longer than mice of the same age and sex. Duan attributes this performance enhancement to the MCAT and believes the gene is responsible for removing toxic substances, known as free radicals, from the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. By using this specific gene therapy vector, the virus, to introduce the longevity gene, Duan and Li opened the possibility of human treatment. Our results suggest similar therapy may one day improve the life quality of the elderly. This could have important implications for many diseases, such as muscular dystrophy, heart disease, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. These patients typically have too many toxic free radicals in their cells.”

 

LIKE CLOCKWORK (August 20 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4342

Mainstream press articles on increasing life expectancy arrive on a schedule like clockwork: “U.S. life expectancy has risen to a new high, now standing at nearly 78 years. The increase is due mainly to falling death rates in almost all the leading causes of death. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006. Life expectancy is the period a child born in

2007 is expected to live, assuming mortality trends stay constant. U.S. life expectancy has grown nearly one and a half years in the past decade, and is now at an all-time-high. Japan has the longest life expectancy – 83 years for children born in 2007, according to the World Health Organization. The CDC report found that the number of deaths and the overall death rate dropped from 2006 – to about 760 deaths per 100,000 people from about 776. The death rate has been falling for eight straight years, and is half of what it was 60 years ago. Heart disease and cancer together are the cause of nearly half of U.S. fatalities. The death rate from heart disease dropped nearly 5 percent in 2007, and the cancer death rate fell nearly 2 percent, according to the report.” Life expectancy is a statistical construct that looks back into the past to measure trends; it doesn’t actually have anything to say about how long people born today are likely to live. This, after all, is an era of great change and progress in biotechnology.

 

SUPERLONGEVITY, SUPERINTELLIGENCE, SUPERABUNDANCE (August 19 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4341

From Accelerating Future, thoughts on goals: “Superlongevity, superintelligence, and superabundance are a perfect summary of what we want and need. How can we achieve them? Superlongevity can be achieved by uncovering the underlying mechanisms of aging and counteracting them at the molecular level faster than they can cause damage. Huge research project, a long-term effort, but definitely worth the time and money. Leading organization in this area? The SENS Foundation. Superintelligence will be a difficult challenge, creating an intelligent being smarter than humans in every domain. It could take decades, or possibly longer, but it does seem possible. Superabundance can be achieved by creating programmable self-replicating machines powered and supplied by easily available resources and materials. Achieving superlongevity, superintelligence, and superabundance will be incredibly challenging, but seemingly inevitable as long as civilization continues to progress. There is no guarantee that we will achieve these goals in our lifetime – but why not try? Achieving any of these milestones would radically improve quality of life for everyone on Earth. The first step to making technological advancements available to everyone is to make them available for someone.”

 

SEEKING AN APPLICATION OF KLOTHO (August 19 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4340

Researchers are looking for ways to apply knowledge of the longevity gene klotho for medical benefit: “A newly-discovered anti-aging gene could be manipulated to stop or even prevent high blood pressure, a leading contributor to early death. Persistent high blood pressure, also called hypertension, can lead to stroke, heart attacks and kidney failure. About one-third of Americans struggles with the condition. An anti-aging gene called klotho decreases as humans age while hypertension tends to increase. Increasing the expression or output of the gene in lab animals reduced blood pressure and reversed kidney damage from hypertension. Sun said testing on humans is the next step, and it would be years before a therapy could be sold. All of us will be and should be extremely hopeful this can occur. It’s possible the therapy could protect other organs – such as the brain and eyes – from conditions related to aging.” This is all pretty speculative beyond the fact of the animal study results – and for most people lifestyle conditions like hypertension are very avoidable. Lead a fat, sedentary life, and don’t be surprised when your body starts to fail more rapidly than those who kept fit or practiced calorie restriction.

 

GROWING NEW CORONARY ARTERIES (August 18 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4339

Scientists continue to experiment successfully with the use of stem cells to engineer regeneration: “researchers have identified stem cells that are able to grow new coronary arteries, a finding that could lead to new ways to treat atherosclerosis. We have defined this novel class of primitive cells and named them coronary vascular progenitor cells [CVPCs]. These cells possess all of the fundamental properties of stem cells and are distributed within niches located in the vessel wall of the entire human coronary circulation system. To test the activity of these cells, the scientists created a blockage in a coronary artery in dogs and injected human CVPCs in the blocked artery. After one month, the dogs showed improvements in blood flow and heart functioning. The researchers found that the dogs had grown large, intermediate and small human coronary arteries. The findings suggest that the human heart contains a reservoir of CVPCs that can be used to create a biological bypass in patients with chronic coronary artery disease and ischemic cardiomyopathy, which results when arteries that supply blood and oxygen to the heart are blocked.”

 

A VIEW OF LONGEVITY SCIENCE FROM THE MAINSTREAM (August 18 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4338

To the man in the street and mainstream journalism, medical science is nothing more than drug development – an unfortunate and blinkered viewpoint. Here is that viewpoint turned to regard research into metabolic manipulation to slow aging: “It may be the ultimate free lunch – how to reap all the advantages of a calorically restricted diet, including freedom from disease and an extended healthy life span, without eating one fewer calorie. Just take a drug that tricks the body into thinking it’s on such a diet. It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. Yet such drugs are now in clinical trials. Even if they should fail, as most candidate drugs do, their development represents a new optimism among research biologists that aging is not immutable, that the body has resources that can be mobilized into resisting disease and averting the adversities of old age. This optimism, however, is not fully shared. Evolutionary biologists, the experts on the theory of aging, have strong reasons to suppose that human life span cannot be altered in any quick and easy way. But they have been confounded by experiments with small laboratory animals, like roundworms, fruit flies and mice. In all these species, the change of single genes has brought noticeable increases in life span.”

 

FOR THOSE WHO WANTED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT GENESCIENT (August 17 2009)

http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4336

I notice that Genescient’s newly relaunched website is up and running, and provides much more information as to what the company is up to: “Our focus is to extend healthy human lifespan by using advanced genomics to develop therapeutic substances that attack the diseases of aging.  We are the first company founded to exploit artificial selection of animal models for longevity. Our extremely long-lived animal models (Drosophila melanogaster) have been developed over 700 generations. They are an ideal system for the study of aging and age-related disease because Drosophila metabolic genetic pathways that are highly conserved in humans. Our sophisticated analysis cross-links gene function in Drosophila with their human orthologs, thus revealing the targets for therapeutic substance development.  To date we have discovered over 100 of these genomic targets, all related to the primary diseases of aging. This large library of targets, enables Genescient to effectively select and test therapeutic drug candidates.  To date, Genescient’s ‘proof-of-concept’ testing program has yielded a number of very promising therapeutic substances.”

 

NOTE: Genescient and their underlying science will be represented at the November conference as well.

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DISCLAIMER:  News summaries are reported by third parties, and there is no guarantee of accuracy. This newsletter is not meant to substitute for your personal due diligence and is not to be taken as medical advice. For originating report, please see www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/.

 

David A. Kekich

Maximum Life Foundation

www.MaxLife.org

 

“Where Biotech, Infotech and Nanotech

     Meet to Reverse Aging by 2029″

Your Perfect Cure Is Prevention

A very close friend of mine’s father seems to have lost his will to live. Here is an aging former soldier of fortune who once had a zest for life experienced by few. Now, he lost interest in eating, in seeing a doctor and seemingly everything else, including his will to live.

This bothers me for a couple of reasons. First, someone close to me may lose her dad. And on a larger scale, didn’t I say most people go to the ends of the earth to hang on to life towards the end? Well, apparently not all. Why is this?

Several months ago, I had a relevant conversation with another close friend about how some people cling to life at the end no matter how much suffering and pain they endure, while others simply throw in the towel. We concluded it may have something to do with declining hormone levels. So I gave my anti-aging physician a call a few days ago to discuss this possibility. His response was that yes, declining hormone levels lead to depression, which usually translates to loss of appetite, and of course, a diminished will to live. He routinely reverses this phenomena with closely monitored hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Could declining hormone levels be evolution’s way to nudge us into going quietly into the night? Could savvy docs reverse deteriorating attitudes and improve and extend millions of lives with simple HRT?

I think the answer is a resounding YES!

Saturday, I enjoyed a wonderful lunch get together with one of the most esteemed psychologists and authors in history. In fact, he has been one of my personal heroes for about 40 years. He’s now experiencing moments of forgetfulness which he calls his “senior moments”. The difference between him and my friend’s father is he is attacking his challenge head on, while maintaining his witty sense of humor. He’s getting sophisticated diagnostics, will undergo cutting edge treatment and is determined to reverse it.

And reverse it he will, according to a medical consultant who specializes in neurodegenerative conditions.

The moral to this story is, don’t wait until you see serious decline to see an anti-aging specialist. In fact, see one before you experience any decline – period. After all, once you see signs of a condition or disease, it may be too late. Heart disease and cancer are two good examples. They eat away at you for years before you show symptoms. And one symptom from heart disease is often sudden death.

Your perfect cure is prevention.
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THREE DECADES FROM NOW

Under the present weight of regulation, it looks to take about 30 years for a new medical technology to progress from first proof of concept through to widespread and cost-effective availability – for those that aren’t buried young by the cost of red tape, that is. Compare that with something more like 20 years in less regulated industries. That difference adds up. But what can we expect to see in the 2030s, based on what has taken place in laboratories and trials in the past few years?

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/001537.php

• “Replacement organs will be grown to order from your own cells.
• Stem cells will be created, manipulated, and transplanted to direct extraordinary regeneration.
• Age-damaged immune systems will be wiped clean and replaced afresh.
• Gene therapy will be a mature technology, and genetic disorders curable.
• Everyone will know their DNA sequence, and have access to a vast database of knowledge that describes risks, therapies, and best practices.
• Cancer will be detected early, and even late-stage metastasis cured with few side-effects by nanoparticle-based, viral, or other therapies.
• The important mitochondrial DNA will be replaced when damaged by disease or age.
• Many of the biochemical processes underlying the benefits of exercise, calorie restriction, and known human longevity-associated genes will be reproduced by cheap drugs.”

 

ON STEM CELLS AND AGING

While perusing PubMed Central, Reason discovered a good overview of present thinking on stem cells, stem cell niches, and their role in aging:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/001536.php

“If many adult tissues and organs are continuously replenished by cells derived from stem cells, then why do they show signs of aging? One possibility is that stem cells themselves age and senesce, resulting in a decreased ability to replace worn-out progeny and/or the fact that they pass on aged phenotypes to their progeny.

NOTE: Pending modest funding, a stem cell company will soon be launched that could solve this problem within a couple of years.

Somewhere at the end of this road of investigation lies the means to keep stem cell populations vital while not exaggerating the risk of cancer due to runaway failure in a stem cell – the most likely reason we have evolved mechanisms that diminish stem cell activity in response to age-related biochemical damage. At some point, the large and well-funded field of regenerative medicine is going to turn its attention to repairing the damage of aging. Many major lines of research presently address age-related disease, and it is becoming clear that the effectiveness of therapies is hindered by age-related damage in stem cells and their niches. We should encourage research in this direction.

Artificial General Intelligence

I wish you could have been with me Wednesday evening. I was treated to a personal demonstration of a technology that could change the world in ways we can’t even imagine. One of the changes that will affect you could lock in full age reversal and open-ended youth and health ahead of even my ambitious schedule.

The technology I’m describing is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

AGI is a new kind of computer application. This technology will allow computers to learn, think and respond like humans. They will exhibit REAL intelligence. Such intelligent systems do not exist yet – however, the required knowledge to build them does, and it has already led to an embryonic prototype. That’s what I experienced Wednesday.

AGI makes up one part of the MaxLife plan to accelerate extreme life extension capabilities. Research aims to create this broad human-like intelligence, rather than narrowly “smart” systems that can operate only as tools for human operators in well-defined domains such as tracking inventory or landing airplanes.

Imagine machine intelligence with the ability to think and learn on its own as well as humans do. That’s in our future. For example, if it gets an education equivalent to a biotech researcher, it could do the research. The developers estimate a sophisticated working system could take less than 10 years to complete. Two years later, we could potentially have a fully-trained PhD-equivalent AGI doing research.

Imagine a PhD lab assistantwhich would have total recall and tirelessly work around the clock. It would be able to download all the data it needs from the Internet almost instantaneously. It could collaborate with humans and other AGI. And then, it could be quickly copied as many times as necessary.

Imagine unleashing 100,000 AGI researchers. Imagine how much faster they would develop real anti-aging therapies.

So keep posted and hang on for a long ride Methuselah.
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$1 BILLION ALREADY INVESTED IN SOMETHING YOU CAN DO FOR FREE

“Two pilot studies were undertaken to examine the effects of alternate day fasting and calorie restriction on indicators of health and longevity in humans. In this study, we used sera collected from those studies to culture human cells and assessed the effects on growth, stress resistance and gene expression. Cells cultured in serum collected at the end of the dieting period were compared to cells cultured in serum collected at baseline (before the dieting period). This resulted in increased stress resistance and an up-regulation of genes proposed to be indicators of increased longevity.”

As of late 2008, I’d guesstimate that something in the order of one to two billion dollars have been invested into developing drugs that will produce some fraction of the effects of calorie restriction on mammalian biochemistry – such as increasing the expression of Sirt1. They aren’t done yet, and years of trials and further development lie ahead. Most people can get these benefits today and for free, however, by simply eating a less calorie-packed diet. You should look into it: calorie restriction isn’t anywhere near as hard as those who have never tried it make it out to be. You can find an introduction at the Longevity Meme website:

http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/calorie_restriction.cfm

TRY NOT TO STAB YOURSELF REPEATEDLY

Words of wisdom:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/001572.php

“On March 19, 2008 a Symposium on Pathophysiology of Aging and Age-Related diseases was held in Palermo, Italy. Here, the lecture of V. Nicita-Mauro on Smoking, health and ageing is summarized. Smoking represents an important ageing accelerator, both directly by triggering inflammatory responses, and indirectly by favoring the occurrence of several diseases where smoking is a recognized risk factor. Hence, non-smokers can delay the appearance of diseases and of ageing process, so attaining longevity.

“Forms of slow self-destruction are many and varied amongst us humans: Smoking, not practicing calorie restriction, failing to keep up a good relationship with a physician, piling on the visceral fat, failing to exercise, and so forth. The vast majority of people are quite comfortable engaging in habits that cause great harm to the old person they will one day be – cutting off years or even decades of health. This is all a good example of time preference at work: we are hardwired to deeply discount the value of the future, even when it’s our own future. What we don’t value, we squander – you can see that maxim in action everywhere

Stay Happy and Save Your LIfe

 know a life extensionist who is facing more challenges now than most people face in a lifetime. Yet he remains upbeat and optimistic. I know a person who is not interested in extreme life extension who is crushed by a disruptive, but temporary challenge, which has sunk him into a deep state of depression.

About 90% of the members of the life extension community who I know would fit more in the first profile. They seem to function well in the face of adversity, bounce back from setbacks and are overall, healthier than average.

I find that the majority of people with no interest in extreme life extension tend to react more negatively to challenges, and also tend to be less healthy.

Then I came across an article by Paul J. Rosch, M.D. It illustrated how optimistic people live longer. Here are some excerpts:

Numerous studies support the belief that people with an upbeat and positive perspective tend to be healthier and enjoy longer lives than those who are gloomy and cynical about the future. Always expecting the worst was linked to a 25 percent higher risk of dying before age 65 in a very long-term California study. In another report on senior citizens, researchers rated 1,000 Dutch men and women aged 65-85 with respect to their degree of optimism, health and longevity. Over the next 10 years, participants classified as being very optimistic had 55 percent fewer deaths from all causes and 23 percent less heart-related deaths than highly pessimistic controls.

So Stay Happy and Save Your Life

The article cites study-after-study proving optimism extends your life. For example, Harvard researchers found cardioprotective effects when they followed 1,306 men who had been rated for optimism and pessimism in 1986. During the next 10 years, men reporting high levels of optimism had almost half the risk of suffering any coronary complications compared to peers classified as being very pessimistic.

Optimists and happy people may also be less likely to suffer a stroke according to a University of Texas study of 2,478 senior citizens. Researchers confirmed that increasing depression ratings were associated with a significantly higher incidence of stroke.

Similar rewards were reported in a study of 600 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town in 1975. Researchers found that optimists who viewed aging as a positive experience lived about 7.5 years longer than participants with a much darker perspective. One might argue that people in poorer health would be more apt to have negative responses and also be more likely to die over the next 23 years.

However, even when health, socioeconomic status, overall morale, loneliness, race, sex, and other possible confounding factors were taken into account, a positive view of aging was still highly correlated with significantly increased longevity. Indeed, this advantage was far greater than that afforded by lowering blood pressure or reducing cholesterol, each of which was found to lengthen life about four years.

In a Mayo Clinic study, optimists:

• Had fewer limitations due to physical health.
• Had less pain.
• Felt more energetic most of the time.
• Felt more peaceful and happy most of the time.
• Had fewer problems with work or other daily activities as a result of their emotional state.

 

If you’d like to see the whole article, go to:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2005/09/03/why-do-happy-people-and-optimists-live-longer.aspx

Over and over, I see evidence of how attitude contributes to health and longevity. If you look for the correlation, you’ll find it too. But more importantly, look within.
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TELOMERE LENGTH: HEALTH OR AGING?

Telomeres are protective caps on your chromosomes that shorten with both aging and ill health. What is cause and what is effect?

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/001566.php

“There are hints that shortened telomeres might be caused by damage to mitochondria, which is in turn a known root cause of many aspects of degenerative aging. In a recently published study, researchers found that telomere length in the oldest humans is still strongly correlated with health – suggesting that perhaps aging is not the primary correlation.

“This makes more sense if you think of aging as less of a process and more of an accumulation of biochemical damage. Telomere length seems to be a marker for your personal level of damage, possibly by virtue of its connections to one or more of the primary modes of damage. Many questions remain, however, as to where exactly it fits in the grand scheme of cause and effect.”

Whac-A-Mole

Did you ever play Whac-A-Mole?

You know, that’s the game where “moles” keep popping up through holes in a board, and the purpose is to whack them on the head with a mallet as fast as you can. The only problem is, no sooner do you whack one, that another pops up from another hole. You can work yourself into a frenzy trying to keep up.

This really ages me, but Whac-A-Mole reminds me of a famous skit from the I Love Lucy show. It must have been televised about 50 years ago. Lucy (Lucille Ball) was working on an assembly line in a candy factory. She was standing behind a conveyor belt, and her job was to package the individual pieces of chocolate as they were delivered to her station.

The only problem was, no matter how fast she put them in boxes, they would come a little faster. Pretty soon, she started popping some in her mouth to keep up the pace. But they came faster still, faster than she could package them and eat them. So her cheeks started filling up until she looked like an overly ambitious chipmunk. It was hilarious to me as a child. But it’s even funnier now that I can appreciate the skit’s reflection of real life.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed, kind of like Lucy?

Maybe your job or business throws you problems faster than you can solve them. Or by the time you answer three emails, five more pop into your inbox. Or do you manage to lose ten pounds, only to gain back eleven? No sooner do you pay your bills then you have another stack. You clean your house, your car, your clothes, yourself, and they get dirty all over again. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up, isn’t it?

And the very technologies that are designed to make life easier often make it more frantic.

All this leads to chronic stress, and chronic stress shortens your life.

Since my purpose is to extend your life, I’d like to identify a common thread that runs through Whac-A-Mole, the Lucy episode and all the overwhelming items I mentioned that lead to stress. In one word, it’s “reaction”.

If you want to bring sanity to your life, one of the most anti-aging habits you can adopt is pro-action. Quit reacting to everything around you, and take control, one day at a time.

Outsource or delegate all the endless repetitive tasks to someone better equipped to handle them. Identify what activities give you the most satisfaction, and spend your time on those. You’ll not only boost your health and longevity, but you’ll marvel at how quickly you recharge and how rapidly you prosper as well.

Hub Of NanoMedicine

Nanotechnology refers to the control of matter on a scale normally between 1-100 nanometers. One nanometer is a billionth of a meter or 80,000 times smaller than a human hair.

We work with the world’s recognized authorities on medical applications and implications of molecular nanotechnology, or Nanomedicine. They have launched a program aimed at developing a provable nanomedical life extension technology. This may be the ultimate technology which can cure aging and reverse its effects. 

They constructed a preliminary R&D roadmap and have already achieved some of their objectives. They have even established six currently active collaborations.

The technology should have commercially useful early applications. If successful, the company will eventually own a must-have product – indefinite life extension and aging reversal. In a nutshell, nanomedicine could eventually build or repair almost every cell in your body, from the bottom up, atom by atom. When we get to the 2020s, we will ultimately have perfected the machines of nanotechnology, nanobots, which are blood cell-sized devices that can go inside your body and brain to perform therapeutic functions, as well as to advance the capabilities of our bodies and brains.

If that sounds too futuristic, I’ll point out that we already have blood cell-size devices that are nano-engineered, working to perform therapeutic functions in animals. For example, one scientist cured type I diabetes in rats with this type of nanoengineered device. And some of these are now approaching human trials. The 2020s will be the “golden era” of nanotechnology.

If you want to see who is at the hub of nanomedicine, visit these two websites:

http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/Nanofactory 

http://www.MolecularAssembler.com/Nanofactory/Media/PressReleaseAug08.htm

Nanomedicine promises to give us complete control of matter and a very efficient way to cure aging damage, injuries and diseases. So keep fit and lean in the meantime. You don’t want to miss this boat.

Two Groups Of Friends

 divide my close friends into two general groups.

1. The Miscellaneous Group: This includes lifelong friends as well as recent acquaintances. I share either/or history and some values with this group. I see some frequently but most infrequently. All-in-all, group is shrinking in size. That’s because many of us have grown or are growing apart. In other words, we don’t have much in common anymore. And outside of rehashing old times (which I find more-and-more boring), hanging out together is pretty much a waste of time. The few that I do enjoy spending with share common goals and typically look forward rather than backwards.

 

1. Life Extensionists/Futurists: This is my favorite and larger group of the two. It’s also expanding rapidly. It’s rare to hear these members talking of the past, and they are far more stimulating. They typically live actively in the present with long-term positive views of the future. And for the most part, they do their best to insure a profound future for all of us. They may take various paths and contribute in a number of ways such as doing research, volunteering for various future-focused  movements, building positive value-laced enterprises, running companies and foundations, marketing positive products and services and actively participating in events, seminars and workshops that point toward noble goals such as (my favorite) radical life extension.

All too often, I get bogged down in the sea of minutia and the distractions of business and life that tends to bury us if we’re not constantly on guard. One of the challenges in my life is to evaporate that sea to a puddle. I’m gradually succeeding, but I’m not there yet. So when I have the chance to shut everything else out and spend time with Group #2, it breathes new life into me. I enjoyed that pleasure the past two weekends.

Two weeks ago, I and a couple of M.D.s got to address a group of life extensionists.

Pure rapture.

Just associating with like-minded people energizes me beyond description. It also validates and reinforces my resolve to conquer aging in our lifetimes.

This past Saturday, I took part in a life extension workshop in Las Vegas. The personal and business challenges that sometimes consume me did not enter my mind the entire weekend. How could they? Almost every minute was spent with some very close friends and with some not as close, but still enormously treasured acquaintances. Every single one of them shares most of my deepest goals and aspirations.

Most people take a two week or longer vacation to recharge. For me, it only takes a day in the company of members of Group #2. If you consider yourself a member of this group, you’re invited to a get-together at my home in Huntington Beach, CA, tentatively scheduled for Sat, Nov 22nd.  If so, email me for directions and a final date and time

Save for the Future

What a week!

If you are in any market, you probably got slaughtered last week. If you didn’t, I want you to handle my investments.

Although I attribute most of the sudden losses to panic selling, it’s still very sobering. We’ll see lots of ripple effects that could last for a long time. We’ll also see more controls which will lead to more erosion of your freedoms.

Meanwhile, I’m working on keeping you alive for a long time, so if the markets are stressing you out, relax and review my previous commentaries on stress.

But this market made one more thing crystal clear to me. You may need money, if you want to dodge the grim reaper. Lots of it. If you didn’t lose money last week, it might be because you don’t have any to lose. And yes, that could be bad if you want to live for an extremely long time.

Let’s face it… the first people who are going to get effective life-extending treatment are those who will be able to afford it. If you’re old and broke when the longevity boat arrives, you might miss it. Sure, prices will come down, and pretty rapidly too. But many of us are on the bubble as it is, and not being near the front of the line could just cost you your life. So what are you going to do about it?

All your life, you have been told to save for the future, and you’re most certainly familiar with the magic of compound interest. As we age, we may regret not starting to save years ago. Now, many people who didn’t save figure it’s too late to amass any kind of fortune, so they live day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck. But what if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, you would be biologically transformed into a 25-year old, twenty or thirty years from now, if you had $500,000 in the bank at that time. Do you realize that if you socked away about $30,000 in a segregated investment account that compounded at around 10% growth per year, you would have your $500,000 in less than thirty years? (10% is roughly the historical annual growth of the stock market.)

In other words, $30,000 could be the difference between your being part of the last generation to die from biological aging or part of the first to live endlessly. What if you don’t have $30,000? That’s easy. Save $3,000 now and $3,000 every year in the same type of account, and presto! You’ll have your magical $500,000 in less than thirty years.

I have no idea what full rejuvenation will cost when it’s available, so plan for more, not less. Wouldn’t it be nice to be young again with a pile of money in the bank?

Aging Is Slowly Stealing Our Lives

You and I are both aware that aging is slowly stealing our health, our vigor and our lives. Yet we function without a sense of urgency to do something about aging. Why? Because we’re bombarded with our personal and career responsibilities and daily distractions. And those squeaky wheels are what get our attention. This is totally normal and logical. We have to take care of our families, get our haircuts and pay attention to endless details. Who has time to really make a commitment to being proactive when it comes to something as abstract as age-reversal?

That’s the way I used to think. But taking paths of least resistance normally leads us down reactive paths. In other words, we usually let outside forces control our lives. It isn’t until we’re faced with a crisis that those forces take a backseat to focusing on something that may have been avoided in the first place. Sometimes, that crisis means life or death.

This really hit home when I just found out a close and loved associate was diagnosed with one of the deadliest forms of cancer. What’s even more tragic is he’s an active life extension researcher. That’s the worst of ironies.

I am saddened to report that Dr. Chris Heward, one of the original participants of MaxLife’s first international scientific brainstorm sessions to reverse aging, is fighting an uphill battle for his life. Chris is Director of the Kronos Science Laboratories of Phoenix, AZ. He has been diagnosed with terminal, Stage-IV Esophageal Cancer.  The cancer has metastasized to several other organs, and consequently his condition has a poor prognosis (50% mortality in 90 days and about 99% in a year). 

Since surgery is no longer a realistic option, Chris has proposed to undergo an experimental but very promising immunotherapy treatment in Boca Raton, FL.  However, this treatment requires blood donors less than 30 years old with “A” or “O” positive or negative blood types and no prior history of cancer in their families. If you are in—or if you know anyone in this category who would be willing to donate several units of blood to retrieve the granulocyte cells, please get in touch with me as soon as possible. Not only could this experimental treatment save Chris, but it could lead to a universal cure for many types of cancer. Here’s an opportunity to contribute to a great cause that could ultimately save many lives by making a simple referral.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this critical matter.

Life Expectancy

Can your expectations determine how long you will live?

I believe lots of us actually die because of our expectations. We’re conditioned to believe the average lifespan is around eighty years, so we wind down and die right on schedule. We usually get what we expect, not what we want. What if you expected to live to 100? Wouldn’t you naturally gravitate toward the habits that will make that happen? Wouldn’t your thoughts and emotions be more positive? How about longer? Loads of research tells us we should stay healthy for up to 100 years. But why don’t we? Could it start with your attitude? Don’t cop out by blaming it on your genes or on luck. Really, 65–75% of it is the choices you make. Your genes account for less that 35%.

This is backed up by hard science. Studies have shown that people who just think they are aging faster actually do age faster!

If you always think the glass is half full, you’re on the right track. Mayo Clinic research shows that people with positive outlooks typically live 19% longer than people who see the glass as half empty. Although it’s questionable if this can be attributed to optimists being more likely to seek medical help when they’re ill, or if their immune systems strengthen as a result of their sunny outlook. The end result is though, they live longer. Optimists are also less likely to suffer depression and helplessness than their pessimistic counterparts.

To support the hypothesis that their immune systems are actually strengthened, Dr. Bruce Lipton’s experiments, and that of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which your cells receive information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control your biology. Instead, DNA is controlled by signals from outside your cells, including the energetic messages emanating from your positive and negative thoughts.

He clearly describes the connection between your core thoughts, beliefs and attitudes and how your cells function as a result. Happy thoughts put your cells’ functions in balance. Hateful, angry and resentful thoughts do the exact opposite. They suppress your immune system, alter your hormones, upset your digestive system, and diminish your brain function and respiration.

Dr. Lipton’s profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a major breakthrough showing your body can be changed as you retrain your thinking. His book, The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of New Biology.

In addition, an often repeated study showed that when a person’s living cells from different organs are put in separate dishes, cells from one organ would respond when cells from a different organ in a different dish were stimulated. If the cells were from two different people, they would not get the reaction. This means the trillions of cells in your body are always in direct communication with one another, even if they are not in direct contact by chemical or neurological pathways.

Stub a toe, and all your cells react. Poison your body with cigarette smoke or toxic food, and you stimulate every cell. Subject yourself to uncontrolled stress, and you stress tens of trillions of cells. Now can you see why stress management and attitude are so critical to your health and longevity?

Now that you know your thoughts affect every single cell in your body, what are you going to do about it? Since you now realize positive, loving and grateful thoughts keep you healthy and make you live longer, while negative thoughts destroy you from the inside out, you have a big anti-aging advantage. What happens to you usually doesn’t matter one bit. How you react means everything.