17th Dec 2016: Science has now discovered 3 major pillars behind the mechanism of aging.
It is only a matter of time (if it hasn't already) that an effective age halting or even reversing treatment is developed. I suspect however it wont make it into common knowledge unless leaked - it is too much of a tempting proposition for those who like to abuse (and maintain) power.. Keep your eyes open people.
Oddly enough I already wrote this article but it seems to have gone missing. Conspiracy? I am hoping just a website crash. I would hate to think my silly harmless tongue in cheek website here attracted the ire of anybody. The only annoying thing is my original article timestamp would have predated certain papers being published on this same topic.. hey even mad scientists have an ego.
Aging is not always what you think it is. Essentially aging is the combination of medical and environmental factors and stresses on the cells in your body.
Quite a lot of progress has been made in this area, and there has already been a two phase experiment where embryos have been genetically altered last year (2013-2014)
Projections for the resulting children estimate they are theoretically able to live up to the age of 150 or so in the first phase.
The second phase of the experiment was to breed two adults from this experiment together - the projections for this second generation is a 10 times increase in life span - or 1500 years.
Given the earth shattering nature of this announcement, and the fact it has for the most part been ignored by public media; I find that quite interesting. I wonder what is going on here.
It is not all good news here however. For the most part the human brain has an effective best before time of about 100 years. These people may live to be 150 or even 1000, but they would be completely senile or insane.
However…. another research branch was publicly announced the same year. An experiment to replace parts of and subsequently the stored memory of your brain with an electronic storage medium.
Now if that doesn't win the mad scientist of the year award I don't know what does.
There is also two much older areas of research in the brain one has basically been outlawed except for the use of the terminally ill. The other has been buried so deep in FDA red tape, I expect not to hear about it again in my life time.
LSD. This drug has been found to violently rewrite the wiring of your brain. That isn't as bad as it sounds; and derivatives of this drug has been used in Anti-depressents as a long term cure.. although the particular SSRI's using it have been abused by the larger pharmaceutical industry for addiction - as such following the re-written big phrarma “instructions” of the SSRI's involved will actually do you quite a lot of harm. (they were designed to be taken only prior to the patient anticipating a stressful encounter, not continuously; after about a year of this the patient would have effectively cured themself) LSD has also been used in its natural form on terminally ill patients - the result is a patient becomes less agitated and more calm and accepting of their eventual fate.
Stimulated Regrowth - Sadly I do not know the name of this drug. It was originally developed on the sly as a drug for repairing nerve damage in horses. I say on the sly - as the moment they got it to work they experimented with it on humans - as a way to heal paralysis. It even featured in readers digest one year as a miracle story. The drug had been used on a young girl who had broken her back and was fully paralyzed. After some targeted injections and some physiotherapy, she made a full recovery and was able to walk again. The drug carries with it some “dangers” in adults where the brain has fully formed it stimulates neural growth. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for some reason this effect got it buried in red tape faster than a land slide in a red tape warehouse.
The drug was permitted for controlled experimental use on children but banned from use on adults - the claim was it would be ineffective on back injuries or nerve damage more than a few months old. This turned out to be a complete lie, as another older man who had been paralyzed for years also arranged to have it used on himself, and the result was the same, he was able to walk again. It is a pity Christopher Reeve never heard about it.
Long story short, the brain apparently doesn't grow new capacity, it simply adapts what is left over time. Eventually you start loosing stuff. This drug however stimulated new growth, not only creating links between existing areas (like LSD) but growing additional ones. Scary I suppose - unless you happen to be over 100 years old and most of the areas of your brain have worn out.
There has been quite a lot of research on the topic, which can be covered by three categories:
This area has had the most research of any other. By the cosmetics industry. They found the appearance of aging is essentially wrinkles/fine lines, lack of elasticity, stretching, and discoloration. They attribute most of this to deficiencies of vitamin D, collagen, and lack of naturally body fats to “plump up” the skin.
Their solution here has been to create chemicals that promote temporary allergic “swelling” in skin particularly the face by a variety of methods, the result being wrinkles and fine lines get stretched out and appear to vanish. To minimize damage from this swelling, they also include chemicals to allow infusions of collagen, vitamin D, and hydration in the skin.
The cosmetic surgery industry has also excelled in sucking out, or pumping in fats and various other things to plump up sagging skin, and cutting off any surplus floppy bits to give the appearance of youth.
Personally I don't consider pumping your face up like a balloon to hide wrinkles any sort of real answer but for those where appearance is all that matters it seems to do the job.
DNA has a built in engineered redundancy system. At the end of each chromosome strand is something called Telomeres it is a sort of enzyme that is depleted with each replication of that strand. Given some cells replicate more than others (eg skin) these cells will start to run out sooner than others. On average a skin cell will have enough cell replications to last roughly 120 years. Other cells which wear out slower as they get less damage may last longer. When these telomeres run out the cell is designed to self destruct. This relates back to cancer where a cell develops the ability to ignore its telomere and keep replicating. This means oddly enough the answer to long life lies in truly understanding how some forms of cancer work, them making our entire body work in the same way.
Experiments in DNA - a famous example “dolly the sheep” was an experiment in cloning. The moment I heard how they did this the first thing that came to mind was.. hold on if they are cloning half worn out DNA in an egg, that means the resulting offspring will die of old age at about the same year that the original of the clone would have died of old age. If you copy a timer that started at 100 seconds when new, but had counted down to 30 seconds, all the copies will start at 30 seconds.. so both the original and the copies will all hit zero at the same time.
Much to my amusement a year later they announced a problem had developed in the offspring, it was aging at a strangely faster rate.. and eventually i think worked out what I wrote above themself.
DNA has a number of triggers not just the telomeres another is physical damage. See next section.
Living cells on earth have all developed a symbiotic relationship with a cell in its core nucleus - the suspicion is cells never worked like this originally. The details here are unclear. But what we have now is basically every single cell in our body contains a small chemical fusion reactor. Yup, humans are nukes. Like atomic power, our cells take fuel and generate energy and toxic waste. This waste can cause damage to the cells. External factors can also introduce toxins into our system most likely from similar sources. The name given to this waste is “free radicals” and they are the one thing other than telomere that can make a cell decide to self destruct (or melt down if you are melodramatic).
Free radicals and related effects can come from many sources, from external radiation, drugs, chemical exposure, eating crappy food, wearing contaminated clothes, or washing in contaminated water. It is thought that given most cells in the human body would in ideal conditions quite easily last over 100 years - that Free radicals are the single most important factor in aging.
What of disease you may ask - well diseases are in effect a form of free radicals invading our bodies, they also take over our cells like cancer, making our own immune system destroy them. So that is part of the issue - but the end result is the same - premature destruction of our cells. This also relates back to metabolism - that is the speed of which your body processes things. Faster healing makes for better short term health but shorter overall life span.
There has been research here as well. To combat free radicals the main solution is anti-oxidants. Anti-oxidants are a variety of things such as vitamins which deal with free radicals.
It was found for example that a number of small animal species live an impossibly long time - such as certain bats. The only difference found between one species and a virtually identical one was the longer lived species had a process in their bodies that naturally created massive massive amounts of anti-oxidants. These animals lived up to 30 times longer than their closely related cousins lacking this attribute.
This indicated to researchers that anti-oxidants play a larger role in life span than previously suspected.
Certain inconclusive experiments in this area seem to suggest the possibility that a human who increases their intake of anti-oxidants by a large amount, can increase the remaining (DNA limited) life span by up to 4 times. So lets say you were likely to die of old age at 80, and you are currently 60. This gives you 20 years on the “clock” If you increase the amount of anti-oxidants and reduce exposure to toxic factors, you could gain up to 80 more years before your body wore out. That means you would live to 140 with the same health you would normally have had at 80.
2021 Edit: Note: Using medication that can alter the Epigenomic mode of cells(and gene therapy), it is possible to even regenerate brain tissue, or restore lost eyesight due to old age. The process is difficult, but possible. Tests in mice have shown if you can flip the mode of enough cells in the body it is like being an adult with the growth of a child. They switch the cells from “reproduction” to “repair” mode. It apparently relates to a body being in survival mode.
Assuming you somehow manage to find a way to extend your life beyond the 100 year mark, the next issue you need to overcome is the limitations of memory and the physical elements of your brain. It is generally understood that although the brain can form new connections and drop old connections; a process which is continual throughout your life - it cannot strictly grow new brain tissue itself. So as adapable and versatile as the human brain is, you are stuck with working with what you already have. Over time the available material wears out and it is not replaced. Regular intellectual activity can compensate somewhat; strengthening existing connections, forming new paths as areas fail.. but eventually you are not going to have much left to work with.
Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the human brain can; given adequate motivation, maintain high function activity after losing up to half to three quarters of its physical matter. However this mainly applies in the case that it was lost at an early age. People born with birth defects causing them to have less than half of their brain, have with persistence been able to develop their remaining brain matter to become mostly normal high functioning individuals as adults. In the cases of other ailments such as strokes or other damage to the brain; given therapy and practice other parts of the brain can adapt to replace the damaged tissue; for example learning to walk again, talk again etc.
Given it appears possible to both upgrade the human life span almost indefinately; or replace the body or brain entirely it must be asked where should the line be drawn.