Gary Null - Does Heart Rate Affect Longevity?

Having spent my entire adult career working with tens of thousands of individuals as a scientist, clinician, and therapist in anti-aging research, it has been my observation that the higher one’s resting heart rate, the more susceptible one is to heart disease and premature death. Considering that we have added nearly ten years to the average lifespan over the last forty years, what can we point to that accounts for this change? A look at the evidence shows that it is multifactorial.

When I was growing up, my parents, aunts and uncles, all smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day. They drank a lot of alcohol- not to get drunk but to socialize- and they had high concentrations of animal protein, saturated fats and refined carbohydrates. They rarely exercised and more often than not, they internalized their distress. This lifestyle was typical among that generation of Americans.

Today, the last two generations have caused a renaissance in health awareness. Thanks to them, we now know the importance consuming a healthy vegan diet high in raw foods and fresh juices, using supplements, and abstaining from alcohol and smoking. We are aware of how indispensible exercise and more and more people are reaping the benefits of de-stress practices such as yoga and meditation. The combination of all these factors has produced a quantitative change our life expectancy.

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Resveratrol: Study Resolves Controversy On Life-Extending Red Wine Ingredient, Restores Hope for Anti-Aging Pill

A study in the May issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism appears to offer vindication for an approach to anti-aging drugs that has been at the center of heated scientific debate in recent years. The new findings show for the first time that the metabolic benefits of the red wine ingredient known as resveratrol evaporate in mice that lack the famed longevity gene SIRT1.

"Resveratrol improves the health of mice on a high-fat diet and increases life span," said David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School. The question was how.

Resveratrol is a dirty molecule, he explained. Its benefits had been attributed largely to its actions on SIRT1, based on studies in yeast, worms, and flies, but the naturally occurring ingredient has other effects; it influences dozens of proteins, and some evidence had pointed to the importance of another well-known gene (called AMPK) for resveratrol's metabolic benefits. That called into question not only the biology, but also whether SIRT1-targeted drugs in development were aimed in the wrong direction. (Those doubts and other factors led the pharmaceutical company Sirtris to halt its last clinical trial of resveratrol last year.)

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120501134209.htm

Music Training Has Biological Impact On Aging Process

Age-related delays in neural timing are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training, according to a new study from Northwestern University. The study is the first to provide biological evidence that lifelong musical experience has an impact on the aging process. Measuring the automatic brain responses of younger and older musicians and non-musicians to speech sounds, researchers in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory discovered that older musicians had a distinct neural timing advantage.

"The older musicians not only outperformed their older non-musician counterparts, they encoded the sound stimuli as quickly and accurately as the younger non-musicians," said Northwestern neuroscientist Nina Kraus. "This reinforces the idea that how we actively experience sound over the course of our lives has a profound effect on how our nervous system functions." Kraus, professor of communication sciences in the School of Communication and professor of neurobiology and physiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, is co-author of "Musical experience offsets age-related delays in neural timing" published online in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120130172402.htm

HealthDay News - Being 'Born-Again' Linked to More Brain Atrophy: Study

WEDNESDAY, May 25 (HealthDay News) -- Older adults who say they've had a life-changing religious experience are more likely to have a greater decrease in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical to learning and memory, new research finds.

According to the study, people who said they were a "born-again" Protestant or Catholic, or conversely, those who had no religious affiliation, had more hippocampal shrinkage (or "atrophy") compared to people who identified themselves as Protestants, but not born-again.

The study is published online in PLoS ONE.

As people age, a certain amount of brain atrophy is expected. Shrinkage of the hippocampus is also associated with depression, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

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Elisha Anderson - Scientists look to centenarian 'rock stars of aging' for health solutions

11-29-11 By Elisha Anderson, Detroit Free Press (MCT)

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=11953&Section=Aging

Nov. 27--Wilma Lakin always included a meat, a vegetable and a starch -- like potatoes or macaroni -- in the dinners she prepared.

Elizabeth Clark Bouch reads the New York Times daily and enjoys a martini before dinner.

Alfred Eadle Belfer watches Westerns -- John Wayne is a big favorite -- and voraciously reads books about cowboys.

All three -- who live at Halsted Place, a retirement community in Farmington Hills -- are part of a rare group: They've reached the age of 100.

"They're the rock stars of aging," said Lynn Peters Adler, founder of the National Centenarian Awareness Project based in Phoenix, which celebrates active centenarians.

The number of centenarians has grown in Michigan and is expected to keep growing. The 2010 U.S. census tallied 1,729 people 100 or older in Michigan, up 194 centenarians from 10 years earlier. Nationwide, centenarians number about 50,000.

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Racing Against Age: Health Impairment Primarily Due to Bad Lifestye Habits -- Not Aging, Researchers Argue

Impairments to health and physical performance are not primarily a result of aging but of unfavorable lifestyle habits and lack of exercise. This is the position taken by Dieter Leyk and his coauthors in the new issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International.

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First Person to Reach the Age of 150 Is Already Born Eire Region

LEADING Irish scientist believes researchers are on the brink of finding a cure for ageing. RTE's startling documentary, The End of Ageing, told last night how many scientists believe that the first person to reach the age of 150 has already been born. In Trinity College Dublin, geneticists are conducting research into why different organisms die at particular points in their lives.

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Gary Null - Hair Study

By Gary Null Ph.D.
In June of 1995 a study of the effects of nutrition, exercise, stress management and environmental adjustments upon the growth of human hair was announced to the general public: this study was entitled "The Hair Study." By March of 1996, 703 people had been selected to participate in the study.They were of different nationalities and backgrounds with ages ranging from 21 to 87 (the average age being 46.6 years). Some had been smokers, drinkers, meat eaters, overweight and obese, in short, a good cross section of our population. The first major study period was nine months, with adjustments every three months. Participants kept diaries and took notes of any changes in health, e.g. energy levels, sleep patterns, gastrointestinal changes, allergy responses, patterns of colds, flu, infections and sick days. Photos of the hair and scalp were taken and detailed objective and subjective analyses were recorded at the study sessions.
The criteria for participation in the study were as follows:
The participant had to have been balding for at least three years or thinning for at least five years and/or graying for at least five years. A protocol was suggested within the study, designed to initially detoxify and subsequently enhance overall health in order to efficiently metabolize nutrients for the hair follicles of a whole, healthfully functioning human system.
The following is a breakdown of the four points within the protocol:
Exercise
This was to consist of: 5 minutes of warming up, 45 minutes of exercise and 5 minutes of cooling down. Participants were to do any aerobic activity to 75% of optimal aerobic capacity 5 days per week. They were to also do cross training exercises,three days per week for 45 minutes.
Stress Management.

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Anti Aging Part 4: The Role Of The Thymus In Health and Anti Aging

by Gary Null Ph.D. The thymus gland is the central control organ for the immune system. When it is functioning properly, the thymus gland acts like a thermostat to provide the right balance of immunity. It turns up to help the body fight infection or tumor and down to prevent autoimmune disease. The thymus gland may experience physiological changes which make it less effective, such as stress and the process of aging. This is problematic as studies reveal that an underactive thymus gland is associated with increased incidences of cancer and infections. It is imperative then to support thymus function. Dr. Terry Beardsley explains how to do so naturally: Zinc. Zinc has been studied as a critical mineral for immune function. Dr. Robert Good, who is considered one of the pioneers in understanding thymic function, has shown over the years, with many studies, that zinc is a critical mineral for immunity.

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Anti Aging Part 3: Having a Healthy Heart and More

By Gary Null Ph.D. Heart Healing Foods Cardiologist Dr. Stephen Sinatra says that too much insulin, insulin resistance, or ineffective insulin, not fats, causes heart disease. Dr. Sinatra's heart-healing nutritional approach, which he calls the Mediterranean diet, contains about 50 percent coarse carbohydrates with a low glycemic index, about 20 percent protein, and up to 30 percent healthy fat. Dr. Sinatra states, "The healthy fats I recommend are from fish and flaxseed. I have a phytoestrogen shake, which I recommend to both men and women in my practice, and which I take myself. It uses soy milk, which contains healthy fat, with ground-up flaxseed, which has a lot of omega 3's. "In addition, it's high in phytoestrogens to help women going through menopause eliminate symptoms. These fats will prevent prostate cancer in men and ovarian cancer in women. I'll tell people to eat nuts, although peanuts do contain some rancid oils, and we have to be careful of that. But walnuts, chestnuts, even pistachios are okay. They contain a bit of saturated fat, but they're mostly monounsaturated. Walnuts are high in omega 3's. So, I'll tell people to eat these foods in addition to plant-based foods, like fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean meats."

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