aging

Back for More: Thoughts from 3 Regular Attendees on the International Forum on Consciousness

Posted on by Karin Borgh

The International Forum on Consciousness offers a lively two days of information sharing and discussion regarding important—and often challenging—topics. Over the years, we have been guided through a range of topics, including creativity, near death, entheogens, intelligence in nature, business evolution and the effects of sensory inputs.  This year, we’re tackling Means and Metrics for Detecting and Measuring Consciousness.  You can find out more here: https://www.btci.org/events-symposia-2018/international-forum-on-consciousness/ .

As we work on the final details for this year and registrations flow in, I took a moment to pause and reflect on the fact that several of the registrants have joined us for many, if not all, of our past events. It’s gratifying to see that they are taking time out of their normal routines to make their way to the Promega campus again this spring.  So, I asked a few of them to share their thoughts for this post and this is what they had to say: Continue reading “Back for More: Thoughts from 3 Regular Attendees on the International Forum on Consciousness”

Lessons From the ‘Long Goodbye’

Posted on by Ben Schmidt
Lewy Body stained with alpha-synuclein.
Lewy Body stained with alpha-synuclein.

A week ago Sunday, I walked among crowds of mothers, grandmothers, and children of all ages celebrating Mother’s Day at the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, Missouri.  As I watched happy families, I couldn’t help being jealous.  Though I was there with my grandmother and other close relatives, I missed my mom, especially since I was in my hometown for her funeral the day before.  Had my mom been alive and well, we might have walked those same paths ourselves and enjoyed the new life teeming above the earth.  Instead, my mother lost her battle of more than six years with Lewy Body dementia the week before at the age of 61.

As a biologist, I was well-aware of Alzheimer disease in the abstract, and tau proteins, beta-amyloid, and genetic predisposition.  But until my mom was diagnosed in 2008, I was painfully ignorant of dementias other than Alzheimer disease.  Once we knew what mom was fighting, I learned that Alzheimer disease and Lewy Body are hardly unique.  The number of other dementias that exist is long and includes vascular dementia, mixed dementia, Parkinson’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Huntington disease, and many others.[1]

Continue reading “Lessons From the ‘Long Goodbye’”

Healthy Lifestyles: Good for You and Your Telomeres Too

Posted on by Kelly Grooms

DNA in a test tubeWe all know that a healthy lifestyle (diet high in whole foods and low in fat, moderate exercise, managing stress and good social support) is good for us. In fact I will go so far as to say that it isn’t even news that these things help our health and well-being.  What is news, or at least newly published, is that these changes may also have a positive effect on telomerase activity and telomere length (1). Continue reading “Healthy Lifestyles: Good for You and Your Telomeres Too”

Methylation of Your Genome Decreases as You Age

Posted on by Sara Klink

If asked what are the differences between a grandfather and his newborn granddaughter, I would reply with the obvious ones: size (the grandfather is larger than his granddaughter), condition of the skin (babies have soft, smooth skin and elders have age spots and wrinkles) and life expectancy. Other visual cues may seem more similar than different. For example, grandfather and granddaughter may both lack hair on their heads or need assistance to move from one place to another. However, both baby and elder are a product of the genes expressed from their genome even if the exact sequence is not identical between them. Because genes are expressed differently over a human’s lifetime, Heyn et al. decided to examine the methylation profile in the genomes of newborns and individuals 89 years old or older. Continue reading “Methylation of Your Genome Decreases as You Age”

A New Role for Reactive Oxygen Species: Can We be Aged and Thin?

Posted on by Kari Kenefick

Add pomegranite to the list of so-called superfoods.

Since the 1980s, we’ve been told that aging can be accelerated by a build-up of free radicals in our cells. We’ve learned that to counteract the damage that free radicals (or reactive oxygen species, ROS) can wreak on our bodies, we should consume  antioxidants like vitamins C and E, and phytochemicals.

In fact, the term “superfood” was coined for foods that contain high levels of antioxidants, phytochemicals and vitamins, foods like blueberries and carrots, spinach and kale, to name a few.

 “Hold the phone”, as a pre-calculus professor of mine used to say.  Turn off the blender and put down that shot glass of beet-carrot-lemon grass juice. This research just in: “Free Radicals Crucial to Suppressing Appetite”.

The research was published August 28, 2011 in the advanced online edition of Nature Medicine.

In this study, Yale University researchers reported that elevated levels of ROS  in the brain activated satiety-generating neurons. Continue reading “A New Role for Reactive Oxygen Species: Can We be Aged and Thin?”