can humans live beyond 100 years-evidence....

[snore2walk]

recently i came across this question in one of the scientific journals, that man can theoretically live up to a hundred years. it stated that man can, with the help of current technology and the vast leaps and bounds in medical science, along with progress in the genetics field. so i am here to conduct a poll whether man can live up over hundred years. if you do support it and agree, please state why. would appreciate if people who don't agree would also supply reasons. thanks........

maybe i should rephrase my question. with the advances in anti-ageing science, can we live beyond 100? if so, technically how is this possible?

[Primarygun]

Recent scientific report shows that the life of a rat is extended by a kind of medicine.

If the new medicine uses on human, our lives can be extended by 30 years.

[dan19_83]

I agree alright. The average age life is increasing all over the world today and even though it is still rare enough for a person to live over 100, it is still becoming more and more common

[Phi for All]

i am here to conduct a poll whether man can live up over hundred years. if you do support it and agree, please state why. would appreciate if people who don't agree would also supply reasons. thanks

You can add a poll to your thread using the thread tools. Consider your wording carefully. People live to be over 100 now. Are you talking about average life expectancy?

 

I think humans can expect to live over 100 years on average only if certain criteria (besides available medical technology) are met. Carcinogens will have to be reduced. Excercise needs to be increased and weight reduced. Overall, I think people need to stop thinking that advances in medical technology allows them to abuse their bodies.

[kotake]

There have been people living for over 100 years without any technological help. But that's not what you mean, is it?

 

As for the life-extending technology and/or medicine, how does it work?

[snore2walk]

yes, i understand, but with reference to anti-ageing science, is it possible to prolong the average life expectancy beyond 100?

[snore2walk]

well, it is not fair to depend wholly on others. so i researched a bit on the subject.

well, scientists believe the root cause of ageing is actually cell ageing, or more specifically, the shortening of telomere, the extra DNA we all have at the end of each chromosome. The enzyme telomerase can replace this telomere, thereby rendering the cell immortal.The Danish Centre for Molecular Gerontology's Dr Suresh Rattan believes the way forward is hormesis, exposing cells to low doses of temperature shock and stress to make them stronger and improve their functional ability.

 

Other anti-ageing gurus say the answer lies with injections of the hormones DHEA and testosterone, nutritional supplements, anti-oxidants, replacing worn out organs with new ones using our own stem cells, or genetic engineering.

 

Scientists accept that ageing occurs due to damage occurring to the cell's DNA, proteins, membranes, and to other such cellular components. So, this implies, that if such damage could be prevented, the body's cells would remain youthful. Could it be that there is a certain 'death' gene that causes such faults to arise, after a certain number of cellular divisions or such?

 

in addition, it is also important to note that the human growth hormone (HGH) may play an important part in ageing. the production of the HGH by the human anterior pitutary gland in the brain decreases as one ages. The major part of the growth hormone secretion takes place after the onset of deep sleep. Overall HGH secretion levels are lower in men than in women.

In 20 to 30 year old individuals the HGH secretion rate over 24 hours represents more than the double of the values seen in 50 to 60 year old persons, and in the age group of 61 to 70 year olds the corresponding levels decline further and don't exceed values that are roughly half of those measured in persons aged 50 to 60 years. this being the case, could injectiopn of the HGH into elderly humans, prolong life?

 

The pineal gland, until recently, has been referred to as mystery gland, since its functions were largely unknown. The pineal is now recognized as a key element in the maintenance of the body’s endocrine regulation (hormone balance), immune system integrity, and circadian rhythm (daily metabolic balance). Melatonin is the principal hormone produced by the pineal gland. Melatonin is under investigation as a treatment for a number of conditions, including jet-lag, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), depression, and cancer. Pineal polypeptide extract (which contains a broad spectrum of other, protein-based pineal hormones) has been shown to inhibit the development of atherosclerosis [Tasca, et al., 1974], reduce blood triglyceride levels [Ostroumova and Vasiljeve, 1976], improve cellular immunity [belokrylov, et al., 1976; Dilman, 1977], and increase lifespan in animals [Dilman, et al., 1979].

 

The pineal gland functions as a biological clock by secreting melatonin (along with many other neuropeptides) at night. As you can see from the following illustration, melatonin levels peak at about 2 a.m. in normal, healthy young people and about 3 a.m. in elderly people. The maximum amount of melatonin released in the bloodstream of the elderly is only half of that in young adults.

Melatonin levels are low during the day. At sunset, the cessation of light triggers neural signals which stimulate the pineal gland to begin releasing melatonin. This rise continues for hours, eventually peaking around 2 a.m. (3 a.m. for the elderly) after which it steadily declines to minimal levels by morning. The delay in timing and decrease in intensity of the melatonin pulse is a manifestation of the aging process.

 

The melatonin pulse regulates many neuroendocrine functions. When the timing or intensity of the melatonin peak is disrupted (as in aging, stress, jet-lag, or artificial jet-lag syndromes), many physiological and mental functions are adversely affected. The ability to think clearly, remember key facts, and make sound decisions can be profoundly hampered by these upsets in the biological clock.

 

so, could extensive research into the secretions and productions of all hormones and chemicals produced by the pineal gland, and injection of such chemicals into the ageing body have any effect in prolonging life?

[snore2walk]

an aricle i read:

 

Does Chromosome 4 Hold the Secret to Human Longevity?

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

 

By comparing the DNA of siblings who are extremely long-lived, researchers believe they have found a region on chromosome 4 that may hold an important clue to understanding human longevity. According to the researchers, their finding is "highly suggestive" that somewhere in the hundreds of genes in that region of chromosome 4 is a gene or genes whose subtle modifications can give a person a better chance of living well beyond the average life expectancy.

 

The researchers believe that additional genetic analyses of nonagenarians and centenarians will lead to the identification of a few genes that confer longevity in humans. They also believe that their studies may turn up "good" versions of a multitude of genes that enable people to avoid age-associated diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

 

In an article published in the August 28, 2001, issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a scientific team led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Louis M. Kunkel and Thomas Perls at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center reported the results of a genome-wide study of 308 long-lived people. The study group included 137 siblings. The research team included scientists from Children's Hospital in Boston, Harvard Medical School, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Rutgers University, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

 

"It is clear to us that longevity has a genetic component," said Kunkel. "Frequently, if there is one sibling who has lived to be a hundred, there will be a second or third sibling who also will live to be a hundred. And while these people were fortunate enough not to have ‘bad’ gene alleles at the loci involved in age-related diseases, they also had alleles that enabled them to live often twenty years beyond their life expectancy, and remain active and in reasonably good health." An allele is an alternate form of a gene.

 

According to Kunkel, the research team launched its search for longevity genes based on an educated scientific hunch. "Most investigators would say that longevity is just too complicated a trait to be influenced by only a few genes," he said. "But we took a chance that this was the case, because in lower organisms such as nematodes, fruit flies and yeast there are only a few genes that need to be altered to give a longer life span. So, my feeling was that there were only a few genes, perhaps four to six in humans, that would do the same."

 

Thus, Kunkel and his colleagues did a genome-wide comparative analysis of 137 sets of two or three siblings who were at least 90, where one member of each sibship was 98 or older. Their mapping studies used 400 known genomic markers to determine whether the sibling sets shared specific chromosomal regions in significantly greater excess than predicted by chance inheritance from their parents alone.

 

"We found that on chromosome four there was a little blip of allele sharing that was greater than would be predicted by chance," said Kunkel. "We term this finding as 'highly suggestive,' because it is ninety-five percent certain that it is not by chance — thus with a five percent likelihood that we just happened to get this blip," he said.

 

Kunkel cautions that finding allele sharing on chromosome 4 represents only the beginning of the arduous process of pinpointing the gene or genes that influence longevity. "We have two major challenges," he said. "First, we will have to replicate these findings in another hundred or so sibships to confirm them, and perhaps to determine whether there may be another shared locus." Some of the subjects studied did not share a locus on chromosome 4, so Kunkel and his colleagues suspect that other shared loci might exist.

 

"Second, we must try to find the gene in this region of chromosome 4 that confers the longevity phenotype," said Kunkel. "This is an extremely complicated process because there are perhaps as many as five hundred genes in this region, and one of them has a single sequence variation that confers this phenotype. This variation is not a mutation as in genetic disease. Rather it is a very subtle genetic difference that produces a protein that may either work slightly better or be less active than in the normal population."

 

According to Kunkel, a thorough search for such a subtle genetic variation — called a single nucleotide polymorphism — in one gene will require performing 200,000-400,000 genetic analyses on some 200 long-lived subjects. The researchers must then compare those results to genetic analyses performed on a similar number of people with normal longevity.

 

"We are extremely excited about the prospects for this work," he said. "We believe that we can find the genes that allow humans to live to be much older than average, as well as the metabolic pathways they influence. And it may turn out that there are similar pathways in lower organisms."

[Peels]

Inventor Kurzweil Aiming to Live, not 100 years, but Forever - Immortality!

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/13/tech/main673726.shtml

[Dave]

snore2walk: Please quote the URL of the place you're referencing from in the future. We don't like plagarism here

 

Thanks.

[snore2walk]

heya....i'm sooo sorry. i copied the second entry from an e-mail sent to me from a friend. he didn't include the url for it though. didn't intend to plagerise or anything....hope you'll understand! next time, i'll be more cautious, though

[yangxu]

seems like a lot of cellular process contributes to aging (eg. non-functioning telomerases, etc), personally I'd go for genetic modifications if human really has the desire to live up over 100 yrs, taking drugs will probably cause side effects.

[snore2walk]

mmmmm......true....but genetic modifications may have complications that are not very vicible from the start. i mean, a complication may arise some years after birth, and it would be rather hard to fix the problem, won't it? also, a living human cannot live for ever...his offsprin=gs may, but he himself cannot be modified, can he?

[Xavier]

I took a class a decade of so ago which had courses in each of the main topics of medical laboratory science; biochemistry, haematology, immunology, histology and microbiology. As the course progressed, I noticed that for each topic the subject of aging came up and was ascribed to be due to something within the topic being taught.

 

For biochemistry - DNA breakdown (this was before telomeres became fashionable and referred to the inability of the DNA repair mechanisms to fix ever more damage - DNA repair was little understood at the time and DNA was believed to be very robust. Nowadays we believe that the DNA is under a highly sophisticated, continuous repair programme.)

 

Immunology - the breakdown of the immune response allowing multiple low level autoimmune diseases attacking the body slowly. (Most deaths by 'natural causes' are actually precipitated by infection, particularly pneumonia)

 

Haematology - againg was said to be due to cumulative restriction, blocking and loss of the microscopic capillaries that feed blood to every nook and cranny of the body. Individually, a loss is unimportant but cumulatively there is a reduction in perfusion over ever larger areas.More parts of the body have to try to make do with less oxygen and nutrient supply so cells die and the immune response is compromised as its transport infrastructure fails to deliver antibodies right to the beachhead of an infection.

 

Histology - againg is caused by the accumulation of cancerous- or precancerous- particles in the body. Whilst some are voided by the immune system many are merely slowed or would never have amounted to a life-threatening condition but the cumulative effect is body degradation. By the time you are a wrinkley you are riddled with clusters of cells that are misfiring, blocking or just getting in the way of the bodies normal functions.

 

In each case, the scientists weresaid to be making strident progress and were just beginning to get to grips with the solution to whatever they believed was the cause of aging - and they may be right.

Anyway, longevity statistics for today are measuring people who lived through the Great War and the Depression! I would expect to live well beyond my grandparents average of about 80 years if I didn't lead such a determinedly unhealthy lifestyle. A child today should expect to see the twenty second century.

 

In 'The Selfish Gene', Richard Dawkins suggested that aging and death were due to an accumulation of mutations in the human genome that cause bad consequences only when the body was beyond its usual reproductive lifespan (like Huntingdon's disease, though most of these mutations are not as horrible). There was much less evolutionary pressure to get rid of these mutations if they only did damage after the next generation was reared and again it is their cumulative effects that cause the visible degradation. He suggests that if the human race is really serious about increasing longevity, we need use only our clever brains to choose to increase the mean reproductive age by not allowing any child to survive if born of parents younger than thirty years. Evolution will favour mutations to push up the maximum reproductive age (or we can use technology to do it artificially) whereupon these negative mutations will be driven out (or their onset age increased) as they will be effecting the procreation of the next generation.

 

In summary, I consider it a fairly much accepted scientific game to come up with a plausible connection between aging and whatever is the topic of study.

Be particularly wary of explanations based of DNA damage as there has been a profound sea-change in our beliefs about DNA repair that is spilling over even into genetics of inheritance! And 'Hormones' was to the 1980's when immunoassays were first measuring that in quantity, what DNA has been to the past decade so make sure that any theories you read are up-to-date.

 

A couple more interesting longevity factoids.

Various invertebrates increase their lifespan by 50% when fed on a strict, near-starvation diet.

Laboratory mice have a lifespan of 150-200% of the maximum found in the nearest equivalent in the wild (>1.5 years vs. 9 months, some lab mice live over 3 years) despite their rampant inbreeding. However, most that are killed in experiments die of cancer - typically non-malignant tumours that grow too big.

People who have had a total thyroidectomy must take a synthetic thyroxine hormone in a pill twice per day to survive. When it was noticed that such people had a average lifespan as much as 10 years longer than an equivalent, non pill-popping population some people had healthy thyroid glands removed so they could take the pills instead!

[snore2walk]

i'm impressed. thanks

[soulestada]

I can't for the life of me understand why people want to live up to and after 100. Most people who are over eighty have numerous medical problems and have to take so many meds that bad interactions are common and could possibly kill them off sooner than otherwise. I mean, I thought that we are supposed to enjoy live, and quite frankly, taking a bunch of pills and dealing with diseases that develop as we age (arthritis, heart problems, etc.) doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me . I guess that is why research is trying to find ways to slow all the damage that aging causes. For now, though, eighty is good enough for me.

[Aardvark]

I can't for the life of me understand why[/i'] people want to live up to and after 100. Most people who are over eighty have numerous medical problems and have to take so many meds that bad interactions are common and could possibly kill them off sooner than otherwise.

 

If the ageing process is slowed or reversed it could lead to people having more years of good health before they become frail. Middle age being extended up to 100 would greatly improve peoples quality of life.

[MolecularMan14]

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/s/space/hangintherethe25yearwaitforimmortality

I hope that the entire population does not get behind all this, and live forever (we're almost full as it is, and unless we want to spread to other planets and overtake the universe, we should probably contain our population )...who is to decide who lives forever and who dies with the rest? Will it be money or merit? Find out after the break, we'll be right back

[snore2walk]

in biblical knowledge, man has been known to live for above 300 years right?

and excavations by paleontologists(dun mind the spelling) indicate that man had a much heavier bone-structure and build back then. suppoedly, a gold ring found on a index finger of skeleton could fit as a bangle on today's modern man's wrist....does this apparent reduce in body structure have something to do with reducing age or something?

[snore2walk]

i read an article similar to this, though a more detailed one in a recent edition of popsci......so it is workable?

[Sayonara]

paleontologists(dun mind the spelling) indicate that man had a much heavier bone-structure and build back then. suppoedly, a gold ring found on a index finger of skeleton could fit as a bangle on today's modern man's wrist

Is this some kind of paleontology joke?

[snore2walk]

i have no idea

[reverse]

re the main topic.

 

Word on the street is that the free radicals that are being targeted as the main cause to ageing,

can be combated by the increase in a particular mitochondria

- has worked in other species but not yet tried in man.

 

Sorry for the loose details but I read it quickly as I passed a magazine today.

 

100 years old was the predicted achievable target.

 

Believe it or not?

[ecoli]

don't forget the role of diet in longevity also. With the invention of new medicines, etc. people tend to forget that this needs to be coupled with healthy diet and excersize.