The Fountain of Youth

Have you ever wondered what makes us age and die? If our cells are constantly reproducing themselves, then why don’t they just keep going? What happens to cause the aging process and the eventual failure of the biological systems that keep us going?

For many decades, scientists felt that cells – the basic building blocks of living tissue such as the human body – were immortal. In other words, they felt that if they were kept in ideal lab conditions, taken well care of and not damaged, the cells would continue on indefinitely, like little machines that never break down.

This was because cellular biologists had cell cultures that seemed to just keep breeding for decades in controlled laboratory conditions. Some cells did die, but they all had assumed that this was a random effect caused by mistakes on the part of the lab staff, or other external factors. Therefore, these biologists felt that aging and death were something that was caused external to the cell. It might possibly be something food-related, or accumulated radiation over time, or disease, etc.

This was the thinking in the field until 1961 when a young Dr. Leonard Hayflick discovered that cells in his lab were dying after about 9 months. He realized this only because he had noted the dates that the tissue samples had arrived from the hospitals. When he compared the deaths of the cell batches to the dates they arrived in his lab, he made the correlation which eventually made him famous.

He discovered an internal ‘clock’ within the cells themselves that told them when to die. He found that human cells could reproduce 50 times, but no more. At that point, the cell dies. This came to be known as the now-famous “Hayflick Limit”. He tried freezing cells and found that when he froze the cells down to -250F, then all activity stops, and the cell is suspended. It can remain in this suspended stasis indefinitely. He currently has cells which are 46 years old that are still suspended this way. These are the oldest known cells in the world.

But when he warmed these cells up again, the internal ‘clock’ began again exactly where it left off before it was frozen. This was a puzzle until a Russian biologist attended his lecture on the subject and then went to the Moscow subway station on his way home. As he stared down at the railroad tracks, he had an insight about how this ‘clock’ worked.

The railroad track, if twisted, looks like a DNA double-helix. He proposed that there are a number of bonds or bars in the DNA strand, like the ties in the railroad tracks. And with each replication, one of these bonds breaks or is dissolved until they arrive at the last one, which tells the cell to keep reproducing, and when that one is finally lost, the cells stops and dies.

There are 50 of these bonds, and so it allows 50 replications and then no more. It is built into the very DNA structure of the cell at the end of every chromosome, and this little stretch of DNA is called a telomere.

The implication then is that humans live the length of time they do because they are limited to 50 cellular reproductions, and that, multiplied by the length of time it take to replicate the average number of cells in the body gives the approximate lifespan of a human. Other animals may live shorter or longer lives depending upon how many bars they have in their DNA strands that are destroyed with each cell generation.

Some tortoises, like the large Galapagos tortoise, have twice the number of little DNA cross members and so they live about twice as long as a human. A lobster, interestingly, does not have a natural lifespan. They do not age, but rather keep living and growing until they are killed and eaten. This is curious and causes researches to wonder about what genetic manipulation they might do to human cell DNA to make us also life indefinitely.

So far, they have determined that there is an enzyme called telomerase which can extend the telomere. As the telomere loses each little bar, it creates another one – thus extending the cell’s ability to keep replicating and also therefore extending the life of the organism indefinitely.

However, the price you pay for this is cancer. To have this uncontrolled growth is what causes cancerous tumors and, in fact, that is what cancer is, really.

Cynthia Kenyon is a molecular biologist who has made some remarkable progress with extending life by manipulating genetics. In 1993, she discovered the so-called “Grim Reaper gene” that causes the cells to die in a special type of tiny worm that she experiments with. She picked the C.elegans worm because they only have a normal lifespan of about 13 days, and because she had the entire genome of 20,000 genes mapped out for it. Her plan was to just tweak one at a time and see if that extended the lifespan.

She found this gene that, when adjusted, caused the worm to live twice as long. Then she found another gene that she called the “Fountain of Youth gene”. This is the one that spawns the repair processes that repair damage that ages a cell. The Grim Reaper Gene kills the cell by disabling this Fountain of Youth gene.

Cynthia is currently doing research into the human genone to see if she can accomplish the same thing for our species.

In the meantime, she recommends a low carb, low salt, low, sugar diet similar to Atkins or South Beach. This kind of diet will keep your body from aging as fast and keep you younger longer. She is 52 now and says she feels as young and agile as a teenager. She is hoping to live to about 150 years old, but she has plans to extend the average lifespan of humans to about 500 years based on her latest genetic experiements. She doesn’t have the answer yet, but she’s working on it.

This brings us to the obvious question. Is this something we want as a society? Is it something you would want as an individual?

If you could be young and healthy strong for most of that time, then why not?

As a society, I don't think we would want to extend the 'old age' part of our lives for another 70 years, but if we could extend the young-adult to middle-aged stage - the most productive stage of our lives, then that would help society in a lot of ways.

Most of the "developed world" is aging. The average age in Europe, for instance, is 54 years and getting older every year. In the last 50 years, in developed, modern countries, people are not having as many babies. My father was the oldest of 9 children in his family. My mother was the youngest of 16 children in her family. This was common in those days, but it's virtually unheard of now.

Look at Japan. Fully 21% of their population is the aged. By comparison, Florida is only 17%, and it's the retirement capitol of America. Japan's largest problem these days is not their economy, or competition with American products or companies, or rivalry with China, etc. It is how they are to take care of their aging population. The old need the young to take care of them. But if the younger generation spends all of their time and energy taking care of the older people, then they are not producing goods and services to keep the economy of the country going and so the country withers and dies. This decline is evident in Japan today.

The developing world has the larger populations now, but that is primarily because people there have lots of children in order to have a way to survive when they are old. Without the social infrastructure of a developed nation, this is their only choice.

But these countries are starting to develop now and are building their own strong economies. China and India have come a long way from the 3rd world nations they were a couple of decades ago. They now appear to be poised to become the next economic superpowers. I think you will see that as their social programs evolve to the point where their old people are taken care of better, then their populations will also start to drop.

From a personal level, it takes a long time to learn all the useful skills at the levels needed in today's complex, technological society. By the time we really know what we're doing in any field, we are already starting to think about retiring. Some have said that if it takes till you're 50 to really know what you're doing and become an expert in something, then you have 10 or 15 productive years at that level and then you retire. It seems like a lot of 'ramp-up' time and 'ramp-down' time for relatively little peak producing time.

Well, imagine if you could extend that peak time. Imagine if you could take all that knowledge and skill and wisdom you've accumulated - and then just keep going for another 70 years. Think of all you could accomplish. What could Einstein have done with another 70 years to do it in? or Newton? Or what could Shakespeare or Dickens have written? How different would the world be today if our best and brightest could have shone their light a little longer?

I wonder how things like marriage, and education, and careers would change if we lived to be 150 years old.

What do you think?

Are you happy? What exactly IS "Happiness" anyway?

Are you happy? What makes you happy?I have been thinking quite a lot lately about happiness. What exactly IS "Happiness"?

Is it a state of mind? Many people seem to think this. To them, happiness is a state of sensation where they feel pleasant and untroubled. In this scenario, it is not the external situation that creates or denies happiness, but rather, it comes from within. It is a state of being. A mental condition of feeling generally 'satisfied' in all respects. But if this is all happiness really is, then couldn't we all achieve happiness through simple medication? We could all just take happy pills like Zoloft or Prozac or something similar, and just 'bliss out', right? But would that really make you "happy"? You would still have your problems - you just wouldn't care and so they would probably get worse.

I heard an NPR interview recently with researchers looking into addictive behavior and they found that there are endorphins that get triggered by substances which increase the overall level of serotonin in the brain, but that SOME people get hooked on that level of serotonin and the brain becomes accustomed to the new levels that the substances are creating, and so their sense of 'normal' can only be arrived at by artificially elevating these chemicals to that level, and then they need more than that to actually feel 'good' again. And so they accelerate their use. This is like driving a car and wanting to feel the thrill of going fast - but driving at a high rate of speed isn't enough for them. They need to be constantly accelerating to a higher speed in order to continue to get the sense of thrill that they are hooked on. Similarly, these people need ever-increasing doses of drugs that give them a higher level of serotonin in order to feel normal.

Obviously, this path leads to destruction - both physical and financial, since these mood enhancing drugs may do damage after extended uncontrolled use and also they are not free. And somehow, artificially enhancing chemicals in the brain doesn't seem like a viable long-term solution to the problem. That isn't happiness, that is merely the artificial simulation of the effect of happiness. Mostly it is simply the numbing of the senses to the point that you don't care about the bad things, and that is not at all the same thing. So there must be more to it than that.

Is happiness based on external things then?

Different things make different people happy. For some it is a favorite food. I know a number of women who are completely happy when they eat chocolate. Or ice cream. These things seem to trigger that state in them regardless of whatever else is going on in their lives at the moment. Of course the effect is only temporary, and they have to stop eating it eventually, and at that point, reality comes crashing back in to their consciousness.

I know with me, there are certain things that give me an injection of a happiness feeling. It's usually about music. Playing guitar with the band when things are really cooking, is one of then. Listening to my own recorded music that I've done a lot of work on but it's turned out well - that makes me happy. It's an accomplishment. Also when I just hear certain tunes from certain artists. Dream Theater has a song called "The Spirit Carries On" about life, death and the afterlife that makes me happy. "Limelight" by the Alan Parsons Project is another. "The Messiah Will Come Again" by Roy Buchanan. "Where Were You?" by Jeff Beck. "Unconditional" by Willy Porter. There are some by Eric Johnson, Pink Floyd, Toto, Vertical Horizon, Sarah Maclachlan, etc. that all make me feel happy when I hear them.

Also sex makes most people happy - at least temporarily. Especially at the moment of climax, of course, but the whole experience is very pleasurable. Although, it might be considered more of a 'thrill', rather than a buoyant sense of 'happiness', really. It's hard to say.

For some people, it's physical activity that generates the endorphins that raise the serotonin levels. running, swimming, climbing, or riding a bicycle. But isn't this pretty similar to the chemical approach where a person takes drugs to generate the chemicals that give the sensation? Again, it's only temporary. Our bodies won't allow us to exercise constantly, and once the exercise stops, the levels go back down to normal.

Some people are happy when they are engaged in a particular activity. This is interesting because for some, it may be that the activity makes them happy because they simply enjoy doing that. For others, they enjoy the escape it provides. Golfing, for example. Or fishing, or woodworking, or gardening, cooking - whatever. Some people may love these activities. For others, it may be not so much the activity itself, as the fact that the activity is taking them away from some other activity that they DON'T want to do - like work, or housework, or dealing with a difficult spouse, etc.

Is this the solution? Find something you enjoy doing, and then just do it all the time, so that you can be happy? But if you do find an activity or a hobby that you enjoy that much, and did it all the time, then you would have to stop working, stop making a living, stop paying bills, and lose your home, and your car, and your possessions, and your security, and you wouldn't be able to feed, house, clothe or protect your family. Would THAT make you happy? I suggest it would not. Also, would you really be happy doing it all the time? Golf might be fun on the weekends when you get away from work and the house and shirk your other responsibilities for a few hours, but is it still fun when you are out there all day every day? Rain, sun, heat, cold, etc....? Any activity gets old after a while.

Is happiness a response to a positive set of conditions in one's life at the moment? Does being wealthy, healthy, and comfortable guarantee that you will be happy? If so, then why are some people happy and some not happy regardless of whether they are rich or poor, healthy or sick, etc.

Some would suggest something more spiritual. They might say that happiness comes from within - not within your body, but from within your soul. Happiness is the result of being truly satisfied with your situation. It is a spiritual sense of calm. Of serenity. Of gentle ease and understanding. Of balance.

Well, that may be, but if that is the case, then what of growth? What of striving to be more than you are? What of struggling to improve? To learn new skills, increase your capacity to become more than what you started as? If we all felt like simply accepting our situations as they are then we would all be living back in the caves from whence we came. No one would have struggled to learn to plant crops, to build homes, to seek out answers to difficult questions. And we would still be dying of trivial diseases at age 35 because no one would have had the drive to learn more and study disease and create cures and treatments to extend our lives.

And what of that struggle to do better? Is THAT where the illusive happiness lies? In the forward motion that comes from learning and growing and striving to push ahead and grab onto the next ledge above and leverage ourselves up another notch on the mountain of knowledge?

Or is that nothing but another illusion? Have we gained nothing? Is the struggle to gain knowledge or power over our obstacles simply some sort of contest to allow us the luxury of the illusion of progress so that we feel good about ourselves? Like becoming 'rich' by playing monopoly. It's a fake situation, but you feel some sort of artificial high by winning at it anyway - as if it were a worthwhile endeavor.

One thing is certain. It's not about money. Many of us feel that money would solve a lot of our problems and since our problems make us feel unhappy, it seems a logical conclusion to assume that if we have a lot of money, then those problems can be paid off and put aside - thus clearing the way for happiness to flow through. But it's not really that simple, is it?

On a recent TV show that I heard about, they interviewed a number of people who had won millions of dollars in various lotteries, but they interviewed them a year or several years after the win, to see how the money affected their lives in the long run. Most of them had gone back to their previous state of income after the money was spent. Some were worse off. None were actually happy.

This goes far beyond simply spending the money foolishly and then having nothing left to show for it 2 years later. Material things have a way of becoming meaningless when you take them for granted. Imagine you go into the lobby of a large, lavish hotel and walk by the lounge area. It may well be a $7,000 sofa sitting there, and a $2,000 coffee table under a $20,000 chandelier. But it means nothing to you. because it's just part of a hotel, it's not in your home. Well, when you have lots of money, the things in your home take on that same detached meaningless status. You have lots of money and so there was no real sense of sacrifice involved in gaining these things and so they are not treasured, and they mean nothing to you. But this is only part of the problem. Most lottery winners had lost all of their friends and couldn't trust their family members.

This is because their family members all expected to be given money, and they expected to eventually inherit what they were not given immediately, so the lottery winner was never sure of the intentions of their family members. They might be hanging around and pretending to like them simply to gain financially when they eventually died. So all of their motives and actions were suspect, and it turned the person with the money into a paranoid recluse who could trust no one.

Also, all their friends disappeared. This was because when the newly wealthy person won the lottery, all their friends came out of the woodwork to ask for money. But once they gave them the money, then these friends had no way to pay it back, so they started to avoid the rich person out of embarrassment. And so the wealthy person was finally left alone and lonely in the end. Indeed, money does not buy friends. And money may solve problems - but it sometimes creates new ones, and so this also is not happiness.

I have thought about my jobs and my career, and the ups and downs I have gone through. I think back to the job I had 5 to 10 years ago, which was a mid to upper management level position in charge of running a regional business for a large software company. I had dozens of staff, and responsibility for running a $12 million dollar consulting business with a 40%+ profit margin. I was paid roughly twice then what I earn now. Since then, I left that company as it downsized and went to a smaller company which meant my salary has dropped dramatically. I understand this company's situation, and so I understand why they cannot afford my old salary. But still - it's difficult to keep paying the bills when the income and benefits drop as the prices continue to rise.

On the one hand, things were a lot easier 5 years ago when I made twice as much money. .....Or were they? Sure, the money made it easier to pay for things, and still put money into savings, etc. but I had a lot more pressure on the job itself, since I was responsible for things I had no control over. Also, I still had money worries, because most of my income was still being chewed up by expenses. Most of us typically set ourselves up to spend whatever we earn no matter what we earn. So we always have pressures there. Also, the whole time I was in that job, I was constantly living under the threat that I would be laid off every day. That was the recession and the company was downsizing, and they were laying off hundreds or sometimes thousands of employees every 3 months. I personally had laid off about 35 people over the course of about 4 years. It was very stressful, because I felt for them. It wasn't their fault. They were doing everything right and yet the recession and the market factors, and the expectations of wall street meant that we had to keep getting smaller and reducing costs to keep profitability up to levels that impressed the stock market analysts regardless of the recession we were in.

So for four years, every conversation anyone ever had on any given day always contained some component about the potential layoffs. Everyone wondered if they would last another month or week or day, or if they might be spared only to face the risk all over again during the next quarter when the same exercise happened all over again. It was horrible for all of us. So the money was good, but the stress was doing its best to kill me.

Now, I work for that small company, but I am working on contract at a much larger company. It's a huge, complex, but fascinating job. I've learned a lot, which after 30 years in the industry is a unique pleasure. And I am feeling good about my contributions. I don't feel like I am at risk of being fired or laid off. At least my position is stable - but now I have the constant money pressure of losing ground every month since my expenses keep going up, but my income is locked. I can't legally change anything to make more money.

So - it's hard to be happy and have everything go along smoothly. There are always trade-offs and challenges. And if that is the case, do we simply accept that we will always have those challenges and seek to be happy anyway? Happiness for it's own sake - not based on anything but the need to be happy itself? Or should we always pick apart every situation and look for the bits of it that we CAN be happy about and focus on that? - which is the same thing, really. If all aspect of my career were going badly, I could still look at my life and say, well, at least my family is healthy and I have my health to keep going. Or I could say at least I am not 75 years old and I still have the energy to keep working and try to improve the situation. Or at least I have my mental faculties, and some skills. Or at least..... something; anything. I could always find SOMETHING to be thankful for.

But is that enough? Or are we just kidding ourselves? There are a lot of people who are unhappy because GWB is the president and they feel he is making a series of bad decisions and is taking our country in a direction they don't want it to go. I'm afraid that if you tie your happiness to things over which you have no control, then you will NEVER feel happiness. Others seem grumpy all the time because they feel there should be a certain order to life and the way the world works, and yet the actual world and the people in it are constantly acting in ways that seem stupid, fruitless, self-serving and are sewing the seeds of anarchy. They have the same problem. They cannot change everybody and everything, so they will have to learn to be happy based on some other measurement if they want that feeling of happiness.

I can think of at least 2 people I know who are like the above scenarios, and I can think of a third who seems to spout happiness and she derives her happiness from simple things like music or a picture of her favorite guitarist. She has chosen to simply DECIDE to be happy regardless of what may be going on around her. Who is better off? The one who is happy despite not having a good reason for it and is ignoring all that is going on? Or the other one who DOES understand in detail exactly what is happening, but who is letting it eat him up inside as he considers the ramifications? Or the one who is grumpy because he cannot tolerate stupidity or ignorance or simple-mindedness in those around him? People who miss the point drive him nuts. But people will always miss the point. Try as he might to explain it.

Some people think that if they were suddenly thin instead of fat, then they would be happy. Some think if they were suddenly young instead of old, THEN they would be happy. Some think if they could be cured of their blindness, or their cancer, or their aids, or their alcoholism, or their gambling habit or their drug habit - then they would be happy. Some think if they could get out of jail, or be spared their death sentence they would be happy. Some think if they could finally have children they would be happy. Some think if their child could be well again, they would be happy. Some think if they could just get through this tour of duty in Iraq and get home safe, then they will be happy. Other think wish that for their son or daughter or husband or wife or brother - to come home safe from Iraq.

The happiest thing I think I've seen so far is a tiny 3 yr old girl eating her ice cream, playing with her puppy, and being surrounded by her loving family. So is it about naivete? About innocence? About the bliss of ignorance? Can civilization move ahead if we all only seek that?

What about you? Are you happy? Do you think you know what happiness is? Or is it like that Supreme Court Justice once said about pornography, "It's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it..."? Is it even worthwhile to TRY to be happy? Should we simply decide to be happy. or should we based it upon something tangible? Is life even about the pursuit of happiness, or is it really all just some struggle to survive and grow and thrive as we overcome one obstacle after another? Is there some greater good that comes by each of us struggling to improve? Or is the greater good served best by all of use just deciding to be happy with whatever we are and whatever we have right now at this moment?

What do you think?