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In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

nature.com

41–50 of 198 posts

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rich old white dude Why attach race, age, gender, and class to the idea that lifestyle changes are hard? I'm pretty sure everyone finds them hard.

I believe the point wasn't about who finds lifestyle changes to be hard, but who has the disposable cash to pay for medicine instead.

rich people

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So does fasting, and it don't cost as much. If a "rich old white dude" could get the health benefits of fasting for a bit of cash, a lot of them are going to pay it. Lifestyle changes are hard, while cash is 'easy' for a significant part of what I imagine to be the target market. EDIT: Apparently I should clarify the "old white dude" part of this. The study in question consisted entirely of "9 white men between 51…

> rich old white dude Why attach race, age, gender, and class to the idea that lifestyle changes are hard? I'm pretty sure everyone finds them hard.

Well, "old white dude" comes from the study participants. "rich" comes from people you want to sell to and/or people who have the resources to pay you.

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#43

It just dawned on me that getting old and dying is most likely an evolutionary chicken and egg problem. If you didn't get old and die, evolution of your species would grind to a halt. Getting old and dying is required for evolution to transpire. I can't see any reason why it must be an absolute truth.

No. You're succumbing to the fallacy of group selection. Evolution operates on a gene-specific level. A trait that maximizes an individual's inclusive genetic fitness at the expense of the species will always out-complete.

Genes most definitely do not want to promote evolution in any sense. Since evolution by definition implies the replacement of currently existing genes with new genes.

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biological immortality in plants and animals isn't unheard of. Take Jelly Fish, they are biologically immortal, been around 500 million years, not to bad. They were the first animals to evolve nervous systems, not sure the timeline of the biological immortality evolution, but they must have continued evolving because there are different species (some have evolved eyes and others not) and I believe all species are bio…

Are you saying there is a floating jelly fish in the ocean that is 500 million years old (‘years old’ in the common parlance of usage)?

The life/reproduction cycle of jellyfish makes it difficult to talk about "common parlance" age. Someone even made a website about it: https://immortal-jellyfish.com/

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So does fasting, and it don't cost as much. If a "rich old white dude" could get the health benefits of fasting for a bit of cash, a lot of them are going to pay it. Lifestyle changes are hard, while cash is 'easy' for a significant part of what I imagine to be the target market. EDIT: Apparently I should clarify the "old white dude" part of this. The study in question consisted entirely of "9 white men between 51…

why white and dude? aren't there other kinds of rich people? and wouldn't they also pay?

From the article:

> The Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration and Insulin Mitigation (TRIIM) trial tested 9 white men between 51 and 65 years of age.

Who knows if this set of treatments will work for other demographics? I'd certainly bet it'd work differently for women, given the differences in hormonal balances. (And IIRC there are different recommended steroids for women - since at least one of the drugs in this cocktail was a steroid, I'd think that would come into play)

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#46

It just dawned on me that getting old and dying is most likely an evolutionary chicken and egg problem. If you didn't get old and die, evolution of your species would grind to a halt. Getting old and dying is required for evolution to transpire. I can't see any reason why it must be an absolute truth.

If a mutation occurred in an individual such that it would not age, while everything else remained the same, that individual would have more reproductive opportunities and so would its offspring, but there would still be differential success, that is not all individuals would reproduce at the same rate. So you would still have reproduction, heredity and differential reproductive success. So evolution would continue. The fact that all creatures age suggest there is some fundamental trade off between longevity and other types of fitness.

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biological immortality in plants and animals isn't unheard of. Take Jelly Fish, they are biologically immortal, been around 500 million years, not to bad. They were the first animals to evolve nervous systems, not sure the timeline of the biological immortality evolution, but they must have continued evolving because there are different species (some have evolved eyes and others not) and I believe all species are bio…

Are you saying there is a floating jelly fish in the ocean that is 500 million years old (‘years old’ in the common parlance of usage)?

Highly unlikely - statistically speaking, predation and disease would kill any individual specimen long before 500M year passed. That said, there are ‘immortal jellyfish’ that do not die of aging - don’t worry about an uprising though, they can be killed!

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#48

It just dawned on me that getting old and dying is most likely an evolutionary chicken and egg problem. If you didn't get old and die, evolution of your species would grind to a halt. Getting old and dying is required for evolution to transpire. I can't see any reason why it must be an absolute truth.

No. You're succumbing to the fallacy of group selection. Evolution operates on a gene-specific level. A trait that maximizes an individual's inclusive genetic fitness at the expense of the species will always out-complete. Genes most definitely do not want to promote evolution in any sense. Since evolution by definition implies the replacement of currently existing genes with new genes.

Wouldn't a gene prefer to transmit copies of itself into descendants that replace all the other genes in the DNA it shares, with better fitness-maximizing ones?

That is, if a gene's options are "copy into clone" or "copy into 100% optimal genetic superman, with the only common gene being me, left completely untouched", I assume any given gene would "choose" the latter.

Which is to say, presuming a given gene is already helpful and is "core" to the organism's functionality, that gene would see evolution as a helpful service that causes it to end up copied into better-performing descendants, rather than same-performing descendants.

This also serves as a decent explanation of why sexual reproduction persists even in species that can also parthenogenetically reproduce: the "good" genes are betting on being retained, and getting the "bad" genes culled out in the process.

Re: In a small trial, drugs seemed to rejuvenate the body’s ‘epigenetic clock’

#50
post #10

The sample size is so small, that the results are nearly meaningless.

If 9 people took a substance and died that would be a compelling enough sample size for me not to take thing. Likewise, 9 people reporting a positive result seems meaningful enough to encourage further study (provided effect size is large enough)..
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