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Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

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Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#11

Post by leereeves »

Coxa wrote: post #8
alexis_fr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least). We’ve just made continually more progress for women than for men. Nowadays for example: lots of research on female cancer (twice more funding than male cancers, for the same incidence and mortality) and domestic violence, little budgets on suicide. Lots of money for equality at work where women are fewer, little money for boys massively dropp…

Do you have a citation for the formerly same life expectancy in men and women. I cannot find any.

According to the UK government [1] there's been a gap back to at least the 1850s, which was growing worse until 1970, and has since been getting better, but remains considerably higher than in 1850.

1: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#12

Post by adventured »

alexis_fr wrote: post #4
Razengan wrote: post #2

Could this be related to the generally shorter lifespans of males?

Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least). We’ve just made continually more progress for women than for men. Nowadays for example: lots of research on female cancer (twice more funding than male cancers, for the same incidence and mortality) and domestic violence, little budgets on suicide. Lots of money for equality at work where women are fewer, little money for boys massively dropp…

There are some interesting challenges to your premise, even though some of it very clearly plays a role in the gap.

There is a six year gap (81 vs 87 as of 2018-2019) between men and women in Japan. Arguably none of that gap is properly explained by the issues you've raised. The Japanese are the healthiest, longest living people of any large cohort on the planet and yet the gap persists.

Further, roughly twice as many girls (50.5%) born in 2019 in Japan will live to 90 as boys (26.5%).

None of that is explained by things like rates of cancer (low in Japan), school drop-out rates, domestic violence, murder rates, prison, crime, work equality, army / Daesh matters, or suicide rates. Japan's male suicide rate for example is below that of the US, Finland and only a few points above France.

Yet the life expectancy gap between men and women is smaller in the US than in Japan, which makes little sense if your raised issues were the leading cause agents.

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#13

Post by huntertwo »

alexis_fr wrote: post #4
Razengan wrote: post #2

Could this be related to the generally shorter lifespans of males?

Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least). We’ve just made continually more progress for women than for men. Nowadays for example: lots of research on female cancer (twice more funding than male cancers, for the same incidence and mortality) and domestic violence, little budgets on suicide. Lots of money for equality at work where women are fewer, little money for boys massively dropp…

This seems like it could be true, but is against my intuition. It could be that in 1900 things that killed people killed them before brain activity was significant to have an effect. But as health results improved, brain activity ended up being a bigger factor on when someone died because they weren't busy dying from typhoid 25 years prior.

I'm personally of the hypothesis that in most cultures men undertake activities that end up killing them earlier in aggregate than women.

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#14

Post by rpmisms »

Does this relate in any way to the anti-aging drug cocktail that we saw a few months ago?

IIRC that one related to genetic aging markers, and stress can affect mitosis.

It seems like immortality has a lot of building blocks, and the research isn't far enough to combine them yet.

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#15

Post by daeroth »

agumonkey wrote: post #7
ghostcluster wrote: post #6

> In their new study, Yankner and his colleagues report that the brains of long-lived humans have unusually low levels of proteins involved in excitation, at least in comparison with the brains of people who died much younger. This finding suggests that the exceptionally old people probably had less neural firing. To investigate this association in more detail, Yankner’s team turned to C. elegans. They compared neura…

Depends on the nature of activity. Pure stress will activate your brain but experience is mostly degraded.

What if stressful existance pushes for shorter lifespan with the effect of quickening the turnover of generations.

So stressful environment would speed up the evolutionary iteration of generations. While less stressful existance that has adopted to the environment would persist longer.

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#16

Post by theothermkn »

ghostcluster wrote: post #6

> In their new study, Yankner and his colleagues report that the brains of long-lived humans have unusually low levels of proteins involved in excitation, at least in comparison with the brains of people who died much younger. This finding suggests that the exceptionally old people probably had less neural firing. To investigate this association in more detail, Yankner’s team turned to C. elegans. They compared neura…

> Does the low neural activity correlate with a less active experience of the world?

From the fine article:

> "Neuronal overactivity may not feel like anything in particular from the viewpoint of the worm, mouse or human, unless it gets bad enough to provoke seizures. But perhaps over time it may damage neurons."

No.

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#17

Post by coldtea »

alexis_fr wrote: post #4
Razengan wrote: post #2

Could this be related to the generally shorter lifespans of males?

Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least). We’ve just made continually more progress for women than for men. Nowadays for example: lots of research on female cancer (twice more funding than male cancers, for the same incidence and mortality) and domestic violence, little budgets on suicide. Lots of money for equality at work where women are fewer, little money for boys massively dropp…

>Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least).

Probably because other factors that would kill early both men and women much sooner dominated. Like trying to measure the performance of a program when the disk is too slow and ending up measuring the disk...

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#18

Post by ghostcluster »

theothermkn wrote: post #16
ghostcluster wrote: post #6

> In their new study, Yankner and his colleagues report that the brains of long-lived humans have unusually low levels of proteins involved in excitation, at least in comparison with the brains of people who died much younger. This finding suggests that the exceptionally old people probably had less neural firing. To investigate this association in more detail, Yankner’s team turned to C. elegans. They compared neura…

> Does the low neural activity correlate with a less active experience of the world? From the fine article: > "Neuronal overactivity may not feel like anything in particular from the viewpoint of the worm, mouse or human, unless it gets bad enough to provoke seizures. But perhaps over time it may damage neurons." No.

> Neural activity refers to the constant flicker of electrical currents and transmissions in the brain. Excessive activity, or excitation, could manifest in numerous ways, from a muscle twitch to a change in mood or thought, the authors said.

> It’s not yet clear from the study whether or how a person’s thoughts, personality, or behavior affect his or her longevity.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/10/nervous-syste...

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#19

Post by ekianjo »

adventured wrote: post #12
alexis_fr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least). We’ve just made continually more progress for women than for men. Nowadays for example: lots of research on female cancer (twice more funding than male cancers, for the same incidence and mortality) and domestic violence, little budgets on suicide. Lots of money for equality at work where women are fewer, little money for boys massively dropp…

There are some interesting challenges to your premise, even though some of it very clearly plays a role in the gap. There is a six year gap (81 vs 87 as of 2018-2019) between men and women in Japan. Arguably none of that gap is properly explained by the issues you've raised. The Japanese are the healthiest, longest living people of any large cohort on the planet and yet the gap persists. Further, roughly twice as man…

> None of that is explained by things like rates of cancer (low in Japan),

??? Not for Stomach cancer or CRC.

CRC: High in Japan vs most other countries, and significantly more prevalent with men: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/colorectal-...

Stomach: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/stomach-can... men get is almost 3x more than women in Japan and Japan is the top 3 worldwide in incidence.

And overall death rates by cancer for men in Japan are quite a lot higher than for females: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929724/figure/...

For suicides in Japan it's predominantly men who commit suicide, with a ratio of 2.53 vs female: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

Before making blanket statements you may want to check the data...

Re: Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons

#20

Post by tasty_freeze »

alexis_fr wrote: post #4
Razengan wrote: post #2

Could this be related to the generally shorter lifespans of males?

Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least). We’ve just made continually more progress for women than for men. Nowadays for example: lots of research on female cancer (twice more funding than male cancers, for the same incidence and mortality) and domestic violence, little budgets on suicide. Lots of money for equality at work where women are fewer, little money for boys massively dropp…

You are driving a thesis here but using only data which supports that thesis. There are many other reasons why, at least in the culture I'm familiar with (the USA) men have tended to live shorter. These are all stated in past tense, though many are still true today:

- men smoked at higher rates than women

- men were more likely to drink heavily

- men were more likely to engage in dangerous work (construction vs nursing)

- men were more likely to drive aggressively and/or drive motorcycles

- men were far more likely to say "watch this!" and do something like, oh, jumping off the roof of a house an into a pool

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