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Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

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Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the volume of replies, advice, and questions, against this suggests it's brought enjoyable conversation. On-topic is shades of grey.

Popularity is not a proxy for quality. ...and just like Reddit, chasing popular posts and comments is a race to the bottom as it attracts an ever-more juvenile crowd of participants. Nuanced opinions and expert commentary are more boring but attract a more intellectually curious crowd - and that is what sets HN apart from reddit.

True in the limit yet democracy and free markets both imply popularity has something to it.

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#193

> Researchers using mouse models found that altering the CaMKII brain protein caused similar cognitive effects as those that happen through normal aging. This should be the title of the article. Honestly these supposedly dissemination articles do not offer much more than reading the abstract or skimming a bit through the article itself. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.ade5892

Realistically, with the title you suggest nobody would have read the post.

A title is not "the most informative and complete sentence summarizing the article", it also has the goal to stimulate curiosity. I understand that we don't want misleading titles but this obsession on titles is not very helpful. I am participating in this useless conversation but I couldn't help myself. Now every single HN post has a comment on how the title is wrong..

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#194
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you die early enough you should be able to prevent any cognitive decline, or at least experience it all at once and very fast.

I wonder if one could even guarantee a quick and early death without suicide. I assume if you join the military or something, if you get shot on the battlefield you could end up surviving with extreme pain, or bleeding out over a long period of time, neither of which are particularly desirable. There are various ways to go to sleep and never wake up, but I'd assume anything you did intentionally would be suicide. Som…

Exotic extreme sports, to answer your question.

But, most people I've come across that are outward with this attitude say they smoke tobacco to help, and have a suicide method all planned out and ready to go as a guarantee.

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#195
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it was explained to me, flouride will work in repairing microscopic areas of decay so long as the surfaces of your teeth are ultra clean. My dentist insists that I see the hygienist every 3 months for descaling, cleaning and basic checks. For the cynics, the cost of this is negligible and I have not needed a filling or any other costly procedure for over a decade.

Ohhh, I misinterpreted your comment. I think other people did too. It seemed as if you were saying that your dentist told you not to step foot in the dentist office at all for 18 months. But you just meant, the literal dentist doesn’t need to see you. Got it. I feel like this isn’t out of the ordinary now. I always hear every 6 months for a cleaning. This new “3-month” information takes a bit away from your original…

You're replying to a different person, now =]

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#196

Eventually we will reach a point where humans are immortal. They’ll still die if they’re shot or clog their arteries etc but they won’t die purely based on running down a clock. There’s no inherent reason we have to die. It’s an evolved strategy to allow newer models to replace us. Turn that off and you’d stay around until physical damage and irreparable decay takes you out. It will be interesting from a societal sta…

> [death is] an evolved strategy to allow newer models to replace us

I don't think that's true and it's pretty difficult to argue that it is given how close to universal death is among living things... if it were true evolution would also have explored the adjacent possible of near immortality more often. After all living longer also means potentially producing more offspring, so it's not an impediment to natural selection. Probably more accurate to say that between the complexity required to keep repairing the accumulated damage in an individual organism over time and simply replacing the organism with a new model every so often, evolution prudently chose the later. Evolution is economical... making highly complex systems that are eternally resilient and repairable is not.

I don't doubt we'll soon be able to extend lifespan (and healthspan) by quite a bit but not indefinitely unless we can transfer the mind to a new body. And frankly I doubt that makes a lot of sense because I don't think 200-year-old me will feel much identity with 20-year-old me anyway. The Buddhists probably have it right that the sense of a continuous self is largely an illusion.

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#197
post #16

I've noticed a cognitive decline in myself the past couple years. I'm in my mid 30's though so I assume it's more related to long covid. One of the biggest side effects of long covid for me was horrible insomnia, which was killer. The insomnia is mostly gone, but I'm still not my previous cognitive self. It's terrifying to be honest.

I doubt it is much to do with COVID. Mid 30’s is about the time when you have to start paying closer attention to things like sleep and exercise or everything starts to go to shit.

I'm in my early 40s, and do nothing specifically for my physical health. I don't have cognitive decline, I don't suffer from little issues at all, (someone once said that'll happen once past 40), some days I skip sleep entirely.

I also learn new stuff and program on projects, which are cognitively demanding, almost every single day. I don't regularly watch TV shows. On occasion I binge-watch something, only to stop it again for many months. I don't drink alcohol at all, but I consume small amounts of THC.

Your "mid 30s" claim might be true for people who are doing it wrong, which probably/likely is the vast majority, but there's absolutely no fair and objective way of putting an age on the beginning of cognitive or physical decline as if it was outside of ones personality responsibility/abilities to prevent it from happening until a much, much later age.

But ... to be the exception that agrees with the rule: If I lived how most people around seem to be living, I'd likely suffer from decline as well.

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#198
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how many supplements are contaminated. I have never seen an analysis even from the vendors who do pretty hefty chemical composition analysis. Why do you think food supplements would be more contaminated than other processed foods? Or even things like toothpaste or shampoo, those are also made from highly processes ingredients.

There's a large amount of precedence, that's why. Rather than asking the room, one would think the first step would be to obtain information and inform yourself. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5753965/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34022259/ https://theconversation.com/natural-supplements-can-be-dange...

Why so defensive? I'm asking the room because it's a smart room, usually, and often there's someone who'll be far better informed than I could be with a quick search. That's literally why I spend time here.

Regarding your links, I'm sure I could find similar studies about nearly any kind of food. I have a friend who won't eat peanuts because he's afraid of aflotoxins, which are real, genuinely dangerous, and if you think that peanut products are tested well enough to 100% guarantee the aflotoxins are always below safe levels in all peanut products you'll ever eat... Well, I'll disagree.

https://inspection.canada.ca/food-safety-for-industry/food-c...

So again, why do you think supplements are worse than other food products? I don't agree that your links answer this question.

They do show that there's often contaminants in supplements. They _don't_ show that supplements are unusual in this regard when compared to other food products.

Your third link focuses on heavy metals in supplements. Here's a similar study showing they are also in baby food:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heavy-metals-in-baby-foo...

So is it just supplements and baby food? Unlikely. More likely it's that supplements and baby food are both things that make people worry about contamination, so they test them more. Meanwhile your ketchup might be loaded with all kinds of contaminants but you'd never think of testing it.

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#199

> Researchers using mouse models found that altering the CaMKII brain protein caused similar cognitive effects as those that happen through normal aging. This should be the title of the article. Honestly these supposedly dissemination articles do not offer much more than reading the abstract or skimming a bit through the article itself. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.ade5892

The title of the study is "Decreased nitrosylation of CaMKII causes aging-associated impairments in memory and synaptic plasticity in mice" - that would have been the base of the shortened title, if the study had been submitted.

The dissemination article was chosen for submission because it was the one from the source University. (There are more around.)

Further from using clear, synthetic expressions, it contains more information than just the (available abstract of the) research article - it is where an author of the latter states that next steps are pharmacological and involving humans.

Re: Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging

#200
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same after COVID. Took me many months to start feeling functional again. Any time I tried to think about something, it'd just... noise out? First 2-3 months were just awful I went to a neurologist who said there's tons of people coming in with the same complaint after COVID, and since there's no literature on that yet, he couldn't really do anything. It gets better.

I wonder how many people just fell into alcohol, isolation induced depression, sedentary lifestyle, weight gain, etc... and that their health decline had nothing to do with COVID. That's the issue with these anecdotes

For me personally, I've been working from home for years. While the world around me changed, my life stayed the same.
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