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So you wanna build an aging company

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Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#31

Post by nancyminusone »

nowahlot wrote: post #13
izzydata wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this be an anti-aging company? Aging is bad and not aging is good.

Is aging bad though? Seems like natures way of helping humanity evolve. As individuals it may seem bad. As a species, keeping old ideas in the form of ossified biology around seems like a bad idea. For example: see 70-80 year old politicians ageist assault on future generations. Physics is ageist and its march towards entropy unstoppable. Anti-aging is just more first worlders who can ignore externalities thanks to f…

I rather think that terms like "nature" or "evolve" are better at describing what has happened rather than some guidelines to adhere to.

One could say air conditioning is similarly "unnatural" but it will be saving lives this summer.

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#32

Post by mvieira38 »

rhet0rica wrote: post #6

Unpopular opinion: Any medical intervention that delays or defeats the aging process will disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and is therefore unethical. The last thing a healthy democracy needs is millennium-old acolytes of Peter Thiel pulling the strings from the shadows.

Not to mention everyone would be better off if the money invested in these VCs was invested in clean energy, public transportation and whatnot. Many of us just have to live with the knowledge that we are handicapping our life expectancies just by living in a heavily polluted major city. Living in São Paulo I'm reminded by national news every year how many cigarettes I am "smoking" daily just by existing in this place

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#33

Post by derektank »

nowahlot wrote: post #13
izzydata wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this be an anti-aging company? Aging is bad and not aging is good.

Is aging bad though? Seems like natures way of helping humanity evolve. As individuals it may seem bad. As a species, keeping old ideas in the form of ossified biology around seems like a bad idea. For example: see 70-80 year old politicians ageist assault on future generations. Physics is ageist and its march towards entropy unstoppable. Anti-aging is just more first worlders who can ignore externalities thanks to f…

Aging exists because the human body is optimized to survive and reproduce in a resource constrained environment with many threats. Our predecessors eked out just enough calories to survive to the age of 15, when we could begin reproducing. Any traits that made it more likely for us to survive until that point, even if those traits resulted in damage that would eventually accumulate and wear us down after our reproductive window, was selected for. We are all basically running the biological equivalent of overclocked CPUs without investing in proper cooling.

We no longer exist in a resource constrained environment and have access to massive amounts of energy from the sun which makes entropy a negligible concern. There is no good reason to not at least try to prevent or reverse senescence.

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#34

Post by hyghjiyhu »

avogt27 wrote: post #18
hyghjiyhu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an anti aging perspective, cancer is the most visible symptom of DNA gradually becoming more and more damaged. The anti aging solution that happens to solve cancer as a side effect is then to figure out how to repair DNA damage, and/or replace cells with damaged DNA with cells with intact DNA.

Pedantic semantics gripe: DNA damage refers to actual damage to the DNA molecule (breakage of the sugar-phosphage backbone, loss of nucleosides, etc). DNA accumulates MUTATIONS over time, which lead to the loss of genetic fidelity. Many cancers have unregulated DNA repair pathways, which is one of the mechanisms by which they can sustain proliferation without succumbing to apoptosis. Common chemotherapeutic targets a…

Perhaps it was unwise to use the term dna damage yes. I used it to mean any deviation from the initial dna of the fertilized egg, including breakage, point mutations, missing chromosomes, viral insertions and probably more I can't think of right now.

Edit: I suppose those are all called mutations. Somehow I thought mutation meant a small local change only.

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#35

Post by bobmcnamara »

nashashmi wrote: post #27
tracker1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it the medication, or reduction in oxidative stress and glycation? Medications almost always come with some form of negative side effects for a portion of those prescribed to. I think part of it needs to come from awareness of what we're putting into our bodies in the first place. I think a large part of it all comes from what we're taking in that wouldn't be considered food by most reasonable people knowing w…

Neither. It is the prevention of high sugar to prevent steady organ damage. For those with diabetes, there is no way to reverse it. They just have to reduce their intake. And all organs will continue to be steadily damaged over time.

Interesting recent news about diabetes!

Type 1 has been reversed through pancreas and islet transplants, recently in at least one individual by stem cell transplants, now he makes his own insulin.

For some type 2 individuals diagnosed early enough, blood sugar can be managed through diet and exercise, and insulin response can be normalized back to typical levels. This seems to work best when caught early, and when the person has the ability to make long lasting lifestyle changes. And the risk of relapse seems to remain much higher than in the general population.

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#36

Post by feoren »

rhet0rica wrote: post #6

Unpopular opinion: Any medical intervention that delays or defeats the aging process will disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and is therefore unethical. The last thing a healthy democracy needs is millennium-old acolytes of Peter Thiel pulling the strings from the shadows.

Virtually every single advancement in science, engineering, and technology disproportionately benefits the wealthy, because they already own everything. That's a great reason to fight against the massive imbalance of wealth distribution, but a terrible reason to halt all human progress.

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#37

Post by spandrew »

hinterlands wrote: post #16

I think there's a fundamental disconnect here: the article says that you should be focusing on strategies that, for the most part, make aging more dignified. The goal shouldn't be even curing cancer. And maybe that's right. But the reason billions of dollars are poured by SFBA VCs into aging research is probably just that they're getting older, they don't want to die, and they figure that they can put some of their m…

It isn't right. Curing cancer is a noble pursuit.

And researchers on planet earth aren't a monolith. Even "longevity" research can take vastly different shapes across the labs driving towards it. The mess of research towards a goal is kinda the point; nobody knows where the universe hid the nuggets of world-bending discoveries. It's not quite pray and spray; but the shapes are diverse and irregular by design.

Cancer, alzheimers, cell senescence — all of it's fair game. Why are we pretending like anybody knows how to police this thought work?

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#38

Post by rippeltippel »

Aging well requires a both biological and lifestyle interventions. One company called Nuraxi [1] is geared precisely to support that, They aim at studying the super-agers in the Sardinia "blue zone", and build digital twins (for the rest of us) on which simulate all-round interventions based on the insights from super-agers. Sounds like a promising way to get personalised longevity recipes.

[1] https://www.nuraxi.ai

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#39

Post by morleytj »

rippeltippel wrote: post #38

Aging well requires a both biological and lifestyle interventions. One company called Nuraxi [1] is geared precisely to support that, They aim at studying the super-agers in the Sardinia "blue zone", and build digital twins (for the rest of us) on which simulate all-round interventions based on the insights from super-agers. Sounds like a promising way to get personalised longevity recipes. [1] https://www.nuraxi.ai

I was under the impression that the majority of recent analysis pointed to the interpretation that most of the claimed blue zones were primarily marked as such due to poor record keeping rather than true super ager status.

Is Sardinia an exception to this?

Re: So you wanna build an aging company

#40

Post by jajko »

OisinMoran wrote: post #21
nowahlot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is aging bad though? Seems like natures way of helping humanity evolve. As individuals it may seem bad. As a species, keeping old ideas in the form of ossified biology around seems like a bad idea. For example: see 70-80 year old politicians ageist assault on future generations. Physics is ageist and its march towards entropy unstoppable. Anti-aging is just more first worlders who can ignore externalities thanks to f…

I think those 70–80 year old politicians would be much less short-sighted if they expected to be around to reap what they're sowing.

That's a nice theory but I don't want to bet future of mankind on some feel-good logic. In my view, a-holes remain a-holes, self-centered narcissists double so.

Feel like trump for example got wiser and saner and more rational the second term? Because literally whole world believes otherwise. He has his whole clan to think of due to consequences of his actions, if he cared. puttin' is same, just sour keg of bad beer that should be poured down the river (or some better ecological disposal of garbage).

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