5000 Years Young?

Forget space travel, human cloning, and cheap computers.

Scientific discoveries in the next ten to fifteen years to stop and reverse aging will result in super-long life spans. Even as you read, debates are raging on topics ranging from whether it is good for humans to live that long to how one hundred billion people can survive in the universe.

The present controversy on stem cell research is just the tip of the iceberg.

Should the scientists succeed, humans can stay young, healthy, and alive for as long as 5,000 years, maybe even forever.

Just imagine being born 500 years before the great pyramids of Egypt. Moses reached the Promised Land when you were 1,500 years old. Alexander the Great conquered Asia as you turned 2,500. And a few years short of your 4,800th birthday, George Washington became president of a new nation, the United States of America.

5,000 years is a very, very long time. But does it make sense at all?

“Indefinite postponement of aging is within sight”

The New York Academy of Sciences published in April 2002 and June 2004 the latest research findings worldwide on super longevity with this audacious claim, after doctors and scientists predicted that babies born in 2100 will have an average lifespan of 100 years, more than the present 72 years for male Americans.

Not everyone agreed.

A small group of scientists, claiming that 100 years was too short, predicted that if their plan called SENS bears fruit, humans can live even much longer.

As long as 5,000 years.

Meet the Mavericks

These scientists believe that SENS – Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence – makes sense. Composed of well-known experts in the fields of health care, genetics, and gerontology or the science of aging, the group includes:

• Dr. Bruce N. Ames, Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of California at Berkeley, who discovered how chemicals trigger cancer

• Dr. Russel J. Reiter, Professor, Department of Cellular and Structural Biology, University of Texas in San Antonio, authority on cell repair and maintenance

• Dr. Hirohiko Kuratsune, Department of Hematology and Oncology, Osaka University, Japan, cancer specialist and pioneer in aging reversal of human cells

• Dr. Andrzej Bartke, endocrinologist at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, discovered how to protect DNA from age-related decay

• Dr. Christiaan Leeuwenburgh of the Biochemistry of Aging Laboratory, University of Florida, expert on brain degeneration and aging

• Drs. Leonid and Natalia S. Gavrilova, husband and wife team of superlongevity scientists from the Center on Aging, University of Chicago

• Dr. Li Li Ji of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who discovered how phytochemicals enhance the body's defenses against disease, cancer, and aging

• Dr. Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey, Computer Engineer of Cambridge University, U.K.; the prime mover of SENS, the group predicting a 5,000-year lifespan for humans

Aging is reversible

Dr. Aubrey de Grey, in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences of April 2002 (959: 452-462), explains the basic facts of how science can reverse aging.

Aging and death result from cellular damage caused by human metabolism. Fixing this damage can reverse the aging process and postpone death.

Oxidants cause the damage. The body breaks down what you eat into simpler chemicals for the body to absorb. The last stage takes place as your cells convert oxygen into water, releasing energy for your body’s use. This energy release produces waste products called oxidants.

Oxidants make you age. As Dr. Ames discovered, “oxidant damage is much like radiation damage.”

It is a cosmic trick of nature: metabolism helps your cells absorb energy and keep it alive, but metabolism’s toxic waste products damage and kill cells.

Oxidants are metabolism’s toxic wastes. Floating in your blood supply in the form of superoxides, peroxides, and hydroxyl radicals or free radicals, oxidants damage your cell DNA and attack cell walls, causing injury.

How bad is oxidant damage?

Oxidation is dangerous because it takes place inside you:

• Causing as many as 10,000 wounds on each cell
• Mutating the cell nucleus and causing cancer
• Killing cells quickly – leading to diabetes, unwanted fat, and skin wrinkles
• Paving the way for fatal sicknesses – heart attacks, strokes, artheriosclerosis
• Damaging your mitochondria, the cell’s energy source
• Weakening your immune system – causing fatigue, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s

Oxidation makes your body cells grow old and die, resulting in the cycle of life and death going on for millions of years that no one has managed to escape. In the end, we all die.

A major breakthrough came in the 1950s when scientists discovered how the body repairs itself. Apparently, one of metabolism’s good effects is triggering the body to produce repair enzymes.

What Repair Enzymes Do

These enzymes, by-products of the immune system, circulate in your blood and remove oxidants, heal wounds on cell walls, and stimulate cells to function well.

While you’re young, repair enzymes have the upper hand, helping your body rebuild itself as you sleep.

However, with time, your immune system starts creaking, worn out by increasing oxidant levels due to poor eating habits, sleepless nights, stress, pollution, sickness, and disease. Your body’s demand for repair enzymes far exceeds the immune system’s ability to supply it.

Your system overwhelmed, the massacre begins: cells die; you age, and it shows.

As you reach middle age, your muscles ache more, wrinkles appear on your face, and you feel shortness of breath, tiredness, weaker eyesight, and mild forms of sexual incapacity. Oxidation relentlessly pummels your body’s defenses, opening the way for cancer, diabetes, stroke, and stress-related disorders to deliver the final blow.

Luckily, scientists discovered what triggers the body to produce repair enzymes.

Antioxidants: Vitamins, Minerals, and Enzymes

Many growing kids hate eating vegetables. Some carry this bad habit to adulthood, to their own detriment.

Vegetables and fruits contain vitamins, minerals, and enzymes – substances called antioxidants – that help your immune system produce repair enzymes and fight sickness and disease.

After scientists discovered the benefits of antioxidants in food, the government passed regulations to ensure or fortify their presence in America’s food supply. The effect is evident in the dramatic increase in our lifespan:

• In 1800, the average American male lived 37 years.
• In 1900, this average increased to 45 (21% in 100 years)
• By 2000, it went up to 72 (60% in the last 100 years)
• And by 2100, this will reach 100 (39% in the next 100 years)

Dr Aubrey de Grey and the other maverick scientists in his team are confident that it is possible to extend human life spans more radically, and that anyone born in the year 2100 will live, not only for a hundred years, but for 1,000…3,000…even 5,000 years. Maybe forever.

The latest research findings in scientific laboratories all over the world will help us understand the basis for this claim.

SENS and the War on Aging

Research show that there are seven, and only seven, ways that oxidation destroys the cells, leading to aging of your body:

1. Cells die or waste away in the tissues of the heart and in the brain, where cells cannot replace themselves.

2. Unwanted cells accumulate as fat cells that spread and replace muscles, leading to diabetes; unwanted cells in our joints cause muscle aches and arthritis.

3. Chromosomes mutate, with cancer as its most damaging result.

4. Mutations take place in the DNA of the mitochondria, the cell’s energy production center.

5. Cells collect junk, complex material by-products of metabolism.

6. Junk accumulates outside the cell, within the extracellular fluid, as aggregates of protein material difficult to break down. The result is amyloid, found in brains of people with Alz­heimer’s disease.

7. Proteins stick together outside the cell. Protein molecules in extracellular fluid gum together and lead to loss of elasticity or thickening of tissues.

Dr de Grey’s plan to stop, and then reverse, the aging process is to limit the extent of oxidation damage and, when possible, to repair this damage.

Dr. de Grey calls his comprehensive plan Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence or SENS. Based in Cambridge University, SENS and Dr de Grey has taken a leading role in the global effort to put together research findings in longevity.

He sees aging as an engineering problem that we can fix following a three-pronged strategy to stop, and then reverse, aging:

• Strengthen the Immune System
• Gene Therapy
• Stem Cell Therapy

These three can solve the seven causes of oxidation damage by:

• Strengthening the immune system to stimulate cell division and replace old and dead cells (1), remove old cells (2) so new healthy ones can replace them, break down junk inside (5) and outside (6) the cell, and stop proteins from sticking together (7).

• Gene therapy can cure cancer (3) and mitochondrial mutations (4). Replacing genes with modified enzymes prevent accumulation of old cells (2) and bring down the level of junk (5 and 6).

• Stem cell therapy can introduce new whole cells engineered to fix cell tissues (1 and 2) and bring in cells that will not mutate (3).

Strengthening the Immune System

With every single cell in the human body acting as the battleground in the war against aging, the body’s immune system is the base from where the body launches its repair enzymes to protect the cells, and therefore the body, from danger.

The immune system –lymph nodes, thymus gland, bone marrow, spleen, tonsils, appendix, and white blood cells – detects the dangers and leads the counterattack. A strong immune system helps the body resist sickness and aging, and postpones death.

Genetic makeup plays a big role in the way the immune system works, but what you eat has a great influence on the system too.

Antioxidants in food increase the potency and concentration of white blood cells, the body’s primary line of defense against foreign elements. White blood cells – antibodies, natural killer cells, and T-cells teeming with repair enzymes – search and destroy bacteria, viruses, and cancer tumors.

In addition to antioxidants in the diet, regular exercise and stress management are equally important.

Regular exercise makes the body strong and keeps it in shape, helping the immune system produce repair enzymes, and sending these enzymes flowing to that part of the body needing it most.

Reducing or managing stress avoids chemical imbalances in the body that deplete antioxidants and repair enzymes, wear out bodily organs and lead to the collapse of vital bodily functions. Only when the mind and body are calm can energies be directed toward repair, maintenance, and strengthening of the body and the immune system.

The growth in the last ten years of dietary supplements and organic food supplies, fitness awareness, and techniques of stress management contributed to longevity by strengthening the immune system.

Aside from being born with good genes, extending life spans beyond the hundred-year mark needs gene and stem cell therapy.

Gene and Stem Cell Therapy

Gene and stem cell therapy are still in their infancy, and the going is difficult, but progress is steady. These two forms of therapy involve the replacement of cell components or whole cells within the body.

One area where gene therapy can be useful is in getting rid of extracellular and intracellular junk.

Inside the cell is the lysosome, a special vessel containing an enzyme that breaks down junk inside and outside the cell. Some humans born without this enzyme suffer from Gaucher’s disease, a deficiency in the enzyme-producing gene. Doctors use gene therapy to replace the defective genes, triggering the cell to produce lysosomal enzyme.

De Grey and SENS scientists predict that in the near future, similar techniques will allow doctors to replace defective genes, boosting their ability to fix damage from oxidation. Gene therapy can wipe out artheriosclerosis, brain degeneration, and macular degeneration, among many illnesses.

Perhaps the most daring application for gene therapy is WILT, or whole-body interdiction of lengthening of telomeres. If it works, it can be the best cure for cancer.

The goal of WILT is to prevent the production of the enzyme telomerase, which maintains telomeres and keeps them long. Telomeres, found at the end of each chromosome, get shorter every time the cell divides.

Experiments show that telomere length is related to a cell’s mortality. When a person has cancer, the telomeres behave strangely; they don’t get shorter when they divide. Cancer cells take a long time to die, so they just multiply and grow in size, producing a tumor.

Scientists hope that gene therapy can eliminate the gene that makes telomerase, making cells die before they reach cancerous proportions.

However, a new set of problems arises. One is how to insert the engineered gene into the body so that a person’s cells will not contain telomerase. Stem cell therapy is one solution.

Gene therapy allows scientists to engineer a gene not to have telomerase. They would then grow stem cells with that gene and replace the person’s defective stem cells, through a bone marrow transplant, with those containing the reengineered gene.

In addition, stem cell therapy can replace blood stem cells to contain enzymes designed to slow down and fix damage caused by oxidation.

Achieving Immortality

Noted inventor Ray Kurzweil recently wrote: “Current advances in medicine will lead to major genetics breakthroughs between 2015 and 2020 that will extend life spans. Then, advances in technology will make radical life extension and rejuvenation truly possible…”

Kurzweil is a prodigy and wizard. He built his own computer way back in 1968, at age 18, and received a science award from President Lyndon B. Johnson. He invented the music synthesizer, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first flat bed scanner, and the first commercially marketed large vocabulary speech recognition technology.

In his latest book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Kurzweil supports Dr de Grey’s findings:

“To achieve immortality, people alive today merely need to survive long enough to reach the first of these breakthroughs (around the year 2015), which will in turn enable them to benefit from the second (around the year 2020).”

In the meantime, eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, and manage your stress. SENS scientists believe that if you can stay fit for another ten to fifteen years, you have a chance at super longevity.

Then, if you’re still up to it, soon you’ll be on the way to living forever.