>>A Blog About the Science and Technology of Living Forever

HARRY ROSEN IS 103. He lives alone in a studio apartment on West 57th Street in Manhattan. His hearing has declined and he a bit far-sighted but his mind is as sharp as most men half his age. Still, he doesn’t remember the last evening he didn’t go out for dinner at one of the city’s top-rated restaurants. It’s been too many years. People say Harry doesn’t look a day over 90, and indeed when people ask him his age, he tells them he is 90. He’s never had a major operation and as far as he knows there is nothing wrong with him. And yes, every single afternoon Harry dresses up in one of his fine business suits, grabs his satchel, and heads out to hail a cab to one of his favorite dining establishments. He eats alone but the waiters always know who he is and patrons at nearby tables almost always strike up a conversation with him. Twice a week Harry goes to David Burke’s Townhouse on East 61st Street where a server greets him, escorts him to his usual corner table, brings him a glass of chardonnay and his usual appetizer of raw salmon and tuna. Harry was recently profiled in The New York Times.  The article makes for fascinating reading, the writer refers to Harry as the city’s “oldest foodie,” but there are no direct refers to any of his longevity secrets. Yet, reading through the lines, I’ve come up with a list of Harry Rosen’s 10 longevity secrets, which follows: Harry always orders fish. For a non-Eskimo he has unusually high levels of omega-3 fats in his diet. His omega-3/omega-6 ratio must be highly favorable to reducing any risk of heart disease or dementia. Harry’s daily routine never varies–this keeps his life stress free....

A fascinating piece from Mental_Floss shows how humans may still be evolving in accordance with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. The piece suggests that the following are traits that show humans are still evolving: non-human milk drinking the slow disappearance of wisdom teeth disease resistance shrinking brains and blue eyes These all point to continue evolutionary development of mankind. Read more...

If you are planning on living forever you may want to consider relocating to a new locale.  Where?  Well, Dan Buetter, author of “Blue Zones: 9 lessons for living longer from the people who’ve lived the longest”, has done the work for us.  He has travelled the world tracking the 5 best places to live to increase your  life expectancy. The following places were outlined as the top five places to keep you alive and kicking: #5 Okinawa, Japan For women specifically, Okinawa Japan is one of the most fruitful places to live. In 2013, Misa Okawa was named The Guinness World Record Book holder for being the oldest woman alive at the age of 115.  Misa is among one of the 50,000 centurians from Japan, making Japan one of the best places to be if you want live forever.  And, Okinawa just so happens to be a leader when it comes to longevity. WHY? A diet rich in vegetables and fish leads researchers to believe that the cause of longevity in Okinawa, and Japan at large, is attributed to their healthy diet.  The Japanese culture on average consumer 25% less calories than their North America friends.  Naomi Moriyama, co-author of “Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen”, says that the Japanese diet, “concentrates the magnificent energy of food into a compact and pleasurable size.” The Okinawans are also known to lead a low stress lifestyle.  They are not run by clocks and alarm systems and have no concept of rush hour. Most Okinawans take time to meditate daily. And, lastly genetics plays a role.  The Japanese people are less genetically predisposed to a variety of harmful diseases. And when they do get sick they use natural medicinal...

Kay Svela, who writes the homemaking blog Little Miss Wife, chimes in on the inequity between the genders on living longer in marriage. She explains why men live longer when they are married and how their wives can too. Read more: Why men do better when they are...

We were quite taken by this piece by the blogger Kay Svela who writes LittleMissWife.com as she explore the joy of wine consumption, not only from a perspective of giving up “personal house rules” to allow for a little joy but also for the health benefits of wine that she outlines later in the post. Check it out: Wine drinking is good for your health and soul...

by Cheryl Poirer I was having lunch with a friend the other day and as we were going our separate ways we loosely started organizing a party. We spoke about where it should be held and I said “Yes! We’ll have it as his place because he’s got that great balcony and he has a…” I was thinking “ barbecue” but I couldn’t find the word. I started gesturing with my hands saying, “You know a..a..,” what came out was this: “One of those box things with fire in it. You know, for cooking stuff.” “You mean a barbecue?” We started laughing. Memory loss is common and can begin as early as our 20s. We start to lose our noggin, so to speak. Meaning our bodies are losing brain cells faster than we replace them. New York-Presbyterian outlines signs, symptoms of memory loss and what to do about them. One thing we can do is eat right. Antioxidants found in certain foods have been proven to fight memory loss, as well as some foods have been known to increase memory retention!  Read more about this here. With both of these resources in hand I’m off to the grocery store to buy things to fill my cooling box, play mind challenging amusing matches and call my friend on my small, communication device and ask if we can have a party at that large, container where he sleeps that has a great balcony and...

Mac Cosmetics is collaborating with 90-year-old style icon Iris Apfel making her the oldest woman ever to personally represent a line of beauty products. From Iris Apfel’s Facebook page: “For me the key to personal style lies in accessories. My friends tell me that my oversized glasses and my pairs of bracelets have become my unwritten signature. I have amassed an enormous ‘collection’ of bags, belts, bangles and beads without which I would be lost. One can change the entire look of an outfit by substituting one accessory for another. I love objects from different worlds, different eras, combined my way. Never uptight, achieving – hopefully – a kind of throwaway chic.” An excellent profile of her was published last August in The New York Times.  Meanwhile here a few more...

by David Bunnell This past week my colleague Shirley Gines (pictured above) and I visited the Mountain View office of Vasper Fitness and Performance Systems to test their high-tech exercise machine.  Reportedly, it provides the equivalent of a two-hour workout in only 20 minutes. And you don’t sweat! Even more compelling, exercising on a Vasper has been shown to increase the body’s production of human growth hormone (HGH). This has many benefits including increased muscle mass and bone density, decreased body fat, improved sleep, increased focus and clarity of mind, faster recovery from exercise or physical injuries, and increased exercise capacity. Whether higher levels of HGH actually make you younger or not is debatable but who cares if it gives you more energy and makes you feel younger. If you can increase your HGH levels naturally without the fuss of expensive, daily injections that may come with some alarming side-effects (see Mayo Clinic article) then Vasper is a potential winner for anyone who wants to live a longer, healthier life. Just getting to the Vasper office is quite an adventure as it is located at Moffitt Field NASA Ames Research Center under the shadow of one of the world’s largest free standing buildings–Hangar One, a massive blimp hangar built during the Depression. From highway 101 you have to drive through a military checkpoint, where you simply tell the nice marine that you are visiting Vasper and show him your California driver’s license. You then follow a windy road towards Hangar One past some vacant military buildings and an immaculately mowed parade ground to a group of trailer-like structures. One of these is building 566, the Vasper office/combination gymnasium. (The reason Vasper is at this peculiar location is because they have a research contract with NASA to see if their exercise technology...

The poorer your sleep, the more likely you may be to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study. “We found that if people had a lot of awakenings during the night, more than five awakenings in an hour, they are more likely to have preclinical Alzheimer’s disease,” says researcher Yo-El Ju, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Preclinical Alzheimer’s disease is the term given to people who have normal mental skills but show brain changes associated with the degenerative disorder. Ju is due to present her findings on sleep problems and Alzheimer’s disease in April at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in New Orleans.  to read this article in its entirety on WebMed, click...

Click here to see WebMD’s Visual Guide to Heart Disease. February is Heart Month....

Men who smoke tend to have a more rapid mental decline than men who do not smoke, a new study shows. But the findings did not reveal a similar link between smoking and mental decline in female smokers. Although the exact reason for the sex difference is unclear, one possibility is that women tend to smoke fewer cigarettes a day than men do and for fewer years. Other lifestyle habits, such as male smokers drinking more alcohol, may also account for some differences seen. In the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, scientists analyzed data from nearly 6,000 men and more than 2,100 women who were British civil servants. To evaluate their thinking abilities, participants were given their first mental assessment at midlife, an average age of 56. The assessment included five tests of memory, vocabulary, and reasoning (verbal and math) skills. Participants were retested two more times (every five years) over a decade. To determine volunteers’ smoking habits over a 25-year period, researchers looked at their then-current smoking status and past history, including whether they had quit or relapsed. Faster mental decline was seen in middle-age men who currently smoked than men who never...

The benefits of exercise are attributed to several mechanisms, many which highlight its neuroprotective role via actions that enhance neurogenesis, neuronal morphology and/or neurotrophin release. However, the brain is also composed of glial and vascular elements, and comparatively less is known regarding the effects of exercise on these components in the aging brain. Here, we show that aerobic exercise at mid-age [also] counters several well-established glial markers of brain aging. Similarly, we show that age-related changes in neurovascular morphology and function were reduced with exercise. Thus, our results show that exercise can potentially mitigate progressive age-related changes in several key non-neuronal elements of the brain. Further, we show that these brain processes are still highly responsive to exercise in the midlife age range, consistent with studies showing that cognitive function can benefit from exercise even if initiated at later ages. Continue reading...

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In case anyone is still wondering why we have so many obese children in our midst, one reason is the huge amount of sugar found in children’s cereals. The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California has just published a comprehensive report on sugary cereals which ranks the best and the worst cereals. To read the complete report, click...

It seems like every year another country’s lifestyle is touted as the new magic bullet to cure us of obesity, heart disease, and premature death: For an unclogged heart, herd goats and down olive oil like a Mediterranean. Avoid breast cancer and live to 100 by dining on tofu Japanese-style. Stay as happy as Norwegians by hunting elk and foraging for cowberries. The places we’re usually told to emulate are known as Blue Zones or Cold Spots. Blue Zones were pinpointed by explorer Dan Buettner and a team of longevity researchers and are described in his book “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.” They’re areas in Italy, Japan, Greece, California, and Costa Rica where the people have traditionally stayed healthy and active to age 100 or older. Similarly, Cold Spots, as identified by integrative medicine physician Daphne Miller, M.D., author of “The Jungle Effect,” are five areas in Mexico, Iceland, Japan, Greece, and Cameroon with low rates of “Western” ailments like heart disease, depression, and certain cancers. To read the rest of this article, click...

Dan Buettner is an amazing person. In 1987, he rode his bicycle 15,500 miles from Alaska to  Argentina, the first of three world records for endurance bicycling. The last of these became the subject of an Emmy-winning PBS documentary co-produced by Buettner and a book he authored, Afratrek: A Journey by Bicycle through Africa. More recently, Buettner is known for his exploration and study of “blue zones,” a term he coined for areas of the world where people live extraordinary long and healthy lives. In April 2008, Buettner released a book on his findings, The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, through National Geographic Books. In the above video, Buettner discusses why most people are unable to maintain healthy lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise. And he talks about a program he initiated in  the small town of Albert Lea, Minnesota, that resulted in lasting changes that actually increased the life expectancy of its citizens by 3.2 years. Well worth watching if you are at all interested in living a longer life!...

Boring playgrounds may be one reason preschoolers aren’t getting enough exercise, researchers found in interviews with childcare providers. Strict safety rules for equipment and low budgets at childcare centers were largely blamed for playgrounds that don’t make kids feel like playing, Kristen Copeland, MD, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues reported. “Fixed playground equipment that meets licensing codes is unchallenging and uninteresting to children,” they wrote in the February issue of Pediatrics. The other main problem cited was pressure to focus on academic readiness at the expense of physically active play time, Copeland’s group noted. “Societal priorities for young children — safety and school readiness — may be hindering children’s physical development,” they wrote in the paper. And that’s a problem because three-quarters of U.S. kids attend childcare at ages 3 to 5, where studies have shown that nearly all their time is spent sedentary. “Because children spend long hours in care and many lack a safe place to play near their home, these barriers may limit children’s only opportunity to engage in physical activity,” Copeland’s group explained. “This is particularly concerning because daily physical activity is not only essential for healthy weight maintenance, but also for practicing and learning fundamental gross motor skills.” Pediatricians may be able to help address this problem by emphasizing the learning and physical benefits of active outdoor play, encouraging parents to dress their child for it, and not suggesting that physical activity is inherently dangerous when giving injury prevention advice, the researchers noted. The investigators conducted nine focus groups with a total of 49 childcare providers taking care of preschool-age children at 34 centers in Cincinnati, which varied from inner-city to suburban locations and included some Head Start and Montessori centers. An abstract or the full text...

This poster was originally published in Eldr magazine. You can download a pdf version here....