Age reversal – video blog

Age reversal appears to be a subject for science fiction, like the alchemist’s vision of turning lead into gold.  Yet, it can be induced on the cellular level.  If fact, for certain of our cells aging-avoidance or age-reversal is absolutely  necessary for the continuation of life.

Please see this short video segment.

How our germline cells can be passed on for hundreds of thousands or millions of years without aging is only now being unraveled.  Those cells don’t age.  Many questions can be raised about all this.  Here is my take on a few of them.

·        Is aging necessary for other than germline cells?  My answer is YES, for otherwise cells could not differentiate into specialized tissue cells to create whole animals like we are.  My skin cells, heart cells, muscle and all other cells are products of aging.  Cells of each type embody an epigenetic “memory” of who they are, thank goodness. So, when a skin cell divides it divides into more skin cells, not bladder or liver cells.   And in that respect all normal body cells are aged in comparison to pristine germline cells.  Germline cells manage not to age by not differentiating except on conception.  There is no clear point when development of an animal stops and aging starts.  Aging starts way back just after conception and is lifelong. 

·        Can aging be reversed in our ordinary body cells?  Breakthrough research developments over the last 10 years say the answer is YES.  Practically any cell in your body can be reverted to become an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC), virtually identical to your original embryonic stem cells.  These iPSC cells can in turn be induced to differentiate into any normal body cell type.  I have written about a dozen blog entries about these iPSCs so far.  Some of the most-recent posts are Additional 2010 research progress with induced pluripotent stem cells (December 2010),   A breakthrough in producing high-fidelity induced pluripotent stem cells (October 2010)Induced pluripotent stem cells – developments on the road to big-time utilization (July 2010),  and  A near-term application for iPSCs – making cell lines for drug testing (June 2010).       

·         Can aging be reversed in whole body organs?  I think the answer will turn out again to be YES.  This is the hope of the field of research called regenerative medicine, and there is much ongoing research in this area.  Many of the approaches are based on using stem cells.  See for example the blog entry      Interesting recent stem cell research on the prevention of muscle aging by adult stem cell transplantation.

·        Can aging be reversed in whole animals like we are?  This remains a completely open question.  It is my guess, only a guess for now, that within 15-20 years we will discover means for significant life extension.  I also think that in the same time frame we will very-possibly discover means for reversing many of the phenotypic signs of aging in older people.  The blog entry Mouse age reversal – very interesting but misrepresented research describes recent research in which prematurely-aged mice exhibiting various kinds of tissue degeneration associated with aging were made young and vital again through a telomerase-related treatment.  The tissue degeneration associated with aging simply went away.  The theme of age reversal is also in the background in many of my other writings, particularly those relating to epigenetics and in the concept of closing the loop in the stem cell supply chain.

This video blog entry, like the previous blog entry We are evolving to live longer – video blog, is being brought to you in close collaboration with the filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas.  And I expect we will generate several more of these blog entries which are structured around short video segments on aspects of longevity science.  Robert is the filmmaker who produced the recently-released film To Age or Not to Age. Robert captured hundreds of hours of interesting video in shooting the film over a 4-year period, including extensive interviews with a number of prominent aging-science researchers.  It was possible to incorporate only a small fraction of that interesting material in the film itself.  However, Robert is identifying short but remarkable segments of materials both in the film and not in the film, and I will be remarking on them just as in this blog entry.  The videos and the remarks will appear on both this site and on the film site To Age or Not to Age.

Readers/viewers – please share your reactions.  How do you react to the video? Can you point to other research that clearly demonstrates whole-animal age reversal?  Any other highly-relevant research?  And what do you think about this kind of blog entry?   Would you like to see more of them? 

About Vince Giuliano

Being a follower, connoisseur, and interpreter of longevity research is my latest career, since 2007. I believe I am unique among the researchers and writers in the aging sciences community in one critical respect. That is, I personally practice the anti-aging interventions that I preach and that has kept me healthy, young, active and highly involved at my age, now 93. I am as productive as I was at age 45. I don’t know of anybody else active in that community in my age bracket. In particular, I have focused on the importance of controlling chronic inflammation for healthy aging, and have written a number of articles on that subject in this blog. In 2014, I created a dietary supplement to further this objective. In 2019, two family colleagues and I started up Synergy Bioherbals, a dietary supplement company that is now selling this product. In earlier reincarnations of my career. I was Founding Dean of a graduate school and a full University Professor at the State University of New York, a senior consultant working in a variety of fields at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Chief Scientist and C00 of Mirror Systems, a software company, and an international Internet consultant. I got off the ground with one of the earliest PhD's from Harvard in a field later to become known as computer science. Because there was no academic field of computer science at the time, to get through I had to qualify myself in hard sciences, so my studies focused heavily on quantum physics. In various ways I contributed to the Computer Revolution starting in the 1950s and the Internet Revolution starting in the late 1980s. I am now engaged in doing the same for The Longevity Revolution. I have published something like 200 books and papers as well as over 430 substantive.entries in this blog, and have enjoyed various periods of notoriety. If you do a Google search on Vincent E. Giuliano, most if not all of the entries on the first few pages that come up will be ones relating to me. I have a general writings site at www.vincegiuliano.com and an extensive site of my art at www.giulianoart.com. Please note that I have recently changed my mailbox to vegiuliano@agingsciences.com.
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9 Responses to Age reversal – video blog

  1. Mike says:

    Great format change Vince

    It adds to understandability of acomplex subject

    Keep up the great work

  2. Hal Lyon says:

    I like the addition of video clips. It gives us readers a break from pure text which is tiring and lets us sit back a watch for a welcome break in reading-stress. It also provides an alternative learning option for those whose learning styles are more visual than text. And research (particularly in the military) shows that teaching with multiple modes, results in more efficient and indelible learning. And, in keeping with your “linux” concept of bringing in more diverse experts, it let’s us hear from some of them — right from the horse’s mouth. Keep up the great Blog — the most informative in this field!! Hal

  3. Regular-reader says:

    I will be laconic – very good “enhancement” for your blog, it just gets better and better overall. That’s it.

  4. admin says:

    Thanks Mike, Hal and Regular Reader.
    We will be making more of these video blogs and I will also continuing to generate blog entries of the highly technical kind focused on specific areas of the longevity sciences.

    Vince

  5. Vincent Papasergio says:

    Hello Vince, the video blogs are a wonderful addition to your thought provoking and information packed Antiaging blogs. Please continue posting them.

    Vinny

  6. pete says:

    Video clips are an excellent addition to an already excellent blog…look forward to more….if you are not aware, the Science Network also has quite a few interviews with scientists on a variety of aging related topics although it would be nice to be able to clip out the relevent few minutes from each segment….

    http://thesciencenetwork.org/

    http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/new-york-city-january-2011/nir-barzilai-and-ana-maria-cuervo-1

    http://thesciencenetwork.org/search?topics=Aging

  7. admin says:

    Vincent Papasergio

    Thanks for your comment. Robert Pappas, my filmaker colleague, tells me he can come up with dozens more interesting clips – and we can film new ones too. So I think the video blogs are here to stay – along with science-oriented entries of the usual kind.

    Vince

  8. admin says:

    Pete

    Thanks for your contribution.Yes, Science Network has some nice clips.

    Vince

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