Comments on: How to achieve ‘biological immortality’ naturally

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 03:26:50 +0000

I bet that imortality is biologicaly posible, but getting it widely available would ruin our planet very fast, we would spend resourses and big wars would come up, just my opinion. :)

By: Blakdjeiki

Blakdjeiki — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:39:22 +0000

What am I missing? If the key to living forever is diet, then why did paleolithic man never live forever? There must be some other thing necessary to prevent the aging process. I support the development of genetically engineered stem cells that do not loose their telomere that can be implanted into humans until all the cells in their body have been created by the immortal stem cells so they can always create new cells and never have to age.

By: annonymous

annonymous — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:02:22 +0000

because immortality isnt supposed to be for everyone, just the people who feel that they havnt accomplished much in their life. it is for the rich and powerful now a days, not for the every day fellow.

By: RBynum

RBynum — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:20:42 +0000

Don’t forget what happened to Tithonus. In Greek mythology Eos asked Zeus to make her lover Tithonus immortal. However she forgot to ask for enternal youth. So she ended up with a demeted undying old man that she walled up in a tower. What good is reaching this plateau and not being healthy and sane?

By: The World Science Festival and Internet Week: Insights Galore! — Publishing Trends

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:19:13 +0000

[...] Michael R. Rose announced, “you can stop aging now—in just three hours—if you follow the regimen in my new book—but it’s not easy.” His new book, Does Aging Stop?, comes out from Oxford [...]

By: 478: Evolutionary Biologist Michael Rose on Achieving Biological Immortality, Naturally | The Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:29:13 +0000

[...] 5th Annual Low-Carb Cruise – Michael Rose bio – Does Aging Stop? – December 6, 2010 Kurzweil story: How to achieve ‘biological immortality’ naturally – Michael Rose’s “55 [...]

By: Does aging stop? | Cosmopolitanaut | Dave Mosher: Science Journalist, Web Nerd

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 23:29:45 +0000

[...] That eliminates most of the modern world (if you’re an uncontacted tribes in the Amazonian jungle, I hope you’re paying attention), but in the pursuit of truth I’ve rquested a review copy. My expectation is that it’ll rehash much of what Rose and his colleagues have popularized in recent years, e.g. the ideas in this article on Ray Kurzweil’s website. [...]

By: kimishere

kimishere — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 05:36:33 +0000

We all owe Michael Rose gratitude for all the fruit fly work he’s done to help understand aging, and he’s clearly a smart guy. However, the idea that taking on a paleo diet will make people go into an “immortality phase” earlier is pure speculation. He doesn’t cite any work with animal models that shows giving them a “natural” diet has any effect on their aging. This strikes me as just a hypothesis, and most hypotheses don’t pan out. Unless you can show some population data in humans or animals backing up an intervention it shouldn’t be taken seriously. (Which includes Kurzweil’s supplement plan)

While reasonably healthy, a paleo diet itself is just a hypothesis. We don’t know for sure what cavemen ate and no population data shows paleo dieters having particular longevity. (remember, evolution only cares about reproduction, not you living to a ripe old age) If you look at the epidemiology, you’ll see that the longest-lived peoples on Earth don’t eat a paleo diet, but instead eat a vegetarian or low-meat diet. For an intro to this, go to youtube and look up Blue Zones Study to see what I’m talking about.

If you want to live long, there are only a few things you can do: healthy diet, exercise, calorie restriction, and supporting real longevity research like the kind the SENS Fdn or Methuselah Fdn do. And even those will only help so much.

PS I see no reason to taken anything Dr Andrew Weil says seriously, as he is just an alt med guru who sells books and hasn’t ever done any science of merit.

By: Alcor CEO Max More and the Paleo Diet | Sam Snyder

Alcor CEO Max More and the Paleo Diet | Sam Snyder — Sun, 22 May 2011 15:07:50 +0000

[...] More joins other life extension researchers like Dr. Michael Rose in endorsing paleolithic nutrition and the paleo diet. In a recent interview on the site [...]

By: Saving a Life Each Day | Sam Snyder

Saving a Life Each Day | Sam Snyder — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:03:45 +0000

[...] could help turn back the clock for a lot of people. Researchers like professors Cynthia Kenyon and Michael Rose believe limiting carbohydrates improves health and extends lifespan. This entry was posted in [...]

By: How to achieve ‘biological immortality’ naturally « FOREVER-Newsblog

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:47:42 +0000

[...] without the use of anti-aging drugs and stem cell treatments. Author: David Despain —– Read more on kurzweilai.net, December 06, [...]

By: sequoiaorchids

sequoiaorchids — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:56:02 +0000

I am confused. We are talking about choosing fruit flies that retain fertility as a way of breeding long lived flies. Next we are stating that without evolutionary pressures, we enter a period of ‘slow or no-aging’. Then we are saying, “eat this diet”. I missed the point where a causal connection was made between these data points. To me this is just another “diet” book. I think that older people are under evolutionary pressure, from bacteria, viruses and fungi, as well as neurological decay which leads to forgetfulness and ataxia, which leads to inanition and falls, which leads to malnutrition, hip fractures, infections and death.
It may be that nursing homes are not the place to study aging, but from what I can observe, there are several types of aging, which I group as follows: Spared body, Spared mind, Spared body and mind, Decay in both body and mind. The later is certainly the largest subset, while Spared body and mind is certainly the smallest subset, with patient encounters in the 1 to 3/yr range.
I think the bulk of jstjnk’s comments are well taken, though bringing in outlying data points like George Burns is absurd. There is always someone who wins the loto. How that translates to the rest of us…it doesn’t. There is clear evidence that smoking and drinking is physiologically harmful for the majority of humans. While that may not have been so for George Burns, I would wonder two things: What was his potential pre alcohol and tobacco? What was the genetic record of his family?
As for immortality, I am more interested in how to decrease memory loss in aging…. I have seen patients kept alive by their children into their 105 plus years, just to have a conversation piece or a reason to live (or so it appears to me). The patient was pleasantly demented decades prior and is no longer participating in social activities of any significant nature.

By: melajara

melajara — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 01:20:30 +0000

This is very interesting, as long as the nutrigenomics screening strategy developed by Genescient, the biotech company where Mr Rose is involved.

However, I’m not understanding how the theory of a late life neutral plateau fits the demographic data available on supercentenarians, those peole living 110+. True, there are holes in the data as it is highly suspicious that Japan has the most concentrated population in supercentenarians when China would have none! For historical reasons, the current data is missing a large part of Asia, Russia and Africa.
Fair enough, from the available data, one can readily see that except the outlier point represented by the French Jeanne Calment (deceased at 122) there is still a quasi exponential decrease in late age population and no one ever succeeded to achieve 120.

So Mr Rose’s theory doesn’t fit the supercentenarrian data, or am I missing something?

By: Mrs Z

Mrs Z — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 09:04:50 +0000

The kind of ‘immortality’ discussed here is not the type of biological immortality most people want to achieve. Here the discussion is about a statistical event which happens in very old populations. The rate of mortality of these people may not increase as a function of age, but their bodies continue to age biologically (i.e. chronic degeneration continues). Those of us who are interested in finding ways to abolish involuntary death due to ageing look at more comprehensive ways to do so.

Whilst I agree that ageing is not inevitable, and I also agree that ageing is a by-product of evolution, I am not convinced that simple measures such as dieting will have any appreciable effect on reducing the damage caused by ageing. A ‘regimen that is natural for humans’ is a vague concept. The paleo diet may have been suitable for cavemen, but we now live in a society leading to global integration and transhumanism, with evolutionary and environmental pressures that are greatly different to those experienced by people thousands of years ago.
See here for a full discussion:
https://acrobat.com/#d=MAgyT1rkdwono-lQL6thBQ

By: eric25001

eric25001 — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 10:04:42 +0000

To me the insect studies point towards two diet interventions.
Lower protein at an okder age and what ratio and types of fat and or carbohydrates. I am surprised Rose does not seem to be more aware of the work in the UK or Australia.

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030223
and
http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v1/n10/full/100098.html

By: donjoe

donjoe — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 20:08:02 +0000

It would be nice to be able to consult a Paleo diet longevity study for corroboration, but I couldn’t find anything with Google Scholar.

By: geekette

geekette — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:50:43 +0000

Growing happy. Do you really want to keep growing old if you are unhappy? Seems like we humans and scientists have an easy time with inventions and diets, but the psychological aspect of being alive is rarely addressed… I would be interested in hearing someone discuss the psychological aspect of growing older. In American society, despite biological progess for longevity, there are some people whose psychological state is so painful, they commit suicide. There are still
others who commit violent crimes, the worse of which is murder. Having worked in nursing homes, I have seen first hand, where some people ram other people in their wheel chairs. Where there are some “trouble makers” that everyone wants to avoid, etc. Depression is also a major issue, many people in those situations WANT to die. If the point of living longer is to suffer longer, I don’t see the point. We MUST address the aspect of happiness as we grow older. Without it we are DOOMED.

By: belacoz

belacoz — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 20:28:53 +0000

I think it would be hard to find any early human evidence. Ancient Egyptians are more neolithic rather than paleolithic. Ancient Egypt around 3500 BC, Neolithic 9500 BC, Paleolithic 2.4 million years ago to 10,000 BC (Wikipedia estimates). So, to find evidence of humans living 100+ years old, we found have to find ancient fossils and those are rare. Additionally, during the Paleolithic humans probably died from physical injuries, cold, starvation, hunting accidents, and disease rather than old age.

I think Mr. Rose is saying that in the modern world most people don’t die from injury or starvation like Paleolithic humans did. We, today, die from old age (and diseases associated from old age). If people today, in our much safer world, lived the active lifestyle of Paleolithic man and ate the same foods he ate, then we could potentially become “biologically immortal.”

From an evolutionary biology standpoint, it makes sense – the healthiest life is one where we eat and live as humans were evolved to eat and live. Food that is present along coastlines (fish,etc), fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries. I think having an active lifestyle is important too as our ancestors were very active – running and walking a lot (read “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall).

Our modern world also has hundreds of dangerous chemicals in plastics and other products that is extremely harmful to human health. For humans to live longer, we must also deal with these chemicals in addition to our diet and physical conditioning.

By: jstjnk

jstjnk — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:49:56 +0000

A diet we were forced to eat “in earlier times”, means we have lots of data-points already on its effectiveness at “immortality”. Were early American Indians “Staying 30 years old” for 50 – 100 years? Early Egyptians living a millenia as “40 year olds” or even “80 years olds”? You don’t have to go back very far in the past actually, no doubt even today there are many places people are eating a diet like that now. Show me this tribe of 100 year olds that have the bodies of 40 year olds and I’ll give up the twinkies. :-) Otherwise 100 year old George Burns smoking and drinking, and other centenarians of his ilk are some REAL data-points.

By: carl2nd

carl2nd — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:39:31 +0000

Mr. Rose I too have an interest of the immortality…a forever life span.,
I invite you to chat with personaly at eamil; alamnal@yahoo.com
I am also writng a book entitled “Beyond Longevity Unto Bodily Immortality”

By: eric25001

eric25001 — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 23:55:48 +0000

What are the biomarkers or metabolite levels and ratios that indicate the [Non Aging] is achieved? What about protein intake? Lower protein intake increases lifespan in yeast and insects? What about carbon sourcees that have also increased lifespan like Mannoheptulose, trehalose, or glycerol?