There is no reason to accept aging as inevitable, Harvard professor Dr. David Sinclair said Friday, adding that if a pill or vaccine is not developed within the next 30 years to combat aging, “something must have gone terribly wrong. “
Dr. Sinclair, co-director of the Paul F Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, and his team recently turned back the clock on aging eye cells in the retina to reverse vision loss in mice seniors.
“Aging is going to happen … We are not going to live forever … But can we try to live another 5, 10 or 20 more years, in a healthy way? Absolutely … There is no law that says we could not live any longer, ”he said at the 18th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
Dr Sinclair, best known for his work to understand why humans age and how to slow down its effects, said it was important to declare aging as a disease for governments to change laws to treat it with drugs and more funds are available for scientific work.
“Whether [a pill or a vaccine to reverse ageing] it doesn’t happen in the next 30 years, something must have gone terribly wrong, ”he said, adding that it was possible that an anti-aging drug was already among us. “We just need to have more evidence that they actually work the way we hope,” said the Harvard professor, who has been featured on TIME magazine’s list of the ‘World’s 100 Most Influential People,’ said.
His research has focused primarily on sirtuins, a group of proteins that appear to be key to regulating the aging process. In 1999, he was recruited to Harvard Medical School, where he has been teaching aging biology and translational medicine for aging.
Dr. Sinclair also shared tips on how to slow the aging process: don’t eat three regular meals; exercise; lift some weights; use biomarker feedback; sleep well and reduce stress; and eat plants that have been stressed.
“You may not want to skip breakfast, you may want to skip lunch or dinner… it’s different for each individual. If you’re young, this is probably not for you, ”he said, adding that middle-aged people whose metabolism has slowed should consider skipping meals strategically.
On the question of whether a vegetarian diet was better or a non-vegetarian diet, he said: “You want your diet to be more like what a rabbit could eat than a lion.”
According to an article published in NatureDr. Sinclair and his team used an adeno-associated virus as a vehicle to deliver three youth-restoring genes to the retinas of mice that are normally activated during embryonic development. The three genes, along with a fourth that was not used in this work, are collectively known as Yamanaka factors. This promoted nerve regeneration after optic nerve injury in mice with damaged optic nerves, reversed vision loss in animals with a condition that mimics human glaucoma, and reversed vision loss in aged animals without glaucoma.
Dr. Sinclair said on Friday: “We are trying to understand if we can compress the last years of life that are sick into a very short period … [The goal] it’s really not having ourselves in nursing homes and being sick longer. We are not prolonging old age, we are doing the opposite. Our goal is to extend youth so that maybe we can live to be 90 or 100 and towards the end, remain productive members of society by playing whatever sport you want with your grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
He added: “We often think that we have reached our maximum life expectancy as a society … that is not true … During the 20th century and up to today, there is a very linear and predictable increase in human longevity. Every time [people] We have said that we have reached the maximum, we crossed that glass ceiling and we continue adding years to life. But they are not all healthy years. “
The expert also provided more information on mortality as a route to address aging. “We tend not to die as much as we used to from cardiac reasons, but the brain still ages at a normal rate and we don’t do much about it … Our approach is to treat the whole body with medications and lifestyles that will keep every part of the body healthier. and younger ”, added the expert. “In my scientific opinion, around the age of 30, aging begins to take effect.”
When asked about the nature of the supplements that people should take in pursuit of slow aging, he said, “Choose a company that has a good reputation … Choose very pure molecules.” He added that resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine, seemed to show benefits in terms of anti-aging properties. However, he said the right meals and exercise seem like the best anti-aging bet right now.
The proof-of-concept study published in Nature demonstrates epigenetic reprogramming of complex tissues, such as the nerve cells of the eye, at an earlier age when they can repair and replace tissue damaged by age-related conditions and diseases. Conducting the study in mice, Dr. Sinclair said that most of our longevity is determined by our epigenome and not by our DNA.
While DNA contains instructions for building proteins, the epigenome comprises all the chemicals that are added to one’s DNA to regulate activity.
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