Is science on the brink of creating the elixir of life?
source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1319011/Eternal-youth-Is-science-brink-creati...
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- UtopianSky
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Once I had a very odd dinner with an elderly and distinguished scientist who told me how he planned to live for ever - or at least for a very long time indeed.
We ate in his beautiful house by the sea in California. Our meal consisted of one bowl of rice each and a glass of water.
With this extreme diet, my host said - limiting himself to 800-1,000 calories a day (the average male is recommended to consume 2,500) - he hoped to stave off death for many more decades.
Such a regime was based on the well-established theory that by reducing calorie intake, people can dramatically increase their lifespans. This had been shown, after numerous scientific investigations, to work in animals from fruit flies to mice.
Professor Roy Walford, a biologist at UCLA, was 74 years of age when I met him. He had no doubt that extreme calorie restriction would work in people, too. However, despite his punishing diet, he was to die five years later from the auto-immune disorder Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Seventy-nine years was a little better than the three score years and ten which have been approximated as the human lot since Biblical times - but his innings only matched the average lifespan for an educated, middle-class white California male of his generation.
It is tempting, then, in the light of this story, to write off the theory that by eating the bare minimum we can slow the ageing process.
But it seems Professor Walford was probably on to something, even if the fates conspired to ensure that he personally did not benefit from his diet thesis. For there is a growing scientific consensus that ageing - against which humanity has been battling for millennia - might not be inevitable.
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freecrack
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Is science on the brink of creating the elixir of life? and if so will the right have to choose between attacking it over attacking evolution?
- 2 years ago
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freecrack
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UtopianSky
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freecrack:
The right will attack it openly, while buying up all the stock secretly. :)
- 2 years ago
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UtopianSky
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freecrack
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UtopianSky:
isnt that the irony of it.they hate scientific advancement, but love the results.cant get em to stop using cell phones or computers, but science is wrong.as they type it lol
cuz on the 8th day god created the pentium chip
- 2 years ago
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freecrack
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artemis6
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This is not science doing this , this is nature . when we are gluttonous , we damage ourselves .
- 2 years ago
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artemis6
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UtopianSky
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artemis6:
Science may find out how a calorie-restricted diet works, and be able to replicate it without following the diet.
And this is not healthy eating vs gluttony- a calorie restricted diet is a REALLY minimal amount of food- the equivalent of what we would consider one small meal a day, but spread throughout the day.
- 2 years ago
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UtopianSky
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Gravity_Man [removed]
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Gravity_Man: This comment was removed by its owner.
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Gravity_Man [removed]
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freecrack
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Gravity_Man:
out of curiosity, do you cut and paste, or actualy type it repeatedly? just curious.
- 2 years ago
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freecrack
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Gravity_Man [removed]
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freecrack: This comment was removed by its owner.
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Gravity_Man [removed]
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freecrack
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Gravity_Man:
u r great:)
- 2 years ago
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freecrack
