How to create your daily diet?

It’s almost impossible to eat a healthy diet without using a computer. It would be a gigantic job to create a diet that contains the exact amount of calories, proteins, amino acids, vitamins, minerals,… by only using a sheet of paper and books. The computer program that I use is a free downloadable program called CRON-O-METER.
You can download it from here:

http://spaz.ca/cronometer/

This program calculates the amount of calories, fibers, water, alcohol, caffeine, starch, ash, sugars, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fats. You are able to create a log which the values of blood glucose, weight, body temperature, systolic BP, diastolic BP and resting heart rate. You can create new foods or adjust existing ones.

Of course there are some other programs that you could use.

What I do is making a diet in the evening for the following day. That is much easier if you have to go to school or go to work.

Two meals a day versus more smaller meals a day.
Some people advise to eat only 2 meals a day. Let’s say one at 12.00h (12am) and one at 18.00h (6pm). By doing that the time between your meal at 18.00h and that at 12.00h is 18 hours. So they say that in that 18 hours your insulin levels are low and that is beneficial. People who support the more smaller meals a day say that by eating a smaller meal your insulin levels don’t change dramatically from very low to high. Of course these smaller meals must be made of foods on which your body only releases a small amount of insulin.

Extracellular cross links

All the proteins in our cells are replaced quite regularly because they get damaged. But some of the proteins outside our cells aren’t replaced or only very slowly. The working is often very simple, so a minor change isn’t that serious. But after a while it can cause problems. Mostly they have a biophysical function like give a tissue elasticity (for example the artery wall) or high tensile strength like the ligaments or transparency like the lens of the eye. A good example of one of the problems which extracellular cross links is the case of the artery wall which becomes more rigid and leads to high blood pressure. When two proteins in our artery wall bond together (cross-linking) then they loose there ability to slide across or along each other. Luckily, a lot of these structure have very unusual chemical structures, not found in proteins our other molecules that the body makes on purpose. This means that it’s possible to make molecules that break these cross links without reacting which other molecules that your body needs. One of these cross-links breakers is ALT-711, today known as alagebrium chloride. But there are cross-links that alagebrium chloride can’t break, so we need to develop some other cross-link breakers too. A problem is that some molecules are too stable to be broken down by a non-toxic small molecule. Maybe you will ask yourself: “why can toxic molecules break it while non toxic can’t”. Well this is because some toxic molecules our very reactive and will not only beak the cross-link but also the rest of the molecules inside your body. The solution for this problem can be the creation of enzymes that can break these cross-links or other molecules that bound to stable molecules but inactivate themselves when they are bounded. Alagebrium chloride can also beak down glycolysation end-products (A.G.E.s).

Junk inside cells

Cells are constantly breaking down big molecules into smaller ones. One of the reasons why they have to do it is because the molecule doesn’t work like it should do. But why does these molecules loose there function? Well, because there have been chemically altered. Sometimes a molecule is created for which your body doesn’t have the machinery to break it down. These big molecules accumulate in your cells. Just like polyethylene on a landfill, no single micro-organism is capable of breaking down polyethylene, so it stays there forever. These molecules accumulate in the lysosomes. The lysosomes are organelles that contain digestive enzymes. The function of a lysosome is to break down molecules and even hole parts of the cell that are to damaged to work (autophagy). When cells dived the junk is divided into two cells, so these cells have some kind of protection against to much junk. But cells that doesn’t divide are gradually filled which junk. These cells include nerve cells (motor neurons), heart cells, white blood cells trapped within the artery wall and some cells in the eye. This can lead to macular degradation (blindness), arthrosclerosis (heart attacks and strokes), some neurodegenerative diseases. A good example of what happen if junk is stored in lysosomes is Tay-Sachs disease. In this disease people the enzyme hexosaminidase A needed to break down gangliosides isn’t working properly. Scientists are developing enzymes that could break down these resistant molecules.

1. Nucleolus
2. Nucleus
3. Ribosome
4. Vesicle
5. Rough endoplasmic reticulum
6. Golgi apparatus
7. Cytoskeleton
8. Smooth endoplasmic reticulum
9. Mitochondrion
10. Vacuole
11. Cytoplasm
12. Lysosome
13. Centriole

What can you do to support the anti aging socienty

When people become old they get medical problems like osteoporoses, diabetes type II, Alzheimer, dementia,… They have sometimes problems to walk. If you don’t want to become like this than is anti aging something for you. Than you could ask yourself: “What can I do to support the anti aging society?”. Well, I will give here some things you could do:
- Tell your family and friends about this
- Write a site or blog about anti aging
- Become a member from imminst, this costs 50 dollar a year and they use your money to make films, write books,… about anti aging.
- Sign the petition on http://www.coalitiontoextendlife.org/news.php#petition
- Make a movie about anti aging and place it on youtube
- Donate to the Methuselah Foundation http://www.mprize.org/donate
It’s critically important for us to inform as many people as possible about anti aging. For getting funds from the government we need to have a lot of people who support us. Don’t forget every day that we wait, people will die unnecessary.

Cell los and atrophy

Cells can’t live forever, except for cancer cells (these live forever if they are preserved in the right conditions). The number of times that a cell can divide is called the Hayflick limit. For a human cell this limit is about 52 times. But how does a cell know how many times that she’s already divided? Well the answer is because a cell uses a mechanism to count this. This mechanism are the telomeres. The telomeres are pieces of DNA on the end of the DNA molecule that doesn’t code for the production of proteins. When the cell divides the DNA is replicated and the telomere becomes shorter. When there isn’t any more telomere, the vital DNA would become shorter and the cell wouldn’t be able to produce the right kind of proteins. So the cell commits suicide. Cancer cells produce an enzyme called telomerase that lengthens the telomeres and by doing so prevent the cell from dying. Now researchers search drugs that inhibit telomerase and this makes cancer cells mortal. A good example of cancer cells' immortality is HeLa cells, which were originally removed from the cervical cancer of Henrietta Lacks in 1951 and are still used in laboratories as a model cell line. They are indeed immortal - daily production of HeLa cells is estimated at several tons even up to this day - all from the few cells taken from Ms. Lacks' tumor.

Mutations of the mitochondrial DNA

Research has shown that mitochondrial DNA has a fast mutation speed. That’s why these mutations accelerate the aging process more than mutations of the nuclear DNA. The mitochondrion’s are the energy factories of our bodies. Free radials are a by-product of the energy production. When you take antioxidants to slow down the aging process you have to be sure that you don’t forget your mitochondria. For example, lipoic acid is one of the few antioxidant that are capable of going inside the mitochondria of the brain and protect them. Antioxidants that are capable of going inside mitochondria are: lipoic acid, melatonin, MitoQ, MitoVit E,… As far as I know you cannot buy these last two (MitoQ and MitoVit E) for supplement purpose. You can only buy the to do research. There are not many safety studies done, that’s why I advise not to take them. If you take to much your ATP will be disrupt and you will die. But the other two (lipoic acid and melatonin) are perfectly safe to take.

Melatonin

Lipoic acid

Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime

This book is wrote by Dr. Aubrey de Grey who works in the department of genetics at the university of Cambrige. He's one of the leading investigators of human aging. The book will be released on 4 September 2007. I'm looking forward to reed it.

You can pre-order it by amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-Breakthroughs-Lifetime/dp/0312367066

Food and antioxidants

Fruit, vegetables and legumes are rich sources of antioxidants. The problem with fruit is that it contains sugar. Sugar is a bad molecule. It rises the insulin level in your body. Insulin is the hormone of aging. Another bad thing about sugar is that it promotes inflammation. Inflammation is the source of cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. But that’s not all, calorie restriction is proven to length the human lifespan. And sugar contains a lot of calories. So, sugar shortens the lifespan. We will discuss calorie restriction in later posts.

That’s why I advise to eat lots of vegetables and legumes. Don’t eat more than 3 pieces of fruit a day. Choose for low glycemic load fruits like melons. I will discuss the glycemic load, glycemic index and insulin index later. Now I want to talk about the ORAC level of foods. ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity and is a value for the antioxidant capacity of a food. High ORAC means that it has very strong antioxidant propeties. Some of the products that have a high ORAC levels are: cocoa, acai, kale, spinach,… When you look at the ORAC levels you have to encounter that some products contain a lot of water and others don’t. This can give a wrong impression. Some herbs have very very high ORAC levels but you can only eat a little bit of them.

Here is a list of the ORAC levels of some foods:

http://optimalhealth.cia.com.au/OracLevels.htm

An antioxidant can’t go to all the places in a human body. Vitamin C for example can’t go into the mitochondrion’s of your brain. But lipoic acid can go there. And an antioxidant isn’t capable of neutralizing every kind of free radical. So like I told before it’s important to ate much different antioxidants. It’s impossible to get all of your antioxidants from your food. Some of them are only in minute quantities present in your food. Some antioxidants are present in unhealthy foods like potatoes and meat. Why potatoes are bad will I discuss later. Red meat doesn’t only contain bad fats and cholesterol (I will discuss fats later, did you know that not all saturated fats are bad? But later I will discuss it in detail) it contains iron in a good bioavailable form. Iron isn’t good for you. So, taking these antioxidants in a pill instead of eating potatoes or meat is a good idea. The antioxidants that I speak of are lipoic acid (potatoes) and ubiquinone (meat). Meat also contains high levels of selenium.

Keep healthy.

Antioxidants

What are antioxidants? This is the definition we find on Wikipedia:

Antioxidants are molecules that slow or prevent the oxidation of other molecules. Oxidation is a chemical reaction that transfers electrons from a substance to an oxidizing agent. Oxidation reactions can produce free radicals, which start chain reactions that damage cells. Antioxidants terminate these chain reactions by removing radical intermediates, and inhibit other oxidation reactions by being oxidized themselves. As a result, antioxidants are often reducing agents such as thiols or polyphenols.

There are 3 groups of antioxidants:
1. Enzymes e.g. superoxide dismutase, catalase and diferent peroxidases
2. Inhibitors of radical formation e.g. fenton reaction inhibitors
3. Free radical quenching agents e.g. vitamin E

The most known group is these of the free radical quenching agents. Who hasn’t heard about vitamin C or E? But very few people have heard about superoxide dismutase. But you can take this in a pill (gliSODin). One of the best antioxidants is glutathione (GSH). Glutathione is a tripeptide, this means that it is a component that is build from three amino acids.

Studies show that orally taken glutathione is very bad absorbed into your body. But you can take the precursor for glutathione called cystein. Cystein is a amino acid but because it isn’t so stable inside your cells it’s better to take N-acetylcystein (NAC).

If you use fenton reaction inhibitors you can choose for two approaches. The first is the inhibition of the formation of hydrogen peroxide (MAO inhibition). The second is to remove Fe2+ from your body by taking chelators. A inhibitor for MAO-B is Selegiline (Deprenyl).
A chelator for iron is Adriamycin (doxorubicin), an antibiotic drug often used for cancer treatment. It removes iron from cancer cells but a big disadvantage is that it often results in severe heart damage. Even if Adriamycin cures the cancer, the patient is likely to die of a heart problem. Another iron chelator Ferriprox (deferiprone) is the first oral one but it has some toxicity problems. But nature gives us a good and safe iron chelator called inositol hexaphosphate (IP6). And IP6 doesn’t remove iron from red blood cells. IP6 is also know as phytic acid. But it chelates also zinc, magnesium and calcium.

Free radical quenching agents are well know, these are the typical antioxidants such as vitamin A, C and E, the minerals zinc and selenium and phytonutrients like polyphenols.

What is oxidative stress? Oxidative stress is the damage done by oxidation to vital compounds like DNA, fats, proteins, lipoproteins,… Oxidative stress is correlated with a lot of illnesses e.g. arthrosclerosis, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, macular degeneration,… Stimulants of oxidative stress are smoking, medicines (e.g. the pill), too much alcohol, too long exposure to the sun, natural aging, intensive and repeated physical exercise, hyperglycemia, metabolic syndrome and obesity.

The problem with taking antioxidants is that in some circumstances they can behave as pro-oxidants. The solution to this problem is taking several antioxidants instead of just one or two. When a radial reacts with an antioxidant it becomes a radical itself. Another antioxidant can than convert this radial back into the antioxidant. But it becomes than a radical itself. This process is called redox cycling. If you lack one antioxidant, the process can’t be executed like it has to be. On the end of the process the radical is being neutralized.

Which antioxidants should you take? I advise to take as much different ones as you can. Here’s a list of compounds that you can take:
- Lipoic acid
- N-acetylcycteine
- Resveratrol
- Green tea extract
- Promegranate extract
- Carotenoids
- Vitamin E (I will discuss the problem of the different forms later)
- Vitamin C
- Selenium
- Zinc
- GliSODin
- Melatonin
- Carnosine
- Ubiquinone (Co-Q10)
- Garlic
- …
I personally take: garlic, ubiquinone, carnosine, lipoic acid, N-acetylcycteine, resveratrol, green tea extract, beta-carotene, vitamin E, vitamin C, selenium and zinc.

Keep healthy

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Enzymes: proteins that catalyses (i.e. accelerate) chemical reactions.
Vitamins: a organic compound required in tiny ammounts for essential metabolic reactions.
MAO: monoamine oxidase, a type of enzymes.
Chelator: a chemical that forms a complex with a metal ion.
Phytonutrients: chemical compounds derived from plants.
Polyphenols: a group of compounents found in plants, characerized by the presence of more than one phenol group.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS)

Like I have said before there are 3 kinds of products that together form the Group of the reactive oxygen species.
1. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)
2. Free radicals
3. Oxygen ions
Hydrogen peroxide (known as a disinfectant) is made in small quantities inside the peroxisomes (a part of a cell). This product is very toxic. But it’s a very good oxidator. Your cells use hydrogen peroxide to oxidize toxic chemicals. That’s why there are so many peroxisomes inside your liver. Different enzymes e.g. catalase, D-amino acid oxidase and uric acid oxidase uses hydrogen peroxide to oxidize these toxic chemicals. The reaction products are water and the oxidized form of the toxic chemical. Catalase uses the hydrogen peroxide to oxidize toxic chemicals like phenols, formaldehyde and ethanol. When to much hydrogen peroxide is formed, catalase will convert it to oxygen and water. So, it protects the cell against toxic chemicals and hydrogen peroxide. Another important roll of the perosisome and hydrogen peroxide is to oxidize fatty acids and break then down to lengths of 2 carbon atoms.
The final product is acetyl-CoA. Acetyl-CoA is a very important product, it’s a part of your energy production system. Into your body is oxygen (O2) converted into superoxide (O2.-). Superoxide is a very bad molecule to be in your cells. So, your body uses superoxide dismutase (an enzyme) to convert it into hydrogen peroxide. Superoxide dismutates (SOD) exists in three forms SOD1 (present in the cytoplasm), SOD2 (present inside the mitochondrion’s) and SOD3 (present outside the cells). But hydrogen peroxide can react with some metal compounds e.g. iron(II) ion, iron(III) ion, some Ni, Co and Cr compounds to form free radicals. This is the reason why I advise you to stay away from iron supplements unless you have to take it from your physician (when you suffer from anemia). This reaction is called the fenton reaction:
H2O2 + Fe2+ à Fe3+ + OH. + OH-
H2O2 + Fe3+ à Fe2+ + OOH. + H+

Remember: the products with a point behind them are radicals.

One of the reasons why inflammation (this will be discussed later) is a bad thing, is because it releases iron in a free from inside your body. This iron reacts with hydrogen peroxide and produces free radicals.

In the next post we will talk about what you can do to protect your body against these reactive oxygen species and what supplements you have to combine.

Keep healthy

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Some extra info about the links between ROS, iron and cancer:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12396663&dopt=AbstractPlus

Nuclear mutations and epimutations

The first thing you will ask is: “What are mutations?” Well mutations are events when the genetic code changes. You know that all of the information in our body is written in a code, this is the genetic code. The structure is called DNA. DNA consists of a long chain of 2 bands that are linked together by base pairs. There are 4 base pairs called: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. These are connected to a sugar called deoxyribose. One base pair linked to this sugar is called a nucleotide.



Some things are capable of converting one base pair into another one. This is called a mutation. Mutations are one of the reasons of evolution, you can get a improvement by mutations. One of these mutations is delta-32. This mutation has made humans immune for HIV. But mutations are only rare beneficial, in most cases there happens nothing or it's a bad mutation. I will give an example. Let’s say that you are someone who knows nothing about engines. You buy a super sport car, let's say a Ferrari, what is the change that by altering something on this engine you improve it? Very small. Well mutations happens random, this is the same as you who have no knowledge about engines and do something to one. You will change a random thing in this engine. So, mutations are bad in most cases. So, its important to diminish the number of mutations.
So, what's the reason mutations occur? One way is because mutagenic chemicals or radiation get inside your body. Examples are: UV radiation, ionising radiation (radioactive radiation), ethidium bromide, vinca alkaloids (natural in some plants), benzene,… Because many mutations cause cancer these compounds are also carcinogens. Another way in which mutations can occur is by damage to the DNA from reactive oxygen species. Many of the mutations occur by errors in DNA replication, repair and recombination of DNA sequences.

Before we come to how you can fight against mutations, we will talk about epimutations.
Epimutations are hereditary changes in the working of the genome without changes in the DNA code. The epimutations occur by a methylation or demethylation of various genes. These (de)methylations can switch genes on or off. So the ‘book’ (= the genetic code) doesn’t change but the chapters that you read changes. When a gene is switched off your body doesn’t read that chapter and when a gene is switched on the body does read the gene.

How can you fight against mutations with means that are avoidable on this moment? The first thing you can do is prevent that you come in contact which mutagenic (carcinogenic) compounds. For example: don’t smoke, don’t eat food that is prepared on the barbeque,…

The second thing you can do is decrease the number of reactive oxygen species. But first we have to now what these are. This group exists of 3 things: free radicals, oxygen ions and hydrogen peroxide. The free radicals are a group of chemicals. What is a radical? When you have learnt chemistry you will know that many of the elements aren’t stable as a mono-atomic substance. This means that they form bonds with other atoms. Let's take oxygen as a example. Oxygen has 6 electrons on it’s outer skin. But to be stable it needs 8 electrons. That’s why 2 oxygen’s chare 4 electrons.

O: + :O --> O :: O

If these bounds breaks and the oxygen, like those two on the left of the image are formed, than we speak about radicals. These are very reactive compounds and react in your body with everything it encounters (e.g. DNA, proteins, fats,…). Many people think that if they take a pill of vitamin C, E or so the problem is solved but it isn’t. Taking an antioxidant can maybe even make the problem bigger. You have to take redox cycling into consideration. This is a very difficult problem. In the next post I will discuss it.

Keep healthy

What is aging?

Well, many of you will answer: “when time passes you become older”. But this is no scientific answer. You could describe it as getting grey hair, getting wrinkles, getting pigmentation spots,… But again these aren’t scientific answers. Off course these have a biological source but are not the reasons why you get ill or died.
Dr. De Grey defines aging as: "the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us".
So what happens inside your body when you get older? Dr. De Grey has made a list of 7 causes of aging. This is a part of his SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) theory.
These are:

1. Cell los or atrophy
2. Nuclear mutations and epimutations
3. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA
4. Cellular senescence
5. Extracellular cross-links
6. Junk outside cells
7. Junk inside cells

We will discuss each of these causes in greater detail in further posts.

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Word list:

Metabolism: the anabolism and the catabolism together.
Anabolism: making bigger molecules from smaller ones inside your body. This process requires energy.
Catabolism: making smaller molecules from bigger ones inside your body. This process relishes energy.
Senescence: the combination of processes of deterioration which follow the period of development of an organism.

Keep healthy

Why fighting against aging?

Well the answer is simple. Do you want to become old? Do you want to become sick? Do you want to die? If you answer no to these questions than fighting against aging is something for you. The goal of anti aging is not to only extend human life but stay younger and healthier for a longer time. Would you like to sit in a wheelchair? Would you like to become dement? NO, you want to stay young and enjoy of jour life! Off course there are questions like: “but the world would be to small for all of us”. But on this moment we don’t speak about extending our lives to hundreds of years. It would be a small impact if we would live a little bit longer. In the future we will have to diminish our birth rate to compensate the longer living population. Off course you could ask but how would we pay the pensions? The answer is simple. We will have to work longer. Is this bad? No, it isn’t. We would be able to see our great great grandchild. If you think about this subject you would see that every problem has a solution and that it’s possible to conduct these solutions in reality. The ultimate goal is to achieve immortality.

If you aren’t convinced that slowing down aging and immortality is a good thing than visit these websites:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6581761732541483047&q=immortality&time=0

This film is a real must.

http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=15120&hl=why+immortality&s=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iYpxRXlboQ

A film of dr. Aubrey De Grey (biomedical gerontologist) on the TED conference.

On these websites this subject is discussed in far greater detail.

Keep healthy

Introduction

Hello and welcome to anti aging and health

My name is Sven and I live in Ninove, a city in Belgium. I study chemistry at the university of Ghent. I’m 18 years old and very interested in life extension and health. On this moment I have already spend 1 year studying this subject. I’m a member of Imminst (Immortality Institute). To extend my lifespan I take supplements and practise caloric restriction (calorie restriction). For supplements I take 20 pills a day, two kinds of powder and one kind of droplets. These supplements include vitamins, minerals and some other chemicals such as lipoic acid, resveratrol, N-acetylcycteine, carnosine,…
I will discuss these things in my posts.

What is the purpose of this blog? Well, I want to make a journey witch you to explore life extension. I will do this in parts. Every post will discuss one subject. You can off course respond to these posts. I will do this in a systematic way. This means that to fully understand a post you have to read the posts before it.

I hope that you learn a lot and begin to live a healthier, happier and longer life.