After a peak of health and vitality in early adulthood, humans start a long steady decline, both physically and cognitively. This decline can be accelerated by degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease, or Alzheimer’s Disease, but people have been unable to decelerate that decline. Experiments with a variety of animals have shown that enforcing a strict regimen of calorie restriction can extend healthy life beyond what is normal for a given species. Taking note of this, some people have adopted a calorie-restricted lifestyle in an effort to extend their lifespan.
The jury is still out on whether this has increased their lifespan in a significant way. Besides that, strict calorie restriction is a difficult discipline to maintain. It sacrifices one of life’s great pleasures (eating high calorie foods) to obtain a hoped-for life extension that is not guaranteed. What a bummer it would be to forego, for decades, the most enjoyable foods, only to be hit by a truck and killed before cashing in on any of those potential years of extended life.
What causes the deterioration that seems to be inevitably tied to growing older? Three possibilities come to mind:
- Some factor that maintains youth, diminishes with age.
- Some factor that causes damage, increases with age.
- Factors in both the above categories are active.
Discovering and dealing with even one of these factors should enable us to stay healthier for longer. One possibility was covered in a paper published recently in Aging, titled “Aging and pathological aging signatures of the brain: through the focusing lens of SIRT6.”
SIRT6, the subject of the paper, is a protein that is manufactured in your body, which plays an important role in keeping you healthy. Researchers knew that the amount of SIRT6 in a person’s body decreases as the person ages. They hypothesized that maintaining levels of SIRT6 is important for delaying the infirmities of age. To test their hypothesis, they bred some genetically engineered mice. These mice, called SIRT6-KO mice (KO = knockout), were young and had been engineered to lack the ability to produce SIRT6.
The SIRT6-KO mice were compared against age-matched wild-type (WT) mice that had not been altered, and also compared against WT mice that were already old, through natural aging. What did they find?
The SIRT6-KO mice started exhibiting many of the characteristics of the old mice. They exhibited the following characteristics of old age:
- Inflammation
- Metabolic defects
- Heart disease
- Genome instability
- Diabetes
- Neurodegeneration
- Progeroid phenotype (They looked old)
- DNA damage
- Cognitive decline
- Premature death
Young mice with SIRT6 knocked out were quickly transformed into doddering oldsters shortly after they were born.
This research indicates that, at least in mice, it might make sense to come up with some intervention that maintains or even enhances the level of SIRT6 in the body. SIRT6 does all the same things in humans that it does in mice, so this might be a good intervention for people too. The nutritional supplement industry is looking at this as a market opportunity, even as we speak.
BIO:
Allen G. Taylor is a 40-year veteran of the computer industry and the author of over 40 books, including Develop Microsoft HoloLens Apps Now, Get Fit with Apple Watch, Cruise for Free, SQL For Dummies, 9th Edition, Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies, Database Development For Dummies, Access Power Programming with VBA, and SQL All-In-One For Dummies, Third Edition. He lectures internationally on astronomy, databases, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He also teaches database development and Crystal Reports through a leading online education provider. For the latest news on Allen’s activities, check out his blog at wwwallengtaylor.com or contact him at allen.taylor@ieee.org.