Health & Fitness

Youthfulness, vitality and a long, prosperous life have been sought after throughout human history. And now, it seems scientists may have discovered one of the keys to turning back the hands of time.

Researchers from Arizona State University and Texas A&M University have made a breakthrough discovery in plant DNA that could lead to stopping cancer cold and slowing the aging process, ABC affiliate News 15 Arizona reports.¹

The research involves telomerase, an enzyme that produces the DNA of telomeres, which have been shown to play a role in the aging process. As your telomeres lengthen, they protect your cells from aging.

Take It From the Experts: Centenarians Share Their Secrets

While direct applications from the study to human health are distant, there are a number of things you can do now to improve your health span, according to one of the co-authors. In interviews and surveys with centenarians, certain themes came up time and time again when they explained why they've lived so long. The 10 most common reasons they gave for their long lives were:

Keeping a positive attitude	Eating good food
Participating in moderate exercise like walking, gardening swimming, etc.	Living clean (not smoking or drinking excessively)
Living independently	Having family to interact with
Having a circle of friends	Being born with "good" genes
Having faith/spirituality	Staying mentally active and continually learning

Centenarians are the fastest growing segment of the U.S population, with numbers doubling every decade; by the year 2050, the number of people who will have reached the century mark is expected to pass 1 million.

Centenarians have 60% lower rates of heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure, yet scientific explanations for their health and longevity remain elusive. As a group, they are happy and optimistic and have extremely low rates of depression and other psychiatric problems, suggesting you may live longer by maintaining the right attitude.

Hopefulness and Positivity Affect the Heart

There are compelling links between cardiac health and mental health. For example, having untreated depression or anxiety disorder increases your odds of having a heart attack or developing heart disease. Stress hormones are again a primary culprit.

According to Julia Boehm, author of earlier Harvard studies looking at optimism and cardiovascular disease (CVD):²

"The absence of the negative is not the same thing as the presence of the positive. We found that factors such as optimism, life satisfaction and happiness are associated with reduced risk of CVD regardless of such factors as a person's age, socioeconomic status, smoking status or body weight."

With a later study,³ author Eric Kim told The Harvard Gazette:

"While most medical and public health efforts today focus on reducing risk factors for diseases, evidence has been mounting that enhancing psychological resilience may also make a difference.

Our new findings suggest that we should make efforts to boost optimism, which has been shown to be associated with healthier behaviors and healthier ways of coping with life challenges."

The Significance of Sound Sleep

Getting adequate sleep is an important part of both mental and physical health. Too much or too little can lead to metabolic issues, as well as changes in mood and your ability to focus. Your circadian rhythm, which affects your sleep/wake cycle, holds implications for your brain, body temperature, hormones and cell regeneration among other things.⁴

"Irregular rhythms have been linked to various chronic health conditions, such as sleep disorders, obesity, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder," say scientists from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.⁵

Italian researchers found that deletion of a specific gene related to aging also affects glucose homeostasis. According to their article, published in the journal Glia, "Disruption of the circadian cycle is strongly associated with metabolic imbalance and reduced longevity in humans."⁶

Telomeres and telomerase activity are also controlled by your circadian rhythm,⁷ making proper sleep an important part of longevity. In a 2007 study involving 21,268 adult twins, Finnish researchers found that adults who slept more than eight hours per night, or less than seven, showed increased risk of death.⁸

Of course, the quality of your sleep is also important, not just the quantity. Good quality sleep, in the appropriate amount, can improve how you think and adapt to the demands on your time and changes throughout your day. There is evidence suggesting that a calm mind and active body are two important ingredients for longevity.

The meditative technique known as "mindfulness" has even been shown to have a beneficial effect on genetic expression. According to a 2018 article in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity,⁹ meditation has also been found to affect the enzyme telomerase, which some researchers believe is actively involved with the process of aging.

After Resting, Be Sure to Refuel

Additionally, there are many other strategies you can implement to improve your health and extend your life span. To live longer, you need to counteract the progressive loss of muscle mass by increasing your protein intake as you age. The elderly, bodybuilders and endurance athletes typically have higher than normal protein requirements for their age group.

It's also important to cycle high and low protein intake. Ideally, combine protein restriction with time-restricted eating, followed by increased protein intake on strength training days.

Fasting 16 to 20 hours each day is likely ideal, as this allows your body to more thoroughly deplete the glycogen stores in your liver. Benefits of fasting include the suppression of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and the activation of autophagy, both of which play decisive roles in disease prevention and longevity.

You'd also be wise to avoid eating two to three hours before bed, as late-night eating will decrease your nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) level, which is crucial for health and longevity. Late-night eating will also make you pack on unwanted pounds, as the excess calories will not be burned but stored as fat.

Preventing Cognitive Decline

Naturally, if you're going to live longer, you'll want to be healthy for the remainder, and that includes maintaining your cognitive function. Specific nutrients that can help prevent dementia and cognitive decline include vitamin D, DHA, folate and magnesium. Additional nutrients of notable interest, which are readily available in supplement form, include:

• Astaxanthin — Commonly called "king of the carotenoids," is a potent anti-inflammatory from specific types of microalgae and may be useful for treating joint and muscle pain. It also supports healthy vision and can be used as an "internal sunscreen."
• Ergothioneine — Found in porcini mushrooms, ergothioneine appears to play a specific role in protecting your DNA from oxidative damage. Along with glutathione, it may offer protection against age-related conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer and heart disease.
• PQQ — Particularly important for the health and protection of your mitochondria, PQQ has been shown to help protect against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. It also works synergistically with CoQ10, producing better results than when either one is used alone. Celery, parsley and kiwi are dietary sources of PQQ.

Kick the Chemicals to the Curb

Naturally, there's also the issue of toxic exposures, which can take a toll on your health, so avoiding toxins is a given, right along with eating a wholesome diet of organic, unprocessed foods.

This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with nontoxic alternatives.

A group of scientists from Southeast University and Changzhou No. 7 People's Hospital in China recently published a study¹⁰ about the role of plastics in our environment and how long-term exposure affects our health. They found that high concentrations of nanoplastic particles reduced the life span of roundworms.

They believe that different levels of exposure may have effects on locomotion and immune response, indicating that nanopolystyrene is likely toxic to all types of organisms.

"Our results highlight the potential of long-term nanopolystyrene exposure in reducing longevity and in affecting health state during the aging process in environmental organisms," they wrote. Next week I will post my interview with leading researcher James Clement on his book, "The Switch," that will go into far more fascinating details on this topic.

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Researchers have now achieved the highest reported rates of inserting genes into human cells with the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system, a necessary step for harnessing CRISPR for clinical gene-therapy applications. By chemically tweaking the ends of the DNA to be inserted, the new technique is up to five times more efficient than current approaches.

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A research team found the temperature increase caused by the probe beam could be utilized to generate a signal per se for detecting objects. Notably, this so-called 'active thermal detection' enables super-resolution imaging at all scales.

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Casting lines into human cells to snag proteins, a team of researchers has solved a 20-year-old mystery of cell biology.

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How can mathematics learning in primary school be facilitated? Scientists have developed an intervention to promote the learning of math in school. Named ACE-ArithmEcole, the program is designed to help schoolchildren surpass their intuitions and rely instead on the use of arithmetic principles. More than half (50.5%) of the students who took part in the intervention were able to solve difficult problems, as compared to 29.8% for pupils who followed the standard course of study.

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A mother's obesity in pregnancy can affect her child's development years down the road, according to researchers who found lagging motor skills in preschoolers and lower IQ in middle childhood for boys whose mothers were severely overweight while pregnant. At age 7, the boys whose mothers were overweight or obese in pregnancy had scores 5 or more points lower on full-scale IQ tests. No effect was found in the girls.

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A mother's obesity in pregnancy can affect her child's development years down the road, according to researchers who found lagging motor skills in preschoolers and lower IQ in middle childhood for boys whose mothers were severely overweight while pregnant. At age 7, the boys whose mothers were overweight or obese in pregnancy had scores 5 or more points lower on full-scale IQ tests. No effect was found in the girls.

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Artificial intelligence can detect one of the most common forms of blood cancer - acute myeloid leukemia -- with high reliability. Researchers at the DZNE and the University of Bonn have now shown this in a proof-of-concept study. Their approach is based on the analysis of the gene activity of cells found in the blood. Used in practice, this approach could support conventional diagnostics and possibly accelerate the beginning of therapy. The research results have been published in the journal 'iScience'.

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Researchers developed a liquid electret material capable of semi-permanently retaining static electricity. They subsequently combined this material with soft electrodes to create the first bendable, stretchable vibration-powered device in the world. Because this device is highly deformable and capable of converting very subtle vibrations into electrical signals, it may be applicable to the development of healthcare-devices, such as self-powered heartbeat and pulse sensors.

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Neurochemicals such as serotonin and dopamine play crucial roles in cognitive and emotional functions of our brain. Vesicular monoamine transporter 1 (VMAT1) is one of the genes responsible for transporting neurotransmitters and regulating neuronal signaling. A research team has reconstructed ancestral VMAT1 proteins, revealing the functional changes in neurotransmitter uptake of VMAT1 throughout the course of human evolution.

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Osteoarthritis is a common and potentially debilitating condition. It’s a degenerative joint disease (often called the “wear-and-tear” type) in which the smooth lining of cartilage becomes thinned and uneven, exposing the bone beneath.

Although osteoarthritis is tightly linked with aging, we now know there is more to it than age alone: genetics, weight, physical activity, and a number of other factors can conspire to make it more likely that someone will develop osteoarthritis while someone else won’t. Osteoarthritis is the primary reason that more than a million joints (mostly hips and knees) are replaced each year in the US.

Treatments short of surgery can help but they don’t always work well, don’t cure the condition, and may be accompanied by side effects. Surgery is usually the last resort, reserved for people who have declining function, unrelenting pain, or both despite trying other treatments such as pain relieving, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen (Advil, others) or naproxen (Aleve, others), or injections of steroids or hyaluronic acid (a type of lubricant). Nonmedication approaches can also help, such as loss of excess weight, physical therapy, or use of a cane or brace.

Calling steroid injections into question

Steroid injections can quickly relieve inflammation in the joints, and the effects may last from several weeks to several months. I’ve seen a number of patients who got significant relief from steroid injections every three or four months. But, a new report of one medical center’s experience and a review of past research came to some concerning conclusions about joint injections for osteoarthritis of the hip or knee. These included:

• a lack of compelling evidence that they work
• about 7% to 8% of people getting steroid injections seem to worsen, with their arthritis accelerating “beyond the expected rate”
• unusual fractures may occur (in about 1% of people)
• bone damage (called osteonecrosis) (in about 1% of people).

Other side effects include a temporary increase in blood sugar, bleeding into the joint, and, quite rarely, infection. And, of course, the injection itself can be painful, although numbing medication is usually provided.

The authors suggest that doctors order x-rays before each injection and not perform injections if there is evidence of any of these complications or unexplained pain. However, it’s not clear how effective this approach would be.

Now what?

The findings of this report regarding injections of steroids for knee and hip osteoarthritis are disappointing, especially for those who have not improved with other treatments.

Regarding the benefit of the injections, it’s important to keep in mind that even if the average benefit of a treatment is small, it does not mean that treatment is useless. Though temporary, some people do report significant improvement with steroid injections.

It’s also not entirely clear that the problems described in this study are actually caused by the steroid injections. And, from my own experience, the rates of complications seem high to me. That said, a 2017 study did find that people getting steroid injections had more thinning of joint cartilage than those getting placebo injections.

In my own practice, I’ll still offer a steroid injection for osteoarthritis, but only after carefully reviewing the potential risks and benefits. If it is not terribly helpful, I would not encourage repeated injections. On the other hand, if it works well, a limited number of injections (up to three or four per year is a common limit) may reduce pain and improve function and quality of life.

Restricting the injections to those who improve the most and limiting the number of injections each year may be a better strategy than eliminating steroid injections altogether, especially since the most serious side effects are quite rare.

We’ll need additional studies that examine the type, dosage, and frequency of steroid injections that might provide more benefit than risk. And we’ll need better ways to predict who will improve the most. Until then, I think it’s important to keep an open mind about just how helpful — and how safe — steroid injections for osteoarthritis truly are.

Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling

The post A new look at steroid injections for knee and hip osteoarthritis appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

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