|Sci|: Meet the Revolutionaries Fighting Aging |Fi|: A Singular Panda Ch 3
Science IRL: How graveyards help us defy death + Fic: An LLM chatbot trained on an alien’s journals mentors our Anti-Aging revolutionary CEO from beyond the grave
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|Science IRL|: Meet the Revolutionaries Fighting Aging
Disclosure—none of this is medical advice.
I’m not qualified to provide medical advice. Furthermore, neither my mechanical engineering experience nor my technical space sales experience lends me any authority on the science and interventions of aging.
This Anti-Aging nonfiction installment of ScifIRL is an edu-tainment style collection of articles informed by my personal goals and research. I’m hoping they will provide you an introduction to this quickly growing field of study and how it may affect your life.
How Do You Feel About Graveyards?
This week we’re following one of the contemporary anti-aging revolutionaries and digging in to his groundbreaking work. (winkwink)
The founder of Cyclarity Therapeutics, Dr. Matthew O’Connor, went poking around in graveyards in his quest to solve one of the most egregious killers of humans globally—heart disease.
Heart disease and other cardiopulmonary issues can lead to heart attack and stroke. These types of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) accounted for over 30% of deaths globally in 2019 according to the World Health Organization.
The cellular process that causes these heart-related issues, broadly categorized as atherosclerosis, is the single biggest killer. It’s no surprise then that it’s the focus of many anti-aging startups.
So what does the damage related to these cardiopulmonary issues look like? Well, it all comes down to that often misunderstood scamp, cholesterol.
As you may already know, there’s ‘good’ cholesterol (the LDL measurement in your blood) and ‘bad’ cholesterol (HDL). This isn’t a particularly useful way to look at cholesterol, but I digress–-spend a few minutes with this video from Dr. Peter Attia if you’re interested. The principle difference is the HDL has components that react with oxygen in your blood to create toxic stuff. The worst of the oxidized toxic deviants is called 7-ketocholesterol.
7-ketocholesterol accrues in our arteries, attracting our cellular cleanup crew called macrophages. Unfortunately our macrophages didn’t evolve to break down this variant of cholesterol. The proverbial stomach in the macrophage bursts, creating more of a mess, which causes your body to call more cleanup cells to manage the exploded macrophage and the original 7-keto bad guy.
Toxic cycle begins.
This mixture of macrophage carnage and 7-keto creates foam cells which attach to our artery walls. Over the years, these foam cells create a buildup of plaque which eventually breaks or sheds, causing fatal strokes or heart attacks.
To watch a video of the process, click this link for Cyclarity's animation.
We’ve established that nothing in the human body seems naturally equipped to break down 7-keto plaque. So how is it that this plaque breaks down after death? Dr. Matthew O’Connor reasoned that something in graveyards must be ready-made for this job since human bodies nearly fully decompose, leaving only bones with no chemical signs of this 7-keto plaque left behind in the soil.
After examining human decomposition in graveyards, the crew at Matt’s company discovered a naturally occurring enzyme that could be the key to curing heart disease. Cyclarity is currently conducting human trials on a synthetic version of the enzyme based on the tried and true pharmaceutical family of cyclodextrin called UDP-003.
“There are currently no disease-modifying drug treatments for atherosclerosis. Statins and inhibitors (e.g., PCSK9 and ACE inhibitors) only slow disease progression through reduction of cholesterol levels, while blood thinners only prevent clotting or obstruction without reducing underlying disease. In contrast, UDP-003 targets the root cause of atherosclerosis, oxidized cholesterol, to remove it.” 1
Cyclarity plans to enter Phase 2 of their human clinical trials next year, which will further test the drug’s effectiveness and assess side effects in about 100 participants. If that’s successful, it will undergo another phase to prove the drug is better than current alternatives in hundreds of participants before it’s approved for broad use and distribution.
If the drugs are as successful as predicted, diseases related to atherosclerosis—essentially the biggest killer in age-related deaths—will become a thing of the past. (And yes, I do think there’s a few good jokes about death and resurrection to be mined due to all this graves=ageless discovery, but I’ll bear that cross for you.)
Cyclarity is just one of several research companies and foundations focused on solving the problem of aging today.
Here’s a quick summary of a few of those organizations:
SENS: Mentioned in the last episode, Aubrey de Grey’s first company that helped define the major types of cellular aging.
Longevity Escape Velocity: Aubrey’s new company, primarily focused on a long-term health and lifespan extension study with mice, using a combination of previously proven therapies to identify synergies.
Altos Labs: Jeff Bezos-backed research lab with Dr. Shinya Yamanaka as its scientific advisor. Dr. Yamanaka won the Nobel prize in 2012 defining the “Yamanaka Factors” which are the protein instructions that can convert a adult cells back to a stem cell which is foundational to many longevity related gene therapies
Calico Life Sciences: This is Google’s (Alphabet’s) anti-aging research arm.
While I’m summarizing, here are a few resources for you to further explore:
FightAging.org by Reason: A longevity blog and community that consolidates info from a lot of great sources and companies.
The Drive podcast by Dr. Peter Attia: An excellent resource with hosts in longevity and health fields, focusing more on tactics you can employ to improve your health and lifespan such as nutrition, sleep, and exercise.
In this month’s fiction…
The new anti-aging therapy Bridgette’s company is working on is in Phase 1 and Bridgette is anxious about the love of her life taking it. But Bridgette cannot bring herself to start the treatment. In the previous chapter of this month’s story, our heroine had a tense but formative conversation with Anhil, her star employee. Anhil implied that Bridgette’s stalling and refusing treatment, thereby risking her own mortality, was tantamount to her murdering whole generations of people.
Anhil takes Bridgette’s blasé attitude about her own aging as a personal offense because he believes her death would set back anti-aging therapy development, possibly toppling her Human rEvolution company and squandering the momentum of innovation they’d built up. To Anhil, every moment they’re not furiously working to save people dying of preventable aging-related illnesses is a human rights violation.
In a few decades, certainly within a century, our society will likely broadly incorporate anti-aging therapies into healthcare as a standard. Once that evolution happens, how will our practices today look in retrospect?
Will the generation of children born to the first wave of successful ageless humans be horrified and bewildered when looking at the modern medicine of today in much the same way we look at the ancient practices of treating the bodies imbalanced ‘humours’ with things like bloodletting with leeches?
It may surprise you to learn that pregnancy is 100 times safer today than it was only 100 years ago. Back then, 1% of women perished in pregnancy-related complications. The mortality rate was significantly reduced via cleanliness practices, antibiotics, and blood transfusion. Today, that rate has dropped to ~.003.
See what a century can do?
Stay tuned!
Next week we’ll discuss some habits and strategies you can begin to implement now to extend your health span so you can personally witness what the next century has in store.
|Science Fiction|: A Singular Panda Ch 3
Previously…celebrity CEO Bridgette Strand sought help at the office from an unlikely ally in her star employee Anhil. Anhil agreed to help her make sense of declassified files from her alien mentor in exchange for some honesty about why she’s not gung-ho about partaking in the age regression therapy offered by her company. She confessed she’s terrified their tech will irrevocably change humans for the worse and she’s craving guidance from her old alien mentor who sacrificed himself to save Earth from climate change.
The next morning, my tablet beeps at me from under a pile of clothes on the nightstand. Wine-weary sleep clings to me like a spiderweb. I'd needed to keep my mind busy last night, and Tarra gorgeously provided a raging party for two.
The tablet beeps again. I allowed Anhil through my Do Not Disturb settings, didn’t I?Only he or Tarra could be pinging me right now and Tarra is a snoring crescent-shape next to me.
I miss the mark rolling over, falling off the bed and landing on my rump. Thanks to my panda-padded body, this phases me not one bit.
The two women on my tablet's screensaver grin up at me from their vacation at the beach last summer. One of them is me, one of them is the face Tarra had only weeks ago. Unconsciously, sleepily, I reach out to touch the delicate wrinkles around her smiling mouth in the picture, but the tablet wakes up showing a series of texts from Anhil.
<<<"Looks like your alien mentor wrote extensive daily journals in a mindmap language. I rigged up our LLM with a translation code and a chatbot so you can query it like you're texting with him."
<<<"Hah, it's rough. Just uploaded the files and the bot to our server and connected them up to our faster assets. Hope you don't mind. Should improve quickly the more you talk to it. >>>link<<<"
I thank Anhil effusively and praise his work beyond what I'm sure he's comfortable with.
I click into the link and it takes me to a collaborative folder on the Human rEvolution intranet. I click on the icon labeled HypBot.
There are so many other items on my to-do list I should be focused on today.
We're hosting Tarra's family for dinner this evening--an ambitious meal we chose to cook ourselves, like the old times.
I should be twenty minutes into my morning jog already.
Tarra is still snoring.
I can't help myself, and I even catch my breath as I type.
>>>"Why did you come to Earth?"
I'm acutely aware of my eyes popping out of my head as I wait for a response.
The cursor blinks dully at me and I begin to doubt Anhil's methods when the text window is suddenly chock full of oddly spaced paragraphs.
<<<blue appeared in view today. Precious blue. A planet called by its sentients Earth.
<<<Earth has the resource-digestion disease we know so well.
<<<Earth sentients are divided, if their broadcasts to themselves are factual. No chance at survival if this is true.
<<<Cruise ship formed Earth-Council. In good faith, Earth sentients deserve, like all intelligent life, to achieve what we have long enjoyed--freedom to expand their reach in the universe. We feel we have a moral obligation as an advantaged species to lend aid.
This sentence would make Tarra throw the tablet. I unconsciously tighten my grip on it.
<<<Many clones of artists are busy with their colors today and are asking Earth-Council to visit the planet with me. Earth-Council will not be popular for its denial of these requests. But it is our understanding of Earth culture that its natives are ill-suited to receive interplanetary life forms.
<<<This clone will die of exposure on Earth, but Earth-Council agrees to our moral obligation to intervene, and this clone volunteered.
<<<I sincerely, fervently wish Original understands this clone's sacrifice for Earth, and hope he can still download this clone's experiences from this place so far from where our voyage was intended. This clone cannot feel the link anymore. And this clone feels young and selfish to make the decision without Original's acceptance. But as this clone cannot communicate, it hopes Original forgives. Original's work is to build ecosystems. This clone is too well-equipped to help Earth to turn away.
I stand up to pace.
Tarra wakes and peers at me. Mumbling, she stumbles out of bed toward the bathroom.
I listen, worried she overindulged last night, but the toilet flushes then shower burbles to life.
As thrilled as I am to be texting with HypBot--my heart is pounding like I'm speaking to a celebrity.
I can't help doubting too. I feel so childishly exuberant that I'm worried about being duped.
I scowl at the HypBot chat box. At the cursor blinking innocently, blankly. Waiting for me to ask more questions with the patience of a non-sentient machine.
Suddenly, in spite of how long I've dreamed of looking at these files, I find myself shy.
My hands are shaking.
I run them through my thinning hair.
A decade vs two years.
I never actually had a choice, did I?
I wish I could just keep typing, go on texting the bot. But I find myself binge eating instead.
When Tarra comes out of the bathroom in a towel, I'm at the bottom of a bag of cookies, staring at the screen.
Although she looks like a kid to me these days, we still have decades of relationship history. She says hi quietly. Crawls up on the bed, wraps me in her arms.
"Tell me what it is, love, lemme at 'em. Is it that dick Anhil again?"
Her gaze is drawn to the bright screen. I'm suddenly ashamed of my upset and I don't want her to know this is the cause. I know it's the trigger but I can't explain why to save my life.
"Oh my god, did you already translate...? Are you sexting with aliens!?" She gracefully lets the joke die when I don't react. She kisses my temple and I try to give a little laugh but instead a little gasp escapes me. A stifled surprise sob.
"Come on, Bridge, talk to me," she whispers.
I look at her and double take. She looks so damned young, like she did when we first met. Tears flow in earnest now, shaking my core to let them loose as fast as they'll come.
…To be continued…
Author’s Note—low and slow, then hot and heavy.
As part of my research, I’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole on the prolonging health span topic. And by rabbit hole, I mean I’ve disappeared into the gym.
Based on longevity tactician Dr. Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, exercise is by far the strongest lever you can currently pull to extend your life and health span. And he gave pretty specific advice for what that exercise should look like. I’ll share all this in detail next article, but as quick summary: 3 hrs/week lifting heavy weights, 2 hrs/week in very low intensity cardio, 1 hr/week high intensity cardio.
Suffice it to say, I’m back to prioritizing 45 mins-1hr per day, 6 days a week and eating to feed new muscle growth. I’ve just started lifting heavy weights again, which I haven’t done in 5 years. I’m still so sore from my first leg day with my new trainer Monday. I even got to play with Rogue sleds! …Which I may approach with slightly less enthusiasm next time.
I’m mildly irked that I’ve spent nearly twenty years doing needlessly intense cardio most of the time. Specifically, running faster and harder than necessary for what I’m looking for. I could have been happily cruising along this whole time.
Hot and heavy with weights. Low and slow for cardio, y’all.
Table of Contents for A Singular Panda + Anti-Aging articles
A Singular Panda Chapter 1 + Science IRL: You’re Invited To Join the Aging Rebellion
A Singular Panda Chapter 2 + Science IRL: Defining Aging—Who’s Holding the Pen?
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Nia Small Business Showcase: Underdog Pharmaceuticals. National Institute on Aging. https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/sbir/nia-small-business-showcase/underdog-pharmaceuticals