Anti-aging medicine: pitfalls and hopes

Insights into the Anti-Aging Prevention and Diagnostic Medicine and Healthcare

Aging is an irreversible and natural phenomenon that occurs as a person ages. Anti-aging medicine applies advanced science and medical technology to early detection, prevention, treatment, and reversal of age-related dysfunctions, disorders, and diseases. Therefore, anti-aging diagnostic medicine and healthcare are important factors in helping the elderly population lead healthy and active lives. However, it is challenging to diagnose various aging and related diseases accurately through various forms of anti-aging diagnostic medicine and health management. It may not be treated appropriately, so many older people are making various efforts to prevent aging themselves in advance. Therefore, anti-aging medicine and health care have been developed in various forms, from health checkups to alternative medicine and biophysical technology beyond simple clinical medicine, and are being applied to demand the needs of the elderly. This review intends to explore and characterize various applications related to anti-aging medicine and healthcare in the elderly. In addition, economic, medical, and ethical considerations arising from the relationship between the increase in the elderly population and the continuous development of anti-aging medicine can be considered.

Hormesis Mediates Acquired Resilience: Using Plant-Derived Chemicals to Enhance Health

This review provides an assessment of hormesis, a highly conserved evolutionary dose-response adaptive strategy that leads to the development of acquired resilience within well-defined temporal windows. The hormetic-based acquired resilience has a central role in affecting healthy aging, slowing the onset and progression of numerous neurodegenerative and other age-related diseases, and reducing risks and damage due to heart attacks, stroke, and other serious conditions of public health and medical importance. The review provides the historical foundations of hormesis, its dose-response features, its capacity for generalization across biological models and endpoints measured, and its mechanistic foundations. The review also provides a focus on the adaptive features of hormesis, i.e., its capacity to upregulate acquired resilience and how this can be mediated by numerous plant-derived extracts, such as curcumin, ginseng, Ginkgo biloba, resveratrol, and green tea, that induce a broad spectrum of chemopreventive effects via hormesis.

The discourse of aging

Historical and epistemological developments contribute to and reinforce the underlying framework that categorizes antiaging discourse and healthy aging discourse. This discourse creates the question "Can we live longer or better?" and encompasses issues of quality versus quantity, dependency versus autonomy, and risk versus benefit. By positing this discourse as a dichotomous tension, the development can be traced through the examination of select examples of influential studies in the field of aging. For nursing, the risk of these continued oppositions is potential oversimplification that may limit discernment of the complexities of care of older adults. Through understanding of the evolution and imposition of this dichotomizing discourse, nursing can provide older adult care within the reality of the aging experience, and develop frameworks, theories, and multidisciplinary discursive practice to optimize nursing care in the real-world spaces that exist between antiaging and healthy aging boundaries.

Effects of a growth hormone-releasing hormone antagonist on telomerase activity, oxidative stress, longevity, and aging in mice

Both deficiency and excess of growth hormone (GH) are associated with increased mortality and morbidity. GH replacement in otherwise healthy subjects leads to complications, whereas individuals with isolated GH deficiency such as Laron dwarfs show increased life span. Here, we determined the effects of treatment with the GH-releasing hormone (GHRH) receptor antagonist MZ-5-156 on aging in SAMP8 mice, a strain that develops with aging cognitive deficits and has a shortened life expectancy. Starting at age 10 mo, mice received daily s.c. injections of 10 μg/mouse of MZ-5-156. Mice treated for 4 mo with MZ-5-156 showed increased telomerase activity, improvement in some measures of oxidative stress in brain, and improved pole balance, but no change in muscle strength. MZ-5-156 improved cognition after 2 mo and 4 mo, but not after 7 mo of treatment (ages 12, 14 mo, and 17 mo, respectively). Mean life expectancy increased by 8 wk with no increase in maximal life span, and tumor incidence decreased from 10 to 1.7%. These results show that treatment with a GHRH antagonist has positive effects on some aspects of aging, including an increase in telomerase activity.

Nutrition and the aging male

Numerous studies have now found that good nutrition coupled with exercise are key factors to aging successfully. In addition, it is now clear that men who drink 2 shots of alcohol (red wine or other) do better. Women are limited to only 1 drink a day. This article examines some key nutritional factors involved in successful aging and highlights different needs between men and women.

Antiaging, longevity and calorie restriction

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The role of calorie restriction in humans is controversial. Recently, new data in monkeys and humans have provided new insights into the potential role of calorie restriction in longevity.

RECENT FINDINGS

A study in rhesus monkeys showed a reduction in aging-associated mortality. A number of controlled studies have suggested a variety of beneficial effects during studies of 6-12 months in humans. Major negative effects in humans were loss of muscle mass, muscle strength and loss of bone.

SUMMARY

Dietary restriction in rodents has not been shown to be effective when started in older rodents. Weight loss in humans over 60 years of age is associated with increased mortality, hip fracture and increased institutionalization. Calorie restriction in older persons should be considered experimental and potentially dangerous. Exercise at present appears to be a preferable treatment for older persons.