Boffins find an 'actionable clock' hiding in your blood, ticking away to your death Buck Institute boffins, with colleagues at Stanford University, claim to have created the first "actionable clock" which can figure out when you're likely to croak it, and even help prolong your life: the inflammatory clock of ageing, or iAge. "Standard immune metrics which can be used to identify individuals most at risk for …
I met up with my first love and she looks 32, I look double that. I drink and smoke, she exercises and eats well. Live fast, die looking awful.
Other people's deaths no longer disturb me. They are the alarm on the LED clock ruining my dream and urging me to wake up as I hit snooze for nine more minutes of slumber. They are the roadside memorials for teenage Italian motorcyclists that act as milestones on mountain roads, photographs on granite of young men on bikes not wearing helmets because life is just too long at that age, in that heat.
They are the few that you hear about as dozens of others just disappear from view without confirmation or ceremony. They shall never be forgotten, we comfort and delude ourselves even as we ourselves are being forgotten.
Gestaþáttr number 77:
Deyr fé,
deyja frændur,
deyr sjálfur ið sama;
ek veit einn at aldri deyr,
dómr um dauðan hvern.
Animals die,
friends die,
and thyself, too, shall die;
but one thing I know that never dies
the tales of the one who died.
Only the Mediterranean diet isn’t that popular anymore, check obesity and diabetes rates in the region.
Here in Portugal meat and sugar consumption has rocketed the last decades, and many people’s diet is almost fibre free. Good for sale of laxatives.
And that is before you decide what Mediterranean diet actually is (I know Portugal is not Mediterranean, but traditional food is similar)
It may be genetics.
There is a cluster of villages in Northern Italy, I think in the Alps, that is famous for their inhabitants longevity.
When it was studied, the most defining commonality was the people’s local breeding and genetic history.
Can’t remember where or when exactly but I remember the discussion some years ago.
You might be thinking of the “blue zone” of mainly mountainous villages near the eastern coast of central Sardinia, between the Golfo di Orosei and Capo Bellavista. The genetic component is the “M26” marker, which is most common in, but not unique to, Sardinia. Note that diet, exercise, and social interactions are also believed to be relevant in the proportion of centenarians in these villages vs. non-“blue zones”.
"Alas there will always be more idiots."
The social/political events in the last few years have convinced me that the human psyche is intrinsically flawed in reasoning. Each new generation has the potential to favour tribalism and superstition. Northern Ireland recently had a party leader and a First Minister who both publicly professed that Earth is only 6,000 years old.
Yes, I am going to die; so are you. Remember, “Inside Every Living Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out.” (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)
Could a generally available iAge test give me an idea of when? Possibly. Do I want to know? No.
I am old and my "actionable clock" is at least as old as I am, given my declining organ functions. I intend to enjoy what I can, while I can, and then, against the advice of Dylan Thomas, “Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
But enough morbid thoughts. The real question is when will Apple throw their sueball at iAge for using a lower case i followed a capital letter.
My late father's thoughts, when told if he did thus and such and didn't eat or drink this and that, so that he might live another year, were:
What? Another year, stuck in this chair/bed and plumbed up to god knows what and with terminal bladder cancer? Why? Sod that, bring another bottle of wine!
Yeah but if you give up anything worth living for there is still no guarantee you will exist another year - there is only a guarantee that whatever time is left will FEEL much longer.
Seen it with my grandpa, also cancer (of several kinds) that got him. Sadly, he believed in the theory of refusing to enjoy the rest of his time to possibly delay the inevitable. That really took his toll on his personality and his surroundings and did not really prolong his existence over the roughly assumed date of passing.
If i may say so with hopefully not sounding disrespectful, your father had the right idea.
> the pension and insurance industry
Indeed, and that's probably the only use of this discovery. I can't really imagine it becoming a standard test everybody can do.
At best some obscure internet operation, where you send in genetic material, fill in some extremely extensive marketing questionnaires and get eventually sent a vague semi-random number ("between the age of 70 and 90").
But as a way to raise insurance prices it's perfect. Sorry, you're a liability, you'll have to pay more!
I remember a scifi short story* about a man who invented a machine that could precisely scan and calculate the exact date and time of death.
He was murdered by some insurance brokers, his machine and every blueprints destroyed in that story. I believe one such inventor would also die in the real world, his invention, however would possibly "live on" and benefit the usual suspects.
* Not sure if that was in a Heinlein collection or some mixed author book.
It's not unique to Apple other than in a very narrow field.
At the very least, they had to buy the iPad trademark from Fujitso and a Chinese company (under some questionable shenanigans, resulting in Apple losing $million in compo in a Chinese court). Likewise, there are and have been many non-Apple, non-related items using a leading lower case i without issue.
"Using iAge it's possible to predict seven years in advance who is going to become frail," he said of the study's findings. "That leaves us lots of room for interventions."
It's absolutely endearing that they even think this is how it'll be used. In the US at least, insurance companies will take this and jack up your rates or deny you coverage, if it's not the 'right' value. Or is endearing the wrong word? Naive? Disingenuous? Unless you're rich enough, in which case you just buy 'good stuff' from poor people.
Just like Fitbits and such trackers have been weaponized. I looked for a way to manually add steps to my daily count after a soccer game in which I couldn't wear it and discovered that it's absolutely impossible. Why? There are insurance companies and employers that require customers/employees to do the 10,000 steps daily or... else. So, manually adding steps wouldn't allow a club to be held over their heads.
If it were possible to say that you are going to die in a year, why would an insurance company offer you a policy that paid out more than a years premiums?
Why do you think they owe you?
> I looked for a way to manually add steps to my daily count after a soccer game in which I couldn't wear it and discovered that it's absolutely impossible.
You could (probably can) buy football boots that have room for an aftermarket tracker under the sole. That can tell you various metrics ( I had the boots for a while, but didn't want to spend the extra on the tracker ). Mine were Adidas.
WWI veteran, when asked to what he attributed his long life, he replied, "Cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women" 6 June 1896 - 18 July 2009 (113y 42d) R.I.P.
The general trouble with the medical profession, they think bodies should be perfect when they're lowered into the ground/burnt. I'm with Hunter S. Thompson: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
that's me, rather than Mr. Allingham BTW ------------->
nah - but if you could push your biological age 5 years the right way that would also be worth having, right?
Better half and I are early 50es, dropped (almost all*) animal products 2 years ago. She also dropped a lot of weight (without going hungry), excess blood pressure, knee and back pain. My starting arthritis disappeared. I know it is anecdotal, but those are probably the sort of changes the project refers to.
- I don't miss meat, but sometimes cheese...
*) We now and then have cockles or clams.
In reply to
"Ooooh ... those I know to be taking statins tell me the side effects are nasty."
and
"This may be observer bias, since those not having nasty side effects are unlikely to be informing me of the un-nasty effects of said statins."
Most people can take statins with no noticeable side effects. I am one of "most people": possibly a good thing as I had a dodgy coronary artery stented a few years back. If statins give you side-effects that means you have to stop taking them and do without their statistical benefits. But it does not mean that everyone put on statins will experience the same things.
From the preprint version:
We studied the blood immunome of 1001 individuals age 8-96 and derived an inflammatory clock of aging (iAge), which tracked with multi-morbidity and immunosenescence. In centenarians, iAge was on average, 40 years lower than their corresponding chronological age.
Right of the bat, we see that there are no centenarians in the study.
Although, centenarians are introduced later on (as a calibrating group):
To investigate the relationship between inflammatory age and longevity we computed an inflammatory index (inflammatory age minus chronological age) in an additional cohort of 37 subjects, 18 of which were 50-79 years old and 19 centenarians, except for 1 who was 99 years old at the time of blood extraction. Despite a significant difference in the inflammatory index between centenarians and control older adults group a large variance was observed in the inflammatory index of centenarians suggesting that there may be other mechanisms apart from inflammation conferring disease protection and long lifespan to these subjects.
But the results from the centenarians suggests that there may be other mechanisms apart from inflammation conferring disease protection and long lifespan to these subjects.
To be filed under: "More Rigorous Studies Required"
I can well believe that science may find a way to increase our average life span, but would that really be something desirable? It would result in increasing the World's population - and overpopulation is the root cause of just about all the things we see as being major problems. Pollution, energy crises, housing shortage, food problems, job shortages etc.
It would also mean that we would either have to increase the retirement age or have a huge increase in the percentage of non-productive members of society. At the end of the day I think most people would prefer a shorter life with a high standard of living than a longer life with a low standard of living. As with most things, we cannot only look at the quantity, we must also look at the quality.
(Life in any case is a sexually transmitted terminal condition).
I went to the Keswick Jazz Festival a while ago. Acker Bilk (him of 'Stranger on the Shore') did the chat between numbers:
Patient: (After examination) 'How am I?'
Doctor: 'You'll live to be 90!'
Patient: 'I am 90.'
Doctor: 'Well, that's your lot then.'
I thank you.
How has this not been posted yet?
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
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