Read More at Well+Good Train travel has long held a romantic place in many adventurers’ hearts. Maybe it’s the fantasy of climbing aboard with a pillbox hat on your head and a vintage vanity case in your hand, like something out of an Agatha Christie novel (minus all the murder-y parts, of course). Or maybe it’s the slow and steady pace of riding the rails, turning a trip into a true voyage. For many Europeans, it’s all about the environmental impact, as scenic train trips have lower carbon emissions compared to flying. In Sweden, flygskam (flight shame) and tagskryt (train bragging) have become big buzzwords. But vacationing by locomotive has another benefit: all those breathtaking landscapes speeding past your window have been scientifically proven to reduce stress. According to research published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, simply looking at…
If You’re Thinking About ‘Quiet Quitting’ From Your Relationship, Read This First
Read More at Well+Good Contrary to its name, the term “quiet quitting” isn’t really about quitting anything. Having emerged as a (controversial) workplace buzzword from a viral TikTok, it really signifies a conscious decision to have boundaries at work—and to not invest effort into work beyond your job description that’ll go unrecognized anyway. As the popularity of quiet quitting skyrockets—or at least the buzz surrounding it— relationship experts fear it could be misinterpreted as a catch-all solution, not just to work burnout but to relationship issues, too. But there’s a big difference between an employee-employer partnership and a romantic relationship that makes quiet quitting work well in the former and not so much in the latter. While the contributions of an employee and an employer are set by the terms of a contract or agreement (you provide services; your employer…
Swap Your Coffee Creamer With ‘Forest Juice,’ the Longevity-Boosting Syrup That’s Functional and Delicious
Read More at Well+Good Gone are the days when cream and sugar were the only ways to doctor up our morning cup of joe. Alt-milks, organic simple syrups, even hot sauce (yes, really)—at-home baristas can now get more creative than ever, equipped with healthier and more sustainable ways to sweeten the (coffee) pot. While I’m not a coffee connoisseur myself, I do love my morning mug, and enjoy exploring different ways to up the ante from standard creamer. I’m not brave enough to ever pour hot sauce into my mug; however, I have ventured into new caffeinated terrain with Rainbo’s Forest Juice ($31), a mushroom-infused maple syrup that’s functional and delicious. The sweet elixir can be swirled into coffee, drizzled over ice cream, or topped on pancakes, adding sweetness and a boost of nutritional benefits, thanks to a load of magical…
Having Oily Skin Isn’t a Bad Thing—Here’s How To Tell if You Should *Actually* Do Something About It
Read More at Well+Good Oily skin is often viewed as a problem that needs to be solved. But while excess oil production can lead to concerns, like acne or having a difficult time keeping makeup in place, there’s nothing inherently “bad” with having this type of complexion. In fact, oil actually helps keep your skin healthy. “Our skin is a barrier to the outside, and it helps maintain hydration levels and protects us from infection, bacteria, and viruses,” says Ivy Lee, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Pasadena, California. Plus, sebum is packed with free-radical fighting vitamin E, which fends off the types of environmental damage that leads to skin aging. What’s more, those with oily skin tend to have fewer wrinkles as they get older. Sebaceous (aka oil) glands are natural and their activity varies from person to person—hence why…
The 13 Best Workout Sets To Instantly Boost Your Confidence, No Matter the Season or Sport
Read More at Well+Good There are a ton of things that can turn a workout sour: Not having the proper fuel, unwarranted shin splints, and forgetting your water bottle at home, just to name a few. But there’s another culprit that can quickly kill our “big gym energy”, so to speak: our outfit. Sometimes, when we look our best, we feel our best, making a world of difference between a great workout and a mediocre one. Cue the cute, matching workout sets which can instantly lighten our mood and boost our confidence when we need it most. (Not to mention, make figuring out to wear so much easier, which is always a plus, amirite?) Whether you’re sweating through an outdoor pilates class in the middle of summer, taking a “hot girl walk” on a brisk autumn afternoon, or braving the…
Transplanting B Cells from Old Mice to Young Mice to Investigate Details of B Cell Aging
Read More at Fight Aging! The varieties of B cell in the immune system participate in the immune response to pathogens by creating antibodies to match specific antigens, and spreading the information represented by that antibody to portions of the adaptive immune system capable of attacking threats. This is a very crude, high level summary of an enormously complex system. The fine details of how subsets of the B cell population generate suitable antibodies, and then communicate with one another and the rest of the immune system, are complicated indeed, involving many different subsets of cell, different paths of activation, and different mechanisms. Aspects of B cell function are known to decline with age, contributing to the broader loss of efficacy in the immune response, the onset of immunosenescence. Is this a problem with the B cells themselves becoming changed…
An Open Letter to My Grandchildren: 10 Things I Want Them to Know
Read More at Sixty and Me Our five-year-old grandson recently asked my husband and me, “Will we always be together?” I was stunned that such a small child would ask such a profound question. I’m not sure that he understood the depth of the question, until I realized that it was one of those stream of consciousness thoughts sandwiched in between, “How much longer before the movie starts” and “Does anyone have a snack because I’m hungry.” But it did get me thinking. We will not always be together. Our grandkids are young, and they have their whole lives ahead of them. I, on the other hand, have more days behind me than in front of me. What words of wisdom can I give this younger generation, my grandchildren? What life lessons can I tell them that will make their…
8 Foods That Cause Man Breasts
Read More at Sexual Post Archive – Ben’s Natural Health For many men, their chest area remains a focal point when looking to build a better physique. Managing chest fat can help boost your confidence, especially if the man-boobs make you feel self-conscious when taking your shirt off. And to do that, some particular food items are better left out during mealtimes. When paired with some extra lifestyle habits, such as exercising and weight loss, you can decrease the size of the male breasts and tighten up those muscles. Here are some classic diet mistakes to avoid with man boobs. What are man boobs? Gynecomastia, often called man boobs or moobs, is a condition that makes the male breasts swell and become bigger than usual. Asymptomatic gynecomastia has a very high prevalence rate of 50% to 60% in adolescents. And up to…
4 Rules a Hairstylist Is Begging You To Follow To Keep Your Hair Healthy Between Salon Visits
Read More at Well+Good Going to the salon is the hair-care equivalent of a teeth cleaning. Just as you would see a dentist twice a year to make sure your mouth is in good shape and give you a deep clean, you should also be regularly seeing a stylist who can assess your scalp and strands and treat them to some pro-grade TLC. But while you’ve probably committed to brushing your teeth twice a day between dental visits, you’re probably not doing everything you should be to keep your hair healthy between salon appointments. “It’s important to keep your hair routine in check between salon visits because your hair color and hair health depend on it—when you don’t care for your hair at home you’re jeopardizing its health, luster, and overall texture,” says Devin Graciano, hair stylist and head of product…
Two Year Update on a Study of One with Flagellin Immunization to Adjust the Gut Microbiome
Read More at Fight Aging! This post is an update for an earlier report on a self-experiment with flagellin immunization, tested as an approach to adjust the balance of microbial populations in the aging gut microbiome in a favorable, more youthful direction. Commentary and data from the earlier report are repeated, with the addition of a new assessment of the gut microbiome taken two years after the end of the experiment. In summary, changes from this short and simple intervention were largely favorable, and largely sustained over this period of time. Flagellin is the protein that makes up bacterial flagellae, and it is hypothesized that there is a sizable overlap between populations of gut microbes that possess flagellae and populations of gut microbes that are harmful rather than helpful. The harmful microbes are largely a problem because they contribute to…
Senolytics, a Promising New Field of Medicine in the Treatment of Aging
Read More at Fight Aging! It is becoming harder for the world at large to ignore the field of senolytics, the large number of research groups and companies working towards therapies that clear a fraction of senescent cells from aged tissues. Senescent cells accumulate in later life, likely because the immune system becomes less able to remove them promptly. Lingering senescent cells actively disrupt normal tissue function and provoke chronic inflammation, thus contributing to age-related degeneration. Scores of mouse studies conducted over the last decade demonstrate that senolytic treatments produce rapid, reliable reversal of many age-related conditions and extension of healthy life span. Most interestingly, the best of the early senolytic treatments, the dasatinib and quercetin combination, is cheap, readily available, and in human clinical trials with promising initial results. The opening decades of the 21st century are the start…
Cysteamine Is the Buzzy Dark-Spot-Fighting Ingredient You’re About To See a Lot More Of
Read More at Well+Good Skin of color is prone to hyperpigmentation, a type of discoloration that can be caused by UV exposure, changes in hormone levels, and inflammation. It’s notoriously hard to treat, and for decades, hydroquinone was pretty much the only option for dealing with it. But after over-the-counter sales of the controversial skin-lightening ingredient were banned in 2020 as part of the CARES Act, a superior active has stepped up to take its place as the go-to for fighting dark spots. Enter: cysteamine, which you’re about to see a whole lot more of. What is cysteamine Cysteamine, an amino-acid derivative present in all human tissue, works by reducing of cysteine (another naturally-occurring amino acid) in your body. When you have too much cysteine, it can cause increased melanin synthesis, which leads to hyperpigmentation. It also leads to kidney…
I Tried Adding CBD To My Routine To Restore My Menopausal Skin—Here’s Exactly What Happened
Read More at Well+Good CBD was my gateway into cannabis-infused skin care. I’d heard from friends that the ingredient could help with menopause-induced hormonal changes in my skin, so I decided to give it a try. Admittedly, I was unimpressed with the first few products I tried (a mask, a muscle salve, and a night cream)—which wasn’t exactly surprising considering the lax regulations around CBD marketing in skin care—but I finally found an under-eye cream that turned me into a dedicated user. From there, I wanted to learn more about the ingredient that gave my skin a glow akin to menopausal sweat (but in a clean, less slimy way), so I set out to test some of the buzziest cannabis-infused products on my mature skin. Keep scrolling for what I discovered. The benefits of CBD for 40+ skin CBD is…
5 Delicious Sea Moss Smoothie Recipes Loaded With Nutrients That Help Boost Heart Health As You Age
Read More at Well+Good Fall is just weeks away, and that means cuddling up on the sofa with spooky movies playing on repeat for hours on end. Needless to say, the excitement gearing up for the Hocus Pocus sequel premiering at the end of September is already through the roof. The best part, you may ask? The iconic steamy cauldron scene as the three sister witches throw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that to make their super secret potion from the magical spell book. Which, I’ll be honest, looks like me first thing in the morning as I throw in a blender a pinch of turmeric powder, a spoonful of yam, and a splash of coconut milk to make one of my favorite gut-healthy smoothies to start the day. Of course, unlike the Sanderson…
A Short Tour of Scientific Thought on Vascular Aging
Read More at Fight Aging! The aging of the vasculature, set aside from any other part of the body, arguably kills the largest fraction of humanity at the present time. It isn’t just the dysfunctions of macrophages that lead to atherosclerotic plaque, and the narrowing of blood vessels and stroke and heart attack. It isn’t just the declining density of capillary networks, reducing blood supply to energy-hungry tissues. It isn’t just blood-brain barrier leakage and the consequent inflammation of the brain, or the stiffening of arteries that causes hypertension and remodeling of the heart. The vasculature is so vital that a great many mechanisms compete in their ability to cause harm with advancing age and the growing burden of cell and tissue damage. Aging represents the main risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) which carries the highest burden for the…
Engineering an Increase in Retrotransposon Activity Accelerates Aspects of Aging in Flies
Read More at Fight Aging! One has to be somewhat careful when declaring that an intervention produces accelerated aging. Interventions that reduce health and life span in ways that mimic aspects of aging tend to be narrow in effect, causing elevated levels of a specific form of molecular damage, often one of those thought to be involved in natural aging. DNA repair deficiencies cause what looks a lot like accelerated aging, but should really be thought of as an excess of only one type of age-related damage, nuclear DNA damage. It might be possible to learn things from this type of malfunction, but given that it is very unlike natural aging, it is more likely that a close inspection of the cellular biochemistry and tissue dysfunction involved would be misleading. One can make similar, more difficult arguments regarding whether or…
Could Reading Be the Best Anti-Aging Secret?
Read More at Sixty and Me Remember when teachers told you reading was good for you? They were right. And now reading is even associated with living longer. Researchers at the Yale University School of Public Health have discovered that book readers have a “significant survival advantage” over those who don’t read books. The findings of the Yale study are now appearing in Social Science and Medicine. They show that people over 50 who read up to three-and-a-half hours a week were 17 percent less likely to die over the 12 years of follow-up. Those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die than non-readers. Of course, even the most avid readers are sometimes at a loss to know what to read next. And readers who are just getting started with intensive reading need to know…
Inguinal Hernia: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment
Read More at Sexual Post Archive – Ben’s Natural Health The term hernia refers to the cases when internal parts of the body push through a muscle weakness or a tissue wall that surrounds it. This leads to the formation of a bulge. Sometimes hernias are painful and have a major impact on quality of life. There are many types of hernia, but inguinal hernia is the most common. Learn more about it below. What is an inguinal hernia? Inguinal hernia is the most common type of hernia, and it occurs in the abdomen, i.e., near the groin. It is the bulging of the abdomen content through a weak spot in the lower portion of the abdominal wall. This type of hernia usually contains a fat part of the small intestine, but in women, it may contain an ovary. Yes,…
What I Learned From a Failed Workplace Child-Care Experiment
Read More at Rewire News Group In September 2020, the mess that my life had become since returning to work one month prior was glaringly apparent. Even from a tiny Zoom window, I could no longer maintain the pretense of my functionality. The pandemic raged, I did not sleep, I did not have clean clothes, and I did not make sense. One Wednesday, right as I started my third back-to-back virtual meeting for the day, my 4-month-old daughter pooped explosively all over my outfit, while breastfeeding. At the same time, my preschooler began screaming for help with her schoolwork. I stripped off my and my baby’s clothes and threw them into the growing mountain of laundry in the bathroom. I was already late to my meeting, both my children were crying, and now, I was too. Without bothering to wipe…
The Popular Press May Be Improving in Coverage of the Treatment of Aging
Read More at Fight Aging! These days, articles in the popular, non-scientific media on the topic of treating aging as a medical condition tend towards being something other than terrible. This is a considerable improvement over the state of affairs a decade ago, and night and day in comparison to the press attitudes towards aging research in the early years of this century. There is always room for improvement, and journalists are near always ill-informed about near everything they commit to paper, but nonetheless the tone is heading in the right direction: that the treatment of aging is a project, it is underway, there are many competing approaches and opinions, and, given the importance of the resulting therapies to all of our lives, this part of the scientific endeavor should not be ignored. For all the advances in medical technology…
Does Healthy Eating = Healthy Aging?
Read More at Sixty and Me Do you have healthy and nutritious habits? Or are you a die-hard fan of those rich foods you grew up eating? As someone concerned with health and nutrition, I have done a lot of research on this subject. I have personally fought pre-diabetes and worked with a team of doctors to determine the best way to eat at this latter stage of my life. Trying to educate others, however, isn’t always so easy. In speaking with friends close to my age, I often hear the old refrain, “But I’ve been eating (insert food here: meat and potatoes, doughnuts, mashed potatoes and gravy) all my life. It hasn’t hurt me yet, and I’m not going to change now.” Is that really true? Are you confident that you can continue to eat the same way you…
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 29th 2022
Read More at Fight Aging! Fight Aging! publishes news and commentary relevant to the goal of ending all age-related disease, to be achieved by bringing the mechanisms of aging under the control of modern medicine. This weekly newsletter is sent to thousands of interested subscribers. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletter, please visit: https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/ Longevity Industry Consulting Services Reason, the founder of Fight Aging! and Repair Biotechnologies, offers strategic consulting services to investors, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the longevity industry and its complexities. To find out more: https://www.fightaging.org/services/ Contents Transfer of Mitochondria Aids in Reducing Harms Following Brain Hemorrhage First Generation Stem Cell Therapies Remain Comparatively Poorly Understood Connections Between Epigenetic Aging and Nuclear DNA Damage Enhancing Neurogenesis Improves Memory in an Alzheimer’s Mouse Model Distributed Full Disclosure Medical Development Suggesting that the Unguarded X Chromosome is not…
Metabolic Changes in Aging Humans
Read More at Fight Aging! Within a species, variations in the operation of metabolism correlate with later life health and life span. Insulin metabolism is one of the more prominent and well studied examples. Much of this may stem from the lifestyle choices that epidemiology shows explain the majority of the variation in human life expectancy. Become sedentary or overweight and this pushes metabolism into a less optimal, more harmful state. The consequences to health and risk of mortality accrue over a long period of time, but are no less real for it. The study of aging has long been linked with the study of metabolism, as early theories pointed to the rate of metabolism and by-products of metabolism as drivers of aging processes. The earliest recognized interventions that caused life span extension in model organisms targeted nutritional and metabolic…
Chromatin Structure in Cell Aging and Senescence
Read More at Fight Aging! The constantly changing structure of nuclear DNA, packaged into chromatin, determines which genes are accessible to the machinery of gene expression, which determines protein production, which determines cell behavior and state. Chromatin structure and all of the determinants of that structure, including epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation, change as a cell ages towards the Hayflick limit and cellular senescence, and change in aged tissues versus young tissues. Given the advent of epigenetic reprogramming as a potential strategy for rejuvenation, questions regarding the ways in which epigenetics determines cell function in cellular senescence and aging become more pressing. Comprehending the role of molecular processes such as DNA damage repair, telomere shortening, nuclear and chromatin changes along with epigenetic alterations which drive aging as well as aging related diseases may hold a key to the “elixir…
All Your Coworkers Quitting? Here’s How To Deal When You’re the One Left Behind
Read More at Well+Good It’s never been more popular to quit your job than it was in 2021 (at least since 2000, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that number). As it turns out, the still-ongoing Great Resignation isn’t a resistance to work, but more accurately, to bad work—such as jobs with minimal pay or opportunities for growth, or jobs that workers realized didn’t align with their values, newly underscored by the pandemic. While many of the job quitters became job swappers, taking on more fitting roles, the upheaval has still helped thin out teams across the board, leaving many short-staffed and overburdened. According to a recent survey of 1,800+ workers conducted by jobs platform Monster, 61 percent say that their workplace is experiencing staffing shortages—and it’s reasonable to assume that the biggest shortages are hitting the workplaces…
Sex Educators Are Not ‘Grooming’ Your Kids—but Conservatives Want to Incite Fear Anyway
Read More at Rewire News Group As a sexual health educator, Kerri Isham is no stranger to pushback from parents and administrators. Sex education had always attracted controversy, and there had always existed a fear of what children might learn in sex ed, and what it might inspire them to do. But when one angry parent shared an out-of-context page from Isham’s Body Smart workbook on Facebook this past spring, the hate really started to roll in. “If your 4-year-old child came home with this as homework,” the parent wrote in a post that has since been taken down, “how would you feel cause I personally lost my shit it wrecked my day and gave me a disgusting feeling.” The homework in question was a page—sent home because the child had been out sick that day—that stated that “some children…
The Idea that Epigenetic Clocks Will Point to Causes of Aging
Read More at Fight Aging! This popular science article on the development and present use of epigenetic clocks mentions the view that the clocks will point the way to a better understanding of the causes of aging. I’m dubious that use of the clocks represents a better way forward to that goal than the approach of implementing the various rejuvenation therapies outlined in the SENS proposals. A potential rejuvenation therapy that affects just one potential root cause of aging in isolation will tell us a lot about the importance and validity of that cause; researchers are learning a great deal from the ability to selectively destroy senescent cells, for example. Even good correlations between epigenetic states and aging will, unfortunately, take a long time to pick apart into knowledge of which mechanisms influence those epigenetic states, and to what degree.…
Connections Between Epigenetic Aging and Nuclear DNA Damage
Read More at Fight Aging! Today’s open access paper reviews what is known of the connections between epigenetic aging and the nuclear DNA damage that occurs across a lifetime, and particularly in later life. Some of this DNA damage is more evidently connected with the epigenetic regulation that determines the packaging and structure of nuclear DNA, such as the activity of transposable elements, restrained in youth, but unleashed to copy themselves in later life, damaging genes as they do so. It is important to note that the relationship of cause and consequence between nuclear DNA damage and epigenetic change is likely a two-way street, particularly given the comparatively recent discovery that repeated double strand break repair causes epigenetic alterations characteristic of aging. While nuclear DNA damage raises the risk of cancer, such as via damage to cancer suppression genes, it…
MItochondrial Epigenetics in Aging and Cancer
Read More at Fight Aging! Mitochondria, the power plants of the cell, are the descendants of ancient symbiotic bacteria, and still carry a remnant circular genome, separately from the DNA of the cell nucleus. Some forms of mutational damage to mitochondrial DNA, and the downstream consequences of that damage, are thought to be an important contributing cause of degenerative aging, but what about epigenetic changes? Epigenetic aging in nuclear DNA is a hot topic at the moment, so it is inevitable that attention would turn to the epigenetics of the much smaller mitochondrial genome. Inflammation is a defining factor in disease progression; epigenetic modifications of this first line of defence pathway can affect many physiological and pathological conditions, like aging and tumorigenesis. Inflammageing, one of the hallmarks of aging, represents a chronic, low key but a persistent inflammatory state. Oxidative…
Your Plants Deserve a Wellness Routine, Too—Here’s the One No Gardener Should Go Without
Read More at Well+Good Humans are in no short supply of wellness accessories to create a well-rounded routine. Whatever our goals may be—mindfulness, better sleep, general self care—we have the tools in our toolbox to take care of ourselves. Our furry friends do, too, thanks to a deluge of pet wellness products eerily similar to those of our own. So it’s only time our plant babies got a wellness routine of their own, too. Something to nourish them from the inside out, protect their precious fronds from pests, and help them to not just grow, but flourish. Something like Arber, the trendy plant wellness company that gives our houseplants and flowers the TLC they deserve. Like a 12-step skin care routine or a daily dietary supplement, Arber’s wellness kits take a holistic approach to helping your indoor and outdoor plants…