Category Archives: Human Longevity

PALM HARBOR, Fla., Sept. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --The Palo Alto Longevity Prize is a $1 million life science competition that challenges teams from all over the world to extend life spans. For more information log on to http://www.PaloAltoPrize.com. Regenerative Processing Plant, LLC (RPP) has accepted this ambitious challenge and has registered their intent to participate.

In a recent study, Harvard scientists found a protein that could reverse the aging process; May 2014, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute showed injections of a growth factor called Growth Differentiation Factor 11 (GDF-11) appears to have special regenerative properties. Many tissues, including damaged muscle, were shown to regenerate in the study. Thus, GDF-11 is being called the "Youth Hormone".

Regenerative Processing Plant's (RPP) First Sterile Product: PDA Human Amniotic Fluid is also the first product on the market to Lot test for the presence of GDF-11.

Dr. C. Randall Harrell, RPP'S CEO and Medical Director comments that:

"GDF-11 is an exciting discovery for Regenerative Medicine. We are proud to have the first Amniotic Fluid product on the market to recognize the regenerative healing potential of GDF-11."

He expressed enthusiasm about the upcoming product launch, stating:

"RPP was established to help bring the science of the body's natural ability to heal itself to the practice of medicine using safe and effective products. RPP intensely focuses on the science of regenerative healing with a world class team of scientists."

RPP's products are available to the healthcare community now for the treatment of Plastic Surgery, Wound Healing, Sports Medicine, Pain Management, Orthopedics, Spinal Therapies and other Regenerative Medicine Therapies through their personal physician. Dr. Harrell also notes:

"For years, professional athletes and wealthy individuals have traveled around the world seeking similar treatments to expedite repair and healing of injuries and degenerative diseases. Now everyone can have access to the same opportunities right here at home, collected and manufactured in the USA."

RPP has several additional products in R&D and will continue to focus on their Proprietary Patented PDA Sterile Process and placental derived amnion products. To learn more about RPP's products, please contact Raquel Roque, 800-781-0818.

Continued here:
$1 million Palo Alto Longevity "Fountain of Youth" Prize - Regenerative Processing Plant Accepts the Challenge!

Civil society, development experts weigh in on prospects for the people of Mindanao, after winning the peace

By Julius D. Mariveles

It is the region that exports gold and caviar. It is also here where the lives of some people are like those in the least developed countries of Congo and Zimbabwe in Africa.

And as hopes continue to run high for the passage and signing of the Bangsamoro Basic Law, those desiring peace must now answer the question: What should happen after the guns fall silent?

Academics, civil society organizations, and development experts weighed in on this issue during a forum on opportunities for development and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro held in Makati City today, Tuesday, September 23.

The momentum for peace is building up development and progress will come on its heels, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Quintos Deles said in a statement read by Undersecretary Jose Lorena.

PARTICIPANTS sign up for the forum on development opportunities and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro | Photo by Cong B. Corrales

Deles, who heads the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, was optimistic that the partnership between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has blossomed into a partnership and the possibility of peace (in Mindanao) excites our neighbors.

There are endless opportunities for development, she added.

The forum was held as the Philippine Senate started its deliberations also today on the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) that shall be the legal framework for the Bangsamoro that will replace the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao.

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What now for Mindanao?

Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) September 22, 2014

Home Care Assistance, North Americas leading provider of in-home care, is proud to announce the release of its newest book, The Brain Boost: A Practical Guide to Brain Health. A major misconception regarding the human adult brain is that it is unable to changethat aging results in a gradual, unavoidable and irreversible decline in cognitive abilities. Contemporary research, however, has shown that the brain actually possesses a remarkable ability to adapt based on experience and environmental influencesa process known as neuroplasticity.

This book is an empirically-grounded response to the misconception that cognitive decline is an inevitable part of aging, said Lily Sarafan, President of Home Care Assistance. Such ideas promote a negative view of the aging process. With a mission to change the way the world ages, we embrace aging as a meaningful stage of life and seek to spread this more positive view. We are proud to provide an accessible guide on the ways that all of us can harness the power of neuroplasticity to promote greater mental acuity and enhanced quality of life.

The Brain Boost is grounded in cutting-edge research from the fields of cognitive science, neuropsychology and medicine to show that all of us have the potential to boost brain performance through various lifestyle behaviors. Filled with fascinating studies from explorations of the hippocampi of London taxi drivers to the role of the emotional tone of music in enhancing cognitive function in Alzheimer's patients, The Brain Boost is a highly engaging window into the world of neuroplasticity. Early response to the book has been overwhelmingly positive; the book has been praised for distilling scientific research into practical every day tips to boost brain health. This book is an essential addition to the bookshelves of adults of any age interested in healthy longevity and cognitive health.

This book is the latest in Home Care Assistances award-winning Healthy Longevity Book Series, designed to address the challenges facing our aging population and what we can do to ensure healthy and happy aging at home. Topics covered in the previous books include scientifically-based lifestyle choices to promote healthy longevity, best practices for providing quality care for an aging loved one in the home, hospital discharge and post-hospitalization care at home, understanding how the five senses evolve as we age, best practices in dementia care and well-researched tools to identify and remedy potential sleep disturbances.

For more information about Home Care Assistance and to find an office near you, please visit http://www.HomeCareAssistance.com or call 1-866-454-8346.

ABOUT HOME CARE ASSISTANCE

Home Care Assistance is the leading provider of home care for seniors across the United States and Canada. Our mission is to change the way the world ages. We provide older adults with quality care that enables them to live happier, healthier lives at home. Our services are distinguished by the caliber of our caregivers, the responsiveness of our staff and our expertise in Live-In care. We embrace a positive, balanced approach to aging centered on the evolving needs of older adults. A 2014 Franchise500 Company, Home Care Assistance has received numerous industry awards including Entrepreneurs Fastest-Growing Franchises and Franchise Business Reviews Top 50. For more information about Home Care Assistance, our services and franchise opportunities, visit homecareassistance.com or franchise.homecareassistance.com.

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Home Care Assistance Publishes Seventh Book in Award-Winning Healthy Longevity Series

Feature Article of Tuesday, 23 September 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

The most powerful organ in human anatomy is the brain. It is also where the mind has a notable presence and where an individuals personality is probably manufactured and stored. Mans world therefore translates to the state of his mind. What is more, the restricting orthodoxies of culture, traditions, or customs, for instance, are made and institutionalized by man and it is only man who can unmake and de-institutionalize them. This requires destoolment of those specific cultural practices deemed antagonistic to actualization of national development, personal growth, and homogenization of multiethnic sociality, given that a nations greatness and relative stability have direct relation to how a group of people puts mutual knowledge of its ethnic or racial diversity to good use, among other indices.

It is also equally important to point out that those who have taken it upon themselves to criticize leadership failure and questionable national policy decisions need to do so constructively and impartially without the garrulous pen of moral smugness, taking note of the additional fact that state management is not the same as petty trading, babysitting, or sole proprietorship. Statecraft is an intellectually and emotionally exhausting, complex and sophisticated enterprise, and, what is more, its successful effectuation requires the services of outstanding individuals at the head of operation in close partnership with the popular support of the masses following from behind. It also means that leadership is more than just leading a people. Leadership in our opinion is a double-edged phenomenon where a leader simultaneously stays ahead of and follows from behind the people he leads. This concept implies mutual prodding between leader and people in the cause of national progression.

That leader in question is of the community from which he or she evolves; that leadership is not any kind of tree that grows apart from the soil of his or her community. It is analogous to a dead, uprooted, or living tooth and its relationship to the human gum. An uprooted tooth cannot be said to have nothing in common with the relative isolation of the gum. An ectopic tooth owes its existential standing to the anatomic grounding of the human gum. Such a model leader was the great Kwame Nkrumah, an outstanding thinker whose achievements, prescience, bravery, intelligence, mastery of statecraft, and tactical decisions shaped the politics and well-being of the Gold Coast, Africa, and the larger world.

There is another exciting fact not worth glossing over at this crucial historical moment. Here is it: Basil Davidson, the world-famous British Africanist historian, captures the force of Nkrumahs intellectual dynamics, his personality presence, and political rhythm in his authoritatively famous biography Black Star: A View of the Lives and Times of Kwame Nkrumah. In fact, according to Harvard Universitys Dr. Emmanuel Kwaku Akyyeampong, a Loeb Harvard Professor of History and a Fellow of UK-based Royal Historical Society, Davidsons authoritative biographic account humanizes Nkrumah. This brings us to Mr. Obamas historic speech in Ghana in which he said Africa needed to move past the epoch of the strongman. There is a disturbing irony implied in his well-intentioned homily when re-considered in the light of contemporary political developments. Visionary, intelligent, patriotic strongmen like Nkrumah is what Ghana and Africa need today. This is not an understatement. It is a bold statement born of a conscious mind.

We all know about Mr. Obamas illicit spying of Americans and foreign governments as revealed to the world by Edward Snowden (a former National Security Agencys contractor). We all know about Mr. Obamas endorsement of and clandestine, sometimes even open, collaboration with brutal theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. We all know about Mr. Obamas drone assassination of suspected terrorists without due process. We all know about Mr. Obamas moral resistance to public calls to give Marcus Garvey a posthumous pardon in light of mounting evidence establishing the FBI as the mastermind of Garveys frame-up. We all know Mr. Obamas secretly pressuring the Cuban government to extradite Assata Shakur, a civil rights activist, to the US for trial when many believe she was actually framed up by the FBI, the New Jersey State police, and the CIA as her previous trials and subsequent acquittals in the US proved.

Finally, Prof. Cornel West and radio/television personality Tavis Smiley have demonstrated one of the abject failures of Mr. Obamas presidency (See their book The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto). Other American public intellectuals have written about Mr. Obama and his presidency (See Chris Hedges essay The Obama Presidency: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic). Mr. Obamas foreign policy decisions and internal politics exonerate Kwame Nkrumah. How? We strongly believe Mr. Obama has finally come to realize it is always easy and cheap to pontificate from the outside, but crucial challenges posed by the internal and external dynamics of politics require draconian proaction, sometimes exertion of military might and operational suspension of legal instruments. Of course wisdom, intelligence, prescience, experience, and reliability of practical solutions are born of individuals tactical and strategic approaches to challenges.

Nkrumah probably understood this better than Mr. Obama and as a result Nkrumahs government worked hard to make sure appropriate laws were put in place to protect the new nation and private citizens as well as public officials against the subversive tendencies and terroristic acts of internal and external enemies. The survival instinct is not something one puts out so easily since it is under the spell of biology or nature. Hopefully Mr. Obama understands this too. Moreover, Mr. Obamas failures are not uniquely and distantly different from Nkrumahs from our point of view. Nkrumah always worked within the confines of the law, not always so with Mr. Obama at every point. Besides, Mr. Obama is a lawyer and a professor of law, Nkrumah was not. Finally, Mr. Obama is lucky to have had the rich experience of an elderly nation behind his proactive decisions, unlike Nkrumah.

Let us therefore give Nkrumah his due. Dr. Kwame Amuah, Nelson Mandelas son-in-law, has this to say about Nkrumah: The time Nkrumah was recovering from a major assassination attempt on his life and therefore access to him was restricted. Mandela, though, met all the relevant cabinet and party officials and the ANC was accorded fulsome support. This bit of history is important here as there are some who attribute Mandelas failure to meet Nkrumah as a snub. They claim the reason was that the ANC was open to all races and was losing its Pan-African identity, and that Nkrumah was leaning towards the Pan-African Congress. The idea that Nkrumah refused to meet Mandela because the ANC was opened to all South African races is far from the truth, and in fact it is not even a historical fact in the least. Nkrumah, while Pan-Africanist to boot, was equally non-racial.

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What Sort Of Democracy Is This, Ghana (2)?

(PRWEB) September 19, 2014

MetroMD, a leading anti-ageing clinic has called its HGH Therapy treatment the God Particle of human health. This therapy has grown tremendously across USA in the last decade with new research making the therapy more effective, safe and dependable. It has far reaching benefits for ageing men and women and gives them an opportunity to live a very healthy and active lifestyle even beyond their middle age.

Explaining the concept of HGH therapy, a senior therapist at MetroMD said, HGH or Human Growth hormones are the building blocks of our youthful life. Optimum growth hormone levels give us a great body growth and shape, increased lean muscle mass, high energy levels and a hyperactive sexuality. However with age, the production of HGH levels start dipping in our bodies and it gives birth to most of our middle age symptoms like increased body fats, loss of muscle mass, sagging skins, High blood pressure, diminishing stamina, dull moods, facial wrinkles and poor sexual activity levels.

The MetroMD growth hormone therapist further added, Anti-Aging clinics like ours which are based on HGH therapy, try to reverse the ageing process by inducing optimum growth hormones back into the body. It is a very safe mode of treatment having negligible side effects. A lot of research and clinical tests have been conducted over the years on a number of ageing men and women and results have been very encouraging. For example, the most common ageing problem in men happens to be erectile deficiency because of falling testosterone levels. This is fully treatable with growth hormone treatment and we simply raise the levels of male sexual hormone testosterone in the problem facing male, and results are instantaneous.

MetroMD is a renowned anti-ageing clinic which has been successfully providing growth hormone therapy services for the last many years. Its current MD Dr. Alex Martin was pioneer in starting the first anti-ageing clinic based on growth hormone therapy in the California region back in 1998. MetroMD is also engaged in myriad of medical arenas like cosmetic surgery (liposuction), stem cell therapy and Nano therapy apart from its quintessential service of HGH therapy. The main thrust of MetroMD is to provide longevity services to ageing or aged men and women and give them a renewed extension of a highly active lifestyle.

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MetroMD Announces Better HGH Therapy - the God Particle of Human Health

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

17-Sep-2014

Contact: Todd Kluss tkluss@geron.org 202-587-2839 The Gerontological Society of America @geronsociety

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) invites all journalists to attend its 67th Annual Scientific Meeting the country's largest interdisciplinary conference in the field of aging from November 5 to 9 in Washington, DC. Media representatives may register free of charge.

An estimated 4,000 professionals are expected to attend the five-day gathering at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and Marriott Marquis Washington, DC. The theme for 2014 is "Making Connections: From Cells to Societies" and the program schedule contains more than 400 scientific sessions featuring research presented for the first time. Noteworthy meeting highlights include:

The complimentary media registration allows access to all scientific sessions and the Exhibit Hall. Badges and printed program materials can be picked up in the Press Room, which will be located in Room 204B in the convention center.

Registration information is available at http://www.geron.org/press. GSA has locked in special conference rates at the Marriott and several nearby hotels, which will be available until October 6.

We look forward to seeing you in Washington!

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The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) is the nation's oldest and largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to research, education, and practice in the field of aging. The principal mission of the Society and its 5,500+ members is to advance the study of aging and disseminate information among scientists, decision makers, and the general public. GSA's structure also includes a policy institute, the National Academy on an Aging Society, and an educational branch, the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education.

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Join GSA in Washington, DC, for the Nation's Premier Aging Conference

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

15-Sep-2014

Contact: Nicole Weingartner sciencenewsroom@wiley.com 201-748-5808 Wiley

Researchers have found that levels of a regulatory protein called ATF4, and the corresponding levels of the molecules whose expression it controls, are elevated in the livers of mice exposed to multiple interventions known increase longevity.

Elevation of ATF4, at least in the liver, seems to be a shared feature of diets, drugs, genes, and developmental alterations that extend maximum lifespan.

"Pathways that appear to change in the same way in many different kinds of slow-aging mice may provide helpful hints towards the design of drugs that keep people healthy longer by slowing most of the diseases of aging," said Dr. Richard Miller, senior author of the Aging Cell study. "ATF4 seems to be involved in control of aging from yeast to mice, so it's a good bet to be important in human aging, too."

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

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Cellular protein may be key to longevity

Today, the only constant is changeAnd the rate of change is increasing.

You either disrupt yourself, or someone else will. For any company, sitting still equals death. I believe that we are now experiencing only a tiny fraction of the rate of disruptive change we will see over the next 10 years.Why?

Though its hard to even fathom, think about this for a second:Exponential technologies dont exist in a vacuum.They interact with each other. They augment each other. They accelerate each other.When they do, the emerging impact is enormous.Its a tsunami of change, and its impossible to predict what it looks or feels like.To give you a better picture of the accelerating change coming our way, I want to define four key Moments of Convergence where I believe we will see the most change.

Moment 1: First, we have the continued acceleration of those exponential technologies riding on top of Moores law: Infinite Computing, Networks & Sensors, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Digital Manufacturing and Synthetic Biology. Each of these technologies enable exponential entrepreneurs to build products that can positively impact the lives of a billion+ people.

Moment 2: Second, we will have Combined Interface Interface moments. In other words, these technologies will converge at various interfaces. For example, the intersection of Networks, A.I. and 3D printing will soon allow anyone to verbally describe their desires and have them physically materialize. Imagine having an A.I. listening to you describe what youd like to see created, then turn it into a design file that is uploaded to the cloud, 3D printed and delivered later that day to your doorstep. Every one of us, with or without skills, becomes a master designer and manufacturer, in much the same way that Microsoft Microsoft Word makes us all perfect spellers.

Moment 3: This decade, the number of digitally connected people on Earth will grow from 2 billion (in 2010) to at least 5 billion (by 2020), perhaps as many as 7 billion (if Google Google and Facebook have their way). These additional 3 billion+ new minds entering the global economy are now fully empowered with dematerialized, demonetized and democratized technologies ranging from Google to 3D printing and SynBio. They now have access to the technologies once coveted by the largest corporations and government labs so what will they create? What will they build?

Moment 4: Historically, the rate of innovation on Earth has increased as peopled moved out of the countryside and concentrated in cities, where they exchanged and built on each others ideas. Soon, the global mind of 5 billion+ connected people will drive a frenzy of rapid iteration. Innovation cycles on new products will go from years to months to weeks. How will the intellectual property system that so many linear-thinking companies rely on, possibly handle this rate of change? It wont; it will likely fail.

It is these four moments of disruptive convergence that will be driving the tsunami of change ahead of all of us.

Our challenge as entrepreneurs is that we are evolutionarily predisposed to be local and linear thinkers. (Our brains evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when our life where best described as local and linear.)

The only option we have to surf atop the tsunami, rather than be crushed by it, is constant and continuous education and emersion in these exponential technologies to understand what you can use to reinvent yourself and your business every year.

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100X Disruptive Change

SAN FRANCISCO -- Ever wanted to stretch your life to Old Testament proportions? You may be in luck. A movement of Silicon Valley thinkers and entrepreneurs wants you to live as long as Jacob, who died at 147, and maybe even Noah, who made it to 950.

One year after Google created a company named Calico with the goal of extending human life, Menlo Park investor and Stanford-trained radiologist Joon Yun has launched a $1 million science competition with the lofty aim of "curing" the disease more commonly known as aging.

While Calico's plan remains largely opaque, Yun has laid out specific criteria for the 11 teams that have already signed up to compete for the Palo Alto Longevity Prize, which focuses on improving "homeostatic capacity," or the ability of an organism to bounce back to normal in the face of stress.

Menlo Park resident Joon Yun announces the Palo Alto Longevity prize at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. Yun, a doctor and investor is the main backer of the prize to to crack the code of life. (John Green/Bay Area News Group) ( JOHN GREEN )

At a swanky launch party this month in San Francisco, Yun declared aging an urgent problem, saying every day 100,000 people die unnecessarily of age-related illness. The Presidio gathering included proponents of life extension who believe the current limit on human life, roughly 120 years, can be pushed back several decades, or perhaps hundreds of years.

"Ultimately, I think we'll crack the age code and we'll hack aging," Yun announced. "And if we do, not only will health care be transformed, but humanity. At that point we'll have unlocked human capacity."

The idea for the competition came from Yun's daily life. As president of Palo Alto Investors, an investment fund targeting the health care sector, Yun gets an early look at innovative research. At the age of 46, he's noticed the many small ways in which his own homeostatic capacity has degraded over time -- for instance, recovering from a poor night's sleep.

That same lack of resilience, Yun said, helps explain serious illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension -- the body loses its ability to self-tune when its blood sugar or blood pressure gets too high.

Professional athlete Brandi Chastain speaks at a conference on aging in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. (John Green/Bay Area News Group) ( JOHN GREEN )

The Palo Alto Longevity Prize has two parts. Judges will give $500,000 to the first team that increases a small mammal's heart rate variability to levels typical of a young adult. Heart rate variability is an indicator of autonomic nervous system health that decreases over time. They also will award $500,000 to the first team to extend the life of a test mammal by 50 percent beyond its life expectancy by restoring homeostatic capacity.

Continued here:
Silicon Valley launches another bid to 'hack' aging, cheat death

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Research has shown strong social relationships -- both with friends and significant others -- to be good for human health. Now a new study shows the same holds true for baboons.

Previous studies have shown same-sex social interaction to have positive impacts on the longevity of rats and dolphins, but the latest research out of Duke University showed the health and life expectancy of female baboons was especially improved by increased interaction, or "social grooming," with male companions.

"Grooming is the baboon equivalent of gossip, or having a good conversation over a cup of coffee," Duke researcher and study co-author, Susan Alberts, explained in a press release.

Alberts and her colleagues -- including study co-author Jenny Tung -- observed the social behaviors of some 200 wild female baboons living in the plains of southern Kenya. They estimated long-term sociability by measuring how often each female partook in social grooming sessions relative to rest of the troop.

The researchers found that more sociable females were likely to live two to three years longer than their less-friendly female peers. As the reason why, Alberts surmised: "Males' larger size may make them better than females at defending their friends against potential bullies."

The study also found that while older females begin interacting less and less with other females, their male friendships remain constant.

"When females get older, many of their female peers start to pass away, and their daughters become tied up with their own infants, leaving less time for social interaction," Alberts said. "It suggests that social isolation isn't an inevitable part of aging, but instead may simply be a consequence of declines in potential friends' availability."

The study was published this week in the journal the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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Female baboons with male friends live longer