Category Archives: Immortality Medicine

Gold is arguably the human races most valued commodity and a lot could be written about the history of this metal. The luster, beauty, resistance to tarnishing, malleability, and overall brilliance have made gold a favorite among all human cultures that have encountered it. There are few metals that have had such an influence on human history as gold. We have given gold power and linked it to wealth, social status, beauty, glory, the divine, and immortality.

Since the human races earliest days we can see evidence of people having a fondness for golds natural shiny, yellow nuggets. Early humans, and perhaps even their hominid ancestors, would have found gold nuggets in streams dispersed across the globe. We cant say for certain when people first took an interest in gold, but gold flakes have been found in Paleolithic caves dating back as far as 40,000 BC.

Early humans, and perhaps even our hominid ancestors, would have found gold nuggets in streams dispersed across the globe.( lesterman/Adobe Stock)

By 3000 BC, the ancient Egyptians were enamored with gold. They included it in their mythology and pharaohs and temple priests demanded it. They mined the metal and also created maps showing their ancient gold mines and where they had found gold deposits around the kingdom. One papyrus map in the Turin Museum even showsgold mines, miners quarters, and roads leading to mines and gold-bearing mountains.

The ancient Egyptians included gold in their mythology and pharaohs and temple priests demanded it. ( Boggy/Adobe Stock)

Prospecting for gold took considerable effort, which is whyPhoenicians, Egyptians, Indians, Hittites, Chinese, and other cultures used prisoners of war, slaves, and criminals to work in the mines. Note that this happened during a time when gold was without monetary value - it was just considered a desirable commodity in and of itself.

Ancient Egyptians are also credited as the first to mandate golds higher status over silver the 3100 BC code of Menes, the founder of the first Egyptian dynasty,specifically stated that one piece of gold was worth two and a half pieces of silver. However, they preferred to use agricultural products when bartering. The first known civilization to use gold as currency is the Kingdom of Lydia, which was located in the western part of what is now Turkey. Prior to that, gold was also used in the same region for jewelry, in the creation of ritual relics, to enhance the appearance of sacred sites, and as a way for the elite to demonstrate their status in personal objects.

The first use of gold as money occurred around 700 BC, when Lydian merchants produced the first coins. These were simply stamped lumps of a 63% gold and 27% silver mixture known as electrum. This standardized unit of value no doubt helped Lydian traders in their wide-ranging successes, for by the time of Croesus of Mermnadae, the last King of Lydia (570 -546 BC), Lydia had amassed a huge hoard of gold. Today, some people still speak of the ultra-wealthy as being rich as Croesus. Gold was a great choice for money, being portable, private, and permanent.

A number of "staters" (a standard measure) from the sixth century BC from a hoard found in Clazomenae. The central "lion and bull" one is thought to come from Lydia. (Dosseman/ CC BY-SA 4.0 )

Jewelry and decoration have long been a favored usage of gold, but since nuggets themselves are not the most alluring form of ornamental gold, humans had to find a way to shape it. Luckily for us, gold is the easiest metal to work. One of the reasons gold working predates iron and copper manufacturing is because it is naturally found in a mostly pure and workable state, its not necessary to extract gold from ore-bodies to smelt it although high demand for gold over the ages has also required its extraction from stone.

Following the Greeks, the Roman Empire expanded gold mining. They diverted streams of water to mine hydraulically, built sluices and the first long toms(a trough placed in moving water and fitted with a perforated sheet which would be filled with dirt or sand, filtering out the gold with the fast moving water). Romans mined underground, included water wheels in mining, and roasted ores with gold in them to separate the precious metal from the rock.

Landscape of Las Mdulas, Spain, the result of hydraulic mining by the ancient Romans. ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )

The ancient Greeks had an interesting notion of how gold came to exist. They thought it was a dense combination of water and sunlight. They were mining for goldthroughout the Mediterranean and Middle East regions by 550 BC and used it for money, status symbols, and personal adornment. By the Classical Period, people had gold shrines, idols, plates, cups, vases, and vessels, and all sorts of beautiful and intricate jewelry.

By this time in history, gold had both an association with the glory of immortal gods and demigods and also an obvious sign of wealth for humans. Later on across the globe, Aztec, Muisca, and Inca people also used gold in their religious ceremonies and at their sacred sites. All around the world the pattern was seen with emperors, priests, and elites those who held gold also tended to hold power.

Moche octopus frontlet. (Carlos Santa Maria /Adobe Stock)

More than just decorative, gold has functional uses as well. It has, for example, found its way into medicine. These days there are two classes of gold drugs, one injectable and the other taken orally, that are used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Gold nanoparticles have also been included in some experimental cancer treatments .

Gold is also a popular material in nanotechnology the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale, which is useful for biomedicine and optical electronic usages. Gold nanoparticles have shown themselves to be effective catalysts materials that increase the rate of a chemical reaction, thus reducing the amount of energy needed to create a chemical change. In the 1980s, a Japanese scientist used this aspect of gold nanoparticles to oxidize carbon monoxide, which is toxic, into carbon dioxide and apply this to vehicle exhaust systems.

The future of gold is certainly bright. Not only for adorning our homes and bodies, but also creating new ways to live better, healthier, more technologically advanced lives!

Top Image: The history of gold is colorful and dramatic. Source: hnphotography/ Adobe Stock

By Alicia McDermott

Trace the full, colorful, and dramatic story of gold through the ages in the March 2020 issue of Ancient Origins magazine. Get it HERE.

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The Shining History of Gold: From Ancient Treasure to Modern Tech - Ancient Origins

(Photo: Unsplash / SCN)

Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality. Because I could not stop for Death, Emily Dickinson

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy

What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short.From now on those whohave wives should live as if they do not;those who mourn, as if they did not;those whoare happy, as if they were not;those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep;those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them.For this world in its presentform is passing away. I Corinthians 7: 29-31

Here at around the first anniversary of the first known cases of Covid 19 in America, we are now quite suddenly living with the possibility of the imminence of death for anyone, almost at random, anywhere in a way nobody would have predicted for the 21st century.

We have largely assumed technological and medical progress was inevitable. Major age-old scourges like polio and smallpox had been eradicated globally years ago, for example; and the means to banish many other endemic, chronic, and communicable diseases exist, just as long as governments can cooperate and allocate the funds to make it happen. Similarly, the means to end most famines and sustained food shortages exist; just as long as the planets governments figure out the mechanisms to do so.

In short, there has been an expectation that economics, governments, science and medicine can achieve mastery over most disasters (except for unanticipated natural ones) that have plagued humans since, well, forever. Mass death of humans now largely seems the product of deliberate human action through wars, civil insurrection, ethnic slaughter and genocide, and forced food shortages along with human-made ecological and climate disasters.

This is new. Less than 200 years ago, it was common for people in the Victorian age to round up their families for a picnic and take them to a local cemetery so family members could commune with those lost to disease and injuries while still young, or with older family members who died from diseases now often easily addressed by medical professionals. Those same cemeteries would have gravesites for all those children who had died young. (Even now, every Japanese temple has a small garden with memorials erected in memory of deceased children, whether from disease, premature unsustainable birth, or termination of pregnancy. These memorial gardens become among the most poignant places one can visit at a religious facility.) Death and disease were seen as inevitable and unforgiving everywhere.

Within our own families, if we are of a certain age, it is likely we would have heard of children, born a couple of generations ago, who never had the chance to make it to adulthood, dying from a childhood disease or from cholera, typhoid, the flu, the Spanish flu, or some other common respiratory infection, absent antibiotics and other therapeutic agents. (In some of my own familys formal photographs from the early 20th century, one can see one of my late fathers older brothers who had never had the chance to reach adulthood, after falling victim to one of these diseases, as did their father.)

In our own time, the nearest we were coming to the idea of the great plague, at least until last year, was HIV/Aids. This disease seemingly came from out of nowhere and attacked unrelated groups of victims: gay men, commercial airline cabin personnel and Haitians. As it began to enter the broader societies of North America, Europe, Britain, and elsewhere, and especially as successful treatment regimens initially remained distant, its victims often were treated as shunned outcasts.

In South Africa, even successful drug treatments were rejected by many including the governments leaders generating an unnecessary death toll that numbered hundreds of thousands. Many of us came to know individuals friends and family members both who had become its victims. But in the minds of too many, it remained a disease whose infections arose out of human behavioural choices, or just plain ignorance. It took researchers years before the diseases etiology was understood, let alone until effective treatments were developed, although prevention still remains a behavioural issue for some.

But what HIV/Aids did not do was to give entire societies a pervasive fear that it was uncontrollable, with an array of symptoms that often could not be understood, and that it was a disease that could strike anyone, anywhere, any time. Unlike HIV/Aids, this newest plague, Covid 19, burst on to the world almost all at once, after its reported outbreak in Wuhan, China. Within months, infection rates and fatalities were growing quickly, turning nations like Italy into hotspots.

Within a year, globally, there have now been tens of millions of cases, more than two million fatalities, and, in the US, now more than 400,000 deaths, as it grows without let-up, as in many nations, casualties and infections continue to increase. (US Covid casualties have now reached close to the number of American deaths from World War 2; and that total is about ten times South Africas total. The latters population, of course, is about one-sixth Americas.)

This rapid rise in infections and deaths, and the institution of increasing public health counter-measures (and their inevitable baleful impacts on economic circumstances) has inevitably struck fear into the hearts and minds of billions of people around the world, and created real economic hardship for many millions.

Those fears, inevitably, have fed a deep need by many to believe in magical or quack cures, especially when these have been punted by irresponsible and ignorant government leaders and their lackeys and hangers-on. Alternatively, yet others have chosen to disbelieve in the very existence of the disease, or to insist it is some kind of conspiratorial plot by doctors, drug companies, foundation executives, and other evil people in order to make money from the fears, or to engage in actions designed to control people and steal their freedoms.

But this disease is not yet giving way. We are all being struck repeated body blows as loved ones, friends, widely admired public figures and entertainers, and even total strangers continue to die because of it. The pain is even worse because these losses are reported widely in the media and then their stories and circumstances are further distributed via social media. The victims receive medical help, or they dont in time, but the result often seems the same as it becomes a deeply painful outcome each time.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is often attributed with the very realpolitik notion, A single death is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic. But the truth is that none of these Covid deaths has become a statistic because each and every one has family and friend connections to others. And most often they have been unable even to say their final goodbyes, given the isolation and quarantines imposed.

In such circumstances, the responses on the part of many people in our time may begin to have an uncomfortable resemblance to the way populations have often reacted to the plagues that have afflicted people throughout history. In response to such fears during an epidemic, and egged on by their leaders, mobs would carry out pogroms against local Jewish populations or other minorities or they engaged in desperate efforts such as days of frenetic communal dancing to hold off the spread of the disease.

If this disease is not stopped in its tracks or rolled back, it does not need an actual fortune teller to predict one of two possible outcomes: either a major upwelling of religious fervour in the face of an unstoppable disease; or, alternatively, anti-social, nihilistic behaviour on the part of many in the face of what appears to be long-prophesied end times. Or perhaps even both simultaneously.

In that second alternative, we could look for stochastic outbreaks of unrest, populism or even terror in the face of the demonstrated inability of governments to halt the disease and right their national economies. (Not sure about this? Consider what just happened in Americas capital city by a dangerous mob on 6 January.)

Stochastic populism: the wave of the future?

Some governments can, and probably will, fall if they are unable to cope with the challenges of such circumstances.

Is it now time to at least consider the kernel of prophecy contained in University of California, Los Angeles geography professor Jared Diamonds Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, when he reflected upon societal failures historically.

Diamond wrote, In fact, one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies is that a societys steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources.

To this, frighteningly, we must add the political and economic instabilities that arise from the failure to cope with pandemics. DM

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Death, taxes and the inevitable chaos - Daily Maverick

On Emorys Atlanta campus, stories above the cigar-smoking statue of Robert W. Woodruff, lies a legend. Well, pieces of one.

In 2014, three Emory baseball players curated the He Had a Hammer: The Legacy of Hank Aaron in Baseball and American Culture exhibit at Emorys Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. The exhibit contains a diverse set of materials with which one can trace MLB star and former Atlanta Braves right fielder Hank Aarons journey to baseball immortality and discover his character as a true moral exemplar.

However, no amount of scouting reports, photographs, memorabilia, letters, correspondences and hate mail could ever accurately capture the life and legacy of Hammerin Hank, one of the greatest players to ever grace a baseball diamond. No matter how unfamiliar one was with Aaron, the weight of his death on Jan. 22 carries a heavy shadow across the entire nation.

The All-Timer

It would be a vast understatement, perhaps even a grave misdoing, to say that Aaron was just a great player. Aaron played for the Braves (who were formerly the Milwaukee Braves before moving to Atlanta in 1966) from 1954-74 and the Milwaukee Brewers from 1975-76. By the time he retired in 1976, he had amassed a .305 batting average, 3,771 hits, 2,297 runs batted in and, most famously, 755 home runs over his indescribable 23-year MLB career. By significant margins, his All-Star appearances, runs batted in and total bases are all MLB records and further immortalize him as one of the best players of all time, if not the best.

The 25-time All-Star was unstoppable for so long that by his retirement, he was the last player on an MLB roster who had also played in the now-canon Negro Leagues, where he played for three months in 1952.

His 755 career home runs stood as an all-time record for 33 years before Barry Bonds broke it in 2007 as a member of the San Francisco Giants. Significant hype followed Bond as he approached the all-time record, yet Aaron was not met with such hospitality during his own chase.

In the months, weeks and days preceding Aarons record-breaking 715th home run on April 8, 1974, in the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, he received countless testimonials of humanitys worst attitudes, dozens of which are currently displayed in his exhibit in the Rose Library.

Hate mail and consistent threats of death and kidnapping against him, his wife and his children poured in with increasing intensity from racist onlookers who felt threatened that a Black man had come for Babe Ruths record. Some threats were so serious they prompted FBI investigations.

The countless letters and on-field taunts which Aaron received were effective, but not in the way in which their senders had intended. Did they harm the Braves great? Absolutely he confessed in 1992 that his pursuit of No. 715 should have been the greatest experience of my life, but it was the worst experience of my life.

He was never fully deterred, however, and persisted through the bigotry with a certain grace and humility that defined his person, which we now fondly remember and extensively revere.

The Pioneer

Aaron will likely always be most known for his athletic prowess, and justifiably so. However, one would be remiss to remember Hammerin Hank as only a ballplayer and not one of the most inspirational and influential figures in Atlanta history.

In an era of the civil rights movement that featured so many charismatic and outspoken leaders, Aaron provided consistent yet subtle support for the struggle, opting to be a silent leader who inspired others with his superb actions on and off the field rather than with eloquent prose behind a podium.

On the field, he was the epitome of a trailblazer. His collection of career stats are perhaps second to none, and his pioneership as a Black man in a white league in the Deep South should be mentioned in any conversation that features Jackie Robinson. Some six years after Robinson broke the baseball color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Aaron was the first to integrate the South Atlantic League in the minor leagues. When the Braves relocated to Atlanta from Milwaukee, he was baseballs first Black superstar in the South. In the face of constant racism and bigotry, Aaron never once paused in momentary defeat. He faced the ugly truth of humanity head on, using the sweet stroke of his right-handed swing to break racial barriers and pave a path for future Black superstars to make their own mark on Americas pastime.

His contributions to baseball did not end with his final at-bat either. Shortly after his retirement, Aaron became vice president and director of player development for the Braves and thus one of the games first Black executives with an upper-level management position. His name also graces an award given annually to the best offensive performer in the American and National Leagues.

His mark on baseball, as a player and executive, cannot be overstated. The magnitude of his impact on the game is perhaps rivaled only by his philanthropy and commitment to the city of Atlanta.

After the Braves relocated, Aaron bought a home in the southwestern part of the city where he supported, created and donated to numerous charities, scholarships and programs meant to uplift and empower Black people, especially students, exemplified by his $3 million donation to the Morehouse School of Medicine in 2016. Aaron stayed in the same home until his death.

His affection for his community characterized his commencement speech, which he gave shortly after he received an honorary doctor of laws degree, to graduating members of the Emory Law School Class of 1995.

Whenever a single human being is humiliated, the human image is cheapened, Aaron said in his speech. Whenever a person suffers for whatever the reason and no one is there to offer a hand, a smile, a present, a gift, a memory, a smile again. What happens, something is wrong with society at large.

The Legend

So, who was Hank Aaron? When future generations ask us to describe one of Americas very best people, how should we? How can we, as mere onlookers, capture his remarkable life in a series of carefully yet vainly constructed clauses that will never be able to adequately describe all that he was?

Bluntly, we cannot adequately answer any of these questions. He was a man who faced the worlds most wretched hive of scum and villainy with the same grace, humility and persistence with which he faced 98-mile-per-hour heaters from the batters box.

Aaron is and forever will be a legend, the making of myths. His stats tell the story of one of the games best-ever players, and his character, partially contained in the collections housed in the Rose Library, reveals the story of a civil rights icon, Atlantan, community leader and extraordinary man.

The location of Aarons exhibit, which towers dozens of feet over the general Emory community, is fitting for such a towering figure.

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Bigger Than Baseball: The Legacy of Hank Aaron - The Emory Wheel

Most of us know we are going to die. How often though do we actually let ourselves really internalize that understanding? To imagine it? To feel it? To try to accept it?

On todays podcast we invited BJ Miller back on our podcast to talk about death using as our guide his recent NY Times editorial What Is Death? How the pandemic is changing our understanding of mortality.In addition to being the author of this NY Times article, BJ is a Hospice and Palliative Care doc, and the founder of Mettle Health which aims to provide personalized, holistic consultations for any patient, caregiver or clinician who need help navigating the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability.

We start off with BJ appropriately picking the song "Ebony Eyes" as our intro song, which is a good analogy to talking about death, as it was initially banned by the BBC from airplay as its lyrics were considered too upsetting to play on the radio. We then go into his thoughts on how we picture our deaths and dealing with those emotions we feel when we do, how we live with death, and

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TRANSCRIPT

Alex: This is Alex Smith.

Alex: And today we're delighted to welcome back BJ Miller, who a hospice and palliative care doc, and co-author of Beginner's Guide to the End. We had a podcast about that previously, we'll link to that in the show notes affiliated with this podcast, and also the founder of Mettle Health and author of a opinion piece in the New York Times that came out in December about death that we're going to talk about today.

Eric: Before we get into that topic, BJ, again we'll have links to that New York Times article What Is Death? How Is the Pandemic Changing Our Understanding of Mortality, big topic, but we always start off with a song request. Do you have a song request for Alex?

BJ: I sure do. This is my favorite part of you guys' show. Ebony Eyes by the Everly Brothers.

Alex: And why this choice?

BJ: Well, I mean, those of you who don't know the song, you'll see. It's just a lovely, sweet little lullaby that has a pretty devastating end to it. And it touches on our theme of the day.

Alex: It does.

BJ: And I just love the Everlys.

Alex: Yeah. I did a little Googling. I was not familiar with this song, and it's in 3/4, which is unusual, it's got this beautiful beginning lullaby story that I'll play at the beginning, and then we'll get to the devastating ending at the end. But it just is so emotionally manipulative and wrenching that it's almost humorous in that it's just right in your face in the way that it does it. It came out in 1961, made it to the top 10 in the charts. It was banned by the BBC because they worried it would make people too sad to listen to.

BJ: I didn't realize that. Hilarious. Thank you.

Alex: (singing)

Eric: Uh-oh. Foreshadowing makes me worried.

BJ: You should be, Eric. That was beautiful, man. That was beautiful.

Eric: So BJ this podcast and maybe banned because it may because severe sadness amongst all of our listeners, because we're going to be talking about death. We can talk about puppies and kitties instead if you'd like. [laughter]

BJ: No. I was going to make a horrible joke about that, no. But we'll do it. We'll dive in. We'll go ahead and we'll do what our patients have to do.

Eric: All right. Can I just ask, before we get into this topic, when we think about other people's death, that's like, okay, we can't handle that emotionally, but for a lot of us, when we think about our own personal mortality and death, maybe our heart starts to flutter. We feel that deep pit, our stomachs are churning.

Eric: Obviously you wrote this piece and I'd love to hear why you wrote this piece, but do you still get that inner feeling of dread when you think about death, or how have you handled that?

BJ: It hasn't changed much. I watch my mind begin to try to picture it, I picture my corpse, I picture a lifeless body, I picture the world without me running around in it, but of course that's where I started short-circuiting, because when I picture the world without me running around it, I'm still picturing it through my eyes. I'm still picturing it as I know it. And that stops.

BJ: It's almost like I feel myself short circuit, so I can approach it, I can get close, but ultimately I really struggle to actually get all the way there. I don't know if we can get all the way there, but it does seem to be some utility in trying to get as close as you can, to narrow the distance between you and this thing that can get so scary.

Alex: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, you've been thinking about death for a great deal of your life. And as you've talked about in your book and in your Ted talk, you had an experience of coming close to death in your late teens, early twenties?

BJ: Yeah. 19. Yup.

Alex: 19. And so you've been thinking about death for much of your life. I wonder if you could tell us how your thinking about death has evolved over time.

BJ: Yeah. Well, in some ways it hasn't. In some ways it remains as ultimately, it's penetrable to a point and I can't quite get past to the point. So what's happened over time, and what has felt, and it feels therapeutic for me and has attenuated my fear, is that the process of imagining my own death, trying to internalize it, trying to make it real, because it is real, and therefore me trying to come to terms with reality, which is ultimately my personal goal, I want to know reality and I want to be okay with it, where I get my, like I was saying earlier, I ping off it, I could watch my brain deflect off it eventually.

BJ: But I deflect to a place where I imagine other people, I imagine the world ... like right now, one of the ways I picture my death is not so much me picturing me dead, it's picture things happening in the world without me in it. So just picturing your lives is almost a practice. My friends, if I think about my friends, what they're doing right now without me in the room ... in a way, thinking about my own death has hope is that it puts me in touch with the world beyond myself. And that seems to be so much of its therapeutic value. That's where the humility is, that's where the right-sizing is, that's where the realization is that yeah, my ego will die, this body per se, on some level will die, but life keeps going. Life keeps going. That's what this misnomer of end of life. No, no end of your life, end of my life, but even that's a porous thing.

BJ: So over time, to answer your question, Alex, it has evolved to allow me to see the world outside of myself. And that seems pretty important.

Eric: And I really loved your New York Times piece, because it starts to talking about how this pandemic is changing a little bit about how we're thinking about death. I was wondering, would you be willing to read the first maybe paragraph or two of the New York Times piece?

BJ: Yeah. I'd be happy to. I'll pull it up. So, let's see here. "This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We've always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding. It's one thing to acknowledge the death of others, and another to accept our own. It's not just emotionally taxing; it is difficult even to conceive. To do this means to imagine it, reckon with it, and most important, personalize it. Your life. Your death.

BJ: "COVID-19's daily deaths and hospitalization tallies read like ticker tape or the weather report. This week, the death toll passed 300,000 in the US. Worldwide, it's more than 1.6 million. The cumulative effect is shock fatigue or numbness, but instead of turning away, we need to fold death into our lives. We really have only two choices: to share life with death, or to be robbed by death."

Alex: As you've talked about here and in your piece, you have this focus on trying to imagine what it's like to be death and trying to grapple with and understand what it means to be alive and then to die. And I'm wondering if you're suggesting, and also for you, personally, is, do you have a regular practice of thinking about death? Is this almost ritualized in some way for you, in terms of something that you come back to with regularity?

BJ: There are certain death meditation's, more formalized traditions around this sort of practice. I don't have a practice per se. I guess I'm trying to be integrated in a way, for my own personal development. So it's not like I'm one way at work and another way here, and I have my formal meditation hours and the rest of time I'm letting my brain run me around the planet. For me, it's all much more mushy and vague. And so I think about my death throughout the day in multiple ways, but not as a practice and not in a formal way, it's just a sweet little reminder. And I think of it any time I see a bug in my windshield, or when I see the death tally, I try to remember these were actual people, and [crosstalk 00:10:55] plant myself into that math.

BJ: But in answer to your question about, no, I don't have a formal practice, but in a way I do it all day long, every day. And it's gotten to the point where there's a relief too. I feel some relief, too. I use it ... Sorry, Eric. I'm just going to say I also use this when I get anxious about all the things I'm doing wrong or not doing right, and I also let death be a comfortable thought, like, "Someday, I won't have to worry about these things." And when I get down on myself for not getting to everything on my list, I realize that's part of the practice, also, of death and dying, is you're not going to get to everything that you've dreamed of. In a way, that's a good thing. My dreams exceed my reality my life's boundaries. And I have come to like that tension.

Eric: And when you talk about sharing life with death, is that what you mean?

BJ: Yeah, yes. That I think the goal is death from a design view or from a worldview, from an integrated view, is if we can actually rope death into our frame of life, versus the thing that robs us of life, that takes our life, this pernicious force that comes in and sneaks in and snatches us away.

BJ: That's terrifying. And I think it's just more accurate to say that death is part of life, that death frames a life. And like we were saying earlier, my life ends, but life keeps going, and in some ways my body goes on to be other things. Death gets hard to say that it actually exists. Certainly exists in my ego. The death of BJ will happen. I don't doubt that. But if I can normalize that, see myself in the world that accommodates that fact, then I'm going to be less at odds with nature, less at odds with reality and less at odds with myself. And that's very appealing.

Alex: You talk in this piece about how the cells in our body are continually dying and turning over. And when we die, the cells in our bodies will turn over and become other things as well. The carbon molecules will become parts of plants and parts of other aspects of nature. And it struck me as I was reading, that this is like a scientific, spiritual conception of life and death. And so I wanted to ask you about your own spiritual religious beliefs or framework. Where are you coming from?

Eric: I also love seeing that big oak tree right behind you as we're talking about what happens to the atoms of ourselves when we die.

BJ: Yeah. Yeah. I love this tree, this big live oak, and it actually may be dying. I recently had someone look at it. It may be slowly dying and I guess, okay, so we are.

Eric: What really is death, BJ?

BJ: Exactly. As you were describing that, Alex, as you were describing that passage, as I listened to you describe it, I'm tempted to go, "Wow, that sounds spiritual," or, "that sounds fantastical or something, or it sounds poetic, even," but no, that actually just is. You just described observable science. Nature is pretty poetic all by herself. That's part of the fun realization, is that when you start paying attention, it is everywhere: in you, on you, around you, death and life, completely just turning, ever churning.

BJ: So, I don't wish that to be or not wish I had be. That just is. I mean, again, that's observational science. I mean, the point about atoms, I guess that starts getting theoretical. You have to believe that there was a Big Bang theory. You have to believe in the Big Bang theory to set off this cascade of action. And that has set us a finite number of atoms in the universe and these atoms keep coalescing and decaying, coalesce, decay, that's happening all the time.

BJ: So, that's the only piece that asks for a little leap of faith that is somewhat theoretical, but otherwise we're just talking about the things you can observe. So, I don't think of it as so spiritual per se, but then again I do, because I guess the point here is separation, separating life from death, separating each other from one another ... this is where we get into trouble, separating spirituality from science. That's so much of our problem, is siloing these things when in fact they're different ways of describing so much the same thing. So that's my answer your question, that's my spiritual bent, is to keep looking for the limitations of language versus the limitations of reality, the limitations of myself versus the limitation of life writ large.

BJ: Now, I'm trying to find these false distinction, these false dichotomies and these false separations, so that I don't feel so separate from, or other than, et cetera, because I think that's where all the trouble creeps into human endeavor.

Eric: Well, it's really fascinating. That one paragraph ... So you talk about from the time you're born and your body's turning over, cells are dying and growing every day. So, data driven start of that sentence, but it ends that paragraph with a story. It's a metaphor. It's poetry. A vital tension holds you together until the truce is broken. So we're now using metaphors to help us understand the data.

BJ: Yeah. And like we were saying earlier, sorry to interrupt you, Eric. I mean, I think we're only left with metaphor. It's like asking us to picture our own death. You can only talk around it. It's like describing a hole or a negative or a vortex. You can define it in the negative space around it.

BJ: Similarly, metaphor may be as close as we can get to a literal truth. I don't know if that sounds ironic, but yeah, I think this is the power of metaphor and why we need it and why we need the expressive arts to even begin to get closer to our subject matter.

Alex: I'm just reading through ... you end this section, "But we have fuller ways of knowing. Who doubts that imagination and intuition and love hold power and capacity beyond what language can describe? You are a person with consciousness and emotions and ties. You live on in those you've touched, in hearts and minds. Just remember those who've died before you. There's your immortality. There, in you, they live. Maybe this force wanes over time, but it is never nothing."

Alex: It is interesting to move from this scientific conception of the cells moving over into time, into parts that are still unknown and unexplained in terms of science. What is consciousness, right? What gives us the ability to be conscious? This is at that liminal border between spirituality and science. We haven't gotten there with science; we can't explain it, yet. There may come a day, but we have to rely on something more in order to integrate our understanding, and also to integrate our understanding of our relationship to others. And I love that line that you live on in others in different ways when you touch them, also with the love that they experienced for you, and they carry that with them, their memories of you, but also in terms of just the cells that you transmit to other people, and that turnover become other people over time.

BJ: Yeah. Isn't it cool? It's just really amazing. And I think that's part of the practice, too, is part of the fun of being reminded that these things can be scary putting yourself in perspective like this, but it's so dang interesting. It's so fascinating. It's so dang amazing. And I think that's another reason why I'm interested in pulling attention to the subject, is not to be a downer or to be ... but because it's actually fascinating and in a way beautiful and beyond our comprehension.

Alex: I was also struck reading this and wondering, do you have mentors or spiritual advisors, or are there people who you read in particular who have influenced your thinking about death strongly?

BJ: No, I don't have a mentor per se or a pathway per se, because for me, the pathway is a self discovery. I mean, received wisdom, received knowledge is important, and I don't want to shirk it, but I also know that I don't want to fall in a pit of actually memorizing lines or memorizing other people's ideas to help me understand myself.

BJ: So, yeah, I might draw from the existentialists, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, these guys have been helpful to me. Working at Zen Hospice and just thinking about Buddhism is of interest to me. I grew up in the Episcopalian tradition, and that informed a lot of my early thinking around death.

BJ: So, yeah, sure. I mean, eclectically, I'm hearing and reading to some degree these thoughts and ideas of others, but that just helped me get in the ballpark. The rest, it feels important and it is. I don't want to over read other people. It needs to be self-evident, because we're talking about a process that is going to happen to me and my relationship to it. And I think that's what's so important. So, yes, respecting traditions that have gone before, but really ultimately, I need to figure that stuff out myself.

BJ: So my main teacher is daily life. And it's born of this notion that Monday through Saturday should be just as amazing and fascinating, and God, whoever, whatever that is, should be palpable in a strip mall as much as in a church. And so, similarly, I feel like I have to be able to live these things. And even if I'm discovering things a zillion other people have discovered before me, that's okay. This way I can own it in my gut, in my viscera.

BJ: So daily life as my teacher. Reconciling my own feelings about my own losses, my own inadequacies, that's stuff comes up every day, and those are proxies for death meditations to some degree.

Eric: And how has the pandemic changed anything for you or have you seen it change for other people, how they think about death or life?

BJ: You asked why I wrote that article, Eric. I mean, it's a little bit because ... Well, for one, I mean the skeleton of that article, interestingly or whatever, was a book chapter in Beginner's Guide to the End that I wrote for that book, but the publisher cut it. It wasn't practical enough or something for the publisher. So they cut that chapter. I loved that chapter. For me, it's where so much of the interest is.

BJ: So I'd always been looking, wondering what I could do with that. So that was the background, but then the pandemic, the overlay now is that this existential crises that have been personal for me personally, my own life or with our patients, and we deal with people in existential crises all the time. And we watch folks at the individual level or the family level confront their own fears, either by choice or by force, and you see transformations happening, you see expansions happening. And so we get these little sweet little vicarious things all the time through our patients and families.

BJ: And so just has struck me that what's happening now with the pandemic is that's happening at scale. We are having a massive shared existential crisis. And that's terrifying, because existential crisis are terrifying, but we know existential crisis. They have just felt like a secret. You almost wish to have an existential crisis, have an excuse to think and feel about these things, because it's vital. So, I guess the point here is I feel an opportunity right now, because normally, that transformation happens quietly, knowing it's not shared. One of the hard parts about existential crisis is that very often it makes people feel very alone.

BJ: Well, here we are having the potential to have all sorts of realizations with an existential crisis, but in a shared way. And then in fact, this could bring new levels of community, new levels of empathy, new levels of shared experience, and can right-size us as a people.

BJ: So I feel this great potential, based on what we see with our patients and families for that to happen in a public way. And so the reason to try to get this into the public discourse was to try to begin helping to catalyze the realizations that happen when you dare to look at something that you're afraid of.

Alex: Yeah. And as you started off the piece, it can be so easy to become inured to death, and it's just another number, as you say, like a ticker tape on the stock market, numbers up, numbers up, numbers up again. But who are these people? And it's so personal for so many people who have lost their loved ones, who've cared for loved ones who have died. I mean, I think we've all cared for people who've died of COVID in our work in palliative care and hospice.

Alex: And that brings us to an experience that you talk about with a patient who, it sounds like she has cancer, advanced cancer, and she talks about how COVID is changed her friends' perspective and that she seems able to relate to them more because of the tremendous uncertainty about what's going to happen to all of us and confronting our own mortality. I wonder if you could say more about that experience in that patient encounter.

BJ: Yeah. Well, so, I'm going to change her name. I'll call her Tina. So, the experience that happened with Tina was on a Zoom visit like we're talking, and she's a ... the word I should use really is client now, because in Mettle Health, I'm not doing the medical piece, it's all the nonmedical stuff that I'm wading into with folks. So she's a client. And we were just talking about her own experience and how she was noticing what used to feel so ... She's beloved, students, friends love her, she's surrounded by, but there's an unbridgeable divide oftentimes with folks when it comes to really the personal vulnerability of being frail or dying. And there's some of that piece that the patient really just often ends up having to walk alone. And maybe ultimately there's always a piece that they have to walk alone.

BJ: But the aloneness is so much often the problem. I don't know about you guys, but so often in clinic ... many of the things, but when you get down to it, the person just feels so alone, so unseen and unwitnessed, and as though they don't exist. I've had this feeling myself, the feeling of being in saran wrap. People can see you, you can see them, but there's something that gets in the way that you're just not quite totally reachable.

BJ: And we were talking about that phenomenon and she was just reflecting, almost in this embarrassed way, embarrassed to say it out loud, because celebrating a pandemic seems kind of crazy. But as we know, this is where language gets screwy. So many of our patients, they're not going to be like, "Hey, I love cancer." But in their most honest moments, they will share with us all they've learned from their cancer and they wouldn't have learned it otherwise.

BJ: So it goes with this, in this hush whispered tone, where she was just realizing as we were talking that she felt less alone, less unseen, more seen. And it wasn't that people were saying different things to her, but they were just holding eye contact a little bit longer, there was a little bit more shared silence, there was a vibe. A vibe, that's the best way to put it, that they could share, where she felt just a little bit more seen, just a little bit more heard.

BJ: Anyway, it's just a telling, sweet, sweet moment. And as it goes, like in our work, our goal would be to root out suffering, as it's not possible as we know, ultimately, but even if it were possible, can you imagine what Stooges we be if we all ... The learning that comes from our suffering and from the things that we can't control is profound and not to be dismissed. And I would be very careful of trying to root out all suffering, because we root out a lot of learning, too.

BJ: It's a moot point because we can't rule out all this suffering. But anyway, I'm going round and round in circles here, but somewhere in this mix of trying to find language to respect what pain and suffering and things outside of our control teach us and do for us, without somehow wanting or courting or celebrating the pain itself or overly attaching to that pain. I find it very tricky to describe, but that look on Tina's face when she leaned into the computer was unmistakable. There was a sweet little wink in her face that I hadn't seen before. And it was all thanks to this shared pain.

Eric: You brought up the word "crisis." I'm actually reading a book by Jared Diamond called Upheaval and it talks about nations in crisis ... It's a really good book for anybody who wants to read it. But basically, another way to think about a crisis, it's a decisive point. And it can go either way, and while there is this potentially fleeting sense that we have that it's recognizing our own mortality, do you think it's just going to be fleeting, that it's just going to go away and we return to the usual? And like for your patient that you were describing, will it go back to just people trying their best to ignore the fact that, including myself, that we're mortal beings, and it's so much nicer to think about something else?

BJ: Yeah. Well, I hope not. I'm glad you asked that, brother. I mean, this is my big wondering right now personally. Are we just going to snap back? It's almost like the financial crisis in 2008. It was such an excuse to learn a bunch of stuff and change some things, but we just snapped so forcibly back right to where we were and clung to that old way even more tightly.

BJ: So the question have we suffered long enough has enough dripped from our control and have enough illusions reveal themselves as illusions for us to actually remember? I don't know. The jury's out. But that's another reason I wanted to write that piece. And I'm glad we're having this conversation and many others are too is to try to keep it in our field of view so that we don't forget.

BJ: And you said, something, Eric, which is a tell, get back to thinking about something that's more pleasant about than our own death. But even as we're talking, whether it's the Everly Brothers' music or own conversation or the poetry or metaphor, actually, there's something really beautiful about all these thoughts, too. And that's another thing I'm hoping that corner will turn, is that we don't really lose this reflexive sense that, gosh, we'd rather be thinking about anything else or talking about anything else, because with a little practice, I think actually we realize there are a few things that are more interesting or more amazing than what we're talking about, than actually facing the [crosstalk 00:31:58] end.

Eric: Yeah, it's fascinating, because I think about death all the time in my work. I'm a hospice and palliative care doctor. But it's other people's death. And when I think about my death, I still get that feeling inside me, like this is a dangerous place to be. I explore it, I explore around it, and when I no longer can take it, I'll think of something else. But I would say 10% of the time, it also makes me think take advantage of what we have today. The life around us is really amazing. All of those things I'm worried about, it really doesn't matter. And just hang out with the family, hang out with my friends. And it does bring some beauty to what we're all going through.

BJ: Yeah. It's so very interesting that this is coming along a pandemic, is coming along at around the time of social upheaval, of renewed calls or new calls for social justice. In a time where we're so divided, I think it's actually also another reason to put this stuff out in the world right now, is we might say, "Oh, we have so much in common as human beings, black, white, rich, poor ..." But even that stuff isn't so palpable right now. In fact, a lot of the divisions that separate us from each other, what's so palpable where so much of the focus is.

BJ: So I think it's also really important right now to name the things that we actually do share, that we actually do share, not just as a pleasant idea, and death being one of them. Not only being mortal, but as human being, having to know you die in advance of your death, I can't say enough about how tricky that is, and that itself is a bond between people.

BJ: So I think it's really important to name this actual shared space and to dwell in there and hang out in there before we go back to separating ourselves and distinguishing ourselves from one another.

BJ: Illusions, hey, illusions are fun. Just call a spade a spade. I think it's important that we let this moment take us down. Let the stuff fall. Let it take us down to the studs so that we can see what part of us isn't mutable, what doesn't change, and so that we can see all the stuff that actually turns out we can live without. And we can welcome luxuries back into our life, sure. But just call it a luxury. Don't call it a necessity. That little distinction is really potent. So we don't have to come out of this with the life of anesthetic and somehow of keeping ourselves from those pesky illusions, no. Illusions are fun and hilarious. Just call them an illusion, just call them temporary. That's all I'm asking.

Alex: And we're coming to the end here. I would love it if you could read the last three paragraph of this before we get there, because so much of your, as I told you before we started, the prose, your writing is terrific, BJ, and some of my favorite lines, I tweeted out one and then Rob Rossick tweeted out another, they were all from these last three paragraphs. I wonder if you could read those.

BJ: Yeah, that'd be my pleasure. And thank you, man. I really like hearing that from you, Alex in particular with that brain of yours. So let's see here.

BJ: "Beyond fear and isolation, maybe this is what the pandemic holds for us: the understanding that living in the face of death can set off a cascade of realization and appreciation. Death is the force that shows you what you love and urges you to revel in that love while the clock ticks. Reveling in love is one sure way to see through and beyond yourself to the wider world, where immortality lives. A pretty brilliant system, really, showing you who you are (limited) and all that you're a part of (vast). And as a connecting force, love makes a person much more resistant to obliteration.

BJ: "You might have to loosen your need to know what lies ahead. Rather than spend so much energy keeping pain at bay, you might want to suspend your judgment and let your body do what a body does. The past, present and future come together, as we sense they must, then death is a process of becoming.

BJ: "So, once more, what is death? If you're reading this, you still have time to respond. Since there's no known right answer, you can't get it wrong. You can even make your life the answer to the question."

Alex: It's great.

BJ: Not bad. [laughter]

Alex: Yeah. Oh, it's great. And it really is, as you started off, an encouragement to people to take this pandemic as a moment to remind us of death, and then incorporate that into our daily experiences, because death is around us all the time as you said earlier. A bug on the windshield is a reminder of death, and that we can take this opportunity to explore within ourselves what that means and to come to our own understanding of what it means to die, and to know that we will one day die, and how will that shape the way in which we live, the way in which we relate to others, the way in which we relate to the natural world? Yeah, I just have to say I love that.

Alex: What sort of reaction have you had from others, from patients to this piece in the New York Times?

BJ: It's been really sweet, I got to say, and it was fun to read the comments in the New York Times, because a lot of people were actually we're taking the charge, were answering the question for themselves. And that's really the hope here, is people ... So people were taking the bait. In a way it's the wrong word, but that was just lovely to see.

BJ: And then I've heard a lot from patients that they felt that they saw themselves in those words, and they saw something that they have felt put into words in ways that resonated, words that maybe they hadn't found yet. But that's my favorite compliment, I guess. People are telling me they could have written it if they had found the words. It described how they have felt in moments of clarity. And that's been really cool.

BJ: And that's been coming from patients and families. I mean, one of the tricks here is the subject is interesting. And if you're not careful, you can bring your intellect to it. But that's won't get you all the way there, and in some ways it's even hazardous. Eric, you mentioned something really important about us. One of, I think, the pitfalls of our work, guys, is we are around the subject a lot. So if we're not careful, we might fool ourselves into thinking, "Oh, we've got this. We understand what this subject ... I'm around it all the time. Patients are dying all the time around me. So therefore I got it."

BJ: Uh-uh (negative), not necessarily. It is a different corner to put ourselves into those shoes. And the hope here would be that this, for our field, that the potential here is to just a little bit narrow the gap between us and our patients and our families, and thereby make us even better at our jobs. But getting these few millimeters of being better at our jobs means we're going to have to get used to being uncomfortable ourselves.

Eric: Yeah. And I think, Alex said the concept of knowing that we're going to die, it's easy. I have that all the time. It doesn't bother me. Feeling like I'm going to die, that's the scary part, being willing to have that feeling and sit with that, we bring them to the word "suffering," and that there is suffering in that. And out of that can come a lot of beauty.

BJ: Amen, brother. Yep. And just one more ... I know where we're trying to wrap up, but I want to also make it clear, because there is a rapturous, exalted side of this very earthly thing. I just want to be careful, too, and just clarify, I can imagine someone hearing this and reading these things and feel like we're just putting lipstick on a pig or trying to somehow focus on the pretty parts. I don't think you guys are, but let's just be clear. The idea is to not polish this subject, but find beauty in the rough. So you've got to go through the hard feelings. This is not an effort to keep hard feelings at bay; it's to go into these hard feelings so that you can see that you're more than just these hard feelings and these hard feelings become fertilizer for other things.

BJ: So I don't want to beeline for the pretty stuff and short circuit the hard stuff. That would be an absolute mistake. The point here is to get into the world of the feeling of the viscera, and that kind of pain, that's where these next level lessons come.

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Living with Death: A Podcast with BJ Miller - GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Blog

Boris Johnson warns of threat of coronavirus to younger people

At the time I was contemplating my approaching 70th birthday. How could I run down my professional commitments and spend more time with my garden and my small grandchildren? How our dreams get dashed! At the beginning of 2020 UK scientific advisers were confident that the Chinese government would control this virus. They had done a good job with Sars in 2003 and we thought the new coronavirus would be as easy to manage.

Unfortunately it was not. Sars is only infectious when its, very obvious, symptoms appear. Covid-19 is infectious before symptoms emerge.

When compared with Sars, it does not usually require hospital treatment or result in death. About three per cent of Sars patients died, while Covid-19 is fatal in less than one per cent of cases.

The scale of infection without symptoms or with only mild symptoms the World Health Organisation estimates that this is at least80 per cent of cases meant Covid-19 was well-established and circulating before anyone could get a grip on it.

As we have discovered, pandemics challenge a whole society, not just its health services or its scientists. One of the things we have struggled with most is understanding that the response needs to be similarly broad.

A classic sociological study of pandemics was published in 1990. The author, PM Strong from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was researching the management of the HIV/Aids pandemic during the 1980s.

He compared this to other pandemics going right backto the Black Death in the 14th century. He found that every bacterial or viral invasion was accompanied by three societal pandemics: of fear, suspicion and stigmatisation; ofexplanation and moralisation; and of action.

The pandemic of fear was a rational response to a new disease which might be an existential threat to humanity: the Black Death probably killed 30 to 50 per cent of the population of Europe.

When Covid-19 first appeared, no-one knew what kind of a threat it might be.

The only thing to do was try to freeze its transmission by isolating people from each other as far as possible.

That isolation encouraged a climate of suspicion and fear which led to the stigmatisation of individuals and groups who were not following the rules.

The pandemic ofexplanation tried to make sense of this unexpected disruption to peoples lives. Where had this disease come from? Why here? Why now?

Some of this competition went on among scientists, as we might expect.

However, other groups became involved: was the crossover of an animal virus to humans revenge for the pressures we were placing on wild spaces, for example?

The pandemic of action was the demand that something must be done, even if there was no evidence it would actually work.

Governments were faced with an unprecedented challenge, with populationsdemanding protection from it, preferably at minimum cost and inconvenience.

The result has been a rash of unco-ordinated measures that have lacked credibility but have allowed governments to be seen to respond. All three of these societal pandemics have ripped through the developed world over the past 12 months.

But they have not been brought under control, as Strong predicted.

Previous pandemics becamematters of government routine.

When bubonic plague returned in centuries after the Black Death, officials took a manual off the shelf, lined up quarantines, body collectors and mass graves and everyday life continued.

It was an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe.

Why hasnt this happened with Covid-19? With this pandemic amplification has been policy, based on the advice of a particular group of behavioural scientists advising government. And fear is spread through social media and the images on ourTV screens.

No-one should make light of the suffering that has come with Covid-19. But this cannot be a basis for public policy.

No-one can make all human lives completely safe. The zero-Covid agenda presents a fantasy of immortality that more reflective medics know is impossible. As vaccination rolls out and treatments improve, the risk of serious illness or death is falling rapidly.

We can live with a new endemic infection, but this willonly happen if we fight the fearand recognise the pictures on our screens do not represent the mass experience of Covid-19, now and in the years to come.

Robert Dingwallis Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent Universityand a member of several government advisory groups. He is writing in apersonal capacity.

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No one can ensure total safety... We must fight pandemic of FEAR - PROF ROBERT DINGWALL - Express

Mushrooms have been used as food and medicine for thousands of years, and its becoming more common for researchers to announce new therapeutic interventions based on different species.

Even though its common for people to tell you that 80% of mushrooms are poisonous, the ones that arent offer nutrients which are often hard to find in more commonly consumed foods.

For brain health, there are few things better, and many mushrooms are now powdered and sold as nootropic supplements, with claims that they enhance memory and mental performance.

Others have been found to inhibit cancer growth and proliferation, and others are studied for respiratory infections.

Putting aside the traditional use of mushrooms in our societynamely for pizza toppings and hallucinogenic trips, new names for new purposes are finding their way into health food stores and magazines, and here are just a few.

For over 2000 years reishi mushrooms have been recognized by Chinese medical professionals as a valuable remedy, reads a study from the American-Eurasian Journal of Botany. Its Chinese name means spiritual potency, while its also known as the mushroom of immortality, and the medicine of kings.

Studies have shown reishi mushrooms strengthen and improve the competence of the immune system through their content of triterpenes. They can protect the liver, significantly inhibit all four types of allergic reactions, and activate immune cells, particularly ones which kill tumor cells, and invasive bacteria.

While it doesnt demonstrate anti-senescence, lengthen telomeres, or boost NAD+ levels hallmarks of the modern understanding of longevityany one of the things it can ameliorate could just as easily end a life, so in a sense, the mushroom of immortality earns its moniker.

This rare, old-growth mushroom has a multi-thousand-year history of use in Europe, world-renowned mycologist Paul Stamets told Rochelle Baker at Canadas National Observer.

Stamets is referring to a little-known mushroom called agarikon, which he has worked to protect in North America. He notes that ancient Greek physician Dioscorides actually described agarikon in his works, calling it the elixir of long lifeparticularly when used to treat tuberculosis.

Now Stamets believes that agarikon and the old-growth forests in which it thrives should be protected and cultivated for use as a public health remedy for coronaviruses, as well as other respiratory illnesses, due to its role as a potent immune system aid.

As fun to say as it is good for you, chaga has actually been extensively studied for use as a therapeutic intervention. Lacking only accreditation as a nootropic, mood regulator, or for other brain-related effects, there is one very important role which chaga can performas an inhibitor of DNA damage.

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A South Korean study found that 40% less DNA damage was observed in human lymphocytes when treated with compounds brought about by the consumption of chaga. Lymphocytes are a type of white blood cell, and one of the main immune cells.

Another study found that chaga inhibited tumor cell growth in human hepatoma cells (liver cancer), among the references for which were other anti-tumor, anti-bacterial, and hepato-protective studies.

In a study from the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry that is close to receiving 100 citations, the authors note that they are sequestering a large and scattered body of literature to present the nutritional compounds and effects of the lions mane mushroom.

The reported benefits, according to the researchers, include, antibiotic, anticarcinogenic, antidiabetic, antifatigue, antihypertensive, antihyperlipodemic, antisenescence, cardioprotective, hepatoprotective, nephroprotective, and neuroprotective properties and improvement of anxiety, cognitive function, and depression.

For the authors, they note that it is particularly the anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, and immuno-stimulating properties, shown in both human and animal cells, that gives this mushroom such a protective role in our biology.

While many people consider this blackish tar-like substance found in the Himalayas to be a fungus, its actually a kind of soil called humus. Its composed significantly of organic compounds, like triterpenes, phenolic lipids, and small tannoids: three things often present in large quantities in mushrooms.

Still, the ancient North Indians and denizens of the mountains there have used it for thousands of years, and its name, Divya Rasayan, means celestial super vitalizer.

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Studies have been done on shilajit which concluded nootropic effects, and others which looked at the properties shilajits content of fulvic acid, a compound which shuttles nutrients like energy, vitamins, and minerals into the cells in much higher quantities than other carriers like blood cells.

Theres little debate about the benefits of cordyceps, which one study noted is used to maintain vivacity and for boosting immunity. That same study noted the only thing misunderstood about cordyceps is whether its nutrients confer protective effects like a nutritional supplement, or whether theyre strong enough to be administered in medicine.

Another study noted its uses could be described as adaptogenic, anti-oxidant, anti-aging, neuroprotective, nootropic, immunomodulatory, anti-cancer, hepatoprotective, and even, the study notes, an aphrodisiac.

Yet another study described it as one of the most valuable medicinal mushrooms and nutraceuticals in China. The researchers cited other studies that showed both powerful anti-oxidant capabilities, and, perhaps most valuably, a tempering of the release of TNF-alpha and IL-1b-beta.

These molecules are known as inflammatory cytokines, which, being necessary for wound healing, are one of the major drivers in models of unhealthy aging.

CHECK OUT: Eating Mushrooms a Few Times a Week Could Dramatically Reduce Dementia Risk, Says 6-Year Study

Far from slimy, insect-ridden markers of death and decay, each fungus has huge potential as something bordering between nutritional supplements and outright medicine, and the incorporation of them in your diet can be a great idea.

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6 Marvelous Mushrooms and Their Myriad of Massive Health Benefits - Good News Network

A major consulting firm has released a report on Chinas online literature industry, shedding light on current trends in the booming billion-dollar market.

The report, published Wednesday by Guangzhou-based iiMedia Research Group, said that last year, Chinas online literature industry was worth 37.2 billion yuan ($5.75 billion), and is expected to reach 41.6 billion yuan this year. The report also said that, as writers born after 1995 have joined the fray, the market has become more diversified in terms of genres and writing styles.

In recent years, Chinese online literature has seen growing fan bases among not only domestic readers, but also those abroad, particularly the West. Some foreigners eagerly devour English versions of Chinese martial arts epics published through online platforms such as WuxiaWorld.

Zhang Yi, the CEO and chief analyst at iiMedia, told Sixth Tone that Chinas online literature market grew last year alongside an evolving domestic understanding of intellectual property.

Some leading platforms, such as China Literature, have more mature approaches toward commercialization and applying IP, he said. The IP market in TV, film, stage performances, and other mediums is becoming relatively more mature and open, while online literature platforms have better operations and clearer market strategies.

Included in iiMedias report is a list of the past years top authors. What kinds of stories are they telling, and what does this say about the tastes of Chinas readers? Heres our overview of some of the most interesting and popular series by iiMedias top-ranked authors.

The wuxia romance: You Fei

The online literature writer Priest is among the top five writers of works catering to female readers. Her series You Fei can be classified as a wuxia romance, centering on her protagonist, Zhou Fei, as she grows from a young and inexperienced girl to a knight-errant highly skilled in martial arts. You Fei is widely considered the top IP among online literature: the most coveted series for adaptation to TV or film. Its also unique as a female-oriented martial arts novel, which typically tells stories from a male perspective.

Although Priest finished the series in 2016, You Fei wound up in the spotlight last year when it premiered in December as a TV costume drama, Legend of Fei, starring popular actors Zhao Liying and Wang Yibo. The show attracted new readers to the series, which should bode well for the success of Priests future projects, according to iiMedias report. Previously, her series Zhen Hun, or Guardian, was also adapted into a hit TV drama in 2018.

Xia Lie, vice president of the Chinese Writers Associations Institute of Online Literature, described Priest as a talented writer covering a broad range of genres, from romance and martial arts to science fiction and danmei or stories of romantic relationships between men, usually told by women.

Each of her works makes you feel new and different, and the quality and creativity set her apart from other writers, Xia told Sixth Tone.

The Asian fantasy: The Path Toward Heaven

Topping the rankings of writers catering to male readers was Maoni, author of the series Dadao Chaotian, or The Path Toward Heaven, known for a style dubbed Asian fantasy. In this series, which concluded last August, the writer combined Asian and fantasy elements, telling stories from a made-up world where the characters are bent on achieving immortality.

Maonis work belongs to two popular Chinese fantasy subgenres, xuanhuan and xianxia, which draw from Chinas rich literary, cultural, and spiritual heritage, and tell fictional stories incorporating elements from Chinese mythology and Western fantasy.

The writer is known for transporting readers to vividly described fictional worlds. He has published six works including Qing Yu Nian, or Joy of Life. After being adapted to a TV drama in 2019, it won plaudits and high ratings from critics and casual viewers alike.

According to Xia, Maoni excels at developing characters and leaving readers thinking after theyre done with the latest installment. The characters are three-dimensional. They have personalities, they feel love and hate, they have childhood experiences and experiences that helped them grow and mature, he said. Moreover, after the story ends, youre left with the feeling that some serious philosophical thinking went into it.

The ancient romance: Shan He Sheng Yan

Tianxia Guiyuan, another famous online literature writer, is particularly well-known for her ancient romance novels and independent female protagonists. Since 2008, she has written eight stories of the same genre, including Empress Fuyao and Huang Quan, triggering a literary wave of female-oriented romance stories set in ancient times.

Her novel Shan He Sheng Yan, published last year, is the most popular work listed among pieces catered to female readers, with a total readership of over 17 million.

But some readers think Tianxia Guiyuans latest series is out of step with her previous works. On Q&A site Zhihu, users have complained about a male characters bad romantic relationships with women becoming a recurring frustration for the female protagonist. Some have also taken issue with what they view as superfluous writing and forced online slang thats more awkward than cool.

Nonetheless, many of the writers novels with television adaptations have been well-received by audiences, who feel connected to the plot and drawn to the characters as in the case of Legend of Fuyao, a 2018 production starring high-profile actors Yang Mi and Ruan Jingtian, adapted from Empress Fuyao.

The medical story: Great Doctor Ling Ran

Some online novels on iiMedias list, though not at the top, are important because they tell contemporary stories incorporating real-life elements. The year 2020 was gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic and its lingering uncertainties, setting the stage for stories revolving around health and medicine.

Great Doctor Ling Ran by Zhi Niao Cun, a series still in progress, is about an ambitious medical student who hopes to become an outstanding surgeon and ultimately achieves his dream by going on an epic journey. With an eponymous TV series expected later this year, online anticipation and expectations are already mounting.

According to Xia, the series is like a written video game: Every time the main character successfully completes a surgery, he levels up, gaining experience and new skills.

Despite the story veering toward what Xia called illusory reality, he said the medical information it presents is quite accurate. When writing about hospital departments and human body parts, he said, the content is so well-researched that even a real doctor would be hard-pressed to find fault with it.

Editor: David Paulk.

(Icons: Iconscout/People Visual)

(Header image: A man passes by the online literature booth at the Shanghai Book Fair, Aug. 17, 2019. People Visual)

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Here Are the Top Reads From China's $5 Billion Online Literature Market - Sixth Tone

The year 2020 will go down in history as the annus horribilis for the human race; the year that millions of lives were forfeited to a tiny and inanimate virus with no sensate hope or ambition. Yet, the coronavirus has decimated millions, and left many millions more cowering in our helplessness. This is one terrible year when most humans, for whom death is often a distant thought, came face to face with the possibility of a sudden demise from a COVID-19 ambush. 2020 has been the very definition of uncertainty for everyone, from the mighty to the lowly. We all got sucked into the vortex palpable fearno one knew when the virus will strike, where it could be contracted, or how fatal it could be. COVID-19 became the most lethal of all the enemies humans have ever contended with. And it fueled our uncertainty in the very fact that we had no certain fact about its character and modus operandi.

As the usual tradition goes with the coming of a new year, we all welcomed 2020 with hope and resolutions. Governments made budgets, humans made plans, organizations made projections. The year was to be the usual in the trajectory of human activities and busyness. Children will be born, and adult will grow old and die. There will be achievements all around the world, and calamities too. The usual diseases will keep ravaging humanity, from cancer to tuberculosis. All the states of the world would battle their normal internal crises and predicament, and few resolutions would be made. And yet, we all neglected what had been on humanitys radar since humanity began its civilizational march many centuries ago; the very underbelly of humans desire to transcend themselves.

COVID-19 brought humanity very low. It humbled us at the very height of our civilizational achievements. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher, once perceptively remarked: The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. Since the Stone Age, and then the Industrial Revolution, humanity has grown beyond its cradle which is the earth. We not only concretized the fragility of the earth; we also have turned our attention to the space. Humanity has arrived at what Mark Twain called the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. This validates the Yoruba adage that when humans have eaten and are surfeited, they then look for unnecessary distractions.

After civilization had settled the issue of survival, it was then time for humans to transcend themselves, especially through the discoveries of science and technology and its limitless possibilities and dangers in ways that are often indistinguishable. When humans cracked the secret of the atom, we arrived at the nuclear reactor as well as the nuclear atomic bomb. We now contemplate a posthuman world with the breakthrough with artificial intelligence.

In its very essence, civilization commenced as humanitys search for survival. It has now been transformed into an exploration of our possible immortality. To be human is not only to be mortal, but to also have the capacity to perceive the infinite, which we do not see in our finitude. Humanity is trapped in the yearning for infinitude; the desire to undermine our mortality and live forever. Abraham Lincoln puts it better: Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality. And so, once the first land was tilled and farmed, agriculture enabled humans to conquer starvation. But it also enabled an abundance that helped us to keep staving off death. With medicine, humans started to invade the genetic code to hold off the principle of ageing encoded into our being. We started battling diseases and sicknesses, and also death. Immortality therefore lies in the achievement of civilization for humanity. We have to keep overreaching ourselves in other to be able to overreach our mortality.

Unfortunately, civilization is what makes you sick, says Paul Gauguin, the French post-impressionist artist. But more than this, civilization already puts in stock the pointer to what will eradicate humanitythe nuclear threat, and the virus. Since the combined effort of humanitys brilliant scientists unlocked the secret of the atom, the human race has remained on the precipice of self-destruction. When Hiroshima and Nagasaki snowballed into the atomic mushroom, we saw in that catastrophe, the possibility of undermining our own race for immortality. That is the paradox of civilization: it contained the seed for our immortality and our destruction in unequal proportion. In other words, we are more likely to be destroyed than to achieve immortality. If humanity is destroyed, then there will be no one left to remember us. This is where the insight of Emerson leads usthe civilization we have invented to ensure our immortality is what will most likely kill and efface us and all the infinitude we ever hoped for.

The reality of our accelerated mortality came alive in 2020. Nature rebelled against the unmitigated assault on her sanctity and exploitation. A family of the coronaviruses jumped its boundary and landed in the civilized space of humanity. And we were not prepared because we have always underestimated the virus. After all, we seem to have got the structure of most of the viruses we know and their epidemiological features. The common cold is one of the most dangerous ailment afflicting humanity, but we seem to have tamed it. What can we not tame? Yet, we have arrived at the limit of human hubris. And it is neither yet from aliens in outer spaces nor from artificial intelligence. It is from a lowly virus that is inorganic and inanimate. There is less we know about the virus and its behavior than we really know. The novelty of the coronavirus effectively undermines the accumulated scientific knowledge about its type that we have stockpiled for decades.

Mercifully, 2020 has also become the year in which humanity has managed to get an understanding of the vaccination that will stop the virus in its deadly track. Of course, human beings have the resilience to always overcome whatever adversity is brought on them either naturally or by their own efforts. But then, humanity has brought itself too many times to the precipice of destruction not to take notice of the dangerous side of our existence and the search for immortality. Essentially, it is human hubris that brought the pandemic of 2020 upon us. It is our inability to take stock of our civilizational progress and how far we are willing to go to transcend our humanity. It is certain that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, for instance, and all the others almost ready for us will provide instant relief from the scourge of the COVID-19. But should the fact of the vaccines, or human resilience in the face of troubles, blind us to how far-fetched our search for immortality is, or how dangerous?

Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, has a piece of wisdom we can draw on: A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses. What insight do we need to urgently derive from this pandemic, and from others that have afflicted humankind? What deep lessons does COVID-19 teach us in 2020? It is simple: there is a need to de-escalate humanitys rush for self-destruction. If this family of coronavirus could make the fatal jump into the human host, there are so many more that can. Thus, the arrival of the breakthrough in vaccination against the coronavirus ought not be interpreted as the resumption of our human normality or the onslaught against nature. On the contrary, it ought to be a time to pause and reassess what it means to be human, and what civilization ought to mean.

And more than this, we need a redefinition of what it means to be immortal. Humans can only be immortal in the face of posterity and the state in which we leave the world. Posterity is our immortality. Unfortunately, the logic of civilization is often oriented towards a further exploitation of the universe with scant thought for what future generations will make of the progress we have achieved, and the failures we leave behind. It ought to be clear to humanity now that civilization is amok.

From the First to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, humans are barely managing the benefits of progress since we are ever confronted with the threat of imploding the world as we know it. 2020 and the pandemic make it very clear to us that we are nearer destruction, and the undermining of our own immortality, that we imagine. The COVID-19, uncontained, has the capacity to kill the whole of humanity. And we have barely even managed to get it arrested. And who knows what the future of more scientific and technological breakthrough holds? The coronavirus is insisting on the imperatives of weighing human progress on the scale of morality. Civilizational progress is not an unconditional good. It needs to be tempered by further thought on how our immortality can be retained in the womb of the future of those yet unborn.

Prof. Tunji Olaopa, Retired Federal Permanent Secretary & Directing Staff, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, tolaopa2003@gmail.com, tolaopa@isgpp.com.ng.

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Loose Women: Dr Hilary discusses how to live longer

WE ALL know someone who waltzed into their 60s looking 10 years younger, or someone who turned 50 looking weathered, exhausted, and a decade older than the candles on their birthday cake would suggest. The latest results in the biology of ageing show us this difference is more than just skin-deep. The differing rate of grey hair or wrinkles appearing is an external sign of the ageing process moving at different rates in different people. Were only just beginning to learn why this is, how we might be able to use medicine to change our rate of ageing, and how this could help us all lead longer and, most importantly, healthier lives.

Lets start by defining ageing, as understood by a biologist. The simplest definition is slightly morbid: how fast you age is how fast your risk of death changes with time.

Its well known that older people are more likely to die than younger ones, but the hard numbers are shocking.

As a 30-something, Ive got odds of death of roughly one in 1,000 per year; when Im 64, those odds will be more like one per cent, which still isnt bad; but, if Im lucky enough to make it into my 90s, my risk of not making my next birthday will be a sobering one in six life and death at the roll of a dice.

The reason for this is an exponential rise in the risk of disease. Were always being told to not smoke, to watch our weight, and to exercise to stave off problems like cancer and heart disease.

But eventually, no matter how well you live, these diseases will catch up with you simply because of your age.

The risk from being old dwarfs those from other sources: for example, having high blood pressure doubles your risk of having a heart attack; being 80 rather than 40 multiplies your risk by 10.

The end result of all seven or eight billion people on Earth running this gauntlet is that ageing is the single largest cause of death.

Of the roughly 150,000 people who die every day, more than 100,000 die of ageing.

Global life expectancy was 72.6 years in 2019, which surveys show is higher than most of us realise.

This is fantastic news, and means that people around the world are living longer, healthier lives than ever before but it also means many people in most countries are living long enough to suffer the diseases and dysfunctions of ageing.

Humans have a risk of death that doubles every eight years or so. That eight-year doubling time defines our rate of ageing as a species.

However, weve already seen how some people defy those odds, for better or worse. Studies show that people who look older on the outside are biologically older on the inside.

One 2009 scientific paper asked a panel to assess peoples ages based on a picture of their face, and found that those who looked older were at greater risk of death, even after accounting for how old they really were.

One of the factors that can affect your rate of ageing is your genes.

The good news for most is that the effect isnt as large as you might think: recent research suggests that maybe 10 to 20 per cent of how long you live is determined by genes. The rest is down to lifestyle and luck.

Whether your parents or grandparents made it to 65 or 85, it doesnt put a ceiling on how long you can live, and theres plenty to play for if you try to live well.

However, the place where genetics seems to make a very big difference is in extreme long life, particularly in those who live to over 100 years old.

If you have a parent or sibling who makes it to 100, youre something like 10 times more likely to do so yourself than someone who didnt.

Look at the royals: the Queen Mother was 101 years old when she died, the Queen is 94, and Prince Philip is 99 I wouldnt bet against a future King Charles (currently 72) having a decently long reign, even if his mum has a few more years in her.

And Prue Leith at 80 and Sir David Attenborough at 94 defy the years as broadcasters.

We know that animals age at remarkably different rates to us.

Were used to watching pet dogs and cats age in a similar way to humans becoming frail, losing hearing and vision, and finally dying but on a much shorter timetable than their owners.

Hamsters, gerbils or mice age faster still. But people with a pet tortoise know that, depending on the species, their animals might outlive them. And some types dont just age slower than people: they dont age at all.

These tortoises display what scientists call negligible senescence, also known as biological immortality.

This means that their risk of death doesnt change depending on how old they are.

Since their average risk of death is around one or two per cent per year, some lucky animals can live for more than 100 years.

One of the worlds oldest, a tortoise called Jonathan living on the island of St Helena, is nearing his 190th birthday.

The fact that the rate of ageing can be so different between different people and animals shows us something remarkable: ageing isnt inevitable.

Theres nothing written in the laws of biology that dictates how fast animals must get old, or even that ageing is necessary at all.

The question is, can humans learn from tortoises example, and become biologically immortal ourselves?

This wouldnt mean living forever but it would mean longer, healthier lives, putting off frailty, forgetfulness, hearing loss, impotence, incontinence, disease and all the other trials of old age until later in life.

And it isnt science fiction either: the latest breakthroughs in the lab show slowing and even reversing ageing is possible.

Scientists have identified hallmarks of the ageing process the biological changes that drive everything from wrinkles, to muscle loss, to an increased risk of cancer.

Even more excitingly, weve got treatments for these hallmarks, some of which are already being trialled in humans.

If they work, they could allow us to prevent many of the problems of ageing simultaneously.

Probably the most exciting are senolytic drugs, which kill aged senescent cells that accumulate in our bodies as we get older.

These are cells that have divided too many times, or suffered catastrophic levels of damage.

They stop dividing, and start sending out molecular messages to let the immune system know that they need clearing up.

Most senescent cells are dealt with by our immune system as requested, but a handful slip through the net and, ironically, its their calls for help that seem to accelerate the ageing process.

These messenger molecules accelerate many of the problems of ageing, and can even encourage other cells to turn senescent, causing a vicious cycle that amplifies as we get older.

Giving mice senolytic drugs to kill these cells seems to make them biologically younger: a 2018 study which prescribed them to 24-month-old mice (roughly equivalent to 70 years in humans) made them live a month or two longer (a few years, in human terms), even though theyd started the treatment very late in life.

Removing senescent cells also improves heart function, slows the onset of disease and dementia, helps old mice run further and faster, and even gives them better fur something wed all like as we get older!

Senescent cells are one of the hallmarks of ageing, and the fact that medicines targeting them affect multiple age-related problems doesnt come as a surprise to scientists.

The idea is, if we could come up with treatments for all of the hallmarks, we could slow or reverse many aspects of ageing, all at once, and with them, many or even most of the diseases and other problems that come with old age.

This could lead to the biggest revolution in medicine since the discovery of antibiotics. Just like an antibiotic can treat multiple bacterial infections, an anti-ageing drug could treat multiple age-related diseases.

Our current model of medicine means that if you get cancer, you see an oncologist, or if you have heart problems, a cardiologist, and so on.

Real anti-ageing treatments would mean that we could attack these problems at their root by hitting the biological processes that make us more likely to get cancer or heart disease in the first place.

And, because the same processes are behind wrinkles and grey hair as are behind increasing risk of disease, these drugs could make us look younger too, as a fortunate side-effect.

May cause mild fever, nausea and reduce skin wrinkles is something many of us would be happy to see on the side of a pot of pills especially if those pills also beat back the single largest cause of human death and suffering.

My new book, Ageless: The New Science Of Getting Older Without Getting Old, takes you through the biomedical breakthroughs that could allow us to slow or reverse all of the hallmarks of ageing.

I think we should be aiming for tortoise-like negligible senescence for humans too a risk of death, disease, frailty, dementia and so on that doesnt depend on how long ago you were born. After centuries of quacks pushing elixirs and decades of dodgy claims on pricey skin creams, we may finally be on the cusp of real anti-ageing medicines.

Its an exciting time to be alive and we may all be alive a little longer to enjoy the excitement.

Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old by Andrew Steele (Bloomsbury, 20) is out now. For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via expressbookshop.co.uk

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How to live longer: Health expert reveals how science can stop and even REVERSE ageing - Express

When the biologist Andrew Steele tells people his thoughts on ageing that we might one day cure it as if it were any other disease they are often incredulous and sometimes hostile. Once, at a friends wedding, he left a group of guests mildly incensed for suggesting that near-future humans might live well into their 100s. A similar thing happens at dinner parties, where the responses are more polite but no less sceptical. He understands the reaction. We think of ageing as an inescapable fact of life were born, we grow old, so it goes. Thats been the narrative for thousands of years, he says, on a video call. But what if it didnt have to be?

Steele began professional life as a physicist. As a child, he was fascinated by space, the way many scientists are. But he has spent the past three years researching a book about biogerontology, the scientific study of ageing, in which he argues the case for a future in which our lives go on and on. Steele considers ageing the greatest humanitarian issue of our time. When he describes growing old as the biggest cause of suffering in the world, he is being earnest. Ageing is this inevitable, creeping thing that happens, he says. He is wearing a button-down shirt and, at 35, a look of still-youthful optimism. Were all quite blind to its magnitude. But what do people die of? Cancer. Heart disease. Stroke. These things all occur in old people, and they primarily occur because of the ageing process.

Steele defines ageing as the exponential increase in death and suffering with time, and he thinks it would be helpful to finally grapple with this raw quantity of suffering. The human risk of death doubles every seven or eight years. We tend to breeze through the first five or six decades of life relatively unscathed, health-wise. Maybe we wake up at 50 with an ache, or slightly sagging skin, but still we are generally considered unlucky if we discover a tumour or develop arthritis or suffer heart problems. The death of a 50-year-old from disease is a premature death.

But at some point in our 60s a kind of cliff edge appears, and often we have no choice but to stumble over it. Easy movements become hard. We begin to lose our hearing and our sight. Frustrating and embarrassing things start to happen. Why cant I feel the tips of my toes? What on earth has happened to my hip? The body has worked tirelessly for years, and the cumulative internal effects of that action the problematic buildup of aged, senescent cells; the dangerous mutations of other cells; the steady decline of the immune system; the general wearing-down of the bodys structures suddenly predispose us to a variety of age-related diseases: cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, dementia. A 10-year-olds risk of death is 0.00875%. At 65, the risk has risen to 1%. By the time we turn 92 we have a one in five chance of dying that year. For decades we are mostly fine, Steele says, and then, all of a sudden, were not.

The dream of anti-ageing medicine, Steele writes in his book, Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old, is treatments that would identify the root causes of dysfunction as we get older, then slow their progression or reverse them entirely. These root causes are what biogerontologists call hallmarks. Cancer isnt a hallmark of ageing, Steele says now. But its caused by several of the hallmarks of ageing. If scientists can address those hallmarks, we can come up with treatments that slow down the whole ageing process, deferring diseases into the future.

The hope isnt that we get to live longer for the sake of it, it is that we live longer in good health. Some people call this longevity; Steele refers to increasing a persons healthspan. Theres this misconception when you talk to people about treating ageing, he says. They imagine theyre going to live longer but in a state of terrible decrepitude, that youre going to extend their 80s and 90s so theyre sat in a care home for 50 years. That doesnt make sense from a logical perspective or a practical one.

I say, What would be the point?

Exactly!

Its just more pain

Nobody would want it, he says. Then he raises an eyebrow. Its surprising that people would actually think scientists would want that.

Humans have been searching for a cure for ageing for thousands of years. Herodotus wrote of the Fountain of Youth in the 5th century BC; countless people have made lengthy, futile quests for life-extending elixirs. Until recently, very little was known about why we age and how. For a long time, scientists looked at it and thought, Oh God, this is going to be some immeasurably complex process that we cant possibly hope to study in a lab, Steele says, which dissuaded research. Until the 1960s, it was generally accepted that our role on this Earth was to produce children, and that once wed succeeded in that undertaking, our bodies, fulfilled of function, would be left to slowly fade.

But in the past three decades biogerontological research has accelerated, and recent successes have sparked excitement. A 2015 study, published by the Mayo Clinic, in the US, found that using a combination of existing drugs dasatinib, a cancer medicine, and quercetin, which is sometimes used as a dietary suppressant to remove senescent cells in mice reversed a number of signs of ageing, including improving heart function. A 2018 study that used the same drugs found that the combination slowed or partially reversed the ageing process in older mice. In another study, the drug spermidine extended the lifespans of mice by 10%, and studies using the drug rapamycin have extended the healthspans of mice, worms and flies, though it comes with problematic side-effects, including the suppression of the immune system and the loss of hair. Last year, scientists in Texas transplanted stem cells from young mice into elderly ones, adding three months to their average lifespans, which in equivalent human terms could be worth more than a decade.

To Steele this is all thrilling. The pace of change has been dizzying, he says of recent developments. Though it is the fact that human trials have begun that excites him most. After the success in mice, the first trial aimed at removing senescent cells in humans began in 2018, and others are ongoing. A more recent study found that a combination of hormones and drugs appears to help rejuvenate the thymus, which contributes to the immune system but degenerates rapidly with age. Next year, a landmark trial will begin to investigate whether metformin, a drug used to treat diabetes, might in fact delay the development or progression of age-related chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and dementia.

In Ageless, Steele writes, This collection of evidence is tantalising, and foreshadows a future where ageing will be treated. He also writes: This future may not be far away. When I ask him what he means by not far away, exactly, he smiles. Scientists are rightly sceptical, he says, but its important to say that a lot of significant breakthroughs could happen in the lifespan of people alive today.

I ask, Can you be more specific?

Eventually, he says, I think we are very likely to have a drug that treats ageing in the next 10 years.

Steele believes we will be hopelessly unlucky if scientists dont make a breakthrough within that time, given how many human trials are in progress or upcoming. And although these breakthroughs wont result in treatments that extend our lives by 100 years, they will give us enough extra time to ensure were alive for subsequent breakthroughs, subsequent treatments, subsequent additions in lifespan and so on. Our lives will be extended not all in one go but incrementally one year, another year, suddenly were 150. In Ageless, Steele talks of a generation of people that grows up expecting to die but, thanks to an accumulation of new treatments, each more effective than the last, just doesnt. One after another, he writes, lifesaving medical breakthroughs will push their funerals further and further into the future.

What Steele is talking about isnt immortality; people will continue to die. Science wont help if, looking down at your phone, you walk out into the road and get hit by a car. Or if you fall off a ladder and break your neck. Or if you are unlucky enough to be hit by a missile in a war zone. Or if you contract a virulent infectious disease that has no vaccine. But it will result in lifespans that are significantly longer than what we currently consider normal.

I ask if Steele expects there to someday be lots of 150-year-olds wandering around, as healthy as 20-year-olds.

Yes, he says, if it all works.

I say, 200-year-olds playing football in the park?

Why not? he says. The trouble is, saying were going to have 150-year-olds walking around looking like 20-year-olds, its weird. It sounds sci-fi. It sounds a bit creepy. Ultimately, I dont want this because I want to have a load of 150-year-olds looking like 20-year-olds, I want it because those 150-year-olds wont have cancer, they wont have heart disease, they wont be struggling with arthritis. Theyll still be playing with their grandkids, their great-grandkids even. Its about the health and lifestyle benefits.

When Steele brings up his work with people, the question he gets asked most often is: What about overpopulation? He has a go-to answer he thinks highlights the ridiculousness of the question. Imagine were staring down the barrel of 15bn people on Earth, he says. There are lots of ways to try and tackle that problem. Would one of them be: invent ageing?

That he is asked this question so frequently frustrates him. More so, he is bothered by the implication that what he is suggesting is somehow weird or inhuman or unholy, rather than ultimately helpful for society. If Id just written a book about how were going to cure childhood leukaemia using some amazing new medicine, he says, literally nobody would be like, But isnt that going to increase the global population?

He shakes his head.

What Im saying is, Here is an idea that could cure cancer, heart disease, stroke Curing any one of those things would get you plaudits. But as soon as you suggest a potentially effective way of dealing with them altogether, suddenly youre some mad scientist who wants to overpopulate us into some terrible environmental apocalypse?

Steele considers this a major hurdle in biogerontologys potential success our incredible bias toward the status quo of ageing as an inevitable process, and our inability to accept it as preventable. If we lived in a society where there was no ageing, and suddenly two-thirds of people started degenerating over decades, started losing their strength, started losing their mental faculties, and then succumbing to these awful diseases, it would be unthinkable. And of course, wed set to work trying to cure it.

He makes reference to the pandemic. The coronavirus exemplifies the problem we have in terms of funding science, in trying to confront these kinds of challenges. Because its so acute, because it all of a sudden appeared on the scene and the entire global economy was dragged to a halt, we see this very clear, current, present need to do something about it. And yet if you look at ageing, or even climate change, these are slow-moving disasters, and so theyre easy to miss. It is not lost on him that ageing-related drugs might have reduced the impact of the coronavirus, given it is a disease that is particularly life-threatening among older populations. To this end, he thinks biogerontology will eventually dramatically change the role of medicine, from being primarily reactive to primarily preventive. Weve somehow unintentionally drifted into this state in society where we end up treating endpoints, almost in a state of panic, at the last minute, he says, rather than preventing them beforehand.

Steele considers Ageless a call to arms, and is hopeful it presents enough evidence to finally convince the public as well as regulators, who currently dont define ageing as a disease, which makes it difficult to receive support for trials that ageing is a problem to be fixed. There is a kneejerk reaction to biogerontology, just because it sounds strange, he says. We place ageing research in this separate category socially, morally, ethically, even scientifically. When, actually, its just an extension of the normal goals of modern medicine.

Writing a book on ageing, it turns out, is a good way to make you reappraise your own lifestyle. These days, Steele is running more than he used to, and he has begun to watch what and how much he eats. Its not like I was ever a massive couch potato, he says. But, equally, I have tried to optimise things. In the absence of anti-ageing drugs, he suggests we all do the same. It seems that a lot of the sort of basic health advice that everyone can recite do some exercise, dont be overweight, try to eat a broad range of foods, dont smoke all that stuff basically slows down the ageing process.

I tell him Ive spoken to people who are taking several unproven supplements a day, hoping to eke out a few more years, and of others who, ahead of the trial, are already taking the experimental drug metformin.

Given that Im in my 30s, he says, I think the case against metformin is stronger than the case for. The evidence is suggestive, but its not conclusive. And theres a spectrum. There are people who are experimenting with senolytics. There was the case of the biotech CEO who went to Colombia and had gene therapy. But the data in humans just isnt there. He adds: The same is true of so many of these supplements and health foods. If any of these things did have a substantial effect, wed know about it.

When I ask him what he thinks of the anti-ageing industry all of those creams and serums that promise rejuvenation, our modern-day elixirs he says, Id like to completely obviate it. If the breakthroughs do come, they are likely to significantly change the structure of our time on Earth. We are used to the three-act life: we are young and learn, we are middle-aged and work, we are old and retire. But what happens if we live another 100 years? Might we go back to school at 60, or switch careers at 105 or, at 40, decide to take some kind of 20-year soul-searching hiatus, knowing well have a century or more to do other things having returned from whatever wilderness we had run away to?

And what about death? At one point during our conversation, I ask Steele if he imagines a time when dying becomes a choice. He thinks the question is overblown. Because death is inevitable people have rationalised it as something that drives life, or gives life meaning, or adds some sort of poetry to the human condition, he says. But I think, broadly speaking, death is bad. If there was less death in the world, I think most people would agree that was a good thing. And though my passion for treating ageing isnt driven by reducing the amount of death, its driven by reducing ill health in later life, its driven by conquering disease, its driven by getting rid of suffering, if theres less death as a side-effect? I dont think thats a bad thing.

Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old by Andrew Steele is published by Bloomsbury at 20. Buy it from guardianbookshop.com for 17.40

The root causes of ageing are called hallmarks. Treat these and you slow ageing.

1. Genomic instability As we age, we accumulate genetic damage. Simply, over time, our DNA gets mangled. It is thought that if scientists can find a way to repair that damage, they will then be able impact the ageing process.

2. Cellular senescence The longer we live, the more chance we have of experiencing a build-up of senescent (old) cells, which tend to hang around in the body and can contribute to the onset of age-related diseases.

3. Mitochondrial dysfunction Mitochondria are organelles that generate the energy our cells need to power necessary biochemical reactions. It has been found that mitochondrial dysfunction can accelerate ageing.

Originally posted here:
Do we have to age? - The Guardian