A drug that can extend your life by 25%? Don’t hold your breath
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Every few weeks or months, the media reports on a new study that tantalisingly dangles the possibility of a new drug to give us longer, healthier lives.
The latest study centres around a drug involved in targeting interleukin-11, a protein involved in inflammation. Blocking this protein appeared to help mice stave off disease and extend their life by more than 20%.
If only defying the ravages of time could be achieved through such a simple and effort-free way – by taking a pill. But as is so often the case, the real-world significance of these findings falls a fair way short of the hype.
The role of inflammation in disease and ageing
Chronic inflammation in the body plays a role in causing disease and accelerating ageing. In fact, a relatively new label has been coined to represent this: “inflammaging”.
While acute inflammation is an important response to infection or injury, if inflammation persists in the body, it can be very damaging.
A number of lifestyle, environmental and societal drivers contribute to chronic inflammation in the modern world. These are largely the factors we already know are associated with disease and ageing, including poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity, stress, lack of sleep, lack of social connection and pollution.
While addressing these issues directly is one of the keys to addressing chronic inflammation, disease and ageing, there are a number of research groups also exploring how to treat chronic inflammation with pharmaceuticals. Their goal is to target and modify the molecular and chemical pathways involved in the inflammatory process itself.
What the latest research shows
This new interleukin-11 research was conducted in mice and involved a number of separate components.
In one component of this research, interleukin-11 was genetically knocked out in mice. This means the gene for this chemical mediator was removed from these mice, resulting in the mice no longer being able to produce this mediator at all.
In this part of the study, the mice’s lives were extended by over 20%, on average.
Another component of this research involved treating older mice with a drug that blocks interleukin-11.
Injecting this drug into 75-week old mice (equivalent to 55-year-old humans) was found to extend the life of mice by 22-25%.
These treated mice were less likely to get cancer and had lower cholesterol levels, lower body weight and improved muscle strength and metabolism.
From these combined results, the authors concluded, quite reasonably, that blocking interleukin-11 may potentially be a key to mitigating age-related health effects and improving lifespan in both mice and humans.
Why you shouldn’t be getting excited just yet
There are several reasons to be cautious of these findings.
First and most importantly, this was a study in mice. It may be stating the obvious, but mice are very different to humans. As such, this finding in a mouse model is a long way down the evidence hierarchy in terms of its weight.
Research shows only about 5% of promising findings in animals carry over to humans. Put another way, approximately 95% of promising findings in animals may not be translated to specific therapies for humans.
Second, this is only one study. Ideally, we would be looking to have these findings confirmed by other researchers before even considering moving on to the next stage in the knowledge discovery process and examining whether these findings may be true for humans.
We generally require a larger body of evidence before we get too excited about any new research findings and even consider the possibility of human trials.
Third, even if everything remains positive and follow-up studies support the findings of this current study, it can take decades for a new finding like this to be translated to successful therapies in humans.
Until then, we can focus on doing the things we already know make a huge difference to health and longevity: eating well, exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing stress and nurturing social relationships.
Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Signs Of Low Estrogen In Women: What Your Skin, Hair, & Nails Are Trying To Tell You
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Skin, hair, and nails are often thought of purely as a beauty thing, but in fact they can be indicative of a lot of other aspects of health. Dr. Andrea Suarez takes us through some of them in this video about the systemic (i.e., whole-body, not just related to sex things) effects of estrogen, and/or a deficiency thereof.
Beyond the cosmetic
Low estrogen levels are usual in women during and after untreated menopause, resulting in various changes in the skin, hair, and nails, that reflect deeper issues, down to bone health, heart health, brain health, and more. Since we can’t see our bones or hearts or brains without scans (or a serious accident/incident), we’re going to focus on the outward signs of estrogen deficiency.
Estrogen helps maintain healthy collagen production, skin elasticity, wound healing, and moisture retention, making it essential for youthful and resilient skin. Declining estrogen levels with menopause lead to a thinner epidermis, decreased collagen production, and more pronounced wrinkles. Skin elasticity also diminishes, which slows the skin’s ability to recover from stretching or deformation. Wound healing also becomes slower, increasing the risk of infections and extended recovery periods after injuries or surgeries—bearing in mind that collagen is needed in everything from our skin to our internal connective tissue (fascia) and joints and bones. So all those things are going to struggle to recover from injury (and surgery is also an injury) without it.
Other visible changes associated with declining estrogen include significant dryness as a result of reduced hyaluronic acid and glycosaminoglycan production, which are essential for moisture retention. The skin becomes more prone to irritation and increased water loss. Additionally, estrogen deficiency results in less resistance to oxidative stress, making the skin more susceptible to damage from environmental factors such as UV radiation and pollution, as well as any from-the-inside pollution that some may have depending on diet and lifestyle.
Acne and enlarged pores are associated with increased testosterone, but testosterone and estrogen are antagonistic in most ways, and in this case a decrease in estrogen will do the same, due increased unopposed androgen signaling affecting the oil glands. The loss of supportive collagen also causes the skin around pores to lose structure, making them appear larger. The reduction in skin hydration further exacerbates the visibility of pores and can contribute to the development of blackheads due to abnormal cell turnover.
Blood vessel issues tend to arise as estrogen levels drop, leading to a reduction in angiogenesis, i.e. the formation and integrity of blood vessels. This results in more fragile and leaky blood vessels, making the skin more prone to bruising, especially on areas frequently exposed to the sun, such as the backs of the hands. This weakened vasculature also further contributes to the slower wound healing that we talked about, due to less efficient delivery of growth factors.
Hair and nail changes often accompany estrogen deficiency. Women may notice hair thinning, increased breakage, and a greater likelihood of androgenic alopecia. The texture of the hair can change, becoming more brittle. Similarly, nails can develop ridges, split more easily, and become more fragile due to reduced collagen and keratin production, which also affects the skin around the nails.
As for what to do about it? Management options for estrogen-deficient skin include:
- Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which can improve skin elasticity, boost collagen production, and reduce dryness and fragility, as well as addressing the many more serious internal things that are caused by the same deficiency as these outward signs.
- Low-dose topical estrogen cream, which can help alleviate skin dryness and increase skin strength, won’t give the systemic benefits (incl. to bones, heart, brain, etc) that only systemic HRT can yield.
- Plant-based phytoestrogens, which are not well-evidenced, but may be better than nothing if nothing is your only other option. However, if you are taking anything other form of estrogen, don’t use phytoestrogens as well, or they will compete for estrogen receptors, and do the job not nearly so well while impeding the bioidentical estrogen from doing its much better job.
And for all at any age, sunscreen continues to be one of the best things to put on one’s skin for general skin health, and this is even more true if running low on estrogen.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
These Signs Often Mean These Nutrient Deficiencies (Do You Have Any?)
Take care!
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We looked at over 166,000 psychiatric records. Over half showed people were admitted against their will
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Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia.
Hopefully, both could be treated on a voluntary basis, taking into account their individual needs, preferences and capacity to consent. If not, you might imagine they should be equally likely to receive treatment against their will (known colloquially as being “sectioned” or “scheduled”).
However, our research published in British Journal of Psychiatry Open suggests this is not the case.
In the largest study globally of its kind, we found Australians are more likely to be treated in hospital for their acute mental illness against their will if they are born overseas, speak a language other than English or are unemployed.
What we did and what we found
We examined more than 166,000 episodes of voluntary and involuntary psychiatric care in New South Wales public hospitals between 2016 and 2021. Most admissions (54%) included at least one day of involuntary care.
Being brought to hospital via legal means, such as by police or via a court order, was strongly linked to involuntary treatment.
While our study does not show why this is the case, it may be due to mental health laws. In NSW, which has similar laws to most jurisdictions in Australia, doctors may treat a person on an involuntary basis if they present with certain symptoms indicating serious mental illness (such as hallucinations and delusions) which cause them to require protection from serious harm, and there is no other less-restrictive care available. Someone who has been brought to hospital by police or the courts may be more likely to meet the legal requirement of requiring protection from serious harm.
The likelihood of involuntary care was also linked to someone’s diagnosis. A person with psychosis or organic brain diseases, such as dementia and delirium, were about four times as likely to be admitted involuntarily compared to someone with anxiety or adjustment disorders (conditions involving a severe reaction to stressors).
However, our data suggest non-clinical factors contribute to the decision to impose involuntary care.
Compared with people born in Australia, we found people born in Asia were 42% more likely to be treated involuntarily.
People born in Africa or the Middle East were 32% more likely to be treated this way.
Overall, people who spoke a language other than English were 11% more likely to receive involuntary treatment compared to those who spoke English as their first language.
Some international researchers have suggested higher rates of involuntary treatment seen in people born overseas might be due to higher rates of psychotic illness. But our research found a link between higher rates of involuntary care in people born overseas or who don’t speak English regardless of their diagnosis.
We don’t know why this is happening. It is likely to reflect a complex interplay of factors about both the people receiving treatment and the way services are provided to them.
People less likely to be treated involuntarily included those who hold private health insurance, and those referred through a community health centre or outpatients unit.
Our findings are in line with international studies. These show higher rates of involuntary treatment among people from Black and ethnic minority groups, and people living in areas of higher socioeconomic disadvantage.
A last resort? Or should we ban it?
Both the NSW and Australian mental health commissions have called involuntary psychiatric care an avoidable harm that should only be used as a last resort.
Despite this, one study found Australia’s rate of involuntary admissions has increased by 3.4% per year and it has one of the highest rates of involuntary admissions in the world.
Involuntary psychiatric treatment is also under increasing scrutiny globally.
When Australia signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it added a declaration noting it would allow for involuntary treatment of people with mental illness where such treatments are “necessary, as a last resort and subject to safeguards”.
However, the UN has rejected this, saying it is a fundamental human right “to be free from involuntary detention in a mental health facility and not to be forced to undergo mental health treatment”.
Others question if involuntary treatment could ever be removed entirely.
Where to from here?
Our research not only highlights concerns regarding how involuntary psychiatric treatment is implemented, it’s a first step towards decreasing its use. Without understanding how and when it is used it will be difficult to create effective interventions to reduce it.
But Australia is still a long way from significantly reducing involuntary treatment.
We need to provide more care options outside hospital, ones accessible to all Australians, including those born overseas, who don’t speak English, or who come from disadvantaged communities. This includes intervening early enough that people are supported to not become so unwell they end up being referred for treatment via police or the criminal justice system.
More broadly, we need to do more to reduce stigma surrounding mental illness and to ensure poverty and discrimination are tackled to help prevent more people becoming unwell in the first place.
Our study also shows we need to do more to respect the autonomy of someone with serious mental illness to choose if they are treated. That’s whether they are in NSW or other jurisdictions.
And legal reform is required to ensure more states and territories more fully reflect the principal that people who have the capacity to make such decisions should have the right to decline mental health treatment in the same way they would any other health care.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Nature Valley Protein Granola vs Kellog’s All-Bran – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing Nature Valley Protein Granola to Kellog’s All-Bran, we picked the All-Bran.
Why?
While the Protein Granola indeed contains more protein (13g/cup, compared to 5g/cup), it also contains three times as much sugar (18g/cup, compared to 9g/cup) and only ⅓ as much fiber (4g/cup, compared to 12g/cup)
Given that fiber is what helps our bodies to absorb sugar more gently (resulting in fewer spikes), this is extremely important, especially since 18g of sugar in one cup of Protein Granola is already most of the recommended daily allowance, all at once!
For reference: the AHA recommends no more than 25g added sugar for women, or 32g for men
Hence, we went for the option with 3x as much fiber and ⅓ of the sugar, the All-Bran.
For more about keeping blood sugars stable, see:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
Enjoy!
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Eyes for Alzheimer’s Diagnosis: New?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
It’s Q&A Time!
This is the bit whereby each week, we respond to subscriber questions/requests/etc
Have something you’d like to ask us, or ask us to look into? Hit reply to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom, and a Real Human™ will be glad to read it!
Q: As I am a retired nurse, I am always interested in new medical technology and new ways of diagnosing. I have recently heard of using the eyes to diagnose Alzheimer’s. When I did some research I didn’t find too much. I am thinking the information may be too new or I wasn’t on the right sites.
(this is in response to last week’s piece on lutein, eyes, and brain health)
We’d readily bet that the diagnostic criteria has to do with recording low levels of lutein in the eye (discernible by a visual examination of macular pigment optical density), and relying on the correlation between this and incidence of Alzheimer’s, but we’ve not seen it as a hard diagnostic tool as yet either—we’ll do some digging and let you know what we find! In the meantime, we note that the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (which may be of interest to you, if you’re not already subscribed) is onto this:
See also:
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (mixture of free and paid content)
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports (open access—all content is free)
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Younger For Life – by Dr. Anthony Youn
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
We’ve reviewed anti-aging books before, so what makes this one different? Mostly, it’s the very practical focus.
Which is not to say there’s not also good science in here; there is. But the focus is on what everything means for the reader, not what happened with a certain cohort of lab mice. Instead, he looks at the causes of aging, the process of aging, and what interventions to implement to address those, and reverse many of them.
Some parts are more general lifestyle interventions that 10almonds readers will know well already, but other parts are very specific advices, protocols, and regimes; in particular his skincare section is well worth reading. As for nutrition, there’s even a respectable recipes section, so this book does have it all!
The final section of the book is dedicated to plastic surgeries (the author is a plastic surgeon who believes that most people should not need those, and would do well to stick to the advices in the rest of the book). We suspect this last part of the book will be of least interest to 10almonds readers.
Bottom line: if you’re of the view that getting older should come with as little as possible physical deterioration along the way, then this book can help a lot with that.
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Psychology Sunday Rewind: Healing Family Rifts
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Estrangement, And How To Heal It
The following article was first published a little under six months ago, and it proved to be our most popular “Psychology Sunday” article of the year.
We republish it today, in case it might also be of value to readers who have joined us since
Having written before about how deleterious to the health loneliness and isolation can be, and what things can be done about it, we had a request to write about…
❝Reconciliation of relationships in particular estrangement mother adult daughter❞
And, this is not only an interesting topic, but a very specific one that affects more people than is commonly realized!
In fact, a recent 800-person study found that more than 43% of people experienced family estrangement of one sort or another, and a more specific study of more than 2,000 mother-child pairs found that more than 11% of mothers were estranged from at least one adult child.
So, if you think of the ten or so houses nearest to you, probably at least one of them contains a parent estranged from at least one adult child. Maybe it’s yours. Either way, we hope this article will give you some pause for thought.
Which way around?
It makes a difference to the usefulness of this article whether any given reader experiencing estrangement is the parent or the adult child. We’re going to assume the reader is the parent. It also makes a difference who did the estranging. That’s usually the adult child.
So, we’re broadly going to write with that expectation.
Why does it happen?
When our kids are small, we as parents hold all the cards. It may not always feel that way, but we do. We control our kids’ environment, we influence their learning, we buy the food they eat and the clothes they wear. If they want to go somewhere, we probably have to take them. We can even set and enforce rules on a whim.
As they grow, so too does their independence, and it can be difficult for us as parents to relinquish control, but we’re going to have to at some point. Assuming we are good parents, we just hope we’ve prepared them well enough for the world.
Once they’ve flown the nest and are living their own adult lives, there’s an element of inversion. They used to be dependent on us; now, not only do they not need us (this is a feature not a bug! If we have been good parents, they will be strong without us, and in all likelihood one day, they’re going to have to be), but also…
We’re more likely to need them, now. Not just in the “oh if we have kids they can look after us when we’re old” sense, but in that their social lives are growing as ours are often shrinking, their family growing, while ours, well, it’s the same family but they’re the gatekeepers to that now.
If we have a good relationship, this goes fine. However, it might only take one big argument, one big transgression, or one “final straw”, when the adult child decides the parent is more trouble than they’re worth.
And, obviously, that’s going to hurt. But it’s pretty much how it pans out, according to studies:
Here be science: Tensions in the Parent and Adult Child Relationship: Links to Solidarity and Ambivalence
How to fix it, step one
First, figure out what went wrong.
Resist any urge to protect your own feelings with a defensive knee-jerk “I don’t know; I was a good, loving parent”. That’s a very natural and reasonable urge and you’re quite possibly correct, but it won’t help you here.
Something pushed them away. And, it will almost certainly have been a push factor from you, not a pull factor from whoever is in their life now. It’s easy to put the blame externally, but that won’t fix anything.
And, be honest with yourself; this isn’t a job interview where we have to present a strength dressed up as a “greatest weakness” for show.
You can start there, though! If you think “I was too loving”, then ok, how did you show that love? Could it have felt stifling to them? Controlling? Were you critical of their decisions?
It doesn’t matter who was right or wrong, or even whether or not their response was reasonable. It matters that you know what pushed them away.
How to fix it, step two
Take responsibility, and apologize. We’re going to assume that your estrangement is such that you can, at least, still get a letter to them, for example. Resist the urge to argue your case.
Here’s a very good format for an apology; please consider using this template:
The 10-step (!) apology that’s so good, you’ll want to make a note of it
You may have to do some soul-searching to find how you will avoid making the same mistake in the future, that you did in the past.
If you feel it’s something you “can’t change”, then you must decide what is more important to you. Only you can make that choice, but you cannot expect them to meet you halfway. They already made their choice. In the category of negotiation, they hold all the cards now.
How to fix it, step three
Now, just wait.
Maybe they will reply, forgiving you. If they do, celebrate!
Just be aware that once you reconnect is not the time to now get around to arguing your case from before. It will never be the time to get around to arguing your case from before. Let it go.
Nor should you try to exact any sort of apology from them for estranging you, or they will at best feel resentful, wonder if they made a mistake in reconnecting, and withdraw.
Instead, just enjoy what you have. Many people don’t get that.
If they reply with anger, maybe it will be a chance to reopen a dialogue. If so, family therapy could be an approach useful for all concerned, if they are willing. Chances are, you all have things that you’d all benefit from talking about in a calm, professional, moderated, neutral environment.
You might also benefit from a book we reviewed previously, “Parent Effectiveness Training”. This may seem like “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted”, but in fact it’s a very good guide to relationship dynamics in general, and extensively covers relations between parents and adult children.
If they don’t reply, then, you did your part. Take solace in knowing that much.
Some final thoughts:
At the end of the day, as parents, our kids living well is (hopefully) testament to that we prepared them well for life, and sometimes, being a parent is a thankless task.
But, we (hopefully) didn’t become parents for the plaudits, after all.
Don’t Forget…
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