Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives?

Re:Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives? by bd on Saturday November 29, 2008 @12:20AM (#379893)

It's actually complementary, aging has many factors.

Heavy water is supposed to make harder for free radicals to do damage in the first place.

Sirtuins should help with switching on repair mechanisms after damage is done.

And then there are telomeres, our natural kill-switch. There is another article, linked from the sirtuins one, about a possible way to slow down telomeres shortening:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16035-elixir-of-youth-...

BTW All three anti-aging approaches have companies working on the products to commercialize the research (Sirtris was recently bought by GlaxoSmithKline for $720M).

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Re:Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives? by kajecounterhack on Saturday November 29, 2008 @12:23PM (#380215)

Wasn't there also some article about how people don't get dumber as they get older, rather, their focus is less and less?

Sort of strange, but if that and all of this really turn out to be true, extending the human lifespan might not be as difficult as we make it out to be.

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