Omega 3 Capsules: Time Capsules

Not much new in the world of living longer recently. Or at least, I haven't been doing my fair share of research in the last month, so I don't have much to report. I've been getting into vitamins online recently, and as a spin off, I found a weight loss shake that has enough vitamins to give me my essentials, without popping little hard gel caps (I hate swallowing pills!)

The reason for these weight loss shakes is obvious. I need to lose weight. I've been putting it off for awhile now, just something I figured I'd get around to eventually. Well, eventually finally arrived. Eventually is today, and I'm ready to finally lose that weight.

I took a big step recently (literally) by climbing the stairs at a parking lot near where I live. Getting to the top of the seven story garage nearly killed me. I practically crawled back down, and decided to give my heart a rest for the rest of the day. I'm going back tomorrow to see if I can make any progress, I'm hoping a week of weight loss shakes has helped in that department. Looks like we'll find out!

That's what they say. Restrict the calories, live longer. It's more complicated, but in layman's terms calorie restriction seems to be one of the keys to prolonging aging (though, obviously not CURING aging, that's a whole different matter).

So, I've been restricting my calories.

The most common method is intermittent fasting. This involves planned periods of no eating. The usual period is 15 to 18 hours. In other words, I would eat a solid, filling, healthy dinner like chicken and spinach massala, and then not eat until lunch the following day. It's pretty simple, not terribly difficult to do once you begin to plan the fasting periods, and it definitely helps with the weight loss.

The other method is to simply decrease the amount of food you eat per meal. Have several small meals per day, and bring your total calories in at roughly 60% to 40% of what you would normally eat. This method usually leaves me hungrier for a longer portion of the day because I feel I've never had enough food at any given meal to feel in any way sated.

There's a learning curve to the calorie restriction process, just like there's a learning curve to the caveman diet, or to damage control supplementation or any lifestyle altering project.

Until I've got it figured out, I'll keep reading about how to deal with stress, and ordering vitamins online. Cheers!

The concept of people today living 1000 years sounds ridiculous.

"How," you say, "Can that be?! Do I just take the best multivitamins. Spend money at the vitamin world, keep my washboard abs, and poof, I'm 1000?"

Yes, and no.

Taking vitamins, staying healthy (the abs, part), and maintaining a lifestyle around maintaining your body are key elements. If you chain smoke, pound down vodkas, and spend your spare time having unprotected sex for kicks, don't plan on hitting the big one zero zero zero.

On the other hand, just because you practice yoga and buy your foot at Earth, Wind, and Flour, doesn't guarantee you a longevity ticket. But you're in the drawing. Here's how it works:

The technology and medicine isn't currently available to allow people living today (say, a 75 year old man) to live to be 1000. The modern 75 year old man is going to die. But a 5 year old...

A 5 year old boy has roughly 80 years to grow before he's ripe for death. during those 80 years, there's a good chance technology and medicine will improve to allow that 5 year old to live to the age of 200 (not 1000 mind you, just 200). Now, by the time he hits 80, he's got another 120 years.

During his next 120 years, there's a good chance medicine will improve to increase the average lifespan to, say, 350. So, by the time he hits 200, providing he hasn't died in war, a car accident, disease, nuclear winter, or other such atrocities, he's got until 350.

The cycle continues, he hits 350, but now people are living to be 500. he hits 500 and 700 is the new 500. All the way up to 1000. At some point as our 5 year old boy ages, the lines on the graph of advancing medicine and aging will cross. Medicine will advance faster than people age, and the 1000 year lifespan will be possible.

Now all we have to worry about is the nuclear winter...

I've been watching old science fiction films recently. The Red Planet. This Planet Earth, Forbidden Planet, The Thing from another Planet. Anyway. There's good guys, usually humans. Then there's bad guys, usually whatever's from the different planet. Sometimes it flip flops, but you get the gist. The Bad guys always have some wildly ambitious scheme, which can only be accomplished through the subjugation or destruction of people. Often the baddies want to rule the world. But even more often the baddies want to live forever.

That's right. life everlasting seems to be a more villainous goal in fiction than world domination. Go all the way back to Dracula, or fuck, even Icarus. Dudes who want to live forever never meet pretty ends. My first encounter with such "evil" was in the feature length version of duck tales, where huey, duey, and louie stop a tyrannical bassett hound from drinking an elixir that grants everlasting life. Even in the video games I play, the most treacherous demon-warshipping sorceri dabble in evil arts so that they may live forever.

Well balls. What's so bad about wanting everlasting life? I say screw mythology. Let's see some fiction where the good guy wants to live forever.

A perfect way to start on the journey of life everlasting is by gaining abs on a high fat diet. Then head on over to these two posts about orac value and how to deal with stress respectively. It may not be the fountain of youth, I would call it more of a drinking fountain of healthiness.

So, Barbara Walters is back in the news again. Okay, she's always in the news, but now she's talking about something I actually care about. Resveratrol.

A recent 20/20 investigative report scooped out the possibilities of life extension and (believe it or not) living for ever. They even interviewed Aubrey DeGray, mentioned here in my last post. Barbara Walters led the investigation, and she came out with puppy dog eyes for the new research developing ways for people to live longer. And just about the right time, because I'm not too sure how many years old Baba has left.

One of the gists of the piece was "take resveratrol." As I may have mentioned resveratrol is the potent antioxidant found in red wine and the skins of red grapes. New research is showing how effective resveratrol is at extending the average age of communities who consume a good quantity of the little nutrient. Most of the 20/20 piece was about the resveratrol, but it also mentioned the effects of diet restriction.

Diet restriction is a tricky subject because everybody already has a formed opinion. I'm all for healthy eating, just as long as "healthy" doesn't turn into orthorexia. If you want  to find people who are imasciated, just turn to an orthorexic. It's not as bad as bulemia, but it's still not something I'd choose to be afflicted with.