Lifeboat Foundation

New research has identified a type of bacteria found in the microbiomes of elite athletes that contributes to improved capacity for exercise. These bacteria, members of the genus Veillonella, are not found in the guts of sedentary people.

By taking a closer look at the bacteria, the researchers from Joslin Diabetes Center determined Veillonella metabolizes lactic acid produced by exercise and converts it into propionate, a short chain fatty acid. The human body then utilizes that propionate to improve exercise capacity. The results were reported today in Nature Medicine.

“Having increased exercise capacity is a strong predictor of overall health and protection against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and overall longevity,” says Aleksandar D. Kostic Ph.D., TITLE., a co-author on the paper. “What we envision is a probiotic supplement that people can take that will increase their ability to do meaningful exercise and therefore protect them against chronic diseases including diabetes.”

In a groundbreaking treatment, cancer patients’ immune systems are being genetically reprogrammed to fight their terminal cancer for them, with promising results.

In the UK, a number of National Health Service (NHS) patients with lymphoma at King’s College Hospital have been given CAR-T, a “living drug” that is unique to each patient as it contains some of their own cells.

Just like the gut, the skin and the mouth, the eye also has a collection of microbes that keep it healthy. Understanding the eye microbiome may lead to new probiotic therapies.

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a way to delay aging in mice with a protein that is abundant in the blood of young mice but declines with age.

eNAMPT and the NAD salvage pathway

That protein is extracellular nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (eNAMPT), and it plays a key role in the process that cells use to create nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), a crucial component that they need for energy production. NAD is a coenzyme found in all living cells. It is a dinucleotide, which means that it consists of two nucleotides joined through their phosphate groups. One nucleotide contains an adenine base, and the other contains nicotinamide.

Two blind patients regain eyesight thanks to stem cell therapy.

A very good article on the life and ideas of life extensionists/immortalists/longevity’s: “… Strole is now 70. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, a desert town. In the life-extensionist mode, he avoids dairy and rarely touches bread, though he devours a whole heap of other things. Recently his diet has included pills, branded ”Cognitive”, which he takes twice a day and claims have all sorts of nourishing effects on his brain. (What good is maintaining the body if not the mind?) The pills are part of a self-directed anti-ageing process that requires a lot of swallowing. On some days, Strole takes 70 supplements, including a tablet that ”energises the mitochondria” (mitochondria produce energy) and whose effects resemble ”a shot of coffee, minus the jitters”, as well as vitamins, multi-nutrients and metformin, a diabetes drug that has become so popular among life extensionists that one referred to it as ”the aspirin of anti-ageing”. In the early mornings, when the Arizona air is still brisk, he takes a cold dip in his pool to shock his immune system into better function, and at some point or another he lies face-up on an electromagnetic mat that whirs silently against his body and ”opens up the veins”, and engages in a breathing regime that, he says, ”balances the hormones”.

Some sleep on electromagnetic mats, others pop up to 150 pills a day. But are ‘life extensionists’ any closer to finding the key to longevity? Alex Moshakis meets some of the people determined to become immortal.

The maker of a popular antibiotic who has been under fire after reports of dangerous side effects has halted production.

Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist and the University of Virginia suggest that chigger bites may cause alpha-gal allergy.