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Category: biotech/medical – Page 3,018

Another excellent blog by Dr Michael fossel PhD, md. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other related diseases could be treated potentially using telomerase.

Alzheimer’s: One Disease?

Date posted: 25.08.2015.

Most of us have wondered about what causes Alzheimer’s. As commonly happens, we stumble badly when we make assumptions, even in asking questions, let alone in trying to answer those questions. The question “what causes Alzheimer’s?” presupposes that there is a single such disease (Alzheimer’s) and that we can define it well enough to ask about “its” cause. Neither of these is probably an accurate assumption. The reality is that there is considerable difficulty in agreeing on the “hallmarks” (the pathognomonic characteristics that define AD) and the “boundaries” between AD and other somewhat similar diseases on the differential diagnosis. Comparing Alzheimer’s to many other age-related neurological diseases can be humbling – and it should be. Small wonder we have so much trouble understanding the cause, let alone finding a cure when we don’t really know what we’re looking at.

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Is seasteading the wave of the future? Joe Quirk of the Seasteading Institute thinks floating cities will allow micro nations to compete for people — providing better life options and innovations. “Aquapreneurs,” says Quirk, can save humanity from disease, environmental harm and maybe even war.

Voice & Exit is a dynamic, transformative festival of the future. Exiters are dedicated to maximizing human flourishing for individuals, communities and our world.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” Buckminster Fuller reminds us. “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” The Voice & Exit community is for those actively seeking to opt-out of models that don’t give rise to human flourishing to create those models that do.

We don’t predict the future, we create it.

Watch more talks and join the community at www.voiceandexit.com.

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If you want to increase your risk of multiple diseases, then smoking is one of surest ways to do it; it can even accelerate aging. So how do some long-term smokers beat the odds?

Long-lived smokers are fascinating. Not only do they live a long time, but they also appear unaffected by their habit. For most of us, smoking has been confirmed to be ‘toxic’, but these outliers somehow overcome this. So how can these people reach old age despite having smoked most of their life? Scientists predicted they must have some unusual genes, and they were right.

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Stem cells coming along nicely, Stanford demonstrate how creating artificial stem cell niches improve grafting and regeneration of bone and it should have a broad application for other tissues. Properly developed we could regenerate organs and tissues by injecting enough stem cells in these manufactured protective niches.

One could potentially take it a stage further and modify the stem cells with genes of interest to make them more robust. Ex-vivo cell manipulation is also considerably cheaper than in-vivo therapy.

New porous hydrogel could boost success of some stem cell-based tissue regeneration, researchers say.

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Our gut and the microbiome play a crucial role in our health, but could better understanding of that role help us avoid disease and live longer?

The microbiome weighs 2–3 pounds and contains 10 times more cells than our own, but we’ve neglected our microbial tenants for a long time. These little denizens help us break down food, provide key nutrients and even play a role in inflammation and the integrity of our intestinal tract. It’s no surprise then that fermented foods and probiotics are gaining popularity as we become more aware of how important our gut is. Recent evidence even links poor digestive health to chronic inflammation and Parkinson’s disease.

New research suggests that both gut integrity, and the amount and type of bacteria that reside within it, can actually predict an individual’s health. They may even quicken or slow the pace of aging.

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Dr Michael Fossel is a PhD and MD heading up telomerase research and therapy and has kindly written a blog article for Bioviva detailing the work both they and his company Telocyte are doing to fight back against Alzheimer’s.

How Alzheimer’s Can Be Prevented and Cured…

Michael Fossel, MD, PhD

As I said in my medical textbook on aging, “If age is a thief, then the greatest treasure we lose is ourselves.” We fear Alzheimer’s not simply because it takes away our health, but because it steals our souls.

Once, we thought it was simply “old age” that gradually killed the cells that carry information and memory. These are brain cells that make us who we are and define our consciousness.

Only in the past two decades, have we gradually come to realize that it’s not the neurons, which are merely the innocent bystanders in the tragedy,

but the microglial cells that cause the disease. It’s our microglia, not our neurons that steal our very souls.

Alzheimer’s disease begins in our glial cells. These cells together form.

90% of our brains, while neurons are only a small minority in the nervous system.

Continue reading “Curing Alzheimer’s” | >

A 28 year old man who has been paralysed has been given a new sense of touch following a new breakthrough that saw electrodes places directly into the man’s brain.

The research and clinical trial has been carried out by DARPA, the US Military’s research agency. Essentially, the man (who has not been named) is now able to control his new hand and feel people touching it because of two sets of electrodes: one array on the motor cortex, the part of the brain which directs body movement, and one on the sensory cortex, which is the part of the brain which feels touch.

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DARPA promised prosthetic limbs that produce realistic sensations, and it’s making good on its word. The agency’s researchers have successfully tested an artificial hand that gave a man a “near-natural” level of touch. The patient could tell when scientists were pressing against specific fingers, even when they tried to ‘trick’ the man by touching two digits at once. The key was to augment the thought-controlled hand with a set of pressure-sensitive torque motors wired directly to the brain — any time the hand touched something, it sent electrical signals that felt much like flesh-and-bone contact.

There’s still a lot of work left to go before this hardware is truly realistic, of course. The sensors don’t cover the entire hand, and they don’t account for temperature or other factors you’ll likely worry about when grabbing objects. Still, this should represent a big step forward. Provided the technology takes off, both amputees and paralysis victims could regain some of the tactility they once had.

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