
Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives? - bd
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026841.800-would-eating-heavy-atoms-lengthen-our-lives.html
======
pg
It's kind of funny that the related articles include another one with a
completely different thesis:

    
    
       Has universal ageing mechanism been found?
    
       A protein that causes yeast to age seems to have 
       a similar effect in mice too – the finding might 
       lead to drugs to reverse age-related diseases"

~~~
bd
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-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16035-elixir-of-youth-drug-
could-fight-hiv-and-ageing.html)

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

~~~
kajecounterhack
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.

------
dcurtis
Show me the study where a researcher feeds some animal deuterated water and
then show how its life is extended by a statistically significant amount.

Before you can actually produce such a study, this entire article is
sensationalist and the editors at New Scientist should be embarrassed to
publish it.

The article says that up to 35% of body water can be heavy, but after that
point it becomes "lethal." What exactly happens to make it lethal, and why has
the author assumed that it is "harmless" to drink small amounts? Where's the
study showing that small amounts are "totally harmless?"

~~~
ars
Normally isotopes don't cause chemical changes, but with hydrogen they do.
Deuterium is twice as heavy as hydrogen, so it moves slower, and is less
reactive - for some reactions this can make a big difference. With the other
isotopes the change in mass isn't anywhere near that.

~~~
dcurtis
This makes sense. But has any human being-- or any animal in nature-- ever
ingested deuterium in any significant amount? How can you not know if this
will change ever-so-slightly the way DNA transcription takes place, or
example?

I just think it's kind of irresponsible for a reporter at a science
publication to make cavalier statements about things like this-- "It's
completely safe..."-- without having any science to back them up.

~~~
wheels
It seems like you didn't read most of the article. They specifically talked
about its effects on lab animals, including rats which had been brought up on
heavy water.

~~~
dcurtis
The author never describes the results of those studies.

------
zby
Articles on health are the worst. The pattern is so repetetive - first comes
some study that under some circumstances some substance or excercise of
something would cause something - then comes the refutations and even articles
about the reverse effects. It is alwasy so sensationalistic and so unfounded.
What I would like to read is a study about that effect - it has some pretty
obvious causes - after all healt is something that everyone is very intimately
concerned about - but still I would like to read a detailed analysis of that
mechanism.

------
13ren
_Deuterated bonds can be up to 80 times stronger than those containing
hydrogen._

That seems likely to alter chemical behaviour (as researchers found). I'm not
a chemist, but it seems reasonable to consider compounds with such bonds as
different compounds. Why should we think of carbon-12 and carbon-13 as
variations of carbon, instead of distinct elements - if they have different
_chemical_ behaviour?

The blackbox testing tells us that 35% heavy water is lethal, but doesn't tell
why. It's possible - and even likely - that it is the very bonds we wish to
protect that become lethal if strengthened 80 times.

The final "heavy babies" grayed paragraph at the end is fascinating (in case
you skipped it: babies have more carbon-13, and their mothers are unusually
depleted with it around the time of birth.)

~~~
yummyfajitas
They are both variations of carbon because they have the same electronic
structure, i.e. the configuration of electrons about C-12 and C-13 is
identical (or similarly H-1 and H-2).

I'll make a bad analogy now.

The electronic structure is like a set of hooks attached to the atom. Hydrogen
has 1 free hook, carbon 4, and these hooks form chemical bonds. Hydrogen and
deuterium have the same set of hooks, as do C-13 and C-14. But deuterium is
heavier than hydrogen, and this makes it harder to unhook it when it attaches
to another atom, even if the set of hooks is identical.

~~~
13ren
Sorry, that was a suggestion phrased as a question (i.e. I know what isotopes
are). I was suggesting a name that signifies operational properties rather
than "the" definition of what it is. If heavy water became commonly available,
this would undoubtedly occur.

It's like features vs. benefits, which I've been working with over a few
weeks, to understand the need for my product, and the gaps left by existing
offers in the marketplace. Quite possibly, I'm thinking _too much_ in those
terms :-)

------
jhancock
I prefer them because they have more crunch and don't get as soggy as the
lighter atoms after 5 minutes sitting in milk.

------
earthboundkid
This is an idiotic idea and will lead to a) expensive piss, sweat, and breath
or b) some horrible disease caused by overly slow chemical reactions. Maybe
both.

~~~
mindslight
Could always recycle ...

------
ryanb
Sounds like a neat idea worth experimenting - this is obviously very early on
in the process though.

------
lst
I prefer Eternal Paradise to some other decade on this violent Planet.

~~~
lst
P.S. In case you are atheist: if you can scientifically prove that Eternal
Paradise does not exist, I'll be glad (or so) to hear from you!

(Side note: the current situation on our Planet is still that much more than
50% of currently living souls actually do believe in God/Good/Heaven/Paradise;
and the already gone ones, actually already _know_ _exactly_!)

~~~
mindslight
Sorry, science doesn't work that way. It's your job to give evidence that some
sort of afterlife exists.

~~~
lst
(There was a message hidden in there!)

To _not_ believe in afterlife, you explicitly have to _not_ believe it, so
even the denying of afterlife is based on a (negative) _faith_.

Atheists don't seem aware of being their position a simple _negative_ faith
response to a _positive_ faith.

~~~
mindslight
If you're talking about "strong" atheism (asserting that no god exists) then
yes, this is an act of faith as well.

But "weak" atheism is merely a rejection of theism. It is not a proposed
hypothesis, but a rebuke of unsupported hypotheses.

~~~
lst
Sorry, but this is already sophistication (in the archaic sense).

All things that happen _must_ have a cause.

Even Big Bang had its Cause. And since the exact definition of God is: "The
only one not caused by anything, but simply 'cause' of Itself", there's no
escape here...

