Group items tagged

"(PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine being able to drop a toothpick on the head of one particular person standing among 100,000 people in a stadium. It sounds impossible, yet this degree of precision at the cellular level has been demonstrated by researchers affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University Institute for NanoBioTechnology. Their study was published online in June in Nature Nanotechnology."

"More than 35 years ago, Matthieu Ricard left a promising career in cellular genetics to study Buddhism in the Himalayas. After earning a doctorate in biology from the prestigious Pasteur Institute in France, Ricard left Paris and moved to Darjeeling, India to study with a great Tibetan master. Today, Ricard draws upon his recent writings, research into brain plasticity and cognitive neuropsychology, and his work with neuroscientists and Buddhist practitioners at the Mind and Life Institute (co-founded by the Dalai Lama), while examining the interconnecting relationship between meditation, brain circuitry, and emotional balance."

ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2010) - Positive psychological changes that occur during meditation training are associated with greater telomerase activity, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, San Francisco. The study is the first to link positive well-being to higher telomerase, an enzyme important for the long-term health of cells in the body.

An immune-suppressing drug called rapamycin could possibly treat Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), a rare genetic disease that causes premature aging, and advance biological understanding of the normal aging process, according to researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Maryland and Massachusetts General Hospital. Progeria is a genetic disorder characterized by dramatic premature aging. "Progerin that causes progeria also accumulates, although in very small amounts, in normal aging," said Dimitri Krainc, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. "However, if rapamycin proves to have beneficial effects in lifespan in humans it is safe to assume that it will not be just because it may clear progerin from cells, but also because it clears other toxic products that accumulate during aging." Ref.: Francis S. Collins, et al., Rapamycin Reverses Cellular Phenotypes and Enhances Mutant Protein Clearance in Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome Cells, Science, 2011; [DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3002346]

Foods such as pomegranates, red grapes, pears, mushrooms, lentils, soybeans and green peas contain natural compounds which can activate autophagy, helping to prevent inflammation and gut diseases.