Sunday, December 12, 2010

Extending Human Lifespan by Growing New Mitochondria

A recent issue of Life Extension Magazine has an interesting piece on mitochondrial regeneration.

            About forty years ago, a few biologists began taking a look at aging, and what causes it.  Many concluded that mostly, aging was caused by cell damage from free-radicals generated by oxidative reactions within the body.  Thus, the anti-oxidant industry was born.  We all began taking anti-oxidants in the hope of slowing down, if not stopping, the clock of cellular aging.  And of course, anti-oxidants do work, to some degree.  If they did not, we wouldn’t still be gobbling them down after forty years.  And some anti-oxidants, such as vitamin C, are necessary for life.  Without them, we die.
            But a central problem still remained:  When sometime in early middle-age, we begin to notice a drop of both physical and mental energy, the main problem, besides hormonal decline, is simply that individual cells can no longer generate the level of energy they once did.  And they lose this capacity to generate energy because the mitochondria, the organelles within the cell which account for nearly all cellular energy production, have, after fifty years of service, become worn out and damaged such that they are barely functional.  They become damaged by free-radicals.  Yet protecting the mitochondria from oxidative damage is extremely difficult, since these organelles are where oxidation has to take place—this is where we burn sugar to make energy.
            But now it appears that a new approach has become available: generating new mitochondria.  In the Special Winter Edition of Life Extension Magazine is an article about PQQ (pyrroloquinoline quinone), a compound that seems to induce bio-genesis of new mitochondria.  The article says that PQQ is a natural substance that is found in all plant species, and is present in human milk.  But humans cannot synthesize it. That would make PQQ an essential micronutrient.   Like all Life Extension Foundation publications, the article contains elaborate references, citing over sixty research works published in peer reviewed scientific journals.
            

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