Growing Young

by Marta Zaraska

  …omega-3s—no effects found. Lee Hooper et al., “Risks and benefits of omega 3 fats for mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer: systematic review,” BMJ 332 (2006).

  In one particularly striking study, researchers evaluated aging biomarkers in almost a thousand New Zealanders…—Daniel W. Belsky et al., “Eleven Telomere, Epigenetic Clock, and Biomarker-Composite Quantifications of Biological Aging: Do They Measure the Same Thing?,” American Journal of Epidemiology 187 (2018): 1220-1230.

  Former president Barack Obama noted that “we live in a culture that discourages empathy.” —“Obama to Graduates: Cultivate Empathy,” Northwestern University, accessed August 1, 2019, https://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2006/06/barack.html

  In 2018 then British prime minister Theresa May appointed a “minister for loneliness” to deal with what she dubbed “the sad reality of modern life”…—Peter Walker, “May appoints minister to tackle loneliness issues raised by Jo Cox,” The Guardian, accessed August 12, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/16/may-appoints-minister-tackle-loneliness-issues-raised-jo-cox

  He admitted, though, that “many clinicians aren’t clear about the strong connection between loneliness and the very health problems we are trying to address, often with medications and procedures.” —Jena McGregor, “This former surgeon general says there’s a ‘loneliness epidemic’ and work is partly to blame,” The Washington Post, accessed August 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/10/04/this-former-surgeon-general-says-theres-a-loneliness-epidemic-and-work-is-partly-to-blame/

  PART I: THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION AND ITS LONGEVITY CONSEQUENCES

  CHAPTER 1: IS DEATH OPTIONAL?

  Unfortunately, as one researcher aptly put it, “In our experience, claims to age 130 exist only where records do not.” —Robert D. Young et al., “Typologies of Extreme Longevity Myths,” Current Gerontology and Geriatrics Research 2010 (2010).

  When in 2016 several scientists published a paper claiming that the maximum human lifespan fluctuates around 115…—Xiao Dong, Brandon Milholland and Jan Vijg, “Evidence for a limit to human lifespan,” Nature 538 (2016): 257-259.

  …which, in case you are wondering, has been verified and established beyond doubt. —Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard, “The oldest human,” Science 279 (1998): 1834–1835.

  Even the New York Times fell for it, reporting in her obituary that she “only quit smoking five years ago.” —Craig R. Whitney, “Jeanne Calment, World’s Elder, Dies at 122,” The New York Times, August 5, 1997.

  While a regular Joe or Sue will spend almost 18 percent of their time on earth overtaken by disease . . . —Stacy L. Andersen et al., “Health Span Approximates Life Span Among Many Supercentenarians: Compression of Morbidity at the Approximate Limit of Life Span,” The Journals of Gerontology Series A, 67A (2012): 395-405.

  For most of us, how long we live is only about 20 to 25 percent heritable. —Anatoliy I. Yashin et al., “Joint influence of small-effect genetic variants on human longevity,” Aging 2 (2010): 612-620.

  One study showed that if kept in petri dishes, away from predators and other environmental dangers…—Ralf Schaible et al., “Constant mortality and fertility over age in Hydra,” PNAS 112 (2015): 15701-15706.

  Thanks to recent studies, however, we now know that the biggest difference in telomere length…—Sonja Entringer et al., “The fetal programming of telomere biology hypothesis: an update,” Philosophical Transactions B 373 (2018).

  …which came up in data from many historical famines, including the Ukrainian famine of 1933 and the Irish one of 1845 to 1849. —Virginia Zarulli et al., “Women live longer than men even during severe famines and epidemics,” PNAS 115 (2018): E832-E840.

  Researchers have calculated that among the Donner party, the male mortality risk was almost double the female one. —Donald K. Grayson, “Human Mortality in a Natural Disaster: The Willie Handcart Company,” Journal of Anthropological Research 52 (1996): 185-205.

  When German researchers looked at over eleven thousand Catholic nuns and monks from Bavarian cloisters…—Marc Luy, “Causes of Male Excess Mortality: Insights from Cloistered Populations,” Population and Development Review 29 (2003): 647-676.

  In a comparison of fifty-nine species inhabiting zoos, only four had males that outlived the females. —Morgane Tidière et al., “Comparative analyses of longevity and senescence reveal variable survival benefits of living in zoos across mammals,” Scientific Reports 6 (2016).

  An analysis of lifespans of eunuchs living in nineteenth-century Korean courts…—Kyung-Jin Min, Cheol-Koo Lee and Han-Nam Park, “The lifespan of Korean eunuchs,” Current Biology 22 (2012): R792-R793.

  What eunuchs are short on, of course, is testosterone…—Rita Ostan et al., “Gender, aging and longevity in humans: an update of an intriguing/neglected scenario paving the way to a gender-specific medicine,” Clinical Science 130 (2016): 1711-1725.

  On the other hand, female hormones such as estrogens give a boost to the immune system…—ibid.

  In an interview for The New Yorker back in 2017…—Tad Friend, “Silicon Valley’s Quest to Live Forever,” The New Yorker, accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/silicon-valleys-quest-to-live-forever

  There is growing evidence that metformin may indeed prolong life and delay aging…—Nir Barzilai et al., “Metformin as a Tool to Target Aging,” Cell Metabolism 23 (2016): 1060-1065.

  In an interview for Scientific American, one University of California molecular biologist said it “just reeks of snake oil.” —Rebecca Robbins, “Young-Blood Transfusions Are on the Menu at Society Gala,” Scientific American, accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/young-blood-transfusions-are-on-the-menu-at-society-gala/

  CHAPTER 2: HOW YOUR MIND TALKS WITH YOUR BODY

  In experiments, people who merely imagine exercising their hand muscles end up with improved strength. —Brian C. Clark et al., “The power of the mind: the cortex as a critical determinant of muscle strength/weakness,” Journal of Neurophysiology 112 (2014): 3219-3226.

  Others get real rashes from exposure to fake poison ivy. —Sandra Blakeslee, “Placebos Prove So Powerful Even Experts Are Surprised; New Studies Explore the Brain’s Triumph Over Reality,” The New York Times, accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/13/science/placebos-prove-so-powerful-even-experts-are-surprised-new-studies-explore-brain.html

  Placebo treatments, meanwhile, are so effective that 42 percent of balding men maintain or increase hair growth after such “cures.” —ibid.

  Hypnosis can even be used to reduce pain during lumbar punctures…” —Christina Liossi and Popi Hatira, “Clinical hypnosis in the alleviation of procedure-related pain in pediatric oncology patients,” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 51 (2003): 4-28.

  …and heart surgeries. —Edwin J. Weinstein and Phillip K. Au, “Use of hypnosis before and during angioplasty,” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 34 (1991): 29-37.

  William Paul Young, a Canadian novelist, once wrote that “emotions are the colors of the soul”…—Young, William Paul. The Shack (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007).

  It was about ten o’clock at night when SM…—Justin S. Feinstein et al., “The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear,” Current Biology 21 (2011): 34-38.

  During World War Two, rumours abounded that the Nazis were developing a miracle cure for stress…—Christoper M. Burns, “The History of Cortisone Discovery and Development,” in Corticosteroids: An Issue of Rheumatic Disease Clinics of North America, ed. Marcy B. Bolster (Philadelphia: Elsevier, 2016), 1-15.

  When the scientists visited her room in Saint Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, they found her exercising…—Rooke, Thom. The Quest for Cortisone (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University
Press, 2012).

  The hypothalamus begins to shrink…—Teresa E. Seeman et al., “Price of Adaptation—Allostatic Load and Its Health Consequences,” JAMA Internal Medicine 157 (1997): 2259-2268.

  Since cortisol takes up fat from places such as the legs and arms…—A. Steptoe and J. Wardle, “Cardiovascular stress responsivity, body mass and abdominal adiposity,” International Journal of Obesity 29 (2005): 1329-1337.

  Like a finger on a light switch, stress hormones turn genes on and off. —David Muehsam et al., “The embodied mind: A review on functional genomic and neurological correlates of mind-body therapies,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 73 (2017): 165-181.

  This so-called “sickness behavior” is actually caused by your own immune system, or your pro-inflammatory cytokines, to be precise. —Robert Dantzer, “Cytokine, Sickness Behavior, and Depression,” Neurologic Clinics 24 (2006): 441-460.

  One meta-analysis showed that about a quarter of patients with hepatitis C…—Marc Udina et al., “Interferon- induced depression in chronic hepatitis C: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 73 (2012): 1128–1138.

  In animals, injections with both infectious bacteria and pro-inflammatory cytokines cause depression, too. —Julie E. Finnell and Susan K. Wood, “Neuroinflammation at the interface of depression and cardiovascular disease: Evidence from rodent models of social stress,” Neurobiology of Stress 4 (2016): 1-14.

  Studies on mice and rats show that only those who are susceptible to stress and deal with challenges passively…—ibid.

  For this reason anti-inflammatory drugs are now being proposed as treatment for depression in patients who don’t respond to traditional treatments. —Ole Köhler et al., “Inflammation in Depression and the Potential for Anti-Inflammatory Treatment,” Current Neuropharmacology 14 (2016): 732-742.

  About 10 to 15 percent of people who die plunging into an ocean or a river have no water in their lungs…—Philippe Lunetta, Jerome Modelland Antti Sajantila, “What Is the Incidence and Significance of “Dry-Lungs” in Bodies Found in Water?” The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 25 (2004): 291-301.

  In animal experiments similar cases have been attributed to the overstimulation of the vagus nerve. —Paolo Alboni, Marco Alboni and Lorella Gianfranchi, “Simultaneous occurrence of two independent vagal reflexes: a possible cause of vagal sudden death,” Heart 97 (2011): 623-625.

  Such sudden vagal death, some scientists believe, could also explain the mortal power of voodoo curses. —ibid.

  Some research actually suggests that we could even treat chronic pain and depression by applying electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve. —A.J. Rush et al., “Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) for treatment-resistant depressions: a multicenter study,” Biological Psychiatry 47 (2000): 276–286.

  …and even an earlier death. —Julian Thayer et al., “A meta-analysis of heart rate variability and neuroimaging studies: Implications for heart rate variability as a marker of stress and health,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012): 747-756.

  Luckily for me studies show that lifestyle changes, such as yoga, can improve HRV quickly…—Marian Papp et al., “Increased heart rate variability but no effect on blood pressure from 8 weeks of hatha yoga—a pilot study,” BMC Research Notes 6 (2013).

  One such study showed, for example, that roller derby players exchange microbes with opposing teams during tournaments. —James Meadow et al., “Significant changes in the skin microbiome mediated by the sport of roller derby,” PeerJ 1 (2013): e53.

  Family members, meanwhile, share bacteria with each other and even their dogs. —Se Jin Song et al., “Cohabiting family members share microbiota with one another and with their dogs,” eLife 2 (2013): e00458.

  If you breed mice devoid of any beneficial gut bacteria, the rodents will be loners, preferring to sit away from all the others. —L. Desbonnet et al., “Microbiota is essential for social development in the mouse,” Molecular Psychiatry 19 (2014): 146-148.

  And if you recolonize their intestines with microbes, their personality will change once again—back to social. —ibid.

  Germ-free rodents have been shown to have overreactive HPA axes and to be less resilient to stress. —Timothy G. Dinan et al., “Collective unconscious: How gut microbes shape human behavior,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 63 (2015): 1-9.

  In the Philippines, for instance, young people in their twenties who had a lot of contact with animal feces…—Thomas W. McDade et al., “Do environments in infancy moderate the association between stress and inflammation in adulthood? Initial evidence from a birth cohort in the Philippines,” Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 31 (2013): 23-30.

  When a group of American volunteers drank probiotic-rich fermented milk for about a month…—Kirsten Tillisch et al., “Consumption of Fermented Milk Product With Probiotic Modulates Brain Activity,” Gastroenterology 144 (2013): 1394-1401.e4.

  A similar experiment showed that consumption of the bacteria Bifidobacterium longum…—Michaël Messaoudi et al., “Beneficial psychological effects of a probiotic formulation (Lactobacillus helveticus R0052 and Bifidobacterium longum R0175) in healthy human volunteers,” Gut Microbes 4 (2011): 256-261.

  In one particularly revealing study scientists have taken stool from depressed patients…—John R. Kelly, “Transferring the blues: depression-associated gut microbiota induces neurobehavioural changes in the rat,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 82 (2016): 109–118.

  Take poop from an anxious mouse and insert it into a second mouse, and your mouse number two will become anxious as well. —P. Bercik et al., “The intestinal microbiota affect central levels of brain-derived neurotropic factor and behavior in mice,” Gastroenterology 141 (2011): 599-609.

  When experimental animals are stressed, the composition of germs in their poop changes in response…—Eoin Sherwin, Timothy G. Dinan and John F. Cryan, “Recent developments in understanding the role of the gut microbiota in brain health and disease,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1420 (2018): 5-25.

  When researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging in Germany made middle-aged turquoise killifish nibble on the feces of their younger companions…—Patrick Smith et al., “Regulation of life span by the gut microbiota in the short-lived African turquoise killifish,” eLife 6 (2017): e27014.

  Mr. Wright had cancer. —C.R. Snyder, Lori Irving and John Anderson, “Hope and Health,” in Handbook of Social and Clinical Psychology: The Health Perspective, eds. C. R. Snyder and D. R. Forsyth (Elmsford, NY, US: Pergamon Press, 1991), 285-305.

  In one study of cancer survivors suffering from fatigue…—Teri W. Hoenemeyer et al., “Open-Label Placebo Treatment for Cancer-Related Fatigue: A Randomized-Controlled Clinical Trial,” Scientific Reports 8 (2018).

  When scientists put people who have received placebos into functional magnetic resonance imaging scanners…—L.Y. Atlas and T.D. Wager, “A Meta-analysis of Brain Mechanisms of Placebo Analgesia: Consistent Findings and Unanswered Questions,” in: Placebo, eds. Fabrizio Benedetti et al. (Berlin: Springer, 2014): 37–69.

  CHAPTER 3: A SNIFF OF LOVE

  According to the producer’s website, OxyLuv is supposed to “create feelings of trust between others” and reduce my “social fears, anxiety, stress.” —PherLuv Pheromone Molecule Compounds, accessed July 29, 2019, https://www.pherluv.com/index.php/oxytocin-nasal-spray

  They incite male cichlid fish to be better fathers. —Lauren A.O’Connell, Bryan J.Matthews and Hans A.Hofmann, “Isotocin regulates paternal care in a monogamous cichlid fish,” Hormones and Behavior 61 (2012): 725-733.

  According to one theory called “the neurochemical hypothesis for the origin of hominids” —Mary Ann Raghanti et al., “A neurochemical hypothesis for the origin of hominids,” PNAS 115 (2018): E1108-E1116.

  …since late Pleistocene times, a
pproximately thirty thousand years ago, they’ve actually slightly shrunk by about 10 percent. —Jean-Jacques Hublin, Simon Neubauer and Philipp Gunz, “Brain ontogeny and life history in Pleistocene hominins,” Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B 370 (2015).

  Scientists believe that what may be responsible for such side effects, be it smaller brains or white forehead patches, is the neural crest. —Brian Hare, “Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality,” The Annual Review of Psychology 68 (2017): 155-186.

  And, in their brains they have twice as much serotonin, one of the social neuropeptides…—Cheryl D. Stimpson et al., “Differential serotonergic innervation of the amygdala in bonobos and chimpanzees,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11 (2016): 413-422.

  Yet in the case of our ancestors, Wrangham argues…Wrangham, Richard. The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution (New York: Pantheon Books, 2019), 47-65.

  Over our evolutionary history, selecting for more friendly hominins…—In the language of paleoanthropology the word “hominin” stands for modern humans and all extinct species closely related to us.

  And while prairie vole parents take care of their little ones together, with the fathers licking and grooming the kids…—Manal Tabbaa et al., “Neuropeptide Regulation of Social Attachment: The Prairie Vole Model,” Comprehensive Physiology 7 (2016): 81-104.

  …the monogamous voles have a very different pattern of oxytocin and vasopressin receptors in their brains as compared to their promiscuous cousins…—Manal Tabbaa et al., “Neuropeptide Regulation of Social Attachment: The Prairie Vole Model,” Comprehensive Physiology 7 (2016): 81-104.

  …as one 2017 study has found, is connected to the so-called pro-sociality gene, GTF2I…—T.L. Procyshyn et al., “The Williams syndrome prosociality gene GTF2I mediates oxytocin reactivity and social anxiety in a healthy population,” Biology Letters 13 (2017).

  Mice that don’t have oxytocin receptor genes tend to behave in autistic ways…––Mauricio Aspé-Sánchez et al., “Oxytocin and Vasopressin Receptor Gene Polymorphisms: Role in Social and Psychiatric Traits,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 9 (2016).