by Jane Fonda
SIRT1 and Resveratrol
In their research, Dr. Sprott and his colleagues discovered a universal gene. Found in plants, in bacteria, and in humans, it seems to control the aging process and appears to underlie many of the benefits of the calorie-restriction diet. The gene is called SIRT1, and it is activated by a molecule called resveratrol, which is found in the skin of red grapes (and is a constituent of red wine . . . but don’t get your hopes up; you’d have to drink a thousand bottles a day to see any effect). Resveratrol is also found in mulberries, peanuts, and other plants, including an Asian plant called giant knotweed.1 Dr. Sprott said, “When you feed this molecule into mice in a pure form, they live longer, they are almost immune to the effects of obesity, they don’t get diabetes, cancer, or other age-related diseases. Most of these results have yet to be replicated in humans. In the only positive human trial, extremely high doses (three to five grams) of resveratrol in a proprietary formulation have been necessary to significantly lower blood sugar.”
“But,” he added, “the reason for doing the research is not be-cause we think that it would actually produce these big increases in human life span. We believe that if we understood why it produces these increases in life span in other organisms we might discover promising therapies in the treatment of metabolic diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases of aging.”
The Telomere Hypothesis
Perhaps you have read about the telomere hypothesis of cellular aging. I have already discussed how many of our cells are continually dividing. Every time they divide, the very tail ends of the chromosomes—called the telomeres—become shorter, until the time comes when they are too short to divide anymore. The cells don’t die; they just quit replicating, for reasons nobody understands, and this is called senescence. Some cells that do not go through this dividing and gradual shortening into senescence are the reproductive cells known as the germ line. In these cells, a special enzyme called telomerase shuts off the process of telomere shortening. If you put the telomerase enzyme back into the cell, it puts the DNA back on the end of the chromosome, so that it doesn’t get short. The result is immortality at the cellular level. Sounds like the Fountain of Youth, right? Trouble is, this is also what we call cancer. Tumor cells are immortal cells because they have been released from the telomere-shortening process.
Biomarkers of Aging
The anti-aging medical interests and the nutraceuticals industry issue a lot of promises about tremendous increases in life span and health if you’ll just take the right supplements, human growth hormones, resveratrol, or all sorts of new elixirs. Look at all the longevity spas springing up all over the place. Dr. Sprott explained, “They run a series of tests on you, looking for what they call biomarkers of aging, and at the end of the tests they will tell you that according to those biomarkers you are in pretty good shape except that you have this system and that system that need a little tuning up—for the average cost of $25,000 a year for the rest of your life. What they don’t tell you is that the only thing that is going to change very much is the thickness of your wallet. We just don’t know enough yet. One problem is that National Institute on Aging grants are for a maximum of four years, but right now it takes one hundred and fifty years for scientists to know if an experiment to extend the human life span has worked. Biomarkers of aging could shorten up the whole process because they would show us the rate at which an organism is aging in less than the life span of that organism. Well, I spent a big chunk of my career and a big chunk of NIA’s money searching for the biomarkers of aging, and I can tell you there aren’t any.”
Dr. Sprott feels that a danger of the current promises of longevity is that they are simply not true, and “it encourages the public belief that you can get health out of a bottle; that all you need to do is to swallow a pill rather than increasing your life span and health span by a combination of having chosen long-lived parents and living an appropriate, healthy lifestyle.”
Stem Cells
Many problems that develop with age are not caused by disease or trauma and are difficult to distinguish from the process of aging itself. One example is what is called sarcopenia, or the age-related loss of muscle mass and muscle strength; this can make it harder for an older person to perform the activities of daily living that require muscle, such as lifting objects and climbing stairs. Muscle mass also diminishes in people who have low levels of growth hormone, testosterone, or estrogen, or high levels of cortisols, the stress hormones.
The Stanford Center on Longevity’s deputy director is Thomas Rando, a stem-cell biologist. He and his team are applying targeted science and technology to understand ways to maintain muscle tissue so that people can remain strong and independent even into old age.
Stem cells are like building blocks that are able to become whatever tissue is needed—they can become skin cells when in the skin or muscle cells when put into muscle. But in order for stem cells to do their job of repairing injured tissue, they have to receive the right signals from the surrounding damaged tissue. Signals can come from uninjured cells in the tissue, from hormones and other factors in the blood, and also from cells of the immune system that migrate into the damaged area to clear away dying cells. Stem cells respond to those signals by dividing many times in order to generate enough cells to replace the cells that were lost. Because stem-cell repair is so much less robust in older animals, scientists believed that age causes stem cells to lose their efficiency. Dr. Rando’s team at Stanford discovered, however, that when the old stem cells were exposed to factors in the blood of younger animals, the stem-cell activity in the old tissue was just as robust as that in young tissue. Turns out there are substances in old blood that suppress stem-cell function, and if scientists can develop a drug to block these suppressors, they may be able to modify old blood and allow for faster, more effective healing of old or damaged tissues.
The science of aging is growing fast, and there are real prospects: new theories, new ideas, and new technologies that can improve function in older people if we can just fund the needed research. Dr. Rando explained to me in detail how the new understanding of the human genome tells us about the genes that are affected in the ongoing biological processes of age and provides the possibility of doing genetic repair in a variety of ways. “If we know what genes are turned on or turned off as you age, maybe we can give you the proper gene product that you no longer have,” he said. “Or maybe we can perform ‘genetic adjustments’ to give you the proper gene product that you need to repair a damaged tissue. Or maybe we can find ways—this is reasonably possible rather soon—to replace aberrant or damaged genes that increase the risk of developing some age-related diseases. I would submit, however, that none of these developments are going to produce dramatic changes in the life span of human beings. What it is going to change, we hope, is the health span of those same human beings.”
APPENDIX II
Prime Time Exercises
You will need a sturdy armless chair and hand weights. These can be dumbbells, cans of food, or bottles of water. Start with light weights and, as you get stronger, increase the weight until you can do the prescribed number of repetitions and no more. Be sure to read the instructions completely before beginning each exercise.
Warm-Up
We begin by warming up the major muscle groups with three exercises.
While standing, reach up tall first with one arm, then the other. Really feel a stretch up your sides. Keep your abdominals pulled up and your spine extended upward.
Standing with your arms on your hips and your feet a little more than hip width apart, bend and straighten your knees as far as is comfortable 5 times, putting your weight on your heels. Next, add a lift with your arms coming overhead as you bend your knees; bring them back down as you straighten. Exhale as you squat; inhale as you straighten. Do this 5 times.
Stand tall and bring your arms out in front of you and then pinch your shoulder blades together by bringing yo
ur elbows back as far as you can, keeping your arms horizontal and at shoulder height as you do. Breathe as you do this and repeat 5 times.
Exercise 1 / SEATED PELVIC TILTS
These work the gluteal muscles, in your buttocks.
Sitting up tall, pull in your abdominal muscles as though you were protecting yourself against someone about to punch you in the stomach.
Keep your shoulders back and your chest lifted, but without letting your rib cage stick out.
Now rock your pelvis forward and squeeze those gluteal muscles hard, tightening your abdominals as you squeeze. Hold the squeeze for 3 seconds and then release.
Exhale as you squeeze, and inhale as you release. Repeat 15 times.
Exercise 2 / SEATED ABDOMINAL CRUNCHES
Strong abs pull in your gut and protect your back.
Continue to sit up tall, as in the previous exercise.
Contract your abdominals by tightening those muscles. Hold for 5 seconds and release.
Exhale on the squeeze and inhale on the release. Repeat 15 times.
Exercise 3 / CHAIR SQUATS
These work your quadriceps muscles, in the front of your thighs.
Stand up tall in front of your chair and, with your hands on your thighs, sit down and stand up. Do this 15 times, exhaling as you stand, inhaling as you sit. As you get stronger, put your hands on your waist.
Exercise 4 / SEATED BICEPS CURLS WITH LEG LIFTS
These strengthen the muscles in the front of the thigh and the front of the upper arm.
Sit up tall with your arms hanging down at your sides and a weight in each hand.
Raise your right leg straight out to knee height, keeping that thigh level with the other thigh and squeezing those thigh muscles and the muscles around your knee. Hold in this lifted position for 2 seconds before lowering.
As you do this, curl both weights up to your chest; lower them as you lower your leg. Control the weights—don’t just let them drop. Exhale on the lift, and inhale as you lower the weights.
Repeat with the other leg. Do this 16 times. Each leg lift counts as one repetition.
Exercise 5 / STANDING SIDE ARM LIFTS
These work your shoulder muscles—the deltoids.
This exercise can be done standing or seated.
Hold the weights in front of your body, with your palms facing down and your elbows very slightly bent. Your knees should also be softly bent.
Exhale and lift your arms out to the sides, only to shoulder height—no higher!
Inhale and slowly lower your arms to your sides. Repeat 15 times.
Exercise 6 / SEATED TRICEPS LIFTS
These work the triceps muscles, in the back of the arms.
Sitting up tall in your chair, without letting your back touch the back of the chair, hold the weights with your palms facing inward.
Lift your arms so they are straight up alongside your ears. Do not hunch your shoulders while doing this.
Keep your back pulled up tall, stomach in, shoulders back.
Now bend your elbows so that your forearms slowly move back and down.
Do not let your back arch as you do this, and do not let the weights drop. Keep the movement controlled, so that you don’t hit yourself with the weights.
Then lift the weights back up so that your arms are straight overhead again. Repeat 15 times.
Exercise 7 / BALANCE ON ONE LEG
Maintaining or improving balance is critical as we age. Every thirty-five minutes an older person dies from a fall!
Stand behind your chair. Don’t hold on to it unless you have to. It’s okay if you need to, but the goal is to do these without having to hold on.
Stand tall on your right leg. Lift your left foot slightly off the floor and try to balance. Keep your hands on your hips.
Don’t forget to breathe, and keep your shoulders pulled back, your stomach pulled in, your head lifted, and your spine long.
Hold for 15 seconds and repeat with the other leg.
Exercise 8 / STANDING HAMSTRING CURLS
These work the hamstring muscles, in the back of the thighs.
Standing behind your chair, balance on your right leg as you bend your left leg. Try to get your heel up to your buttocks. That’s hard, but that’s what to aim for … it’s almost like you’re kicking yourself in the butt!
Make sure the thigh of the leg you are bending remains parallel to the thigh of the standing leg—only the lower part of the leg should move.
Do this 15 times with one leg and then repeat with the other leg.
As you get stronger, try doing this exercise without holding on.
Make sure your abdominal muscles are engaged the entire time and that you keep breathing.
Exercise 9 / STANDING ELBOW TO KNEE
This exercise works the muscles in the pelvis and the back, the obliques (the sides of the abdomen), and the thighs.
Holding on to your chair with your right hand, reach your left arm straight up.
Bend your left elbow and bring it down to meet your right knee as it lifts, squeezing the muscles in your side as you do.
Do this 15 times with your left arm and right leg, and then repeat with your right arm and left leg.
Exercise 10 / STANDING SIDE LEG LIFTS
These work the back, the hip, and the thigh muscles. They help with hip mobility.
Stand up tall behind your chair, exhale, and lift your right leg out to the side as high as you can without moving your torso.
Inhale and slowly lower your leg. Repeat 15 times and then repeat with the left leg.
Do not let your torso rock from side to side as you do these lifts.
Exercise 11 / ISOMETRIC SQUATS
These will strengthen your thighs.
Stand behind your chair. Place your feet wider than hip width and turn your toes slightly out.
Bend your knees and come down into a squat.
Your knees must not stick out beyond your toes. If they do, move your feet farther apart.
Do not lean forward—keep your back straight.
The goal is to lower your hips so that they are level with your knees. Getting there and holding the position may take a while. In the meantime, lower as far as you are comfortably able to and then hold the pose for one minute.
Your thighs will begin to burn. This means you are really challenging these muscles … not to worry. The burn is a good sign. But if you must come back up for a moment, do so and then return to the squatting position.
I like to keep my hands on my hips, but if you need to (until you are stronger), you can softly hold the back of your chair. Do not hold your breath!
Exercise 12 / FLAT BACK BEND-OVERS
These stretch and strengthen your hamstrings and strengthen your gluteals.
Stand up tall, inhale, and slowly walk your fingers down your thighs as far as you can go until your flat back is parallel with the floor.
Keep your head and neck aligned with your back. Do not let them either drop down or crane up, as that will strain your neck.
Keep a slight bend in your knees.
Exhale as you come back up to standing, squeezing your gluteal (buttock) muscles as you reach the full standing position.
Repeat this move—up and down—10 times.
Exercise 13 / SEATED ANKLE CIRCLES
Ankle mobility is important for balance.
Lift your right thigh and circle the ankle clockwise 5 times.
Repeat counterclockwise 5 times.
If it is too hard for you to keep your thigh lifted, you may hold your thigh under your knee.
Repeat with the other leg: 5 times clockwise, 5 times counterclockwise.
Throughout this exercise, keep your abdominals pulled in and sit up tall.
STRETCHES. After working out, when our muscles are warmed up, is the optimum time to stretch. Stretching helps us stay flexible and helps prevent injuries. Each stretch must be held for a minimum of 20 seconds to get the full benefit.
Exercise
14 / SEATED HIP STRETCH
This stretches the muscles in the hip and buttock.
Place your right ankle across your left knee. If your hip is tight, you can move your left foot away from the chair a little and put your right ankle on the leg just below your left knee.
