Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis. This is a podcast about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. And I’ll do it by loving my life enough to make it last as long as possible.
We’re getting deeper into our series on Aging Reversed. As I say at the beginning of every episode, my goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the end. This year I want to focus more on these simple topics and this series is about the “long” part. I take my inspiration from the book “Lifespan” by David Sinclair, which, if you have the stomach for some deep technical stuff, I recommend you read. The theory is that aging can be halted, or even turned in reverse, if we devote enough resources to the effort. That’s what this series is trying to decode for you.
In this episode we’ll introduce the Information Theory of Aging, and explore how aging is viewed as a loss of information in our epigenome and the science behind it. The epigenome is what regulates gene expression. It is not part of DNA, but consists of genetic markers which determine whether genes are switched off or on. For example, a study in mice suggested that a fear response could be passed down from parent to child through epigenetic changes.
David Sinclair is the geneticist who came up with the Information Theory of Aging. The basis for the theory starts with enzymes called ‘sirtuins’, which are responsible for turning genes on and off. They are very powerful and, when working properly, can protect us against major diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, osteoporosis, and cancer. They reduce the inflammation that causes atherosclerosis, metabolic disorders, ulcerative colitis, arthritis, and asthma. They also require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). As we age, we lose NAD, sirtuins fail, and our resistance to these diseases decreases.
Other enzymes are performing similar functions. What they have in common is that they all force cells to enter survival mode during times of stress, reducing the fuel required and increasing survival, or extending cell life. There are ways to induce this stress and put our cells in survival mode without damaging the cells.
We’ll learn more about sirtuins and other enzymes that control genes in the next episode.
There is something called epigenetic noise that occurs when cells are damaged. The epigenome needs to repair them. It’s similar to static you might hear on a TV or radio. It’s disruptive. The static interferes with the flow of information through the TV or radio. This is what causes aging. The loss of information in the epigenome. The Information Theory of Aging says that aging is a loss of epigenetic information rather than genetic mutations.
A little note here. You may be seeing a contradiction in my words. I said that inducing stress puts cells into survival mode and extends life. I’m also saying that cell damage can confuse the genome and cause us to age quicker. Both are true, and that’s why the key to extending life is finding the happy medium. A level of stress that brings on survival mode and yet causes no damage. We’ll talk about ways to do this later in the series.
DNA contains all of the information of youth. It doesn’t change. What changes is the epigenome. And damage to the genome affects the _reading_ of the digital data in DNA. Are you starting to understand why information is important in aging? I think I am.
So in times of stress, these enzymes rush around trying to fix things. And when they go back to their original job of turning genes on and off, they sometimes forget where they were and switch the wrong genes on or off, thus disrupting the information that tells our cells what to do. Maybe they switch the brown hair gene off, and hair begins to lose its color.
Sinclair believes that if we can keep the information in the epigenome intact, a person could live an indefinitely long life, possibly 150 years, possibly infinity. I hope he’s right, because time is the most valuable resource there is. Some people disagree, and we’ll get into that anon.
The Information Theory of Aging may be the key to understanding aging enough to reverse it. If the information generally lost over time out of the epigenome can be restored, all the right genes turned on, or off, a body could become good as new. Of course, it’s only a theory, supported by a few experimental results. But wouldn’t that be something?
Next time, we’ll talk more about sirtuins, NAD, and longevity genes. I hope you enjoyed this one. And if all this information flew over your head, be sure to check out the blog at RunningAFEVER.com/390. And if you have the fever, keep it burning. And if not, catch the fever, and I’ll see you next time on Running: A FEVER.
References:
Sinclair, David A. and LaPlante, Matthew D. (2019). Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To. Atria Books.
https://tinyurl.com/epigenetics-heritable