Promise of Adult Stem Cells in Disease Management, Anti-Aging, and Life Extension

The Promise of Adult Stem Cells in Disease Management, Anti-Aging, and Life Extension

Nov 17, 2013  By Dr. Mercola

Since time immemorial, man has searched for the Fountain of Youth. Nothing has changed in that regard, but the methods of inquiry and discovery have certainly progressed.  Some of these ideas rival even the most outlandish sci-fi scenarios imaginable, up to and including the transfer of your consciousness into a bionic body.¹ Personally, I don’t want to veer too far from the natural order of things.

But the technology and science enthusiast in me can’t help but be intrigued by the ideas and radical advances in the field of extreme life extension. One of the most promising techniques in this field, from my perspective, revolves around the use of adult stem cells.
Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells found throughout your body. They multiply and replace cells as needed, in order to regenerate damaged tissues. Their value, in terms of anti-aging and life extension, centers around their ability to self-renew indefinitely, and their ability to generate every type of cell needed for the organ from which it originates.

Dr. Bryant Villeponteau, author of Decoding Longevity, is a leading researcher in novel anti-aging therapies involving stem cells. He’s been a pioneer in this area for over three decades. Personally, I believe that stem cell technology could have a dramatic influence on our ability to live longer and replace some of our failing parts, which is the inevitable result of the aging process.  With an interest in aging and longevity, Dr. Villeponteau started out by studying developmental biology.

“If we could understand development, we could understand aging,” he says.

Later, his interest turned more toward the gene regulation aspects. While working as a professor at the University of Michigan at the Institute of Gerontology, he received, and accepted, a job offer from Geron Corporation—a Bay Area startup, in the early ‘90s.
“They were working on telomerase, which I was pretty excited about at the time. I joined them when they first started,” he says. “We had an all-out engagement there to clone human telomerase. It had been cloned in other animals but not in humans or mammals.”

What is Telomerase?

Your body is made up of 10 trillion cells, each of which contains a nucleus. Inside the nucleus are the chromosomes that contain your genes. The chromosome is made up of two “arms,” and each arm contains a single molecule DNA, which is essentially a string of beads made up of units called bases.

A typical DNA molecule is about 100 million bases long. It’s curled up like slinky, extending from one end of the chromosome to the other. At the very tip of each arm of the chromosome is what’s called a telomere.   If you were to unravel the tip of the chromosome, a telomere is about 15,000 bases long at the moment of conception in the womb. Immediately after conception your cells begin to divide, and your telomeres begin to shorten each time the cell divides. Once your telomeres have been reduced to about 5,000 bases, you essentially die of old age.

Telomerase is an enzyme that is involved in repairing the ends of the chromosomes, i.e. the telomere, thereby preventing it from shortening.

“What you have to know about telomerase is that it’s only on in embryonic cells. In adult cells, it’s totally, for the most part, turned off, with the exception of adult stem cells,” Dr. Villeponteau explains. “Adult stem cells have some telomerase – not full and not like the embryonic stem cells, but they do have some telomerase activity.”

What’s so Great About Stem Cells?

At Geron, Dr. Villeponteau worked on a program to isolate human telomerase. They were the first industrial lab to do so, and successfully at that. The founder of Geron was Michael West—now known for his pioneering work with embryonic stem cells. In ’94-‘95, West began searching for another product to add to Geron’s arsenal besides telomerase. He honed in on stem cells, recognizing their incredible potential for turning regeneration of body tissues into a practical reality.

“He identified several groups that were working on the isolation of human stem cells,” Dr. Villeponteau says. “He put together a collaborative agreement with these people and part-funding from Geron. That bore fruit later in the ‘90s. That’s how Geron became both the telomerase and the stem cell king – it was because of that early support of the stem cell research. They had lines of stem cell, embryonic stem cells, before anybody else did.  I was involved in a lot of that initial research. But what I came away with was that these embryonic stem cells, as good as they were, had problems too. Because you had to isolate them, you had to grow them, and then you had to put them into a foreign body, if they were going to be useful. That means you have to worry about immunity, because it’s a different type of somebody else’s cells. That was a problem. The other problem was that it was not that easy and straightforward to differentiate these embryonic stem cells the way you want them. I started to be more interested at that point in adult stem cells.”

Most of the research currently being done, both in academia and industrial labs, revolves around either embryonic stem cells, or a second type called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Dr. Villeponteau, on the other hand, believes adult stem cells are the easiest and most efficient way to achieve results.

That said, adult stem cells do have their drawbacks. While they’re your own cells, which eliminates the problem of immune-related issues, there’s just not enough of them. Especially as you get older, there’s fewer and fewer adult stem cells, and they tend to become increasingly dysfunctional too. Yet another hurdle is that they don’t form the tissues that they need to form...

To solve such issues, Dr. Villeponteau has created a co. with the technology and expertise to amplify your adult stem cells a million-fold or more, while still maintaining their ability to differentiate all the different cell types, and without causing the cells to age. Again, it is the adult stem cell’s ability to potentially cure, or at least ameliorate, many of our age-related diseases by regenerating tissue that makes this field so exciting.

The Case Against Telomerase for Life Extension

I was initially intrigued with the principles of using telomerase to potentially extend human lifespan. But in talking to a few other clinicians, I became aware that using a generic process to influence the entire body raises potentially serious concerns.  Dr. Villeponteau’s amplification process of human adult stem cells, however, appears to bypass such concerns as it’s targeted to one cell type. He explains:

“Here’s the issue: I think, with telomerase activation systemically, it probably doesn’t do much good, because 99% of your cells are not going to be affected, nor should they be. You don’t even want them to be, because the somatic cells in the body, the cells that do all the work – muscle, nerves, and all of that – have a natural lifespan. Maybe you can do certain things to extend [their lifespan] a little bit. But you’re going to do only a little on the margins. They’re going to be dying and they have to be regenerated. There has to be a regeneration process. They used to think that certain tissues like the brain and heart muscle didn’t have any stem cells; didn’t have any new growth. That’s not true. Now we’ve found that they do have them. In the case of neuro [brain cells], it is very important for memory that you have this capability. I think where the telomerase activation really helps, even taken systemically, is in the stem cell compartment because it would help with your own stem cells. We have a product that we’ve been selling commercially... to stimulate stem cell growth and maintenance of the stem cells, and telomere function is part of it... [ Aging itself and stem cells are multi-faceted and multi-pathway. You really have to attack it from different pathways. There’s no magic bullet in its treatment. You have to get in multiple ways, because aging is a process that [involves] multiple pathways.”

 

An Example of How Adult Stem Cells Work

Dr. Villeponteau uses skin as an example to illustrate the potential benefits of adult stem cells, as your skin can be used as a cosmetic “guidepost” for how old you are. As you get older, your skin starts to thin and loose its elasticity. This is what causes your skin to wrinkle and sag. Now, your skin is constantly renewing itself; shedding old cells as new cells are created underneath.  Adult stem cells are responsible for these new skin cells being born.

As mentioned earlier, with age, your adult stem cells are reduced in number. They also become increasingly dysfunctional. As a result, the turnover in your skin slows down by about half. If you were able to keep the regeneration of skin tissue at more youthful levels by the addition of adult stem cells, you’d be able to maintain youthful-looking skin longer. While this may sound too good to be true, Dr. Villeponteau points to experimental and practical evidence showing that body organs can be repaired using this technology. As for stopping the clock on general aging, however, the results are less clear.

“For general aging, are we going to be able to replace your stem cells by, let’s say, IV? We don’t know how much good we can do. But there has been one rat experiment that’s been done. They were able to extend the lifespan by adding IV stem cell population,” he says.

 

Three Different Types of Stem Cells

There are three major types of stem cell populations, each with their own set of pro’s and con’s:

1.    Embryonic stem cells. As the name implies, embryonic stem cells come from human embryos. Ethical issues have been raised with respects to the use of embryonic stem cells, as you have to destroy the embryo in order to collect the stem cells.  While potent, their immaturity also poses problems. It’s difficult to program them to develop into later-stage tissues. It’s also difficult to find a way for them to form the specific tissue types that you want, because they’re further removed from those individual tissues – say, liver, brain, or muscle tissue. Embryonic stem cells also have cancer potential because they form keratomas, although that’s rare. And, since they are not your own cells, they may cause an immune reaction.

2.    Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). These cells, discovered in 2008, have caused great excitement among scientists. These cells can take a fibroblast (a type of cell) from virtually any part of your body, and transfect it with, or put in, four different genes that are known to be important for stem cell function. This converts the original cell into what amounts to an embryonic stem cell—your embryonic stem cell.  However, this too has its problems. On the upside, it eliminates the issue of an immune reaction, since it’s your own cells. But it still has the potential to promote tumor growth. As explained by Dr. Villeponteau, whenever you insert genes into a genome, you run the risk of putting it near a cancer gene, thereby generating cancer. There are also difficulties in being able to differentiate them into the various tissues you might need. Still, it’s an exciting area where lots of research is being done.

“Very recently, there was one group that was able to take, I think, seven chemical drugs and convert a small proportion of the fibroblast into these iPS cells—doing it just chemically and not using any genes. Of course, that’s much safer. But we don’t know the full impact of what that’s going to mean yet,” Dr. Villeponteau says.

3.    Adult stem cells. On the upside, they don’t have the immunity problem because it’s your own cells. This also eliminates any ethical problem. So far, they do not appear to pose a cancer risk, which is another major advantage.  The disadvantage is that they’re difficult to grow and that there aren’t enough of them to be effective. It would be a game changer if you could amplify their numbers, and this is precisely this key component that Dr. Villeponteau is working on. So far, they’ve developed the media, and a procedure that looks promising, through which adult stem cells could be multiplied. He believes it might be one to two years, however, before the principle can be proven.

How Stem Cells are Currently Used

In the US, it’s illegal to take out a cell, amplify it, and then put it back into the human body. The FDA considers that as a drug. However, it is legal to take bone marrow, for example, and isolate the stem cells. As long as you don’t treat the cells with any kind of drug, or try to grow them, you can then legally put them back in, in a purified, concentrated form. Such treatments already exist, both in the US and abroad. One of the most common treatments using isolated adult stem cells is for knee injuries. According to Dr. Villeponteau, they’re achieving very good results doing that, and many are actually cured. Adult stem cell therapy has also been successfully used in people with back problems, and it appears particularly effective for joint problems and bone growth. Dr. Villeponteau even used adult stem cells to treat bone loss around one of his front teeth, with good results.

He also believes it could be successfully used in the treatment of diabetes, and for recreating the human pancreas and perhaps even the heart. Another area he believes will eventually benefit from adult stem cell technology is in the general reconditioning of your circulatory system—your arteries, veins and capillaries. Autoimmune diseases and multiple sclerosis (MS) may also benefit. At present, there’s a doctor in Utah who claims to be using adult stem cells on stroke patients; successfully regenerating brain function. Stem cells have also been used in cancer patients for the past two decades.

“Cancer patients, if they get high levels of radiation to kill off the cancer, it also kills off blood-forming stem cells. What they’ve been doing in some places, for 20 years now, is to take a sample of your bone marrow and then replace it after the chemotherapy or the radiation therapy to regrow your immune system quickly. They can do that several times. That allows you to go to a much higher dosage of radiation that you would otherwise not be able to survive.”

Another novel technology that also makes use of stem cells is 3D-printing architecture, where iPS cells or embryonic stem cells (not adult stem cells) are used to recreate an organ using a 3D printer. This too is something straight out of a science fiction movie, but it does work, and it’s legal. They’ve successfully replicated an esophagus for example, as well as human ears. It’s really only a matter of time before they figure out how to replicate more complex organs, such as kidneys, pancreas’, livers and hearts using this technology.

 

More Information

When I think about aggressive future efforts to reverse the aging process, nanotech comes to mind. In talking to Dr. Villeponteau, I believe the technology he’s working on is akin to biological nanotech. Rather than creating synthetic nanobots to repair tissues, it would seem far wiser to focus on the already intrinsic intelligence of the human body, which already knows how to use adult stem cells to perform such tasks.

There’s no telling how long it will take for this kind of technology to be perfected, but research is certainly moving ahead at near-breakneck speed. Dr. Villeponteau believes adult stem cells is the fastest way to make some real headway in the areas of cellular regeneration and life extension.

Until then, you can certainly add many years, likely decades, to your life simply by eating right, exercising (which promotes the production of muscle stem cells, by the way) and living an otherwise clean and healthy lifestyle. Extreme life extension, on the other hand, is a different matter.

“I think you can add 20 years to your life now if you eat right, take the right supplements, and exercise. You’d delay diseases, but that’s all you’re going to get. You’re not going to get extreme changes. To do that, you need real science,” he says.

Dr. Villeponteau’s book, Decoding Longevity, covers preventive strategies to prolong your life, mainly diet, exercise, and supplements—although he admittedly also includes some drugs. A portion of the book also covers future developments in the area of more radical life extension, such as stem cell technology. To keep abreast of advancements in this area, you can check out his company website at www.centagen.com.

 

What Happens to Your Brain When You Eat Junk Food (And Why We Crave It)

What Happens to Your Brain When You Eat Junk Food (And Why We Crave It)

 

Most of us know that junk food is unhealthy. We know that poor nutrition is related to heart problems, high blood pressure, and a host of other health ailments. You might even know that studies show that eating junk food has been linked to increases in depression.

But if it’s so bad for us, why do we keep doing it?

There is an answer. And the science behind it will surprise you.

Why We Crave Junk Food

 

Steven Witherly is a food scientist who has spent the last 20 years studying what makes certain foods more addictive (and tasty) than others. Much of the science that follows is from his excellent report, “Why Humans Like Junk Food.”

According to Witherly, when you eat tasty food, there are two factors that make the experience pleasurable.

First, there is the sensation of eating the food. This includes what it tastes like (salty, sweet, umami, etc.), what it smells like, and how it feels in your mouth. This last quality — known as “orosensation” — can be particularly important. Food companies will spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip. Their scientists will test for the perfect amount of fizzle in a soda. These factors all combine to create the sensation that your brain associates with a particular food or drink.

The second factor is the actual macronutrient makeup of the food — the blend of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that it contains. In the case of junk food, food manufacturers are looking for a perfect combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites your brain and gets you coming back for more.

Here’s how they do it…

How Science Creates Cravings

There are a range of factors that scientists and food manufacturers use to make food more addictive.

Dynamic contrast. Dynamic contrast refers to a combination of different sensations in the same food. In the words of Witherly, foods with dynamic contrast have:

… an edible shell that goes crunch followed by something soft or creamy and full of taste-active compounds. This rule applies to a variety of our favorite food structures — the caramelized top of a creme brulee, a slice of pizza, or an Oreo cookie — the brain finds crunching through something like this very novel and thrilling.

Salivary response. Salivation is part of the experience of eating food, and the more that a food causes you to salivate, the more it will swim throughout your mouth and cover your taste buds. For example, emulsified foods like butter, chocolate, salad dressing, ice cream, and mayonnaise promote a salivary response that helps to lather your taste buds with goodness. This is one reason why many people enjoy foods that have sauces or glazes on them. The result is that foods that promote salivation do a happy little tap dance on your brain and taste better than ones that don’t.

Rapid food meltdown and vanishing caloric density. Foods that rapidly vanish or “melt in your mouth” signal to your brain that you’re not eating as much as you actually are. In other words, these foods literally tell your brain that you’re not full, even though you’re eating a lot of calories.

The result: You tend to overeat.

In his best-selling book Salt Sugar Fat, author Michael Moss describes a conversation with Witherly that explains vanishing caloric density perfectly…

I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it … you can just keep eating it forever.”

Sensory specific response. Your brain likes variety. When it comes to food, if you experience the same taste over and over again, then you start to get less pleasure from it. In other words, the sensitivity of that specific sensor will decrease over time. This can happen in just minutes.

Junk foods, however, are designed to avoid this sensory specific response. They provide enough taste to be interesting (your brain doesn’t get tired of eating them), but it’s not so stimulating that your sensory response is dulled. This is why you can swallow an entire bag of potato chips and still be ready to eat another. To your brain, the crunch and sensation of eating Doritos is novel and interesting every time.

Calorie density. Junk foods are designed to convince your brain that it is getting nutrition, but to not fill you up. Receptors in your mouth and stomach tell your brain about the mixture of proteins, fats, carbohydrates in a particular food, and how filling that food is for your body. Junk food provides just enough calories that your brain says, “Yes, this will give you some energy,” but not so many calories that you think, “That’s enough, I’m full.” The result is that you crave the food to begin with, but it takes quite some time to feel full from it.

Memories of past eating experiences. This is where the psychobiology of junk food really works against you. When you eat something tasty (say, a bag of potato chips), your brain registers that feeling. The next time you see that food, smell that food, or even read about that food, your brain starts to trigger the memories and responses that came when you ate it. These memories can actually cause physical responses like salivation and create the “mouth-watering” craving that you get when thinking about your favorite foods.

All of this brings us to the most important question of all.

Food companies are spending millions of dollars to design foods with addictive sensations. What can you and I do about it? Is there any way to counteract the money, the science, and the advertising behind the junk food industry?

How to Kick the Junk Food Habit and Eat Healthy

The good news is that the research shows that the less junk food you eat, the less you crave it. My own experiences have mirrored this. As I’ve slowly begun to eat healthier, I’ve noticed myself wanting pizza and candy and ice cream less and less. Some people refer to this transition period as “gene reprogramming.”

Whatever you want to call it, the lesson is the same: If you can find ways to gradually eat healthier, you’ll start to experience the cravings of junk food less and less. I’ve never claimed to have all the answers (or any, really), but here are three strategies that might help.

1. Use the “outer ring” strategy and the “5 ingredient rule” to buy healthier food.

The best course of action is to avoid buying processed and packaged foods. If you don’t own it, you can’t eat it. Furthermore, if you don’t think about it, you can’t be lured by it.

We’ve talked about the power of junk food to pull you in and how memories of tasty food in the past can cause you to crave more of it in the future. Obviously, you can’t prevent yourself from ever thinking about junk food, but there are ways to reduce your cravings.

First, you can use my “outer ring” strategy to avoid processed and packaged foods at the grocery store. If you limit yourself to purchasing foods that are on the outer ring of the store, then you will generally buy whole foods (fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, etc.). Not everything on the outer ring is healthy, but you will avoid a lot of unhealthy foods.

You can also follow the “5 ingredient rule” when buying foods at the store. If something has more than 5 ingredients in it, don’t buy it. Odds are, it has been designed to fool you into eating more of it. Avoid those products and stick with the more natural options.

2. Eat a variety of foods.

As we covered earlier, the brain craves novelty.

While you may not be able to replicate the crunchy/creamy contrast of an Oreo, you can vary your diet enough to keep things interesting. For example, you could dip a carrot (crunchy) in some hummus (creamy) and get a novel sensation. Similarly, finding ways to add new spices and flavors to your dishes can make eating healthy foods a more desirable experience.

Moral of the story: Eating healthy doesn’t have to be bland. Mix up your foods to get different sensations and you may find it easier than eating the same foods over and over again. (At some point, however, you may have to fall in love with boredom.)

3. Find a better way to deal with your stress.

There’s a reason why many people eat as a way to cope with stress. Stress causes certain regions of the brain to release chemicals (specifically, opiates and neuropeptide Y). These chemicals can trigger mechanisms that are similar to the cravings you get from fat and sugar. In other words, when you get stressed, your brain feels the addictive call of fat and sugar and you’re pulled back to junk food.

We all have stressful situations that arise in our lives. Learning to deal with stress in a different way can help you overcome the addictive pull of junk food. This could include simple breathing techniques or a short guided meditation. Or something more physical likeexercise or making art.

With that said, if you’re looking for a better written and more detailed analysis of the science of junk food, I recommend reading the #1 New York Times best-seller Salt Sugar Fat.

Where to Go From Here

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One of my goals with this article is to reveal just how complex poor eating habits can be. Junk food is designed to keep you coming back for more. Telling people that they “need more willpower” or should “just stop eating crap” is short-sighted at best.

Source:

JamesClear.com