October 06, 2009
Dear Future Centenarian, About thirty years ago, I was hospitalized with a blood infection. In their infinite wisdom, the hospital staff gave me an intravenous injection of antibiotics which cleared up my infection... but it also damaged my hearing. My right ear is especially affected, and my doctor advised hearing aids don't seem to help this type of damage very much. I mention this because I often hear people object to age reversal pursuits as "not being natural". But these same people probably don't think wearing hearing aids or getting cochlear implants is 'unnatural'. But they are the same things in principal. Virtually everything we do in modern society can be considered unnatural. Every time you use tools created by human intelligence to enhance your life or to prevent damage which would undermine your health, you are defying nature. Since we understand what causes tooth decay, we brush our teeth. And since we know certain bacteria can make us sick, we wash our hands with soap. These seem like natural responses to your environment, don't they? And they are if you use your head. So don't you think it actually is natural to enhance your health and longevity with toothpaste, soap, antibiotics and pacemakers too? Isn't that what our intellect is designed to do? Reversing the aging process is way more complex, as are the tools we will need to develop to stop the damage aging heaps upon us, but the principle is the same. Reversing hearing loss and aging are simply extensions of basic medicine as we march into the 21st century. Here's an example of what science is doing to keep me from annoying you every time I ask you to repeat yourself. |
An Israeli discovery on the function of tiny molecules called (miRNAs) in the inner ears of mice could lead to the cure of human deafness in adults caused by aging, disease, drugs and noise, or genetic disease in children.
The research carried out over three years by world-renowned geneticist Prof. Karen Avraham of Tel Aviv University
About one out of every two elderly people suffers from some degree of hearing disability, while one in 1,000 infants is born deaf due to mutant genes. Healthy babies are born with 15,000 sensory hair cells in each ear that allow them to hear. These hair cells are responsible for translating sounds to electrical pulses that the brain can interpret.
When these cells die off in a process called apoptosis, sometimes caused by stupid mistakes made by hospitals, it results in hearing disability. When the hair cells are all gone, profound deafness follows. Finding the mechanism in which apoptosis occurs might make it possible to prevent it.
The TAU team - working with cooperation from the Weizmann Institute of Science molecular genetics department and biologists at Indiana 's Purdue University
Today, it's reversing hearing loss. Tomorrow, aging!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment