Happily ever after
How to prolong an active life
Post-science experts explain whether it is possible to defeat aging and prolong the active period of life.
Cardiologist Dmitry Shchekochikhin: preventive examinations
A great influence on the state of health in old age is how a person lives in the so–called middle age - from 40 to 60 years. First of all, we are talking about the control of the main risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, the level of physical activity and alcohol abuse.
It is clear that with age, restructuring occurs, and the rhythm of life and character change. But there are things that we are responsible for – health. Therefore, from the age of 30, you need to see a doctor about once a year, and at the age of 45-50, a deeper screening takes place. During this period, the peak of the development of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, thyroid diseases occurs. Such diseases are quite "slow": their consequences accumulate for 20-30 years. And here the logic is simple: the earlier a person begins to control high blood pressure, cholesterol, the higher the chances of an active old age.
If nothing bothers you, then you can start with a general practitioner, a standard scheduled annual medical examination. It is important to know the family history. We may suspect an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (which requires a more aggressive approach) with the development of a heart attack or stroke in first-line relatives younger than 55 years in men and younger than 65 years in women.
I will point out a curious fact about sports. American scientists, based on 46 years of observation, have established a link between fitness and medical expenses after 65 years: more athletic spend less, which once again indicates the importance of active middle age.
Geneticist Evgeny Rogaev: the search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease
Today, 50% of age-related dementia is due to Alzheimer's disease. This disease is a pandemic of our time. There is no complete understanding of the causes of Alzheimer's disease, but scientists have identified a key feature – the appearance of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. Alzheimer's disease is most common in people over 60-65 years old.
Alzheimer's disease is a unique case of a complex disease, where it was possible to reliably detect genes and decipher the molecular mechanism of the disease. Four main genes (PSEN1, PSEN2, APP, APOE) have been identified, which can be used to determine a person's predisposition to Alzheimer's disease. At the same time, mutations in the PSEN1, PSEN2, APP genes are the cause of the disease, usually with an early onset. The genetic variant in the APOE gene acts as a risk factor for a common form of Alzheimer's disease with a late onset, that is, after 60-65 years.
It is important that there are external risk factors for the development of the disease. The main ones are head trauma and sleep deprivation. People who are constantly exposed to different types of insomnia are at increased risk. Another risk factor is the presence of episodes of loss of consciousness in a person's life, including during surgical operations.
Today there are no drugs that cure Alzheimer's disease and stop the degenerative process. Clinical trials of the drugs have not yet led to real results. Although experiments using immunization against amyloid peptides have been successful in mice. As a result, the number of amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease decreased in the brains of animals. Testing the method on humans has led to a number of negative effects. The main one is inflammation of the brain, the emergence of a strong immune response. Therefore, drugs that temporarily improve cognitive functions are still used.
Psychologist Vladimir Spiridonov: the development of cognitive abilities with age
Certain cognitive abilities decrease with age. In 2009, American psychologist Timothy Salthouse published a study made on a large sample, according to which a person's cognitive abilities gradually decline after 25-27 years. This leads to the fact that it is more difficult for people after 50 to remember new information, find a way out of unexpected situations, and react quickly to changes. Their so-called fluid (fluid) intelligence decreases.
On the contrary, crystallized intelligence does not deteriorate with age – for example, a rich vocabulary and its competent use. Moreover, if a person is focused on a particular area and is actively engaged in it, then he can be very effective in it. And this efficiency will continue to grow after 50 years. A banal example is crosswords. If you take up solving them even after 60 years, you can succeed very well in this, showing better results than people who are several decades younger.
But cognitive abilities are literally connected not only with the body and brain. It's pretty much a way of life. These abilities are fueled by a variety of content: when a person has goals, when he is in demand and needed, when he is engaged in an interesting business, and so on. A good example is pensioners of developed countries who can travel a lot, live for themselves, or can continue their studies and look for new activities for themselves. I hope that this trend will gradually prevail in our country.
Biologist Alexey Moskalev: the search for geroprotectors
Scientists are actively searching for geroprotectors – drugs that can be used to mute the processes that accelerate aging and activate the processes that protect against aging. Drugs should hit targets – certain proteins. There are a million types of proteins in a cell, so there is a risk of hitting not only the right protein, but also a dozen others. Currently, only clinical studies are being conducted, there are no proven medicinal geroprotectors.
But a person himself can have a geoprotective effect on the body – through moderate stress. For the body, such stress is physical exertion, sauna, hardening, fasting periods in nutrition (for example, switching to a vegetarian diet several times a month or skipping one meal from time to time). Even meditation is considered stressful when you disconnect from the usual sources of pleasure and communication, for example, from viewing social networks. And also stress – performing in public, traveling, a new environment.
What does stress do? It suppresses the production of the hormone responsible for growth at the cellular level. The body turns on stress resistance, as a result of which it begins to look for and fix errors in DNA, and also starts autophagy – a process in which the cell "eats" itself. And it does not die at the same time, but, on the contrary, rejuvenates, because damaged proteins and mitochondria "go into the furnace" (due to insufficient influx of nutrients from the outside). There are two important points: stress should be moderate and short-lived, and it should also be replaced by rest.
Geroprotectors can be contained in food. By eating less food, which accelerates aging, and more, which slows down, we can also have a rejuvenating effect on the body. In the book "The Intestines of a centenarian," I tried to outline everything that science currently knows about nutrition in terms of slowing down aging. In particular, the diet should meet seven criteria: balanced; prebiotic and metabiotic; antimutagenic; hormetic; anti-inflammatory; containing biologically active substances; low-glycemic.
About the authors:
Vladimir Spiridonov is a Doctor of Psychology, Head of the Laboratory of Cognitive Research at the Faculty of Psychology of the ION RANEPA.
Alexey Moskalev – Doctor of Biological Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Geroprotective and Radioprotective Technologies of the Institute of Biology of the Komi National Research Center Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Department of Ecology of Syktyvkar State University.
Evgeny Rogaev – Doctor of Biological Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Genomics of the Institute of General Genetics named after N. I. Vavilov, Head of the Department of Genetics of the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Dmitry Shchekochikhin – Candidate of Medical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Cardiology, Ultrasound and Functional Diagnostics of Sechenov University.
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