What you need to not grow old at all. When does the body really start to age? What to do to avoid getting old

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Doctors and scientists Rhonda Wright and Ruth Winter wrote the book “Fitness after 40,” where they collected important scientific arguments on how not to age, how to maintain a youthful body and good spirits, despite the years. With the permission of Alpina Publisher, we are publishing a chapter from this book.

Aging does not imply a sudden and irrevocable transition from activity to frailty.

In fact, this popular belief is a myth. Years do not condemn you to powerlessness. And energy, joy from life and activity can be maintained for a long time.

Why then do people believe this myth? I declare that you “don’t work hard” like you used to, precisely because you “don’t work hard” like you used to. Do you know what I mean? To maintain strength and energy, you need to work hard, just like in your youth. The human body masterfully knows how to adapt to circumstances and is capable of constant activity, provided that you part with stereotypes and obstacles that mistakenly seem to be inevitable accompaniments of aging.

Today, the success of the entire team often depends on athletes over 40. Looking at the professional baseball players, hockey players, triathletes, wrestlers and amateur athletes who literally fill the streets, sports fields and stadiums, one can see the most beautiful old age of the best of the best.

« How is this possible? Isn't the human body genetically programmed to slow down internal processes? One of my favorite sportswriters, John Hank, in his article for Best Life magazine (in which he interviewed me) puts the answer to these questions very well:».

It seems as if in the 21st century, older athletes, both amateurs and professionals, are living out the story of Benjamin Button in reality: by intelligently combining proper training, balanced nutrition and the achievements of sports medicine, they overcome the immutable laws of nature and turn back time, or at least stop it. Today, professionals are busy turning their forties into their thirties. These lines are inspiring, but in reality everything is not so simple. It is obvious that over the years it becomes more difficult to achieve success in sports.

As a doctor and scientist, I wanted to find out what the human body is capable of. I set out to prove that through constant movement we can really maintain youth and prevent the negative consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. These include more than 33 chronic diseases, included in the “sitting death syndrome,” that literally suck the life out of people.

I started watching experienced amateur athletes because they are ordinary people (not professional athletes, like you and me, and do not receive money for training and competitions) who invest in their health every day. This observation made it possible to exclude the factor of inactivity and see what the body is capable of if you remain active and in good physical shape after 40.

How not to grow old: how much does the slowing down of processes in the body depend on nature and how much on us?

In a sense, the cells of the human body are immortal. They know how to share and renew themselves. However, over the years, recovery processes slow down, tissues lose elasticity ness and function worse. In nature, we see many examples (from insects to humans) of how performance decreases with age.

This general decline also affects our physical capabilities. But how much of it is due to inactivity, and how much is due solely to the nature of age-related changes? Is there such a thing as an age-related decline in activity that does not depend on any additional medical factors?

To answer the question about the rate of aging, it is necessary to analyze how this process occurs in the healthiest people - elderly Olympians. Even in old age, these athletes live full lives and do not lose mobility, and therefore they can be taken as a model.

I will repeat my question: to what extent the slowdown of processes in the body is caused by inevitable biological factors? To get the answer, I looked at the performance of 50- to 85-year-old runners who competed in the 2001 National Senior Olympics.

As expected, running times increased with age across all distances, from the 100-meter to the 10-kilometer. Until the age of 75, the deterioration in performance occurred slowly and gradually, but then the time required to complete the distance (from 100 m to 10 km) increased sharply, which indicated a significant weakening of physical capabilities.

When I discussed these results with the Olympians themselves, they confirmed that they felt this change. However, many believed that only their performance was deteriorating, and not that of all athletes their age.

At the age of 50-75 years, distance completion time deteriorated gradually - by less than 2% per year. Moreover, the results of runners of different ages are approximately the same, but when we analyze a group of 75-year-old athletes, the picture changes. From this moment on, the time to cover the distance increases by almost 8% per year.

Track and field athletes show high results until the age of 50, then a moderate decline occurs until the age of 75, and a sharp decline at 75. It turns out that, if factors such as inactivity and illness are eliminated, it is possible to maintain physical activity and independence until at least 75 years of age . If activity is lost earlier, then this is most likely a consequence of illness, inactivity, genetic predisposition or bad habits..

Stable performance is also observed in sports such as swimming, triathlon, cycling and weightlifting. Hirofumi Tanaka and Douglas Seals, leading scientists in the field of sport physiology, have published numerous studies analyzing changes in performance in swimmers over the lifespan. Scientists compared the highest performance at long (1500 m) and short (50 m) distances and found only slight deterioration of maxi low results at the age of 40–70 years . But after 70 years, swimmers’ results deteriorate even more significantly than runners.

To find out how performance and age correlated, Tanaka and Seals compared data from swimmers and runners. They found that while both groups showed stable performance and showed little decline in performance until age 70, runners experienced a 30% greater decline as they aged. This means that athletic success depends not only on physiology or training organization, but also on the task we perform.

Triathlon- a rapidly growing sport. According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, about 3 million people practice it in the United States, 43% of whom are 40+. Romuald Lepers, Beat Knechtle and Paul Stapley found that during the period of 19 years - between 40 and 59 years - both men and women begin to complete the distance faster . The performance of triathletes over 44 years of age - both men and women - has improved slightly over the next 25 years in swimming, cycling and running, and their level of physical fitness has also increased. Overall triathlon performance declined by 13% for men and 15% for women over a decade until age 70. Performance in cycling did not deteriorate as sharply as in swimming and running.

About the same thing was found among weightlifters.. David Meltzer estimates that they deteriorate at a rate of 1–1.5% per year, and that the rate of deterioration increases once they reach age 70. During the experiments, it turned out that the strength of an 85-year-old weightlifter and a 65-year-old member of the control group was approximately equal. This means that the age advantage of weightlifters is at least 20 years.

These three studies prove that amateur athletes can achieve almost the same results as in their youth, if they pay attention to physical activity every day .

What happens if you stop?

Wondering how quickly we age, I, as a physician, became interested in whether activity helps maintain strong bones. In two studies, I found that older Olympians aged 70-80 years and older actually have very strong bones. In addition, it turns out that if a person plays high-impact contact sports—or, as I like to call them, “bone shaking”—it affects bone health just as significantly as age, gender, genetics, and weight.

Research has proven that bone fragility can be avoided and that constant mobility is the key to their health for many years .

I know for sure that few people think about bone health until they get a fracture - then it’s hard to think about anything else. You want your bones to live as long as you do, but osteoporosis and osteopenia can develop without symptoms for years - until we fall and break something. The consequences can be the most dire. One fracture will be followed by another. Osteoporosis is usually considered a disease of women, but it affects 2 million men in the United States. And its consequences can be fragility, loss of motor independence, decreased growth, even death.

When an older person falls and breaks a hip, there is a 6.3% chance that they will die in hospital . And of the 93.7% of those who decide not to see a doctor, a third will die in the first year after a fall. (The risk increases if the victim is elderly, male, and lives in a medical facility
boarding type). Of the 2⁄3 who survive, 50% will never return to their previous activities and will not be able to cope without daily outside help. That is, they will not be able to live in the house where they raised their children, or return to the life they like.

These numbers are puzzling, but our research shows that Daily exercise can protect you from fractures .

How not to grow old: I found the fountain of youth

It seems that today many of us, following the example of Juan Ponce de Lion, travel to distant lands in search of that very elixir of youth (in the form of a pill, diet, cream, etc.). But, most likely, constant movement, and not some kind of “magic water,” helped Juan maintain his youth.

A recent large and long-term study showed that even minimal physical activity reduces mortality and the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. Scientists from New Orleans published data in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that Jogging for just 30 to 60 minutes a week reduces the risk of early death by 30% and the risk of death directly from a heart attack or stroke by 45%. .

That is, you don’t have to be a marathon runner to largely maintain your health. Not at all necessary! At the genetic level, you are programmed to move. The body does not know what you are doing: whether you are hunting, picking berries right in front of the cave, or going somewhere far away to get them. The body simply recognizes the movement. And activity supports the work of genes that encode health, mobility, strength of muscles and bones. If you sit idle, the body decides that you are waiting for the end of winter and puts your metabolism into “hibernation” mode. .

How does activity help not to lose youthful energy? One of the most important points here is maintaining lean muscle mass.

When talking about their own aging, people very often complain about weakness. They can no longer bear weights, walk long distances, and get tired much faster. One reason this can happen is muscle loss. Numerous population studies have shown that lean muscle tissue loses cells and fibers with age, becoming stiff. Loss of lean muscle mass, or muscle mass, leads to loss of strength and endurance.

In a study of sedentary populations, Walter Frontera and his colleagues found that in people aged 50-75 years, muscle mass decreases by about 15% per decade, due to which working ability decreases by three to four times .

In addition, a study of key health indicators in patients aged 70–79 years found that in sedentary people, the muscles are covered with fat. In other words, a huge amount of fat accumulates between muscle fibers and even in the cells themselves - like on a steak.

What happens to your muscles if you move regularly and actively? My colleagues and I decided to answer this question by observing elderly amateur athletes training 4-5 times a week. Thanks to MRI images, I was able to track changes in the volume of lean muscle mass. The result shocked me.

This is a shot of the thigh of a 40-year-old triathlete. It looks like a piece of lean beef. The muscles are in excellent condition, the muscle is not swollen with fat, there is practically no subcutaneous fat. Next we see a photograph of the thigh of a 74-year-old man leading a sedentary lifestyle. It's a completely different picture, isn't it? And just below that is the thigh of a 70-year-old triathlete: the muscles are in about the same good condition as those of a 40-year-old athlete.

Constant mobility preserves lean muscle mass and prevents fat from swimming around the muscles and loss of muscle strength.

It is necessary to do the same thing that we do to combat excess weight, to strengthen the cardiovascular system, for longevity and simply for a good mood. Namely: get enough sleep, exercise regularly and eat right.

It is important to remember that the true source of youth is proper nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. If this foundation is missing, then no potions or creams can help your skin.

Before we talk about what harms our skin, let's look at the products designed to make our skin beautiful. Below are some recommendations.

Green and red vegetables

All orange-red vegetables are rich in beta-carotene, which is converted into vitamin A in the body. This vitamin, in turn, protects cells from destruction and premature aging. Moreover, spinach and most green leafy vegetables are rich in vitamin A.

Nuts

In the case of nuts, especially almonds, the benefits come from their high antioxidant content. Vitamin E contained in nuts helps retain moisture and actively fights free radicals, which accelerate the aging process of the skin.

Citrus

Vitamin C, which citrus fruits are rich in, helps the body produce collagen. This protein is the basis of the structure of the skin. A decrease in collagen and its breakdown lead to sagging skin, and the vitamin C contained in citrus fruits tightens it again.

Youthful skin

When we talk about eating right for healthy and youthful skin, it is extremely important to start your work in this direction by learning not only what to eat, but also what to avoid. Eating heavily on skin-healthy foods while continuing to eat destructive foods will not achieve anything.

You can almost always tell by the color of a person’s face how he eats and, in general, his state of health. Let's look at foods that negatively affect complexion.

For example, resistance to leptin and insulin is a major accelerator of the aging process. It manifests itself both from the inside and from the outside, for this reason it is extremely important to monitor the level of these elements in order to look young and be generally healthy.

The most effective way to reduce leptin and insulin levels is to reduce or eliminate sugar, especially fructose, and grains from your diet as much as possible. Moreover, if you intend to benefit from the products that we will talk about below, you will definitely need to give up sugary soda.

What is good for the skin

Donna Gates, author of The Body Ecology Diet, gives great tips on how to use foods to improve your complexion. She also explains why products have such a powerful effect on our skin.

The main idea of ​​her book is that for clean and healthy skin it is necessary to rid your body of toxins, cleanse it of dangerous substances in a timely manner and at the same time give it the necessary elements.

The organs responsible for the beauty of the skin are the kidneys and liver, thyroid gland, adrenal glands, large and small intestines.

Liver and kidneys- these are organs that regularly, without interruption, filter everything that enters our body. If a person’s nutrition is far from correct, then these organs begin to wear out. The result is boils and other skin problems.

Thyroid- an organ that, when receiving proper nutrition, produces hormones that the human body needs for energy. Flabby, flaky and dry skin is an indicator of poor functioning of this organ.

Adrenal glands produce the most important hormones in the human body (testosterone, progesterone, DHEA, pregnenolone and estrogen). Hormonal imbalance is also a cause of skin problems.

Small and large intestine provide nutrients to all organs and remove waste from the body. When what needs to leave the body is retained in the intestines, our skin quickly becomes oily and inflamed. Clean and flawless skin is an indicator of clean intestines.

Your main strategy is to eat a diet that suits your type, with organic and whole foods a priority. Only this will help you get rid of toxins naturally and get what your body needs to function normally.

Skin beauty

Some products have been particularly successful in the area of ​​beauty and radiance. So, one of your first healthy strategies should be to get enough good quality omega-3 fats. This is such a reliable indicator that you can understand a person’s needs for this element only by shaking his hand.

If the hand is not smooth and soft, then this is a sure sign that the person is suffering from omega-3 deficiency. Moreover, many reputable experts agree with this diagnosis and recommend seafood as the main source of omega-3 fats. However, this is a very controversial recommendation because fish today is so contaminated that if you eat it, you will get more harm from the toxins than the benefit from the omega-3s.

Therefore, take high-quality omega-3 supplements. One of the best is krill oil. Its benefits are generally greater than those of regular fish oil because it has higher antioxidant levels, is more bioavailable, is not rancid, and is more stable.

Therefore, when dealing with dry skin, the first point is to have a sufficient amount of omega-3 fats in the diet, especially in winter. During the cold season, you can even increase the dose. The second point is to eat enough vegetables.

It is not uncommon for 75-year-old women to look at least 20 years younger, or even more, and have virtually no wrinkles. As it turns out, the vast majority of these women, in addition to leading a healthy lifestyle, drink freshly squeezed juices.

How to prolong youthful skin

Vegetables contain large amounts of both nutrients and water. Moreover, vegetables are a catalyst for the activation of the body’s natural detoxification systems. So, to keep your liver healthy, it needs to be supported by green vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, dandelion greens, kale and chlorella.

The simplest and easiest way to consume the right amount of vegetables in your daily life is to juice them. Adjust the amount of vegetables and juice you need based on your food type.

In general, include as many raw foods as possible in your diet, including those without allergies, and raw dairy products, as they are also a source of youthful skin. However, dairy products become potentially harmful when they are pasteurized. Avoid these whenever possible.

In the vast majority of cases, problems in our body are provoked not by the food itself, but by the changes its natural states undergo before reaching our table. Therefore, only raw dairy products are healthy.

Another category of products that are known for their impact on skin health are fats and oils (cold pressed and raw). Coconut oil is extremely beneficial for the thyroid gland. Also be sure to include foods that contain antioxidants in your diet, which includes most berries.

An important group of products that also need to be mentioned are cultured (fermented) products. They promote the growth of good bacteria in the intestines, helping to digest food faster. Benefits also include support for immune function, increased digestive enzymes, omega-3, lactic acid, B vitamins, lactase and other beneficial elements that fight harmful bacteria.

How to prolong the beauty of your skin

Research has proven that eating richly colored foods promotes a healthy complexion. Carotenoids (xanthophylls and carotenes), which give vegetables and fruits their bright color, are found not only in orange, red and yellow fruits, but also in green vegetables.

The more yellow and red pigments a person contains in his skin, the more attractive he looks. If the complexion turns red, this is due to a rush of blood. As a result of one experiment, it turned out that if there is a choice between tanned skin and skin color obtained as a result of the action of carotenoids, then a person prefers the second.

Old age is considered inevitable and is associated with health problems, decreased activity and even frailty, not only physically but also mentally. It begins differently for everyone, and one of the signs is loss of reproductive function. Is this so, and also why old age is not the same as decrepitude and not a death sentence at all, we talked with Vadim Ushakov, Candidate of Biological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Physiology of Plants and Microorganisms of Perm State National Research University.

- What is old age?

Old age is not the result of life, but an integral process and weakening of vital functions, it begins quite early: from the age of 11 the immune system becomes weaker, by about 20 years sarcopenia begins - this is a decrease in the number of muscle fibers, from the age of 25 the decline of cognitive functions begins - says the biologist. - And we can continue ad infinitum. This is a gradual degradation of all body systems if they are not trained. Therefore, old age is not something that will ever await you. Old age is already with you.

- Why does the body age?

In order to make way for future offspring. If everyone lived forever, there would not be enough resources in nature, explains Vadim Ushakov. - Everyone is susceptible to aging, although this is not entirely true. There are some species of animals in which old age, or rather, decrepitude, does not occur. These are the humpback whale, naked mole rat, some types of oysters and other vertebrates and invertebrates. A whale that lives and reproduces for up to 200 years dies suddenly - from an unexpected reason. Most often, one of the body functions fails in these mammals. If it's vision, they bump into things in the ocean.

Myth No. 1. Old people are as naive and vulnerable as children

Here the answer is categorical - overwhelmingly yes. And first of all, this is due to slight degradation of the brain. Because in children the brain is not yet fully developed, and in old age it begins to degrade and develop, so to speak, in the opposite direction. Therefore, most older people become a little naive and gullible, like children. They also become grumpy because they have life experience with all this.

Myth No. 2. With age, a person decreases in height.

This is true. A person becomes several centimeters shorter with age. Only these centimeters are not going anywhere. It's a matter of muscle tissue. With age, it weakens, a banal stoop also occurs, and the amount of cartilage tissue between the vertebral discs decreases. You can minimize this, but the horizontal bar will not help here, only running, walking and a small load with weights.

Myth No. 3. With age, a person’s bite becomes deformed and the chin moves inward - this is one of the signs of aging.

Yes. And again this is due to the weakness of the muscular system. As long as the facial muscles and chewing muscles are in good shape, the relief of your face is normal. When muscle degradation begins, the masticatory muscles become weaker, the cartilage gradually disappears and the jaw falls in a little. This does not happen to everyone, but to most.

Myth No. 4.Old age deprives a person of memory and intelligence

Yes, it's true if you don't train your brain. See what situation arises. The most active moment of nervous cognitive activity occurs during school and student life. What comes after? You have a diploma, you go to work. In the first two years of working in a new place, you also develop, because you need to find out how it is done. Optimize your activities. But the brain is actually a very lazy substance. She lays out neural pathways for the implementation of some business, and then rests. And when they tell you: “Do something new,” denial arises: “Or maybe you shouldn’t do this?” - this is the brain starting to get lazy.

If the brain is indulged in this, then from the age of 25–30 the degradation of the nervous system begins. To keep your nervous system young, you need to do something new every month and every day. You need to maintain your cognitive function. Read new books, watch new films. That is, never read old books or watch movies. Always strive for novelty. You can find many activities that you have never done before. New activities mean the creation of new nerve cells. You can weave with beads, listen to music, knit, study. If you do not engage in constant development, nerve cells will begin to degrade.

Myth No. 5: To live longer, you need to eat less. Does nutrition affect the aging process?

One hundred percent - yes. A huge amount of research has already been carried out on different animals, from mice to monkeys. It has already been proven that limiting the number of calories prolongs the state of vigor and youth. This will not increase life, but the body will wear out more slowly. But this does not mean that you need to constantly not finish eating, otherwise you will not cope psychologically.

A good solution, according to the scientist, is fasting or temporary, at least one day a week, limiting the amount of food consumed.

Recently, a type of unloading and cleansing of the body called detox has become popular. Detox is also about restricting calories and, first of all, consuming huge amounts of fiber. Fiber contains very few calories, and therefore the body is unloaded at the level of each cell.

Myth No. 6. Women age faster than men.

Yes its true. Women age and wear out faster than men, because their hormonal systems are designed for childbearing, their reproductive function is greater than that of men. While a woman is carrying a child, enormous wear and tear on the body occurs.

At the same time, the average life expectancy of women is longer than that of men, but wear and tear of the body in women begins earlier.

Myth No. 7. Life expectancy depends on heredity

50% of it depends on genetics, the rest is lifestyle.

Myth No. 8. There is no sex life in old age.

Clarification - in wear and tear there is no sex life. If you have worn out your body, of course, you will not have any sex life. But if you begin to take some actions from a young age in order to delay this deterioration, then, of course, reproductive and sexual functions will be with you much longer.

Myth No. 9. Being old means being sick.

No, that's not entirely true. It depends on that 50% of lifestyle that we talked about.

Myth No. 10. Gray hair is the main sign of aging.

It is a myth. Gray hair can be genetic. Many people already have gray hair behind their ears by the age of 25. And this is not an indicator that your body is worn out, it’s just genetics. Some people have quite thick hair until they are 50 years old and so on.

The most important and first sign of aging is psychological.

If you prefer the elevator to taking the stairs, or take the bus instead of walking a couple of blocks, this is the first sign that your body is starting to wear out. This is the first signal that it’s time to do something, it’s time to change your lifestyle.

Photo: Timofey Kalmakov

Myth No. 11. Older people get up very early because they suffer from insomnia.

Elderly people have insomnia. This is due to the fact that the synthesis of the hormone melatonin, which regulates our biological clock, decreases. It decreases because the gland that produces it, the pineal gland, wears out with age. There are fewer cells in it, less melatonin, and, accordingly, the rhythm is disturbed. Either a person goes to bed early and gets up at night, or he can go to bed late and get up before dark. If this happens, it is already useless to fight.

Myth No. 13. The most serious crisis in a person’s life is withdrawal from activities.

There is no absolute zero state in nature - you either develop or degrade. And, indeed, a large number of depressive states arise when a person leaves work - because he does not know what to do next. Again, you need to make a lot of psychological effort to force yourself to do something, because the brain gets lazy.

Solution: start doing something. Embroider, weave with beads, play the violin, study. Then, even in old age, the scale of degradation can turn into a scale of development. And the nervous, muscular and hormonal systems will remain in an alert state much longer.

Photo: Timofey Kalmakov

Myth No. 14. Aging cannot be slowed down.

If aging and wear and tear are a program embedded in us, then, in the language of the Internet, why not “hack” it? And this has already been done and has been done for quite a long time, since the 1990s, and first of all this is being done in Russia at Moscow State University. Let's figure out why we get old? What happens to the body, why do cells begin to degrade and collapse? In fact, each of our organs and each of our tissues is capable of regenerating endlessly. From school biology, everyone remembers very well that a cell divides in half: one cell gives rise to two young cells. If this continued indefinitely, we would live forever and be forever young.

For example, the intestinal mucosa is renewed in less than a month. Liver cells are able to regenerate at high speed. But for some reason the process gradually stops. The fact is that the number of cell divisions is limited, since at the ends of the chromosomes there are sections called telomeres, and with each cell division the telomere shortens and shortens. When the telomere ends, the cell stops dividing and tissue degradation occurs.

It sounds unoptimistic, but I’ll add joy. Cells have an enzyme that helps telomeres repair. It is called telomerase, our main assistant, which allows us to increase the number of cell divisions. The problem is that through our lifestyle - overeating, smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of physical activity and depression - we constantly reduce telomerase activity.

- How to help telomerase?

The first is lifestyle and nutrition. A nutritionist’s golden rule would be: “Eat half of what you want.” No need to overeat.

A scientist shares a breakfast recipe that increases telomerase activity.

Mix walnuts, almonds, currently fashionable chia seeds and some red dried berries in equal portions. Volume - how much you can eat in the morning. Stick to this breakfast throughout your life and don’t overeat during the day.

In addition, the diet should contain 80% vegetables and fruits and 20% meat foods.

People often indulge heavily in meat. Refusing it is pointless and harmful. But it is worth limiting its consumption.

As for alcohol, you can drink 100 milliliters of dry red wine per day, because it contains some of the most reliable antioxidants: resveratrol and dihydroquercetin. The only problem is that few people limit themselves to the permissible dose. And what happens is not help to cells, but violence against them.

Another way to help telomerase is through mandatory physical activity.

Just don’t think that this means constantly sitting in the gym and wearing yourself out on exercise machines. No. The optimal physical activity, which reliably increases telomerase activity by 20%, and therefore rejuvenates us, is 40 minutes of interval running three times a week. 10 minutes - running, 10 minutes - brisk walking and so on.

If you want to build muscle mass, of course, go to the gym. This will also help telomerase. Just don’t let your condition get to such a point that after leaving the gym you crawl out of there, your muscles and joints hurt. This way you will increase muscle mass and reduce telomerase activity.

You can and should also go to the steam room. Its temperature should be 50–60 degrees. This is the best temperature for cleansing lymph and intercellular fluid. This steam room once a week for 15–20 minutes helps cleanse the lymphatic system.

Photo: Timofey Kalmakov

Myth No. 15. Youth can be extended with the help of pharmaceuticals

Let me say right away that I am not a gerontologist. I cannot give prescriptions, I can only advise which drugs can really help cells rejuvenate. Be sure to consume Omega-3 daily - fish oil. It is better to buy it at a higher price because it is well purified from heavy metals. It is worth using lipoic acid systematically; it is now sold en masse in pharmacies. Just don't take it every day. Everyone chooses on their own or in agreement with their doctor - a month of admission, a month of rest.

A huge number of women in the Urals are deficient in vitamin D.

Nowadays, any clinical laboratory tests the level of vitamin D in the blood. In 99% this figure is reduced. And women should definitely use it. Daily or not - this is in agreement with the therapist. But this element is very important, you need to pay attention.

Antioxidants are assistants that help fight the formation of harmful substances in cells.

The main thing here is not to overdo it. The first antioxidant to consume is vitamin C.

As for the medicine that can be used to postpone wear and tear and prolong youth, it, according to Vadim Ushakov, is in development.

The medicine has been developed in Russia by academician Skulachev since the 1990s. This is not a cure for death. But it allows you to slow down the processes of cell degradation. It has already been tested and proven on many living organisms, from ciliates to mice. It is not known when it will hit the shelves, because clinical trials of this kind of medicine, and not the nutritional supplements that I talked about, are delayed for many years.

To learn more about old age and deterioration of the body, the scientist advises reading two popular science books: “Life without Old Age” by Vladimir Skulachev and “The Telomere Effect” by Nobel laureate in the field of telomere research Elizabeth Blackburn.

Eternal youth is the cherished dream of any woman, at any age. After all, you must admit that none of us wants to grow old, and in order to look younger than our years, any of us is ready to do a lot. In this article we will give recommendations, following which you can find your “rejuvenating apple”, while the quality and habitual routine of your life will not noticeably change. Ready to check it out?

Why do we grow old?

The biological point of view represents aging as the gradual loss of important functions by the body, including slower regeneration and loss of the ability to reproduce. Over the years, it becomes more and more difficult for our body to cope with diseases and withstand sometimes aggressive external conditions.

Human aging is studied by the science of gerontology. But even gerontological scientists hesitate to give a clear answer to the question: why do we grow old? They have already put forward several theories of loss of youth, each of which has its own grounds, but does not provide a complete picture of the prerequisites and conditions of aging. They need to be considered only as a whole. Therefore, we present the main theses and conclusions from them:

• Poisoning of the body with intestinal poisons. The intestines, which digest food throughout our lives and help us absorb nutrients, cannot process them without waste. And what remains in it forms toxins and wastes, which over time begin to poison the entire body. The more microbes in the intestinal flora, the lower life expectancy.
• Aggressive forms of oxygen (oxidants), which are produced in the human body during its life, accumulate and have no outlet, destroying it.
• The process of cell division, which continuously occurs in our body, is not endless. Sooner or later, the amount of “raw materials for division” is reduced, and the body’s cells are renewed less and less often.
• Each person has their own biological clock. The parts of the brain - the pituitary gland and hypothalamus - are responsible for the production of hormones by the glands, under the influence of which the vital activity of all cells occurs. The genes of our body are programmed for withering and destruction, but the duration of normal functioning of the hormonal system is different for everyone, laid down by nature.
• Throughout our lives, damage to our body accumulates, which also causes aging.

Based on the above reasons for aging, let’s try to develop for ourselves an algorithm of behavior that will help us not only look young for a long time, but also feel “25.”

How to maintain youth without compromising your quality of life?

Contrary to general prejudices, in order to look great at any age you do not need to radically change your life. To maintain health, beauty and youth for a long time, significantly improve your well-being and increase the overall quality of life, you just need to make minimal adjustments to your usual routine.

As for maintaining physical youth, here are some tips for women of any age:

• rational nutrition with the inclusion of environmentally friendly dishes with low calorie content in the menu;
• sufficient sleep duration;
• regular gymnastics;
• hygiene and systematic skin care procedures;
• reducing the number of emotional and physical overloads, sufficient rest after them;
• giving up bad habits or reducing them;
• adding variety to your life.

The closest path to youth is a healthy lifestyle, and our advice will be based on compliance with its components.

Gerontological scientists have suggested that reducing calorie intake by approximately 25-30% below normal can significantly prolong the youth of the entire organism: the life cycle increases, the risk of cancer decreases, memory sharpens and reactions improve.

It is worth trying proper nutrition as the main key to maintaining youth. Include in your body as many fresh fruits, vegetables, grains and other foods rich in “essential” vitamins A, C, E, which serve as natural antioxidants and help us fight toxins. Even if you are unable to reduce the size of your portions, make sure that your diet is rich in the following foods - the fountains of youth: carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, bell peppers, citrus fruits, apricots, rose hips, nuts, grapes, pumpkin.

By eliminating overly spicy spices from your diet, you will be surprised how much faster you feel full and how noticeably your portions have decreased.

Youth and attractiveness are directly related to movement. And the category of movements can include not only walking, fitness classes or exercise machines, but also, for example, good regular sex.

By the way: special studies have been conducted, the conclusions of which convince us that if you have sex every day for 6 months, you can actually rejuvenate physically and look 5 years younger than you are.

In addition to the pleasant side described above, make it a rule to use public transport as little as possible, preferring to walk, do exercises at least three times a week, and ideally sign up for aerobics, dancing or swimming - the quality of your life will only improve, it will become much more more interesting and richer.

In order not to go on diets, but to always be in good physical shape, many women practice fasting days, and they do it right. By arranging such a day, you do not cause any significant harm to the body, while a long diet can hurt your metabolism. It is especially good to arrange fasting days after you had a hearty dinner the evening of the previous day and are afraid that excess weight will not slow down on your figure.

So, what is the best way to unload ? Try spending a whole day on one product, choosing from the following options:

• water;
• kefir or yogurt;
• tea with milk;
• apples;
• cucumbers or green salad;
• green tea with honey;
• skim cheese.

Advice: falling asleep with a half-starved stomach for just a few days will help solve the problem of poor sleep and “getting off on the wrong foot” syndrome.

It is not without reason that they say that Tibetan herbs and oils are the elixir of eternal youth, because in all Tibetan cosmetic recipes the main ingredients are natural products. Let's focus on the most beneficial properties of popular herbs for our youth, beauty and longevity:

• Ginseng– one of the most important and popular plants in Tibetan medical practice. Its composition is rich in essential oils, peptides and saccharides, which are simply irreplaceable when caring for aging skin that loses its elasticity. It has regenerating and tonic effects, ensures a normal level of water-salt balance, and promotes oxygen saturation of the skin and hair.
• Saffron– a source of vitamins B and PP, essential fatty oils and phosphorus and potassium salts. It is used not only in cooking, but also in cosmetology. It is an excellent moisturizer for the skin, smoothes and soothes it, and helps increase its elasticity.
• Honeysuckle– a storehouse of ascorbic acid and astringents. Strengthens blood vessels, actively tones and rejuvenates the skin.
• Lofant– a plant that contains high concentrations of essential oils and tannins, vitamins, and various types of acids. It is actively used in cosmetology as part of masks to smooth the skin and maintain a long-lasting effect, as well as to nourish and strengthen hair.

Decoctions and infusions of these herbs and flowers can be used to regularly wipe your face or rinse your hair: their effect can compete with a set of medical procedures or the use of popular branded cosmetics to preserve youth.

In the arsenal of modern cosmetology today there are many procedures and products that can help any of us in the fight for youth. You should not neglect them, but you should also approach the choice of rejuvenation methods selectively, relying solely on your own case. Let's name the most popular anti-aging cosmetic procedures today, which are performed in salons and medical centers:

• Laser peeling – cleanses the skin of old cells, age spots and spider veins. The effect of the procedure can last for several years.
• Mesotherapy or hyaluronic acid injections – wrinkles on the skin are filled with special cocktails of active drugs selected by a cosmetologist.
• Photorejuvenation – effective for facial contour defects, decreased skin elasticity and pigmentation, performed using light flashes. The pain during the procedure is insignificant, the effect will last about a year.
• Botulinum toxin (Botox) injections , stopping the muscles from working. As a result, fine wrinkles and crow’s feet are smoothed out around the eyes and on the forehead. The effect of the drug will last a year, but facial reactions will be significantly reduced.
• Facial plastic surgery – produced primarily using hyaluronic acid injections. After this procedure, an immediate effect is noticeable and lasts about 6 months.

We invite you to watch an interesting video about the effectiveness and pitfalls of modern cosmetic procedures for rejuvenation.

“It’s impossible not to be nervous at all,” you say. Of course, but you can change your attitude towards nervous situations and increase your resistance to stress in simple ways. Nerve cells are not restored, let's take care of their safety, and at the same time prolong our youth. A few simple practical recommendations:

• by reducing the consumption of excessively invigorating coffee and tea, you can forever eradicate lack of sleep, improve the quality of sleep and successfully combat the constant feeling of anxiety - the constant companion of all coffee lovers;
• Surprisingly, if you walk and sit with your back straight for at least a week, you will notice how much your memory has improved and your resistance to stress has increased;
• By turning off the TV and hiding your gadgets a couple of hours before bed, you not only fight back the stress and anxiety that rain down on us every day from the news feeds, but also free your imagination, give free rein to the flight of thoughts: it is 2 hours before bed that are most suitable for creativity and creativity;
• use your phone only for business purposes, and you will not only protect yourself from unnecessary information and stress, but you will also understand that there are much more than 24 hours in a day.

In order to stay young longer, we need to take care of the timely removal of harmful substances that accumulate throughout life and clog our body from the inside. Even if you eat right, you need to take measures to cleanse the body, especially the intestines. Several ways to naturally and regularly cleanse the body under normal conditions:

• compliance with the correct drinking regime (you must drink at least 1.5-2 liters of clean water daily);
• drinking freshly squeezed berry, fruit and vegetable juices (beetroot and carrot juice has a particularly strong effect);
• herbal infusions will relieve you of toxins: herbs such as St. John's wort, chamomile, birch buds, and immortelle are especially useful;
• cleansing with folk remedies. So, a paste made from 10 heads of garlic, 10 lemons and 1 liter of natural honey is very effective. Drink this “potion” on an empty stomach, 4 tsp each, until the remedy runs out;
• cleansing and rejuvenation with tea made from strawberry, raspberry and rosehip leaves.

How not to harm your health in pursuit of youth?

Often dreams of eternal youth push us to perform feats that we regret for years. Unfortunately, as a result of thoughtless actions, we often end up with health problems rather than the desired rejuvenation and beauty.

It is worth remembering that an important role in a woman’s attractiveness is played by her light, cheerful disposition and kindness, charming smile, grooming and culture of speech, and not by painful thinness or lack of wrinkles. You should not get carried away with exhausting diets in order to look thinner or younger than the age indicated on your passport: exacerbation of diseases of the gastrointestinal tract often has the opposite effect.

Be careful with cosmetic procedures that can be detrimental to your skin and health in general: before you “transform”, be sure to consult your doctor.

Use our practical advice and in a short time you will notice how your body has rejuvenated, your mood has improved and your self-esteem has increased.

Life without old age No

What to do to avoid aging?

What to do to avoid aging?

If you are reading this chapter, then we can congratulate you - you will soon understand how this book differs from all other books about aging, which can be very fascinating, harmoniously prove this or that theory, and are full of interesting examples and discouraging calculations. But the books of the best gerontologists always leave open the most important question - “So what?” That is, your story was wonderful, fascinating, but what is all this for? What should you do to avoid getting old? The answer is either silence or a set of very correct platitudes: drink less, don’t smoke, don’t walk to the left, don’t forget about physical activity. Amazing! That is, the point of an ordinary book about aging is to talk about how interesting it was for the author to deal with this problem and, at the same time, do nothing to help the aging reader. It is no surprise then that gerontological research is so poorly funded.

The authors of this book are not professional gerontologists. We work in the fields of biophysics, biochemistry and molecular biology, that is, pure experimenters. This means that any theory or hypothesis that cannot be verified by experiment is meaningless for us. The fact is that biology is still such a young science that in the overwhelming majority of cases we cannot do anything prove strictly. The systems with which biologists work are so complex and poorly understood that any fact, the results of any experiment, can have several explanations, sometimes mutually exclusive. Theoretical physicists and mathematicians probably grabbed their heads here - and This you call it science? If nothing really can be proven, then what could be the criteria for the correctness of your work?

In fact, everything is very simple: a hypothesis must predict something. That is, having formulated an assumption, you assert on its basis that such and such experiments should give such and such results. Next, appropriate experiments are carried out, and if the results coincide with those predicted, then you are right, and you can move further in proving your scheme. This is how modern biology and the “evidence-based medicine” based on it work.

Now let’s formulate what the scheme that we outlined to you in previous chapters predicts.

1) Individual cells and organisms can die not spontaneously, but following the genetic program embedded in them.

2) Aging appears to be one of these slow suicide programs. However, some species of living beings do not have it - they do not age. Although all organisms eventually die: eternal youth does not mean eternal life! People are unlucky - we have an aging program and it’s working so far.

3) There is every reason to believe that the aging of mammals, including humans, is achieved through the slow poisoning of one’s own body with some kind of “nasty” that this body itself produces.

4) The best candidates for the role of this “muck” are reactive oxygen species (ROS), and not all of them, namely those produced by the “power plants” of our cells - mitochondria.

The experiment suggests itself - so let's reduce the production of ROS in the mitochondria of our body's cells and see if aging will slow down? No sooner said than done!

1.7.1. Antioxidants to extinguish the source of aging

So, we decided to reduce the amount of mitochondrial ROS and see if this would help us maintain youth longer. And now we will have to explain to you what enormous work is needed for this experiment and why until very recently it was fundamentally impossible.

We hypothesized that mitochondria are slowly killing us by executing the commands of some genetic program. If this is really the case, then it would seem that the surest way to defeat old age is to find those genes in which the aging program is written and turn them off. It happens that it is enough to replace one letter (nucleotide) in a gene, and it will stop working. The problem is that this method cannot be applied to humans, since its consequences are irreversible. How are genetically modified animals made? Take, say, mice - parents, on them, or more precisely - on their reproductive cells, certain manipulations are carried out, and their offspring one or another gene is “turned off”. By transferring this technology to humans, we will first get genetically modified children (!), who do not have the gene we selected in all the cells of their body. What if we were wrong? We will no longer be able to return this gene. What if it not only participates in the aging program, but also performs some other important, as yet unknown function?

Not a single biologist in the world can now undertake to predict all the consequences of removing one single gene in a person. And if so, then no experiments on genetic modification healthy You can’t see people off!

Of course, the most radical way of interfering with human genetics is described above. There are others - for example, infecting a person with a virus that can insert its genes inside the DNA of certain human tissues or making genetically modified stem cells and injecting them into him. In this case, however, it will not be possible to achieve gene changes in 100% of the body’s cells, and all risks will remain. That is, if something goes wrong, there will be no way back, as is the case with genetically modified children.

To finally convince you of the impossibility of genetic modification of people, we note that if our assumptions about the aging program are correct, this extremely risky procedure will have to be carried out healthy young people in the hope that they will age more slowly. Even if there are dedicated volunteers, of whom thousands are needed, what scientist in his right mind would be able to take responsibility for such an experiment?!

So what to do? We know that a deadly program is working inside us, counting down our lives, but nothing can be done? It's not all bad. Genes by themselves cannot do anything. They are just a code, by reading which the cell synthesizes the main molecules of life - proteins. Proteins perform a variety of functions - with their help, all sorts of biochemical reactions occur, signals are transmitted from one system to another, proteins serve as the main building material for all cellular structures. Including our beloved mitochondria. That is, our malicious program forces some mitochondrial proteins to work “harmfully” and produce reactive oxygen species. With this, perhaps, nothing can be done with modern means. But you can try intercept these reactive oxygen radicals before they cause trouble.

Substances that can neutralize ROS are well known: antioxidants. There are a great variety of them, they are natural: vitamin C, vitamin E, coenzyme Q, green tea flavonoids, resveratrol from red wine. There are also synthetic ones: N-acetylcysteine, idebenone, trolox, etc. In the 60-70s of the 20th century, when scientists discovered the harmfulness of free radicals and reactive oxygen species, a real boom in antioxidants began. What kind of magical properties were not attributed to them and where were they added! You can feel the echoes of this boom even now, looking at the store shelves: “The newest antioxidant cosmetics!”, “Dietary supplements based on antioxidants!”, “Balm-rinse with green tea antioxidants!” and so on.

Two of the authors of this book are now about 40 years old, and we have been taking vitamin C periodically since we were young. We must honestly admit that we have already noticeably aged compared to what we were 17 years ago in the 5th year of the Faculty of Biology at Moscow State University. Just like all the other people who took antioxidants. What's the matter? Are reactive oxygen species harmful? - Harmful. Do antioxidants fight them? - They are fighting. Why is there no effect? Because a living organism is very complex, this is not a “spherical horse in a vacuum”!

In ancient times, the human body was perceived by naturalists as a wineskin filled with blood. If you poke him with something sharp, blood will flow, and if it is not stopped, the person will die. If you want to treat a person, you give him some medicine, it mixes inside with the blood, heals it and the person becomes better. Quite soon, the ancient Aesculapians found out that not everything is so simple. There are different organs inside a person. They have different functions and properties, and that, for example, air for the lungs is good, but air bubbles inside the heart can mean death. Then, following the previous logic, organs began to be considered wineskins. Relatively recently, in the middle of the 19th century, it was discovered that organs and tissues consist of individual living cells. And many substances traveling through the blood and organs do not enter the cells.

Cells can live their own lives, perform different functions, die, “go crazy,” turning into cancer cells, etc. In short, it's all about the cells. And according to the ancient scientific tradition, they were declared “skins”. Until now, many biologists and almost all doctors, for the sake of simplicity, consider cells to be small bubbles filled with water, inside of which, of course, there are some structures, but this is not very important. There are free radicals inside - you add an antioxidant and the cell should feel better. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Aging is not an explosion, but rather

SLOW, DELICATE COMBINATION INSIDE THE BODY. To be more precise - INSIDE THE CELLS, IF STILL EXACTLY - INSIDE

mitochondria. Pour over this smoldering

THE FOCUS OF AGING IS POSSIBLE WITH PRECISION DOSES

antioxidant. How to deliver the antioxidant there and only there?

The inside of the cell is strictly structured. There is virtually no “free” water there. Like the body, cells have separate organs. To avoid confusion, they are called “organelles”. Some of the organelles are tightly isolated by membranes from the rest of the cell. And even these organelles are not “skins” of protoplasm, but are ordered and very smoothly functioning structures.

We are telling you all this not only to boast about what an infinitely complex thing we are dealing with. It’s just that, as we already wrote at the beginning of this book, it is impossible to understand the problem of aging and ways to solve it without a modern view of biology. And there is no place in it for the concept of “waterskins”.

So, the mitochondrion is such an isolated organelle. And if you want to neutralize the reactive oxygen species it produces, then the antioxidant must be delivered exactly to the address - to the inner membrane of the mitochondria. And then, with an accuracy of a few nanometers, place it next to the proteins that carry out respiration and form ROS. Because the task is to prevent the oxygen free radical from starting a chain reaction in the mitochondrial membrane, i.e., roughly speaking, to “set fire” to the membrane.

Of course, if you properly pump the cell with antioxidants, then eventually these molecules will reach the mitochondria. And they will even somehow fight the AFK. But there are a number of points that make this approach impossible.

a) It is necessary to give very large doses of the antioxidant, which may already have bad side effects. For all biologically active substances there is such a thing as an overdose, and for an antioxidant it means a change in the sign of its effect from anti- to pro-oxidant.

b) In fact, reactive oxygen species are necessary for life. In small quantities. For example, with their help, cells of the immune system kill harmful microbes. In addition, trace amounts of free radicals serve to transmit a number of signals from one cell to another and are involved in several beneficial chemical reactions. If we “flood” the entire body with antioxidants, then all these vital processes risk being stifled.

c) It will most likely not be possible to achieve such colossal doses of antioxidants inside the cell. The fact is that existing antioxidants are either natural substances or their close analogues. Such compounds are familiar to our body; it knows how to determine when there is too much of them, and it has special systems that bind, break down and remove excess of such substances from the body.

Therefore, despite the fact that the key role of reactive oxygen species in aging has been known since the 60s, it was not possible to solve this problem with the help of antioxidants. This does not mean that antioxidants are completely useless. In no case! There are a number of conditions when a real explosion of free radical production occurs in a cell and even in the tissue around it. For example, with myocardial infarction. And then it is extremely useful to “douse this fire” with a powerful antioxidant - for example, coenzyme Q. Many medications have been made based on it, indicated for people with heart pathologies. But aging is not an explosion. It's a slow, delicate smoldering from the inside out. And completely from the inside. From inside mitochondria. So how do you get the antioxidant there and only there?

1.7.2. Ions Skulachev: history of the term

As you remember from the previous chapter, the mitochondrion works like a power plant and, during the process of respiration, “charges” its internal membrane, like a capacitor (plus outside, minus inside). The inner membrane of mitochondria is a very good insulator because it does not allow ordinary charged particles to pass through. But if a charged particle (ion) is surrounded by voluminous water-repellent organic residues, then the membrane will cease to be an insurmountable barrier for the ion. The idea of ​​using such substances - “penetrating ions” - to study mitochondria was born at the turn of the 1960-1970s. The author of this book and his group from Moscow State University together with the group of E.A. Liberman from the Institute of Biophysics discovered that penetrating positively charged ions, i.e. cations are able to selectively penetrate mitochondria and accumulate there. Minus - inside the mitochondria, do you remember? It was these experiments that led to the discovery of “mitochondrial” electricity. It also turned out that penetrating cations are a convenient tool for studying biological membranes; Soon they began to be actively used by researchers around the world, and in 1974 the famous American biochemist D. Green called them “Skulachev ions.”

And in 1970 S.E. Severin, L.S. Yaguzhinsky and V.P. Skulachev made an assumption that then played a decisive role in the development of a new generation of antioxidants. The authors suggested that cations penetrating the membrane can be used as “electric locomotive molecules” for the accumulation of uncharged substances attached to these cations in mitochondria. In other words, in order to deliver something useful to the mitochondrion, it is necessary to attach this “something” to the Skulachev ion and the entire structure will inevitably end up in the mitochondrion.

True, such a substance, if it is added outside the cell, will still need to overcome its outer shell - the plasma membrane. But here, too, luck is on the side of Skulachev’s ions - the plasma membrane of the cells is also charged, with the minus being inside the cell and the plus being outside. That is, Skulachev’s ions will be actively drawn into the cell and then go to the mitochondria.

You probably already guessed where we are going. If we need an antioxidant inside the mitochondria, let's attach it to the Skulachev ion and we will get a mitochondria-targeted antioxidant. Meet the substance SkQ1

The left side of the formula is the most powerful antioxidant from plant chloroplasts - plastoquinone (hence the letter Q in the name of the substance - in English quinone is written as quinone). Next comes the decia - a “bundle” of a strictly defined length, which allows the antioxidant to be precisely positioned inside the membrane. At the top is the organic decyltriphenylphosphonium ion, which is the classic “Skulachev ion” (Fig. 6.1).

And Figure 6.2 shows what a flask with this brown glassy substance looks like.

In itself, it is very strange, poorly soluble in both water and oil. Not very stable, afraid of light. It feels good only where its place is intended - inside biological membranes. More precisely, at the boundary between the membrane and the aqueous phase. At the beginning of our research, we could not learn how to work with it. For example, you take a test tube, pour a diluted SkQ1 solution into it, after a minute you take the solution back, analyze it - SkQ1 has disappeared! A rumor spread through the laboratories of our project about the terrible instability of the substance. But we are not just studying its properties, we are making a cure for old age. But what would such a medicine look like: a sealed ampoule stored in liquid nitrogen; it is taken out of liquid nitrogen and defrosted in a very special thermostat; After that, the poor patient only has a few seconds to drink it! Can you imagine how much all this would cost the unfortunate person?

Fortunately, the problem was not low stability. SkQ1 did not disappear. It was no longer detectable because it stuck to the walls of the plastic tube. There he was most comfortable: his fat body was on the plastic, and his charged head was in the water. Now we have already learned to deal with this problem, and SkQ1 solutions are stored for years.

1.7.3. SkQ as an aging program interrupter

Imagine that you are a biologist, an employee of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. You are wearing glasses, a white robe over a faded sweater and jeans, and you are standing in the middle of a laboratory, lost somewhere inside the grandiose university complex of buildings on Sparrow Hills in Moscow. In your hands you have a flask with 10 grams of the brown glassy substance SkQ1, which is supposed to slow down aging. From an iron cage standing on a laboratory table, two white rats look at you with interest, wondering whether they will be fed something tasty or offered to have fun running in a maze. Outside the window you can hear the distant howl of an ambulance siren, transporting a hopeless patient to the hospital through Moscow traffic jams. Your actions?

We're not living in a Hollywood movie, so we definitely shouldn't:

> immediately swallow the entire contents of this flask to become the immortal McCloud;

> burn the contents of this flask entirely along with yourself in order to take to the grave the secret of immortality that nature has kept from man for so many centuries;

> urgently call your friend in Seoul to secretly sell these 10 grams of the miracle substance to a transnational corporation for a billion dollars;

> rush after the ambulance in your Zhiguli to save at least one dying person;

> feed laboratory rats SkQ1, only to discover the next day that they have not aged during this time, and then go on the same Zhiguli to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize.

Instead, as befits a scientist in glasses, a sweater and jeans, you need to put the flask in the refrigerator, add food to the rats and... think.

Where did this substance come from? From the assumption that it can slow down the human aging process. Our goal is to test this assumption. How to do it? Well... we need to feed the stuff to more people and watch them grow old. That is, call the newspaper “Moscow University” (or even “Moskovsky Komsomolets”?) and advertise - volunteers are needed for a lifelong experiment to slow down aging. There are probably a hundred or two desperate people who wouldn’t mind trying. Again, unfortunately (or rather fortunately), we do not live in Bulgakov’s novel and we cannot do this.

Let's think about how a new substance can get into inside person? There are two main options: we put either food and drink or medicine into our mouths. All kinds of dietary supplements, which the reader has probably heard about, are Biologically Active Food Additives, designed to compensate for the lack of one or another natural substance in the human diet. They can only contain what a person can already find in nature. As we already know, SkQ1 is not a natural substance.

It was “made up out of my head” in order to interrupt the implementation of a completely natural, natural program of death from old age. There is only one option left - medicine.

And this is a very correct option. Because the main principle of creating any medicine is to do no harm! First of all, the developer must prove that his drug is safe. But the medicine has one more important parameter - the indication for use, in other words, the disease that this medicine should treat. For SkQ1, this indication is actually aging. But such a disease is not in medical reference books. Aging is a natural process and it would seem impossible to treat it. Therefore, the problem has no solution “head-on”. SkQ1 cannot be used as a cure for old age simply because of the legislation that exists in most countries!

THE MEDICINE HAS ANOTHER IMPORTANT PARAMETER - INDICATION FOR USE, SIMPLY SPEAKING, THE DISEASE WHICH SHOULD BE

treat this medicine. For SkQI this

THE INDICATION IS ACTUALLY AGING. But SUCH DISEASE IS NOT IN MEDICAL DIRECTORIES.

So, should we take the flask out of the refrigerator and throw it away? Take your time. If a substance slows down the aging process, then it should be useful in the fight against aging diseases. In addition, let's not forget about the main property of the substance - it neutralizes free radicals produced by mitochondria. Aging is aging, but for many “classical” diseases it has already been proven that ROS from mitochondria play a key role in causing harm to the body. That is, you can try to prove that SkQ1 treats a specific senile disease, and thus turn the brown substance in the flask into a normal medicine that can be bought at a pharmacy with a doctor's prescription. But after this, you need to very carefully monitor what happens to patients taking SkQ1 as a medicine. According to our hypothesis, they should develop various signs of aging more slowly, age-related diseases should occur less frequently, etc. But formally, all this is like a pleasant side effect of a “normal” medicine for a “normal” disease.

Oddly enough, the scenario described above is the only way to legally provide a person with a miracle substance that interrupts the aging program. Therefore, the scientist will have to change his sweater and jeans to a decent suit, in which he goes to conferences, and go... in search of money for his project.

So, we found out that in order to test a simple hypothesis - does SkQ1 slow down the human aging process? - we need to make some kind of medicine from SkQ1. This is an extremely important decision, since a) drugs - they, as M.M. says. Zhvanetsky, “for internal use”, i.e. it is necessary to exclude the possibility of any unpleasant side effects, b) in the modern world, creating a new medicine costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. True, if you are successful and the medicine enters the pharmaceutical market, then it can bring huge profits, which, in turn, is attractive to potential investors. That is, it is theoretically possible to find a risky person who is ready to invest tens or two million dollars and wait 10-15 years to get their money back. But not every scientist would risk taking responsibility for such a project.

We decided to try it. True, we did not rush headlong to create a medicine, but first spent several years testing our hypothesis in experiments with animals. Everything is simpler with them, and no drugs need to be registered for research. You can simply give them a substance dissolved in water. And they don’t age for decades, but in the case of mice and rats, only 2-3 years. Actually, the experimental design is quite simple - we start giving the animals SkQ1 from their “young claws” and see how quickly they age compared to the control group, which did not receive SkQ1. However, such an experiment still takes several years, and while it was going on, we carried out other studies on the properties of this unusual substance - the mitochondria-targeted antioxidant SkQ1. The results of these “first wave” experiments are described in more detail in the second part of the book, sections II.7.1-11.7.3. Here we will provide only a brief summary. In a nutshell: everything was more or less confirmed, as sometimes happens in biology. Skulachev ions SkQ1

a) penetrated through artificial and biological membranes,

b) accumulated in mitochondria, effectively protecting them from free radicals,

c) saved cells from apoptotic death caused by free radicals,

d) protected individual organs: heart, brain, kidneys - from the same oxidative damage,

e) extended the life of a wide variety of animals, including mammals, as well as fungi and plants and, most importantly, delayed the development of a whole bunch of senile diseases in them.

We cannot resist citing the very first striking result of the project. It was obtained in St. Petersburg in the laboratory of our country's chief experimental gerontologist V.N. Anisimov, President of the Russian Gerontological Society. The experiment was carried out on the SHR mouse line, which lives relatively short - about two years. Moreover, the animals were kept in the so-called. conventional vivarium. There were no procedures for sterilizing air, water and food and, as a result, the mice were susceptible to natural infectious diseases characteristic of these rodents. Both experimental and control animals simply lived their lives and eventually died of old age. The only difference is that in the experimental groups, small amounts of SkQ1 were mixed into the drinking water of mice from a very early age. The results of two independent experiments are summarized in Fig. 7 (Prof. V.N. Anisimov insisted on starting a repeat experiment when, six months after the start of work, he saw how different the experimental (with SkQ) and control groups were).

This result was subsequently repeated in other strains of mice and rats, under other conditions - for more details, see the second part, sections 7.2 and 7.3. Here we want to pay attention to the shapes of the curves with SkQ. These curves themselves reflect what percentage of mice were alive in each group at each time point. As you can see, SkQ failed to somehow fundamentally increase the maximum lifespan of SHR mice - by 10-15 percent, which may well be within the experimental error. But! Notice how the number (percentage) of mice surviving to old age (500-600 days) has increased dramatically. Almost 2 times. Calculations show that SkQ doubled the average (median) life expectancy of these animals. The reason for this prolongation of life becomes obvious if one simply looks at photographs of control animals and mice that received SkQ from early childhood (Fig. 7). At a very advanced age of 630 days (approximately this corresponds to 70-80 years in humans), the control animals “looked their age” - they were bald, hunched over due to curvature of the spine, they suffered from infectious diseases much more often, lost their mustaches (this is a sign that means that the mouse is no longer capable of reproduction). The amazing result is that none of the above happened to virtually any of the SkQ-treated mice! Using a fairly simple analysis, the staff of Prof. Anisimov monitored the ability of mice to reproduce (analyzed the regularity of the so-called estrous cycles of females). By the 500th day of life, more than half of the control females had an irregular cycle, while the overwhelming percentage of animals in the SkQ groups retained this cycle, and, consequently, the ability to reproduce. This means that, without fundamentally extending the maximum life expectancy, SkQ is 2 times increased the period of youth of animals. If we project this onto a person (we must understand that this is a very bold assumption - we are still not mice, although we are also mammals), then it turns out that SkQ will not increase the maximum possible life expectancy - centenarians will live up to 100-120 years, just like Now. But at 60-70-80 years old, they will look and feel like 30-40 year olds. The period of youth will extend and, accordingly, old age will decrease. It is clear that this option is much preferable to simply increasing life expectancy by prolonging old age. The effects of SkQ, discovered in the now distant 2008 by the group of V.N. Anisimov, were subsequently confirmed in other laboratories. Now we even

We know many of the biochemical and physiological mechanisms underlying these effects. Read more about this in the second part of the book, and the latest results can be found on the book’s website on the Internet - 1.

Independently of us in Japan, a biologist with a rare surname for this country, Subota (with one “b”) and his colleagues from Tokyo published two works in 2010 devoted to an attempt to truly cure dry eye. In one of them, six-month-old rats were restricted in food by 35% for the next six months. One-year-old animals in the control group ate without restrictions. In addition, young (two-month-old) rats, also not limited in diet, were studied. As the results of the experiment showed, over the course of a year of life in rats, large degenerative changes occur in the lacrimal glands. The number of tear fluid producing cells and the level of proteins in it decreases, the concentrations of oxidized guanosine and oxynonenal (a product of lipid peroxidation) increase, and the structure of mitochondria in the cells of the lacrimal glands is sharply disrupted. All of these adverse effects are significantly attenuated (and some are completely abolished) by dietary restriction. Apparently, the lacrimal glands belong to early aging organs, and their aging is caused by oxidative stress (for slowing down the aging program and reducing oxidative stress by limiting nutrition, see section II.7.4 in the second part). Also in 2010, Subota published the results of an experiment he performed on himself. The fact is that since 1985, the Japanese researcher himself suffered from a severe form of “dry eye” syndrome and tried to recover in the same way, by restricting food, which helped the animals so much. In 2001, he switched to a restricted diet. During the first year, no changes for the better occurred. But at the beginning of the second year of life from hand to mouth, there was a steady increase in tear production, which continued into the third year (Fig. 8.1).

To get rid of painful phenomena, Subota had to drip tear substitute 50 times a day until 2008, and in 2009 - only twice. Subota, inspired by the success, founded the Japan Society for the Control of Dry Eye Syndrome and declared that “in the near future, this severe disease will be considered a treatable disease.”

In a separate section of the second part of the book (11.7.4) we will specifically look at the similarities between the effects of our SkQ1 and dietary restriction. This is why these similarities were reassuring to us when planning the first clinical trials of SkQ1. In parallel, we tested the effect of SkQ1 on aging of rat lacrimal glands. The results of an electron microscopic study conducted by L.E. Bakeeva and V.B. Saprunova, shown in Fig. 8.2.

These micrographs show massive degradation of secretory cells in a 22-month-old rat compared to a 3-month-old rat. Degradation is not observed if the animal received SkQ1 2 with food.

But in Fig. Figure 9 shows one of the results of a clinical study of SkQ1 drops conducted at the Moscow Institute. Helmholtz on patients with dry eye syndrome.

It can be seen that in 60% of cases, a three-week course of SkQ1 led to the complete disappearance of symptoms of the disease. The control group of patients received a very popular remedy - “tear natural” of one Western company (to be honest, quite artificial mixture containing viscous polymers), which was effective only in 20% of cases. The nature of the dependence of the effect of SkQ1 on time clearly shows that 60% in three weeks is not the limit and one can hope for an even higher percentage with longer treatment. However, it is already clear that SkQ1 acts much faster than dietary restriction in the experiment carried out by Subota.

Judging by electron microscopy data, in the case of SkQ1, as in the case of dietary restriction, we are dealing with a true treatment of the lacrimal glands, and not with an attempt to replace tears with something artificial. The last circumstance is of utmost importance, since tears, of course, perform, in addition to “lubrication,” many other functions that are vital for the eye. We are currently conducting longer-term clinical trials of SkQ1 drops (“Visomitin”) in 10 clinics in Russia and Ukraine.

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