All Things Permanent Health

[MachineGhost]

Well, thanks for the compliment!

So you WERE paying attention!!!

I've heard the three year claim about curing cancer for years, but I do wonder what the actual source is. It could be an urban legend by now.

If we got to die of something, then I rather it be by my choice or by my hand than because of our inability to transcend Mother Nature. With CRISPR gene editing technology and organ replacements grown from stem cells, I expect most of us alive right now are going to reach 120+ in relatively fantastic shape. I suspect our greatest threat for forestalling death will be coming from the Byzantine bureaucrats and bioethicist do-gooders.

[WiseOne]

What causes the shower of microemboli?

It happens when circulation is switched to a bypass machine during surgery. Blood + metal = clotting. Actually if it's only microemboli you're lucky. The unlucky ones get larger clots that cause out and out strokes.

MG - welcome to the human race! Ain't none of us getting out of here alive, I'm afraid. No supplement regime is going to change that. Or should we rename you "Lazarus"? My goal is to stay healthy and functional as long as possible, then when the time comes I hope it won't be a long, drawn-out affair.

I only wish the gods of modern medicine would officially recognize this.

[MachineGhost]

I only wish the gods of modern medicine would officially recognize this.

If I were to be cynical, then the long, drawn-out affair is for purposes of full employment.

[MachineGhost]

Wow, check this out...

Dr. John Meara had a challenge in front of him. His patient, 4-month-old Bentley Yoder, needed to have part of his brain put back into his cranium.

The bones of his skull hadn’t fully formed, and his brain was pushed through the bone, forming an eggplant-sized mass above his head. Meara, of Boston Children’s Hospital, had a few ideas about way to approach the surgery, but he’d only get one shot at it in the operating room.

If only, he thought, there was a way to practice the procedure ahead of time.

As it happened, he was able to do exactly that before Bentley’s surgery thanks to a 3D printing program Boston Children’s Hospital started in 2014.



http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hospit ... m_swu=6852

[Maddy]

The problem with life extension technologies isn't so much the difficulty of getting organs and organ systems to keep going, but whether these technologies will have any practical utility given the seemingly inherent inflexibility of the human psyche and the limitations on its capacity to adapt. As I approach my 60s, I am acutely aware of how fast the world is changing and feel increasingly left behind. (As an aside, I'm not sure that even the youngsters who purport to be able to adapt are faring so well, considering the number of kids on psychotropic drugs and the increasing prevalence of sociopathy in both children and young adults.) The whole concept of neural plasticity is far beyond my level of understanding, but it is nonetheless clear to me that there is a limit on the amount of change an organism can adapt to in a single lifetime, and that adaptation gets harder and harder the older we get. So although I'm as eager as anyone to be as healthy as I possibly can be, I can't say I'm especially interested in an extraordinarily long life. Who wants to live to the ripe old age of 125 if the world as you know it is gone, if your most deeply engrained values are foreign or even repugnant to the society at large, if your skills are no longer valued and needed, if you lack the technological savvy to navigate even the most basic transactions, and if the pace of life has exceeded the pace at which you can function without constant stress?

[Mountaineer]

The problem with life extension technologies isn't so much the difficulty of getting organs and organ systems to keep going, but whether these technologies will have any practical utility given the seemingly inherent inflexibility of the human psyche and the limitations on its capacity to adapt. As I approach my 60s, I am acutely aware of how fast the world is changing and feel increasingly left behind. (As an aside, I'm not sure that even the youngsters who purport to be able to adapt are faring so well, considering the number of kids on psychotropic drugs and the increasing prevalence of sociopathy in both children and young adults.) The whole concept of neural plasticity is far beyond my level of understanding, but it is nonetheless clear to me that there is a limit on the amount of change an organism can adapt to in a single lifetime, and that adaptation gets harder and harder the older we get. So although I'm as eager as anyone to be as healthy as I possibly can be, I can't say I'm especially interested in an extraordinarily long life. Who wants to live to the ripe old age of 125 if the world as you know it is gone, if your most deeply engrained values are foreign or even repugnant to the society at large, if your skills are no longer valued and needed, if you lack the technological savvy to navigate even the most basic transactions, and if the pace of life has exceeded the pace at which you can function without constant stress?

That made me think of my grandparents, born in the 1890s, and what happened during their lives: cars, airplanes, several terrible wars, the great depression, moon landings by humans, satellites, weather forecasts that were semi-accurate, the cold war, two presidents assassinated, computers, rural electricity, refrigeration, interstate highways, antibiotics, and the list goes on.

[MachineGhost]

The problem with life extension technologies isn't so much the difficulty of getting organs and organ systems to keep going, but whether these technologies will have any practical utility given the seemingly inherent inflexibility of the human psyche and the limitations on its capacity to adapt. As I approach my 60s, I am acutely aware of how fast the world is changing and feel increasingly left behind. (As an aside, I'm not sure that even the youngsters who purport to be able to adapt are faring so well, considering the number of kids on psychotropic drugs and the increasing prevalence of sociopathy in both children and young adults.) The whole concept of neural plasticity is far beyond my level of understanding, but it is nonetheless clear to me that there is a limit on the amount of change an organism can adapt to in a single lifetime, and that adaptation gets harder and harder the older we get. So although I'm as eager as anyone to be as healthy as I possibly can be, I can't say I'm especially interested in an extraordinarily long life. Who wants to live to the ripe old age of 125 if the world as you know it is gone, if your most deeply engrained values are foreign or even repugnant to the society at large, if your skills are no longer valued and needed, if you lack the technological savvy to navigate even the most basic transactions, and if the pace of life has exceeded the pace at which you can function without constant stress?

Well, that is mostly an issue for the Greatest Generation, because they're not going to be able to take advantage of cybernetics over the next couple of decades.... they're simply too old and in sickly condition and just won't be around. I'm honestly not sure about the Baby Boomers -- they're dangerously close to being near or over the cliff edge, but they're also the major driving force for anti-aging technology at present, so who knows? But what you're not perceiving about the future at a "ripe old age" of 125 years is that up to that point we are not going to just simply sit by and remain increasingly limited by our biological boundaries and decay, including the brain. No, we're going to continue to evolve into transhumanists and cyborgs to keep up with the ever increasing pace of development. But, you still have the freedom of choice at present. Either take the necessary steps to prepare yourself for the new paradigm or resign yourself to eventual obsolecence and death.

I'm not saying it'll be easy (nothing ever worthwhile is), but the rewards will be worth it in ways we can't possibly imagine once we ascend out of the tired old work-breed-die paradigm that is so, so limiting. Don't you want to be living on Mars or a moon or Star Trekking around the solar system by 2050? Well, you can't if you're sickly or dead!

And considering what PS posted recently, it's quite obvious that children will be the competitive force for the rest of us.

[MachineGhost]

And who exactly is going to pay for this? Each individual, or the nanny state? What if you can't afford it? Should the financial burden be placed on the ever shrinking number of productive citizens?

You will. It'll be cheap 'cuz thats what technology and mass production does. Combine that with a Citizen's Dividend where no one needs to work anymore unless they want to and I don't see an issue. All the teeth gnashing about it in the beginning will be as silly as protesting against the initial price of color TV.

It currently costs $50 billion to send just 5 people to Mars. When it costs $50,000 to send 100-300 people are you going to still be complaining?

Why do I always have to defend the future agaisnt Negative Nellie's? Y'all should know better! Rich people always get what they want in the beginning. Either get rich or wait your turn.

[Maddy]

Well, that is mostly an issue for the Greatest Generation, because they're not going to be able to take advantage of cybernetics over the next couple of decades.... they're simply too old and in sickly condition and just won't be around. I'm honestly not sure about the Baby Boomers -- they're dangerously close to being near or over the cliff edge, but they're also the major driving force for anti-aging technology at present, so who knows? But what you're not perceiving about the future at a "ripe old age" of 125 years is that up to that point we are not going to just simply sit by and remain increasingly limited by our biological boundaries and decay, including the brain. No, we're going to continue to evolve into transhumanists and cyborgs to keep up with the ever increasing pace of development. But, you still have the freedom of choice at present. Either take the necessary steps to prepare yourself for the new paradigm or resign yourself to eventual obsolecence and death.

I'm not saying it'll be easy (nothing ever worthwhile is), but the rewards will be worth it in ways we can't possibly imagine once we ascend out of the tired old work-breed-die paradigm that is so, so limiting. Don't you want to be living on Mars or a moon or Star Trekking around the solar system by 2050? Well, you can't if you're sickly or dead!

So your vision of the future is that our brains will be reconfigured in such a way as to afford infinite flexibility and an ability to bypass all the hard-wiring and psychological edifices that together make up our identity and sense of security in the world? It's a hard-to-imagine paradigm, but the proposition is so extreme as to make the idea of "me-ness" pretty much meaningless.

Consider that it's the archetype of "home" and the security of familiar tonal and rhythmic patterns representing a "return to home" that makes a Mozart symphony enjoyable to listen to. Query whether the same brain that could adapt to life on Mars would find a Mozart symphony and a cacophonous clatter of sounds equally meaningful.

[Maddy]

Taking this one step further, why would it make any sense to send people to Mars if technology could give them the ability to experience it virtually? Isn't this the more likely possibility?

Think of it. . . All those technophiles lined up suspended by wires like in the movie Coma, with 3-D goggles and electrodes implanted in their heads, each experiencing whatever kind of life they always wanted. Other than the need to change their catheter once in a while, the expense to society of maintaining these people would be minimal.

[MachineGhost]

So your vision of the future is that our brains will be reconfigured in such a way as to afford infinite flexibility and an ability to bypass all the hard-wiring and psychological edifices that together make up our identity and sense of security in the world? It's a hard-to-imagine paradigm, but the proposition is so extreme as to make the idea of "me-ness" pretty much meaningless.

Consider that it's the archetype of "home" and the security of familiar tonal and rhythmic patterns representing a "return to home" that makes a Mozart symphony enjoyable to listen to. Query whether the same brain that could adapt to life on Mars would find a Mozart symphony and a cacophonous clatter of sounds equally meaningful.

You're projecting another extremist vision of doom porn. Why would we want to destroy what makes each of us unique as individuals other than for purposes of in-group-signaling-cum-conformity which I would hope would drastically diminish in a pluralistic world of endless variations and possibilities? Enhancing memory and senses with cybernetics isn't gonna elimate your haughty ego! If you want to be in a state of techno-nirvana or to be like the Borg, I guess no one is stopping you when that is possible, but I'm not interested and neither would billions of other people. Reality is unique like a snowflake in that each of our own unique perceptions create it. Uniqueness is fittest. We are each "God's" eyes incarnate.

Look, Millennials already deludedly believe they can multitask when all the scientific evidence is the brain completely fails at it. But since their delusion is based on faith, it will provide the impetus necessary to develop a cybernetic implant that will actaully allow a brain to do it. How are you going to fight that? It's both faith and facts in one.

[Maddy]

You're projecting another extremist vision of doom porn.

I don't think so. As I explained earlier, I don't think the human psyche is capable of adapting, within a single lifetime, to the kind of change you're suggesting. To render it capable of that kind of adaptation would require a rewiring of the brain.

I would hazard a guess that for most people, alienation (in the Marxist sense of having lost the feeling of "connectedness" and meaning in what we do) is a far bigger problem than boredom or whatever else it is that propels technophiles to be constantly pushing the envelope. I predict that one of these days, there will be a backlash against technology and people will be signing up in droves for Outward Bound-type experiences and classes in hog butchering and candlemaking. Above all, people want to feel REAL, and technology is driving us further and further away from that.

[Maddy]

Rich people always get what they want in the beginning. Either get rich or wait your turn.

Well when the elite go to Mars, could we just keep them there?

[Reub]

Rich is someone that has one dollar more than you have.

[Reub]

Deleted

[MachineGhost]

I would hazard a guess that for most people, alienation (in the Marxist sense of having lost the feeling of "connectedness" and meaning in what we do) is a far bigger problem than boredom or whatever else it is that propels technophiles to be constantly pushing the envelope. I predict that one of these days, there will be a backlash against technology and people will be signing up in droves for Outward Bound-type experiences and classes in hog butchering and candlemaking. Above all, people want to feel REAL, and technology is driving us further and further away from that.

Immersive VR will solve that problem and make things feel REAL. We're disconnected now not because of technology, but because of piss poor government planning of urban and suburban areas. Here's a small taste of what experiences are available now: https://www.viveport.com/list/desktop

What technology is absolutely excellent at is reducing the costs to have experiences. Ships, trains, planes, cars, video game consoles, VR, etc.

[MachineGhost]

Rich people always get what they want in the beginning. Either get rich or wait your turn.

Well when the elite go to Mars, could we just keep them there?

Not sure I like the idea of the Earth turning into a poor, impoverished wasteland with milk farms:

[MachineGhost]

That doesn't answer my question. Even if the price comes down eventually, at the beginning only the rich will be able to participate. And that will raise all kinds of ethical issues with everyone else.

I'm not a bioethicist and if they're gonna pass a law or outlaw a treatment because of "fairness", we will just go out of the country via medical tourism to more enlightened (or greedy) countries to get whatever done. It is a losing proposition for only those that want to play by the rules (lack the balls or are just simply naive) that other people have decided is in your own best interest. I have only two words to say to that.

I'm not complaining. What you were talking about is essentially in the medical realm. Have you seen the price of anything in health care come down in price, even after the idiots in Washington made that an expressed goal of Obamacare?

That's sick care. There's no profit in eliminating sickness or reducing costs. It's an entirely different paradigm than the one I'm talking about. Let's be honest. Regenerative medicine is not going to be welcomed with open arms by the powers that be; it isn't now, its not gonna be for a long time. You will wind up dead waiting for the Byzantine bureaucracy to stamp its feeble "approval" on anything revolutionary. You will have to take matters in your own hands if the Byzantine bureaucracy is not moving fast enough. Stem cell therapy is a success for many debilitating conditions yet the FDA, the NIH, the lamestream media and Big Pharma consistently lie, lie, lie and spread even more lies about it being "risky", "ineffective", "worthless", "useless", or a "scam". The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

Look, life is not for the weak and winners are not handed to you by Big Mommy or Daddy government. It may not be fair, but this is reality. If you want to be a winner, either in terms of being rich or practical life extension, you have to grab it. No one is going to do it for you.

Rich is relative. What constitute rich in your mind? What constitutes rich in this application?

Hmm, not rich enough to afford the first iteration but rich enough to afford the second or third at much lower costs before the 20-30 years it takes the FDA to stamp "approved" because it threatens the crony profits of the status quo.

Being rich alone is not enough, of course. You also have to be informed, you also have to believe and you also have to know where to get access. Make it a habit now or you're gonna join the back of the queue.

[Mountaineer]

That doesn't answer my question. Even if the price comes down eventually, at the beginning only the rich will be able to participate. And that will raise all kinds of ethical issues with everyone else.

I'm not a bioethicist and if they're gonna pass a law or outlaw a treatment because of "fairness", we will just go out of the country via medical tourism to more enlightened (or greedy) countries to get whatever done. It is a losing proposition for only those that want to play by the rules (lack the balls or are just simply naive) that other people have decided is in your own best interest. I have only two words to say to that.

I'm not complaining. What you were talking about is essentially in the medical realm. Have you seen the price of anything in health care come down in price, even after the idiots in Washington made that an expressed goal of Obamacare?

That's sick care. There's no profit in eliminating sickness or reducing costs. It's an entirely different paradigm than the one I'm talking about. Let's be honest. Regenerative medicine is not going to be welcomed with open arms by the powers that be; it isn't now, its not gonna be for a long time. You will wind up dead waiting for the Byzantine bureaucracy to stamp its feeble "approval" on anything revolutionary. You will have to take matters in your own hands if the Byzantine bureaucracy is not moving fast enough. Stem cell therapy is a success for many debilitating conditions yet the FDA, the NIH, the lamestream media and Big Pharma consistently lie, lie, lie and spread even more lies about it being "risky", "ineffective", "worthless", "useless", or a "scam". The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

Look, life is not for the weak and winners are not handed to you by Big Mommy or Daddy government. It may not be fair, but this is reality. If you want to be a winner, either in terms of being rich or practical life extension, you have to grab it. No one is going to do it for you.

Rich is relative. What constitute rich in your mind? What constitutes rich in this application?

Hmm, not rich enough to afford the first iteration but rich enough to afford the second or third at much lower costs before the 20-30 years it takes the FDA to stamp "approved" because it threatens the crony profits of the status quo.

Being rich alone is not enough, of course. You also have to be informed, you also have to believe and you also have to know where to get access. Make it a habit now or you're gonna join the back of the queue.

Spoken like a true Darwinian. Screw everyone else but me. Sad. But I doubt you will understand.

[MachineGhost]

Spoken like a true Darwinian. Screw everyone else but me. Sad. But I doubt you will understand.

I hate to break it to you, but that is your God's nature. Argue with him/her/it, not me. I'm just the messenger.

[MachineGhost]

Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?
Because of soil depletion, crops grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... tion-loss/

[Maddy]

Interesting that the author doesn't cite return to heirloom varieties as one of the answers, although his own analysis would suggest that might be the most important factor.

[MachineGhost]

Interesting that the author doesn't cite return to heirloom varieties as one of the answers, although his own analysis would suggest that might be the most important factor.

One of the commenters said its not really diminished soil per se, but commercialized, fast growing, sweet tasting fruits and vegetables that don't have enough time to uptake minerals present. What do you think about that?

[MachineGhost]

As Maddy likely knows better than all of us, soil is repairable and improvable. Healthy soil is a bit like a living organism, teeming with microbes and decaying organic material. By the way, making compost in the high desert is very frustrating; it takes forever. It's good to be down here in the South where everything rots almost immediately (including the house).

Does SoCal qualify as a high desert? 'cuz high or not, the damn heat has stunted all of my plants' growth.

[Maddy]

You really should be able to make great compost anywhere. Everything rots eventually, so you have the forces of nature on your side! The basic formula is 1 part green (e.g., grass clippings) to one part brown (e.g., fallen leaves, straw, or wood shavings--but not cedar). Layer the brown and green so that no layer is more than 4-6 inches high. Keep the pile uniformly moist throughout--about like a wrung-out sponge. Turn it with a pitchfork every couple of weeks to keep things cooking aerobically. Don't get discouraged! Things won't get moving until your pile is of sufficient size to generate and hold heat--about 1 cubic yard.

If you're religious about doing the above, your pile should heat up nicely and should yield a rich, black humus chock full of worms by the end of the summer. (I'm assuming you start the pile in the spring, when grass clippings become plentiful.) But if you really want fast results, you can kick-start your pile with the addition of fresh chicken manure. Composted manure from the store won't work--it has to be straight from the chicken house. Or, if you're not squeamish about these things, pee in the compost pile morning, noon and night. I've got a little neighbor boy who BEGS to pee in my compost. But since I've gone commercial, that's no longer possible. I'm sure it wouldn't hurt anything--under most circumstances urine is sterile, but customers would understandably flip out.

Usually slow compost is the result of (1) too little oxygen (i.e., not turning the pile frequently enough, (2) not enough watering, or (3) an imbalance in the ratio of nitrogen (green) to carbon (brown).