Do mole rats hold the key to immortality?

"Spring Chicken:
Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying)" by Bill Gifford (Grand Central Publishing)

Someone alive today will live to celebrate a 1,000th birthday — or so says gerontology theorist Aubrey de Grey, who has been snickered off many podiums during his controversial career.

His theory, which he calls SENSS, or "Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence," contends that one day we will be able to engineer aging out of cells. Once we can implement de Grey's idea to clean our cells of "aging garbage," a kind of cellular housekeeping, then lifespan could even become infinite.

De Grey has a hopeful admirer in journalist Bill Gifford, author of the new book, "Spring Chicken." In it, Gifford points out that MIT and the Technology Review have offered scientists $20,000 to try and refute de Grey's theories. So far, three teams of scientists have tried. None, Gifford writes, has succeeded.

Long live rats!

If the idea of exponentially increasing human lifespan sounds like the stuff of science fiction, consider this: Scientists have already doubled the lifespans of other species in the lab, including mice, worms and flies.

British theoretician Aubrey de GreyPhoto: Wikipedia

Researchers have also sequenced the genome of the naked mole rat, an animal that doesn't develop cancer, never suffers through menopause and lives 10 times longer than regular old subway rats.

Researchers believe that the longevity of mole rats comes down to the limited oxygen of its subterranean habitat. As such, its metabolic rates are abnormally slow and a proliferation of repair mechanisms keep their cells astonishingly youthful.

This is key, Gifford writes, pointing out that "healthspan" is far more important than lifespan. The real problem with aging isn't that we eventually die, it's that we break down.

Aging is thought by some to begin while we are still in the womb. It speeds up after we finish growing, at about 20 years old, then accelerates after that.

These exciting — but preliminary — research findings come during a time when preoccupation with staving off old age is growing. The reason, Gifford points out, is simple: There are more older people on earth right now than ever. Today, more people will make it to 95 with, as Gifford puts it, "more of their marbles than ever before."

Mole rats don't develop cancer, never suffer through menopause and lives 10 times longer than subway rats.Photo: Shutterstock

Population size once looked like a pyramid, with youngest on the bottom and the elderly at the top. "Now," writes Gifford, "as life expectancy gets longer and birthrates get smaller, industrialized countries have become top-heavy with old folk, more like mushrooms than pyramids."

A leading newspaper in Japan recently reported that adult diapers will outsell diapers for infants by 2020.

Why wouldn't we want to stem the tide of old age? In our 40s, our ability to process oxygen decreases by 10%. It decreases by 15% in our 50s and another 20% in our 60s. By the time we are in our 70s, we lose yet another 30%.

"We have less energy as we get older," Gifford writes, "and yet we use what we have much less efficiently." Unfortunately about the only thing that doesn't decrease as we age is our weight.

It's no wonder then that the anti-aging industry — much of which is not backed by any sort of medical science — is ballooning. By 2017, Viagra alone is expected to reach $5 billion in annual sales.

Young-blood transplants

A 19th century formula for an 'elixir of life'Photo: Getty Images

Of course, as Gifford points out, living forever has been a fascination long before now.

In the middle of the 19th century, "Elixirs of Life" became all the rage in Europe, a movement led by French-American scientist Charles Édouard Brown-Séquard.

Using himself as his own guinea pig, Brown-Séquard, who is considered the father of endocrinology, put himself through many a harrowing trial to see if he could thwart death. One experiment produced the "Brown-Séquard Elixir," a mixture of dog semen, testicles and blood that he injected into himself as a remedy for aging. Brown-Séquard swore by it, even when other scientists discredited it, and people lined up, cash in hand, ready to try the miracle cure for aging.

Charles Édouard Brown-Séquard, a French-American 19th century scientist considered the father of endocrinology. He would inject himself with a mixture of dog semen, testicles and blood to fight aging.Photo: Wikipedia

Though bizarre (with any change to aging credited to the placebo effect), this early experimentation could be viewed as a precursor to the testosterone-replacement therapy we use today.

The mid-1800s produced another similarly wacky study called "heterochronic" parabiosis.

Not for the faint of heart, parabiosis involves suturing two animals together at their sides until their blood supply eventually fuses and becomes one cohesive fluid. Though banned in some countries because of its inherent cruelty, studies have found that when you splice together an old rat with a young rat, the old rat lives up to five months longer than other rats their age.

This is exceptional when you consider that their life expectancy is only two to three years. The result of the studies showed something remarkable: Youth is contagious.

Parabiosis is making a comeback, albeit with IV drips rather than Frankenstein's monster. In "Spring Chicken," Gifford explores the work of Saul Villeda of the University of California, a researcher who has been studying the results of young blood in older animals. To Villeda's surprise, he discovered that the young blood offered inarguable benefits, especially when it came to synaptic plasticity in the brain, improving memory and cognitive functions.

Today, he is joined by other scientists on a similar path, who are petitioning the FDA to seek approval for drugs based on promising studies of "young blood" that could be used to treat diseases from Alzheimer's to heart failure.

Shocks to the system

. According to the book, people who subject themselves to very cold water on a daily basis enjoy higher levels of natural antioxidants in their blood as well as higher red-blood-cell counts.Photo: Shutterstock

If the thought of being sewn to someone else or injected with "young blood" doesn't do it for you, Gifford takes a look at lifestyle changes that might offer clues to longevity.

He points to calorie-restriction diets, as well as temporary fasting states. Scientists took note when it was observed that Muslim athletes seemed to perform better during the month of Ramadan, when they gave up food and drink during the day and only consumed again after sundown.

Repeated tests continue to reveal all kinds of fascinating benefits in this arena, including substantially higher levels of grey matter in monkeys whose calories were restricted to near-starvation levels. Tests in humans have yielded strikingly similar results.

Gifford contends that the success of calorie restriction harkens back to our days as hunter/gatherers, when periods of extreme hunger could last months. It was in our bodies' best interest to get stronger in order to successfully carry on our hunt for food. When we need food, our brains are actually hardwired to kick into survival mode; Gifford advises that we "embrace the hunger."

When both mice and humans were placed on an alternating eating schedule — eating one day, fasting the next and so forth — there were obvious and immediate memory improvements.

In another study, biologist Mark Mattson of the National Institute on Aging conducted a study on asthmatics, putting them on a dietary regiment that only allowed them to eat every other day.

On the off days, they were given a limited-calorie shake as a supplement. The study showed that the subjects actually had fewer symptoms, leading them to believe that limited fasting helps to reduce inflammation.

Gifford finds that the key to living a longer life is to take on short bouts of stress — most bracing among them is perhaps the ice-water bath. According to the book, people who subject themselves to very cold water on a daily basis enjoy higher levels of natural antioxidants in their blood as well as higher red-blood-cell counts.

Katharine Hepburn (pictured here in 1988) famously swam in the Long Island Sound every day, and lived until she was 96.Photo: WireImage

"There was more blood in their blood," Gifford writes of recent scientific studies.

Katharine Hepburn famously swam daily in the Long Island Sound, rain, snow or shine. Perhaps it's no coincidence she continued to act until she was 87 and died at 96.

On the other hand, short bursts of heat can also be good for our long-term health.

Heat shocks proteins that serve as a stabilizing force in our cells, helping them to retain proper structures. These valuable proteins are best activated through bursts of heat, including intense exercise like spinning classes. It turns out, they've also been found to counteract diabetes by lowering insulin resistance.

Behind each of these beneficial stressors lies the concept of hormesis, a stress response that is hardwired in our bodies, explains Gifford. Organisms that are "stressed out" emerge stronger — just like, Gifford explained in a "Fresh Air" interview, the way our muscles become stressed and damaged with weight lifting, only to become stronger and bigger after.

Meanwhile, new studies are looking at the ways in which exercise actually switches our "young" genes on and our "old" genes off. At McMaster University in Ontario, mitochondria are under deep scrutiny. These tiny cellular powerhouses exist in the cells of almost every life form. When we lose mitochondria, we age. But exercise preserves them.

The lesson here, Gifford says, is simply: Move it or lose it.

The 'SuperBubbes'

'SuperBubbes' are Ashkenazi Jewish women who live into their 90s, an endocrinologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has been studying this group of women hoping to discover a 'longevity gene.'

Then there are the "SuperBubbes," Ashkenazi Jewish women who typically live into their 90s but don't exhibit many of the detrimental symptoms of aging, like heart disease and diabetes.

What makes SuperBubbes exceptional is that their lifestyles tend not to have differed much from their contemporaries who died well before them. Similarly they seem to have all the genetic markers that code for things like Alzheimer's and cancer. And yet, according to the scientists that study them, they continue to retain remarkably healthy-looking blood.

Dr. Nir Barzilai, an endocrinologist and the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, chose to study this particular group of women because of the tendency of American Ashkenazi Jews to marry within their own tight-knit community. As such, they might share large swaths of genetic information. And Barzilai was looking for a "longevity gene."

Barzilai believes the SuperBubbes age slower, and he thinks the reason is genetic. These studies have led to some fascinating discoveries, including a single gene every single one of these women share called the CETP-inhibiting mutation. One day, this gene could hold the key to protecting all of us from the unwanted effects of aging.

And if we could combine the SuperBubbe gene with those of a naked mole rat? Imagine the possibilities!