Alan Cash, MetVital CEO, Discusses Life Expectancy Trends

An interesting article from the Journal Science discusses whether the trend of living longer is slowing down or has reached a limit. The article first analyzes female life expectancy over the last 160 years. In the country with the longest lifespan, women's average survival is longer each year, increasing average life expectancy by 3 months every year; this has been a linear trend for 160 years. Here, Alan Cash, CEO of MetVital, details recent studies and trends of life expectancy and discusses their potential implications.

Increasing overall life expectancy is tied to living better.

"World life expectancy more than doubled over the past two "World life expectancy more than doubled over the past two centuries, from roughly 25 years to about 65 for men and 70 for women. This transformation of the duration of life greatly enhanced the quantity and quality of people's lives. It fueled enormous increases in economic output..."

The article concludes that Life Expectancy is not slowing down nor has approached an upper limit. They provide three reasons for their conclusions:

"First, experts have repeatedly asserted that life expectancy is approaching a ceiling: these experts have repeatedly been approaching a ceiling: these experts have repeatedly been proven wrong. Second, the apparent leveling off of life expectancy in various countries is an artifact of laggards catching up and leaders falling behind. Third, if life expectancy were close to a maximum, then the increase in the record expectation of life should be slowing. It is not. For 160 years, best-performance life expectancy has steadily increased by a quarter of a year per year, an extraordinary constancy of human achievement." (1)

So, in general, we can all expect to live longer than our ancestors. What is amazing is that this linear upwards trend was achieved without any of the strategies for cellular or genomic improvements which are being researched today. New technology, along with anti-aging supplements that increase mitochondrial biogenesis, (2,3) mimic calorie restriction, (4,5) and increase the NAD+/NADH ratio in the cells (2,5,6) such as benaGene (oxaloacetate), may not only keep the linear trend moving upwards, but may bend the graph towards even higher life expediencies in a non- linear upward trend. The future looks bright, and there may be more that humans can do during their lifetimes to extend their life expectancy.

Another study, performed at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, suggested that calorie restriction (CR) can potentially increase the average and maximal lifespan in humans as well as animal models (7). However, there has always been a question as to if it will work in humans, and because of this two-year study, this question is closer to an answer.

The study found that Energy Expenditure (EE) in the CR group was substantially less than in the control group, along with significantly reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS is known to damage genetic and functional cell structures. CR has been hypothesized to both reduce ROS and make EE more efficient.

The participants in this study achieved a calorie restriction of 15% over the 2-year period. The original paper can be downloaded here. Calorie Restriction mimetics, such as benaGene (oxaloacetate), which has also shown a 25-50% increase in laboratory animal survival, may provide an alternative path to longevity than actual CR, which is difficult to maintain over a lifespan. (8,9) In addition to increasing animal lifespan, benaGene has been shown in increase cellular energy efficiency in muscle tissue in a similar fashion to this new study. (10)

References

1. Oeppen J, Vaupel JW. Demography. Broken limits to life expectancy. Science. 2002;296(5570):1029-31.

2. Wilkins HM, Harris JL, Carl SM, E L, Lu J, Eva Selfridge J, et al.
Oxaloacetate activates brain mitochondrial biogenesis, enhances the insulin pathway, reduces inflammation and stimulates neurogenesis. Hum Mol Genet. 2014;23(24):6528-41.

3. Wilkins HM, Koppel S, Carl SM, Ramanujan S, Weidling I, Michaelis ML, et al. Oxaloacetate Enhances Neuronal Cell Bioenergetic Fluxes and Infrastructure. J Neurochem. 2016.

4. Williams DS, Cash A, Hamadani L, Diemer T. Oxaloacetate supplementation increases lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans through an AMPK/FOXO-dependent pathway. Aging Cell. 2009;8(6):765-8.

5. Cash A. Oxaloacetic Acid Supplementation as a Mimetic of Calorie Restriction. Open Longevity Science. 2009;3:22-7.

6. Haslam JM, Krebs HA. The permeability of mitochondria to oxaloacetate and malate. Biochem J. 1968;107(5):659-67.

7. Redman, L.M., et al., Metabolic Slowing and Reduced
Oxidative Damage with Sustained Caloric Restriction Support the Rate of Living and Oxidative Damage Theories of Aging. Cell Metab, 2018.

8. Williams, D.S., et al., Oxaloacetate supplementation increases lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans through an AMPK/FOXO-dependent pathway.

9. Aging Cell, 2009. 8(6): p. 765-8. 3. Edwards, C.B., et al., Malate and Fumarate Extend Lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. PLoS One, 2013. 8(3): p. e58345.

10. Nogueira, L., Acute Oxaloacetate Exposure Enhances Resistance to Fatigue in in vitro Mouse Soleus Muscle. FASEB Journal, 2011. 25(1104.5).