glycine stimulates production of Growth Hormone.... Having more Growth Hormone is always a bad thing in my book.. So no thanks!
In rodents, as mentioned by others previously on this thread, glycine supplementation appears to function as a calorie restriction mimetic and lengthens lifespan by 30%.
Of course, randomly adding growth hormone for no reason is not good. But if the body is rejuvenating and increasing its own production as a result, than it is not bad, especially if we see that other lifeforms gain life-extension and disease resistance as well.
All or most of the SENS types of damage would still be there, and would still need to be fixed.
This assumes that it would not be reverted. It is said that there are quality control mechanisms for mitochondria, human neurons can keep their high energy requirements that necessitate lots of it from high functioning mitochondria up to the age of 122. Older animals can keep neurons working for centuries, and in them there is no evidence of mitosens solutions evolving, afaik(e.g. bowhead whale), if there is evidence of such that would change my viewpoint. What that means is that either existing mechanisms, upregulation of existing mechanisms, or similar quality control mechanisms are sufficient to indefinitely maintain mitochondria quality. Any age related accumulation of mutations could very well simply be due to age related dysfunction of quality control mechanisms.
Molecular garbage that leads to diseases like Alzheimers and other neurodegenerative conditions have been vinculated to deficiency of garbage export mechanisms via the glymphatic system of the brain. Even a partially functioning glymphatic system enables at least 122 years(lifespan over 40 years over what most humans reach) of dementia free brain. A fully rejuvenated glymphatic system might keep things going indefinitely in the brain. Cells can even export organelles, it remains to be seen whether the accumulation of molecular garbage elsewhere is due to failure to recycle or failure to export, the rest of the body has the lymphatic system and it ages too. In any case it is in the brain where cells are amongst the most metabolically demanding(generating lots of garbage) and where cells do not divide(which dilutes garbage) that one would expect garbage to be a problem, yet as said even with aging garbage removal system the brain can last for over 122 years dementia free in some. That is what is easiest is the export of garbage out, like we do in our society, much easier than recycling it all, any accumulation that occurs might very well simply be the result of aging garbage exporting mechanisms.
Nuclear mutations are a non-issue. Parent to child about 50 mutations pass on, some of the fastest reproducing cells(think it was blood stem cells) have only about 400 mutations in a centenarian negligible for a genome Billions of bases wide. And also iirc, sperm producing stem cells are also quite rapidly reproducing, and while there is increased disease chance in offspring, perfectly healthy perfectly young offspring is possible from very old men.
Cell depletion would also be addressed in most of the body by restoring telomere length to stem cell pools and rejuvenating niches. In the brain it is said that in healthy old adults there is no cell loss in some of the examined areas, only in diseased old adults does it occur, and the thought that we all lost cells is said to be the result of averaging diseased with nondiseased aging populations.
This ignores the fact that predation and infection is rampant in nature, thus animals have never needed any help in order to die. .... Thus the idea of an evolved aging program is completely at odds with what we observe in nature.
http://io9.com/are-l...tion-1710634703
It has been seen that aging populations can outcompete immortal populations in evolutionary simulations.
The reality is that we've observed populations which have indeed bred like mad and collapsed their food supply, the species later suffering catastrophic collapse itself if not going extinct. Predation is nice, but tell me who is going to be more likely to succumb to it, the young? the less fit? or the fittest? The reality is that the fittest prey or predator will be unlikely to succumb to predation or disease barring aging all the others will be much likelier to succumb first, this will lead to a loss of genetic diversity compromising population fitness, and for the same reasons things like incest avoidance exist, a process like aging is necessary to keep populations at viable size and preserve genetic diversity.
Edited by Castiel, 23 August 2015 - 05:53 AM.
