Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026841.800-would-eating-heavy-atoms-lengthen-our-lives.html

by bd • 18 years ago

33 25 18 years ago

pg• 18 years ago

It's kind of funny that the related articles include another one with a completely different thesis:

   Has universal ageing mechanism been found?

   A protein that causes yeast to age seems to have 
   a similar effect in mice too – the finding might 
   lead to drugs to reverse age-related diseases"

bd• 18 years ago

It's actually complementary, aging has many factors.

Heavy water is supposed to make harder for free radicals to do damage in the first place.

Sirtuins should help with switching on repair mechanisms after damage is done.

And then there are telomeres, our natural kill-switch. There is another article, linked from the sirtuins one, about a possible way to slow down telomeres shortening:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16035-elixir-of-youth-...

BTW All three anti-aging approaches have companies working on the products to commercialize the research (Sirtris was recently bought by GlaxoSmithKline for $720M).

kajecounterhack• 18 years ago

Wasn't there also some article about how people don't get dumber as they get older, rather, their focus is less and less?

Sort of strange, but if that and all of this really turn out to be true, extending the human lifespan might not be as difficult as we make it out to be.

earthboundkid• 18 years ago

This is an idiotic idea and will lead to a) expensive piss, sweat, and breath or b) some horrible disease caused by overly slow chemical reactions. Maybe both.

mindslight3• 18 years ago

Could always recycle ...

ryanb• 18 years ago

Sounds like a neat idea worth experimenting - this is obviously very early on in the process though.

jhancock• 18 years ago

I prefer them because they have more crunch and don't get as soggy as the lighter atoms after 5 minutes sitting in milk.

zby• 18 years ago

Articles on health are the worst. The pattern is so repetetive - first comes some study that under some circumstances some substance or excercise of something would cause something - then comes the refutations and even articles about the reverse effects. It is alwasy so sensationalistic and so unfounded. What I would like to read is a study about that effect - it has some pretty obvious causes - after all healt is something that everyone is very intimately concerned about - but still I would like to read a detailed analysis of that mechanism.

13ren2• 18 years ago

Deuterated bonds can be up to 80 times stronger than those containing hydrogen.

That seems likely to alter chemical behaviour (as researchers found). I'm not a chemist, but it seems reasonable to consider compounds with such bonds as different compounds. Why should we think of carbon-12 and carbon-13 as variations of carbon, instead of distinct elements - if they have different chemical behaviour?

The blackbox testing tells us that 35% heavy water is lethal, but doesn't tell why. It's possible - and even likely - that it is the very bonds we wish to protect that become lethal if strengthened 80 times.

The final "heavy babies" grayed paragraph at the end is fascinating (in case you skipped it: babies have more carbon-13, and their mothers are unusually depleted with it around the time of birth.)

yummyfajitas• 18 years ago

They are both variations of carbon because they have the same electronic structure, i.e. the configuration of electrons about C-12 and C-13 is identical (or similarly H-1 and H-2).

I'll make a bad analogy now.

The electronic structure is like a set of hooks attached to the atom. Hydrogen has 1 free hook, carbon 4, and these hooks form chemical bonds. Hydrogen and deuterium have the same set of hooks, as do C-13 and C-14. But deuterium is heavier than hydrogen, and this makes it harder to unhook it when it attaches to another atom, even if the set of hooks is identical.

13ren2• 18 years ago

Sorry, that was a suggestion phrased as a question (i.e. I know what isotopes are). I was suggesting a name that signifies operational properties rather than "the" definition of what it is. If heavy water became commonly available, this would undoubtedly occur.

It's like features vs. benefits, which I've been working with over a few weeks, to understand the need for my product, and the gaps left by existing offers in the marketplace. Quite possibly, I'm thinking too much in those terms :-)

lst4• 18 years ago

I prefer Eternal Paradise to some other decade on this violent Planet.

juliend2• 18 years ago

Where is the option to give 10 points to this comment? ;)

lst4• 18 years ago

P.S. In case you are atheist: if you can scientifically prove that Eternal Paradise does not exist, I'll be glad (or so) to hear from you!

(Side note: the current situation on our Planet is still that much more than 50% of currently living souls actually do believe in God/Good/Heaven/Paradise; and the already gone ones, actually already know exactly!)

mindslight3• 18 years ago

Sorry, science doesn't work that way. It's your job to give evidence that some sort of afterlife exists.

ars2• 18 years ago

You are not supposed to downmod things just because you disagree with them - that's the reddit way. You are supposed to downmod worthless stuff that doesn't add to the discussion.

dcurtis3• 18 years ago

Show me the study where a researcher feeds some animal deuterated water and then show how its life is extended by a statistically significant amount.

Before you can actually produce such a study, this entire article is sensationalist and the editors at New Scientist should be embarrassed to publish it.

The article says that up to 35% of body water can be heavy, but after that point it becomes "lethal." What exactly happens to make it lethal, and why has the author assumed that it is "harmless" to drink small amounts? Where's the study showing that small amounts are "totally harmless?"

riahi• 18 years ago

The wikipedia article on Heavy water has some interesting comments to some of your later questions.

In particular, it seems that high levels of deuterated water inhibits formation of the mitotic spindle, thereby preventing cell division.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water

ars2• 18 years ago

Normally isotopes don't cause chemical changes, but with hydrogen they do. Deuterium is twice as heavy as hydrogen, so it moves slower, and is less reactive - for some reactions this can make a big difference. With the other isotopes the change in mass isn't anywhere near that.

dcurtis3• 18 years ago

This makes sense. But has any human being-- or any animal in nature-- ever ingested deuterium in any significant amount? How can you not know if this will change ever-so-slightly the way DNA transcription takes place, or example?

I just think it's kind of irresponsible for a reporter at a science publication to make cavalier statements about things like this-- "It's completely safe..."-- without having any science to back them up.

Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives?

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