A New Approach to Longevity

A New Approach to Longevity

By Steve.Richfield@gmail.com

WARNING: Everyone who has “scanned” rather than carefully reading this article has completely misunderstood what it says. Hence, if you don’t have the time to carefully read this article, then stop reading now.

I have had a health and longevity hobby since 2001, initiated by my own health needs. I work on one or two people each year who have some sort of “incurable” age-related illness, and invest the effort needed to understand what is happening well enough to engineer a true cure, usually requiring no further treatment. I was my own first major project. I am excited about a number of successes detailed below, along with some informative failures. I have identified a single factor in most of my case studies that made a big improvement when corrected, and which could underlie many if not most age-related illnesses.

Note that Aubrey de Grey is a British biomedical gerontologist, who has identified seven types of age related tissue damage that need to be repaired. He has been interviewed in CBS 60 Minutes, Free Talk Live, and the BBC. The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, and Popular Science have published interviews with him. See my analysis of Aubrey de Grey’s seven issues of aging in light of my discovery about halfway through this article.

Unfortunately, this is not a simple thing to understand, so I will first explain some basics in no particular order before putting the pieces together.

Some Freshman Chemistry

Solubility, the ability of a liquid to dissolve a solid (or gas or other liquid) is a strong function of temperature. The higher the temperature is, the more that can be dissolved into a given quantity of liquid (except for a few anomalous substances). This is a crucial capacity for our blood, urine, bile, and other liquids, for the more that can be dissolved, the more these liquids can do for our bodies. Also, if temperatures should drop significantly, then less can be dissolved, thereby impairing operation and potentially resulting in dangerous solid deposits, like fat deposits on artery walls, kidney stones, gall stones, etc.

Dan previously had a quadruple bypass operation, but it was clogging up with blood fats, and when I met him he had been given ~6 weeks left to live. Dan was a Baptist minister who had fought a pitched battle with his heart, and had the long chest scars to prove it. Dan was too weak to work and was about to lose the battle. Dan’s out of control diabetes precluded further operations. Dan was preparing to meet his maker. I reset his 97.something=~36.4oC daytime temperature back to 98.6oF=37oC, and had him run it up past 100oF=37.8oC in hot showers each morning. Dan’s clogged heart quickly cleared out and Dan was soon back to work as an outside electrician. Dan is now still alive, 6 years later, and supplements his income with Friday and Saturday night gigs as a musician. See more about Dan later in this article.

Some Theory of Cooking

Everyone is familiar with the “browning reaction” – the way food browns when you cook it. More scientifically known as the “Maillard reaction”, this is the process whereby sugar molecules chemically bond to proteins and DNA, and is also known as glycation. Like all chemical reactions, these reactions proceed at a rate that is dependent on temperature and the concentration of the molecules involved, so that sweeter things cook faster. Given an opportunity to develop, these bonds become what are known as Advanced Glycation Endproducts (A.G.E.s), or more commonly as crosslinks. Crosslinks make the affected tissue inflexible. The same thing happens in people as they age, resulting in hardened arteries that become inflexible and unable to even out the pressure pulses from our hearts. In a very real sense we are constantly cooking ever so slowly for our entire lives, but because our temperature is so low it takes a century or so just to reach “rare”.

The progression of this phenomenon is highly dependent on blood sugar concentration, so this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as diabetic glycation, because only diabetics develop serious symptoms before dying of something else. Carnosine is often given as a supplement to inhibit glycation.

Some Evolutionary Biochemistry

In the continuing battle between pathogens and immune systems, pathogens have developed ever more complex ways of fooling immune systems, while immune systems have developed ever more complex ways of differentiating between self and pathogens/tumors. Given ~200 million years to refine this competition, both immune systems and pathogens/tumors absolutely must have developed the most complex chemical reactions possible in their continuing competition to kill each other.

What limits the ultimate complexity of chemical reactions? Temperature range. As reactions become more complex, they operate over an ever more narrow temperature range, so that at the maximum possible complexity, they barely operate at a specific temperature, and not at all at other temperatures. Given that there are several reactions involved in these complex processes, this would seem to impose a complex temperature control requirement. A body would have to switch between temperatures needed by the immune system, while avoiding intermediate temperatures that might be more useful to pathogens/tumors.

Given this situation, it should come as no surprise that nearly everyone with any sort of autoimmune condition also has a restricted range of body temperatures, typically never exceeding 98.2oF=36.8oC.

As I have been unraveling this puzzle, I have a varying shortlist of questions that I ask every medical doctor I encounter. These questions usually take the form of “Approximately how many xxx patients do you have?” and “Do any of then have yyy”. Some of these questions uncover the fact that there are zero or nearly zero patients with certain combinations of common conditions and common symptoms (or lack thereof). One example is the near absence of patients with age-related disease and normal 98.6oF=37oC temperatures. Another is the near absence of patients with chronic autoimmune conditions and normal daytime body temperatures.

Note that there are common poisons that can cause almost any condition, such as dioxin causing cancer or a black mold infestation causing COPD (See Ted’s story later on in this article). Hence, there will be rare exceptions to almost any “perfect” rule.

Some Adaptive Control System Theory

Go into a nuclear plant, oil refinery, or any other complex control facility and you will probably see red tags hanging from some of the controls. If you read one of these red tags, it will explain that when the control was operated in a particular circumstance something went wrong. Some of these red tags indicate real breakdowns in the machinery, while others represent superstitious learning, meaning that the observed problem was an unrelated coincidence. Of course, no one knows for sure which red tags were from superstitious learning. As red tags accumulate, engineers must carefully distort the operation of the plant to avoid red tagged operation, thereby causing even more red tags to accumulate due to the unusual operating conditions. Eventually, SO many red tags accumulate that it becomes impossible to continue operation without endangering the plant by violating the red tags. Then the plant must be shut down for engineers to remove the red tags and repair the real malfunctions.

Sometime in the second half-century of people’s lives, both normal and backup modes of operation becomes impossible due to superstitious metabolic red tagging. This results in a cascading series of attempts to operate under increasingly bizarre conditions, like at 94oF=~34oC temperatures. One night their temperature may drop so low to avoid red tagged operation that they become unable to generate enough heat to keep from continuing to get even colder, and they simply die in their sleep, with no organic malfunction prior to death.

Our temperature control system routinely maintains our temperature with an accuracy that is probably beyond the capabilities of modern science to recreate in a machine, which works despite sudden changes in ambient temperature, insulation, etc. Just look at how poorly the cruise control in your car works and marvel how much better our own regulatory systems work. My mental model for the operation of people’s central metabolic control system is a “virtual” control systems engineer, who keeps good notes, affixes red tags as needed, performs experiments, etc., just like a real college trained control systems engineer would. I must somehow convince this virtual control systems engineer to remove or downgrade existing red tags in a complex real-life competition as subtle as any chess match, with someone’s life going to the winner.

Our central metabolic control system probably controls hundreds of parameters, including such disparate things as fat burning, mineral stores, hormones, metabolism, temperature, immune system operation, reparative mechanisms, etc. I am focusing on temperature regulation in this article for several reasons:

1. Proper temperature regulation requires almost everything else to work, so it is a quick test for overall operation. Hence, problems with temperature regulation may have nothing to do with the regulation mechanism itself.
2. Only a simple thermometer is needed to test and observe temperature regulation.
3. The temperature regulation mechanism itself is the only thing malfunctioning in about half of the cases where temperature regulation is not working right.

Some Thermodynamics

The special significance of various daytime body temperatures is discussed in this article. Note that they generally span the range from 97.4oF=36.3oC to 98.6oF=37oC, or only a 1.2oF=0.7oC range. This is only ~3% of the temperature difference from a typical 70oF=21.1oC ambient. Hence, other things being equal, this would only make a 3% difference in metabolism, and have a similarly small impact on direct temperature-related aging effects. Hence, any direct physics-of-aging effects would be too small to measure. However, this tiny temperature shift causes many systems to work radically differently, among other things resulting in a major reduction in the levels of thermogenic adrenal hormones that are needed to function at what should be sleeping temperatures. The reduction in metabolism then results in reduced metabolic damage.

Some Communication

Small changes in temperature would certainly make an effective low-bandwidth way to broadcast something throughout our bodies. What would be communicated? It appears that many systems respond to temperature, especially cognition and digestion, as our temperature typically hangs around 97.4oF=36.3oC when we sleep, and jumps up to 98.6oF=37oC when we are awake.

When I first realized that temperature cycling might be important, I purchased dozens of inexpensive thermometers and handed them out to all of the really healthy people I encountered, to determine what “normal” is, and if there even was a “normal”. I had them read their temperature then, and where possible, I had them keep notes as to what their temperature was at other times. One particular pattern, the one I call “normal” in this article, emerged among nearly all of them. Note that about half of the patients who go to a doctor have other temperatures and patterns, but these people have not been selected as being the pictures of ideal health – quite the contrary, they are sick enough to be seen by a doctor.

It could be important to shut digestion down at night to avoid having to brave lions, tigers, and bears in the dark just to defecate. We have now seen from direct observation that wakefulness is being communicated.

Some Needs for Occasional Brief Hyperthermia

We NEED to have our temperatures go quite high every year or so for the following important reasons:

1. Hyperthermia is an effective way to kill developing cancers.
2. Hyperthermia dissolves any fat that survives normal temperature cycling.
3. Hyperthermia kills some weak/mutated cells, which if left alive will replicate and compete with healthier cells.

It seems pretty obvious that the usual practice of working to reduce fevers could be likely misdirected, as having fevers may add decades to our lives.

With my first illness after correcting my daytime body temperature, my temperature barely went up past 100oF=37.8oC. However, by taking hot showers when my fevers were at their maximum, I have been able to push my maximum fever temperatures up ever higher with each illness, so that my present maximum fever temperature as of this writing is 103.8oF=39.9oC.

Note that some supplements like Coenzyme Q-10 may negate some of the beneficial effects of fevers by strengthening weak or cancerous cells enough to survive fevers.

Some Misdirection

All medical doctors are told in medical school that normal body temperature can be just about anything between 96oF=35.6oC and 100oF=37.8oC, and advised not to concern themselves with variations within this range. There have been some poorly designed and implemented drug company financed studies that have attempted to debunk various body temperature theories, e.g. Mackowiak, et al. JAMA 1992;268:1578-1580. All of these have hinged on the invalid assumption that there is (or is not) a single correct body temperature. However, my own research clearly shows that there are several closely-spaced correct temperatures that your body routinely switches between according to a complex algorithm, a complex situation not considered by any of the previous observations, studies, or experiments.

Note that having low daytime body temperature does NOT mean that you feel cold. Quite the contrary, people having low daytime body temperature are typically the ones who go around wearing short sleeved shirts while the rest of us are wearing jackets. One sad repeating story that has emerged over the years is of hikers who died of hypothermia, and who were found nearly naked in the snow. Feeling completely comfortable only means that your body temperature is equal to your set point temperature, whatever it might be at that moment, and nothing more. This is because your conscious mind is part of your overall temperature control system, and you are made to feel warm or cool as needed for you to take appropriate action to control your heat loss. No action is needed when your temperature is at the desired set point, so you will feel neither warm nor cool at that temperature.

Further, note that low body temperature does NOT mean low metabolism, as most people actually raise their metabolism when their body temperature drops because they must “run on adrenaline” just to stay awake, and adrenaline is very thermogenic. Elevated adrenal demands cause adrenal fatigue in many people with low daytime body temperatures, making adrenal fatigue the most common symptom of low daytime body temperature.

Satisfying Many Requirements

The above considerations impose complex requirements on our temperature control system. The system must jump between certain specific temperatures to make our immune systems work properly, to do this on a schedule to communicate wakefulness, and to sometimes go quite high. We have evolved a complex automated control system to satisfy these many requirements UNTIL red tagging interferes with it. It probably only takes one really badly placed red tag to start the long slow dying process.

Different Strategies can satisfy the Requirements

One strategy that certainly works, parts of which were described in books by Dr. Broda Barnes and Dr. Denis Wilson and I observed in healthy people, is to sleep at around 97.4oF=36.2oC, pop up to 98.6oF=37oC during the day, and sometimes go way up to ~104oF=40oC. However, that certainly is not the only good strategy, and may not even be the best long-term strategy.

The primary short-term problem with not staying at 98.6oF=37oC during the day is that large amounts of adrenaline are needed to be active. Low temperature is essentially a sleeping condition, and intelligence is much improved at the 98.6oF=37oC temperatures. However, laboratory mice and “couch potatoes”, people who just lay around during the day and who do not need their best mental faculties, can exist under semi-sleeping conditions without actually being asleep.

A person could operate at peak for just a short period each day, during which time they could solve their complex problems and engage in any strenuous activities, and then drop back to a lower temperature while they lay around for the remainder of the day. I have seen this in a number of elderly people. Unfortunately, without careful attention this may lead to continuously low temperatures.

It would also seem important to periodically run a high fever, even in the absence of infection. However, I have not seen this actually happening in the absence of immunological challenges, though this could underlie some idiopathic fevers.

What is So Special About 98.6oF=37oC?

With careful observation, you can feel your body switching things on and off, e.g. your hands getting warm and cold, cycling between feeling warm and cool, etc. This is true for all set points, except for the one at 98.6oF=37oC, where things are proportionally controlled to be much more stable. However, as any control systems engineer well knows, proportional control becomes unstable and goes into oscillation if any significant part of it hits a limit. This means that nearly all subsystems must be somewhere within their normal operating range, and not hitting any high or low limits. Our metabolic control system quickly recognizes unstable conditions and abandons operation at 98.6oF=37oC. Hence, if you are able to operate at 98.6oF=37oC for any significant length of time, then just about everything must be working right.