— Cristina Deptula

One risk factor crops up for most of the USA’s deadliest diseases – aging. Can old age be treated, as just another medical condition? And how can we expand our healthspan – the portion of our lives that we’ll spend healthy?

San Francisco State’s University’s Department of Biological Sciences pointed towards some answers to these questions at their twelfth annual Personalized Medicine conference.

Personalized medicine as a concept, is not new. The basic idea goes back to Hippocrates, and modern precision medical tools can enable us to live out his vision of special care for each different patient.

Dr. George M. Martin, of the University of Washington, known as the ‘father of aging research,’ kicked off the day. His lab looks into progeroid syndromes, where people’s bodies age much more rapidly than usual. These are linked to mutations that harm parts of the genome that encode for proteins related DNA repair. Genomic instability and damage is a major pathological mechanism in progeroid syndromes and could be in normal aging as well.

He pointed to the need to look at patients who have only one copy of the genes for these types of recessive syndromes to figure out how their bodies compensate for the faulty gene and avoid showing symptoms. Also, he said we should study people who have antigeroid syndromes, who show less physical change than normal with age.

Dr. David Zarling of ImmunoLongevity Inc., works with small molecule drugs that can reduce the inflammation that can be a root cause of aging-related health problems.

This avenue of therapy shows promise in protecting mice against the negative health effects associated with unhealthy high-fat diets. Treating inflammation can be beneficial for diet-related and digestive conditions because we all have a microbiome of bacteria inside our intestines. Humans have around 100 trillion gut bacteria, representing anywhere from 500-1000 distinct species. Harmful pathogenic bacteria can impair intestinal membrane integrity, causing chronic gut inflammation that can lead to health problems that we associate with age.

Diabetics tend to have more opportunistic gut pathogens and fewer beneficial gut bacteria, pointing to another avenue of research and potential treatment for the condition.

Researchers have developed another new medicine, Tempol, which promotes faster metabolism by making it harder for beneficial gut bacteria to extract energy from the foods we eat.  In another part of the body, these small molecule drugs seem to slow age-related macular degeneration in mice.

Dr. James T. Kirkland, with the Mayo Clinic, described how cells can go into a state known as senescence, where they permanently stop dividing and secrete certain substances that are linked to age-related disease. Senescence differs from cell death (apoptosis) because cell metabolism continues. Senescent cells accumulate in adipose fat tissue with aging, especially during our 60s through our 80s and in our skin.

Dr. Kirkland described new therapies known as senolytics, which clear the body of senescent cells that have accumulated after an injury. Developed with the help of big data, senolytic drugs can remove most senescent cells within one day. They have been shown to alleviate Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice, as well as increase bone mass, cardiovascular function and lifespan by up to 36 percent.

The first human trial of senolytics will be for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a severe lung disease.

Drs. Xi Cen (University of Rochester/Stanford) and Anoshua Chaudhari (San Francisco State University) spoke next, on the economics of aging. Older adults are an increasing share of the population in many industrialized countries, and we need to figure out how to afford to care for them, financially and logistically.

More seniors are now living in home and community-based settings, which seems good, although less is known about the quality of care there.  There are also sometimes unintended consequences of programs set up to save money on elder healthcare, such as Medicare’s voluntary bundled payments to hospitals for certain medical procedures. This was intended to streamline care by minimizing unneeded subsequent hospitalizations after surgery, but is also now associated with exacerbated racial differences in hospital readmissions after lower extremity joint replacements. Hospitals may now have a financial incentive to preferentially admit patients they believe will be healthier and need less treatment, as they don’t get additional reimbursement for follow-up visits.

Research shows that women go to doctors more often, and that women have more chronic conditions. But men are more likely to get life-threatening conditions and die of them. So there are more older widows now in the population than before, who will need the social support of younger generations. The speakers suggested that industrialized countries with a greater fraction of the population who is elderly allow more migration of young people from other nations who can care for them.

After lunch, Dr. Judith Campisi, of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, explained cellular senescence much more in depth.

Why might we have evolved cellular senescence at all? This state plays several roles in the body: it promotes wound healing, signals when labor should begin, and helps with embryonic development.

As Dr. Campisi reminded us, evolution favors those organisms who can reproduce the most, not necessarily those who have the best post-reproductive quality of life. So people affected by the negative age-related consequences of senescence escaped the culling effect of natural selection.

The Buck Institute has been at the forefront of new therapies that eliminate senescent cells from mice, which seem to be able to prevent chemotherapy-induced toxicity. These drugs can restore Parkinson’s-like motor neuron damage and also regenerate old joints in mice too – but only when stem cells are still present within the appropriate regions of the body. So there’s a time window by which doctors will have to administer the medicine.

Dr. Matthew S. O’Connor of the SENS Research Foundation showed off his team’s research, modified cyclodextrin molecules that can bind to and remove cholesterol and ‘rescue’ aging cells. These molecules are able to treat Niemann-Pick disease in cats in the laboratory and hopefully also atherosclerosis in humans.

Next, Dr. Steven P. Braithwaite of the company Alkahest outlined the promise of plasma transplants from younger mice to older mice in the laboratory. These are shown to improve brain function and help older mice get through mazes faster.

Plasma isn’t so easy to use as a treatment, however. It’s hard to transport, gets contaminated easily, and requires that donors and recipients have a compatible blood type. So, researchers are glad that a partial plasma treatment has similar positive therapeutic effects.

Dr. Barbara Koenig, of the University of California – San Francisco, brought up what seemed the other end of the spectrum from life extension, choices regarding one’s death.

Currently, our medical system favors an open disclosure of information: doctors let patients know they are dying, rather than hiding the truth to preserve hope. We also tend to embrace advance care planning and have a desire to manage our deaths, which Dr. Koenig suggests stems from our Western individualistic mentality.

A recent California law permits ‘aid-in-dying’, drugs that facilitate death. This is legally distinct from euthanasia because terminally ill patients must administer the drugs themselves. Research into the effects of this law shows that patients who choose to obtain prescriptions of this nature are more likely to be educated and wealthy or otherwise hold a relatively privileged position in society.

Dr. Koenig suggests that people who are used to expecting more agency and control over their lives are more likely to request this sort of prescription. Many of these people get a prescription for the drug and never take it, just hold onto it as an option. And these are often the same people who are likely to request radical medical interventions to prolong their lives. So, ‘aid-in-dying’ and dedicated research into longevity may be opposite sides of the same cultural and bioethical coin.

Dr. Evaleen Jones, of Stanford University, spoke next, with the help of colorful hand-drawn slides, replete with trees and sunshine. She advocated a more civilized, and civilian-ized, way to practice medicine, where community health workers were educated and empowered to serve people through providing home care. This system is designed to assist patients on a large scale while also providing a pathway to well-paid employment for the caregivers. The need for healthcare for the aging is great around the world and also in Hawaii, where Dr. Jones is from, and this seems a humane and cost-effective solution.

Finally, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, of the University of Washington, discussed how to slow aging in pet dogs. The biological process of aging in dogs is similar to that of humans, although dogs age more quickly. Dr. Kaeberlein advocates a focus on slowing aging rather than treating individual diseases, as aging is an underlying risk factor for many deadly canine diseases.

A research grant has recently made possible a large longitudinal study to sequence the genomes of different breeds of pet dogs. Through this, we aim to identify any commonalities among those dogs who tend to die young or those who tend to live longer. The study also involves observing dog microbiomes and behavior/activity levels.

Experiments involving helping out our pets engage people in citizen science. Also, pets share our environment and thus research into their medical needs offers more potential insights for human treatment than looking at lab mice.

So far we know of a gene that controls dog size, and that larger dogs age more quickly. Also, researchers have developed a medicine, rapamycin, that can rejuvenate dog heart and immune function. Five years from now, Dr. Kaeberlein said, he expects veterinarians to have common treatments available to extend our pet dogs’ lifespans.

This year’s Personalized Medicine conference pointed to the frontiers of scientific research into cellular, molecular and genomic therapies for age-related disease. The choice of speakers and topics also reflected concern for how society as a whole could respond with compassion and wisdom to the need to provide care on many levels for an aging population.

More about San Francisco State University’s Department of Biological Sciences and the annual Personalized Medicine conference here.

Molly Gaudry’s Desire: A Haunting presents a familial love story where most characters are no longer in the realm of the living. This is a novella made poetry through line breaks and the interweaving of fantasy into otherwise realistic lives of gourmet elegance and past violent trauma.

In a seaside cottage, a speaker encounters the first and most persistent of many ghosts, Pearl Prynne (the more famous Hester Prynne’s daughter)  who chooses to go by the name ‘Ogie’ – a kinder, gentler form of ‘ogre.’ Ogie and the narrator establish an unlikely years-long friendship, cemented by the fact that both seem incredibly alone.

The setting, while replete with cherry blossoms, herbs, lovely scenic views, and food and cocktails that the characters prepare in poetic sequences that could fit into a cookbook, doesn’t contain many live humans. The few whom the narrator does interact with at the local markets are wallpaper characters and the exchanges become awkward due to the vivacious ghosts’ invisible actions and sense of humor.

The ghosts, starting with Ogie, who’s thirsty and enjoys pretending to eat and drink at the narrator’s table, come to life physically and emotionally on Gaudry’s pages. They request their favorite foods, care about what they’re wearing and how they look, celebrate present-day holidays in real time, and get injured in ways that require stitches.

For a book that’s populated by ghosts and fragmented memories, there’s a lot of emphasis on the ‘present moment.’ Current holidays and seasons pull the story along and serve to transition between scenes and interludes. Ogie becomes bored and wants the narrator to join her in drawing as a hobby, something to ‘pass the long autumn hours.’ Today’s world doesn’t disappear, even when we become absorbed with the past.  

A theme of nurturance and caregiving emerges: Ogie adopts a ghost-boy, William, who needs to be looked after, who wants and takes in a pet rabbit. Characters, real and otherwise, need clothing that has to be mended with care, and people give each other gifts.

And while she takes awhile to get there, and first gives a few fanciful renditions of her past and her death, Ogie reveals that she knew the narrator’s mother and helped to care for the narrator as a child after a nearly-unspeakable tragedy. The narrator’s childhood memories, as well as Ogie’s own past tragedy and loss, only come near the end in a section that offers the closest to a literal rendition of events that this book gives.

This, and the ending, suggest that the point of this story is that Ogie, William, the narrator, and others have learned how to get along and care for each other as a little family. Knowing who everyone is, exactly what happened, and when, is somewhat incidental.

Perhaps it is this implied focus on love and care, rather than linear memory, that can facilitate healing from the trauma and betrayal of the past. There is definitely tragedy and pain in the narrator and her family’s past, and Gaudry conveys this through style as well as plot. She crafts flowing lines of both languid and purposeful beauty, then screams, through capital letters and occasional pages with only one single word, about what and who cannot be ignored.

This tale does not offer a clear progression out of the past into the present or the future, or from ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ as readers have come to expect. Even as both main characters grow stronger, they remain involved with the ghost-world, as the narrator clothes a whole new cast of phantoms.

In keeping with the poetic, implicit style of this book, there’s no concrete atonement, restitution or forgiveness for past wrongdoing. Even an actual apology isn’t passed on directly: the narrator sometimes backs off, leaving the ghosts to communicate with each other rather than passing messages through her.

Yet, we see constant motifs of cooking, washing, clothing and mending, and the narrator and ghosts find ways to continue to interact with and nurture each other. Through these, and by the story’s resistance of linear narrative that would include a scorekeeping account of wrongdoings, Gaudry’s work points to a subtler sense of peacemaking and restoration.

Molly Gaudry’s Desire: A Haunting can be ordered here. 

All His Life My Brother John Drank and Drank, Now His Death Is Looming

With steady rain since 5:12 am

this might be Asian forest

high in cloudy hill, billiard table green, Sumatran thrush singing;

but for you, a drunk every God-given day since 1969

I say Nebraska, the rain – bastard-son of temperance

haunting you since its timber-hall lay in ash and smoke

and you turned 21, grinning, firing shots in the air,

Sunday’s sermon soot-grey.

The Angel of Death does not need to ride for long, stopping for fireside coffee,

saddling up again shortly after.

In fact, I think he would share a glass with you, professional courtesy,

your shape abrupt and still, rain deriding your leathers,

your horse waiting for the thrush to sing,

James Earl Fraser’s End of the Trail – constrained –

rain-cloak smell

He came in peace and he left in peace

Albert Ayler

Arranged Hopes

Hopes are arranged.

I take my seat.

The dishes shine and

instead of the tried and tasted cuisines

you serve something

that denies the temptation of the form and shape.

‘Mother, what will we have

tonight?’

‘Hope’, you say.

My father’s name is hunger

and since the day

he went to the factory

and returned slope-shouldered

he always lingers here,

near, too much near,

everywhere.

Death Strolls By Hope

In the laughs of a streetlight

a homeless man feeds his

kittens before having a morsel,

and death passes him even tonight,

him and all those kittens.

The man begins reading eight obscure

words related to sleep-

oscitancy, logy, soporific, dozy,

sleepify, peepy, somnolent, sloomy.

Death returns nearby, yawns and

let a planet inhaled inside.

Hope In Straightjacket

The thoughts,

pointing at the pills utters the nurse.

Her mouth will turn platypus

once I swallow the pills- the ‘red queen’ first,

then the ‘father’s broken bottle green’,

‘yellow submarine playing in a loop’.

I name all of them.

I shall never know what they go by in the market-

perhaps ‘a touch of wind for your head’!

I swallow all those thoughts, and they

witch dance washed in the moon of my nocturnal heart,

witches who dance to bring dimness, more dimness,

and they dance merging their bodies

into each other again and oh, again.

Thoughts have never been easy to swallow.

What I think about not recalling them in the first place

chokes my pipe, system.

I call, “Mother!” and the nurse

wraps my flesh in the white stillness.

Upon graduating Central Wyoming College in Riverton in 2014, I sort of veered off as to what my “purpose” was. I can recall the Native American community being full supporters at each of our home basketball games. At that time I hadn’t never set foot on a reservation so I just assumed that they didn’t have anything better to do. Upon moving back to Wyoming from Louisiana at the beginning of the summer of 2017 I posted on Facebook that I would be interested in training the youth in the area because I didn’t know of anyone fulfilling those needs. One mother by the name of April Goggles gave me a chance to train her son Daniel C’Hair. Daniel is a Northern Arapahoe Indian. We didn’t have a gym, we didn’t have equipment and we didn’t have any idea the impact that one video of me training him would do. I posted Daniel’s workout and it drew the interest of more Native Americans. Ultimately, I was grateful to have access to a gym actually on the Reservation. It was my first time on an actual reservation. I personally didn’t know they existed because coming from a decent sized city they aren’t seen, heard from, nor talked about.

The numbers started off really high because the kids in the area don’t have much to do in the summer time. They heard a basketball bouncing and poured into the gym. The training is rigorous and challenging though so I weeded them out pretty quick. Many Native Americans don’t show tremendous work ethic in sports and I think it’s due to their natural abilities to go out into their respective fields of competition and succeed. They usually aren’t tested until later on in life. My training program is designed to instill discipline , respect , consistency and commitment through sports training.  I teach many life lessons through the drills we do. From punishment for everyone if someone is late to making participants whom I know dislike one another work together to reach a common goal.

Leann Brown, a former Gatorade Player of the Year (Basketball) from Riverton High School in Wyoming messaged me saying she had a group of girls whom wanted to get better. I remember the day all of them came in the gym. Some were timid , some were blank and others were cocky. They had no clue what they were getting themselves into. That first day sucked , really bad (for them). They complained a lot as far as soreness and toughness of the drills but they continued to come. Once they became frequent visitors I learned their backstory by being informed that they were the players nobody wanted when it was time for youth tournament in the area and around the state. Leann Brown was their coach and their team name was the Wind River Indian Reservation Ballin Beauties. A team that hadn’t won any tournaments and was averaging about 9.7 points per game. These girls were only headed in sixth grade at the time but they all seemed to have had chips on their shoulders. The original five was Deja Felter, Elianna Duran, Shye Killsontop, Cameillia Brown and Amanda Jenkins. I must’ve spent all summer in the gym with them. I invested personal interest in this group because they were the first  “team” to give me me an opportunity to get them all better together. Leann took notice of their constant progress and was marveled. So marveled that she handed me the keys to the Ballin Beauties machine. With her constant workload she couldn’t provide her presence as much as she would like so It just made since to trust them with their trainer. I had never coached before becoming the Coach of the team. Once I became coach I put a supreme focus on attention to detail and exposure. I wanted people to know who these hardworking Native American women were.

We would train daily and post new content semi-weekly. The additions of Taline Tendore , Shi”ta’daa’dine” Roanhorse and Roberta Whiteplume made our team complete. There is a mixture of Northern Arapahoe and Eastern Shoshone Indian’s on our team. Two tribes that historically were meant to kill each other off , because the government placed them both on the same reservation. Our first few tournaments under me were decent. We hadn’t learned to put the talent we worked for in the gym on the floor yet. We all noticed progress though. First tournament, we lost in the semi-finals. Second tournament, we lost in the Championship. Then it happened, we won our first championship, one year removed from nobody wanting them and averaging less than then points we were now winning tournaments and averaging close to 50 points per game. We’ve been getting a lot of local support and it’s finally start to spread nationwide. Our most recent post on our team page (WRIR BALLIN BEAUTIES) has amassed almost 20,000 views.

It was from our training retreat where we participated in three-a-day workouts and scrimmaging against boys. I made the decision last year to get back into school and pursue my bachelors degree at the College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho. Our Co-Head Coach Kay Killsontop stepped in and stepped up. She is a former state champion at the historic Wyoming Indian high-school and her daughter, Shye, is our starting forward. She led them to three tournament titles in my absence. We are a really tight knit group from Coaches, to players and parents. My training program “gROw” and the Wind River Indian Reservation Ballin Beauties are joined at the hip. Each feeding off each other’s success. Going into my senior year of school I am completely comfortable knowing that these girls and the reputation of this team will continue to trend upwards. The mothers, including Coach Kay, Aundria Tindall, Sacheen Brown , Lacey Duran, Elizabeth Roanhorse , and Natalie Bell have all dedicated and sacrificed for their daughters future. Going into their 8th grade season they are well noticed by the community around them and all of Indian Country have began to take notice of what’s going on in the Wind River Reservation. A place that has more funerals than birthdays. These girls are paving the way for many behind them to see what it takes to make a better future for themselves. Our team GPA is a 3.8. The books are more important than the ball.  We would like to thank you for your support and spreading this information. Native American woman are murdered , forgotten and counted out. These beautiful, smart, hard working and respectful young girls are looking to change the narrative.

Facebook – WRIR BALLIN BEAUTIES
Facebook – Ro Wiggins/gROwsportstraining

Angstman

“With great power must also come great responsibility!”

– Amazing Fantasy #15 (first appearance of Spiderman)

“Fuck Voltaire. Fuck Winston Churchill. Stan Lee was the one that said that” Brian said to himself.

He had good reason to be thinking of such things. The first incident he could have written off as coincidence but now that there had been a second he was forced to consider the fact that he had a real super power.

Let me elaborate a little before continuing.

Brian had recently gone through a very difficult break-up with a girl named Britney Doolittle. She had broken his heart and he was not moving on with any success. To say he was heartbroken would not be putting too fine a point on it. He would think about her for hours on end.

One of these hours happened to be while he was walking down a busy city street. He was deep in the throes of missing her and wondering why she had left him and how he would ever be able to pull his life back together when he saw a shifty-looking man suddenly bolt from the pack and grab the handbag of a woman walking in front of Brian.

Looking back he wasn’t sure what exactly he was feeling or why his frustration with reality as he saw it chose that moment to flare up but, overcome with angst, he yelled “No!” at the fleeing purse-snatcher and just as the word was leaving his mouth a cleaning woman just happened to be exiting a large building. Innocent-sounding enough but as she exited she tripped and lost control of her bucket and mop, both of which made a beeline for the villain. After the former had intersected with the latter the bad guy laid sprawled out on the sidewalk with a broken leg.

Police were promptly summoned.

Even after he calmed down from the day’s excitement Brian couldn’t shake the feeling he was somehow responsible. Was it because the cleaning woman worked for Doolittle Cleaning Services? Had the bottled-up energy of his unrequited love somehow caused the mop and bucket to bend to his will? Who would hire a company called Doolittle to clean up in the first place? “Do little” is right in the name.

The next day the first two questions would be answered. The third question would remain a mystery. An irrelevant mystery at that. Can we put the third question behind us and move on?

Still pining for whom he believed to be his lost soul mate he just happened to be driving when he saw up ahead of him a bank robbery in progress. The three robbers piled into a waiting get-a-way car and they roared off, guns firing wildly behind them to deter anyone from following them.

Brian wiped a small tear from his eye, remember he was smack dab in the middle of thinking about  when he did an Escape Room with ‘her’ and a group of Asians who didn’t speak English but knew every word to the Star Spangled Banner, and thrust his hand towards the vehicle and yelled “Stop!”

Instantly the front tire of a stretch limo in front of the departing villains blew and it violently swerved into the side of their car. Being a much heavier automobile the limo sent the car directly into a large statue of somebody on a horse wielding a sword.

The statue won that particular confrontation, the exclamation point being driven home when the arm holding the sword toppled off and fell right into the engine block.

The driver of the limo, the company name BLC along with a logo that appeared to be a cartoon of a happy passenger was emblazoned on both sides of the Lincoln MKS, was not hurt.

“Wow” was all Brian could say to himself.

Then he went home and looked up BLC. He had to know.

Yep. Of course. Britney Limousine Company.

“Fuck. I really have a super power.”

He immediately called his second-best friend, she had been his best friend, and told him to meet him at a local bar because he had something important to tell him.

A few hours later they were both seated in front one of a dozen large television sets tuned to one of a dozen sporting events and the words “You’re not going to believe but…” had just left Brian’s mouth when all of the TVs were suddenly broadcasting the same scene.

A crazed gunman was holding a gun to the Mayor’s head. He’d somehow slipped through security at some fundraiser downtown and was now screaming that if he didn’t get a million dollars cash he was going to blow the Mayor’s head off in front of a national audience. The scene was chaotic and the various announcers were all giving their viewers warnings that they might want to look away.

Brian tapped the shoulder of his friend, who was of course transfixed by the news report, and said “Watch this.”

Brian closed his eyes and remembered the afternoon he’d spent with his ex-girlfriend at the park. He’d bought her a bag of peanuts and a couple of brave squirrels had approached her. A few minutes later they were perched on her lap and shoulders taking the nuts directly from her hand. It was something out of a Disney film and at the time Brian was surprised that a bunch of blue jays didn’t burst into songs. So intense was the memory that he briefly forgot all about the hostage situation and felt himself start to slide into a familiar funk.

“Watch what?” asked his second-best friend, slightly annoyed

Brian snapped back into the moment and then glared at the TV screen.

“I’m sick of waiting” yelled the lunatic with the pistol. “It’s time for action!” The crowd gasped and the snipers tried unsuccessfully to find a way to take a clean shot. Everyone there knew they were about to witness something horrible.

They were half right.

Behind the gunman a giant black disembodied hand appeared, hanging there ever so briefly, as if finishing up the task of being pulled into existence, before plunging into the chest cavity of man with the weapon.

Even above the cacophony of the frantic crowd everyone heard it. The loud crunching noise of the hostage taker’s ribs and heart being crushed by the hand.

Everyone watching in their homes heard it.

Everyone at the bar heard it.

Brian’s second-best friend heard it… and swayed on his feet a little as he realized what Brian had meant by “Watch this.”

“What the fuck?” was all he could get out.

“I should explain” replied Brian. And so he did. To the best of his ability anyway. The whole time seated in front of the big screens as they showed replay after reply of the incorporeal hand. The first documented case of telekinesis in the history of mankind.

The nation was reeling.

Brian’s second-best friend was reeling. Did what he’d just witnessed make Brian the most dangerous man who’d ever lived?

Brian’s second-best friend (who I really should have named so I didn’t have to keep calling him Brian’s second-best friend) panicked. As soon as Brian went to the bathroom he (Brian’s second-best friend) called his (Brian’s) ex and told her everything.

She, of course, thought that it was just a lame ploy to get her to call Brian but she’d been missing him a bit anyway so she texted him “Hey. How are you doing?”

And that’s how Brian lost his super powers.

“With not-so-great relationships come almost no responsibility.”

-Lance Manion