Posted on 01/05/2021 9:00:32 AM PST by Red Badger
A massive study published in 2020 found evidence that blood iron levels could play a role in influencing how long you live.
It's always important to take longevity studies with a big grain of salt, but the research was impressive in its breadth, covering genetic information from well over 1 million people across three public databases. It also focused on three key measures of ageing: lifespan, years lived free of disease (referred to as healthspan), and making it to an extremely old age (AKA longevity).
Throughout the analysis, 10 key regions of the genome were shown to be related to these measures of long life, as were gene sets linked to how the body metabolises iron.
Put simply, having too much iron in the blood appeared to be linked to an increased risk of dying earlier.
"We are very excited by these findings as they strongly suggest that high levels of iron in the blood reduces our healthy years of life, and keeping these levels in check could prevent age-related damage," said data analyst Paul Timmers, from the University of Edinburgh in the UK.
"We speculate that our findings on iron metabolism might also start to explain why very high levels of iron-rich red meat in the diet has been linked to age-related conditions such as heart disease."
While correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, the researchers used a statistical technique called Mendelian randomisation to reduce bias and attempt to infer causation in the data.
As the researchers noted, genetics are thought to have around a 10 percent influence on lifespan and healthspan, and that can make it difficult to pick out the genes involved from all the other factors involved (like your smoking or drinking habits). With that in mind, one of the advantages of this new study is its sheer size and scope.
Five of the genetic markers the researchers found had not previously been highlighted as significant at the genome-wide level. Some, including APOE and FOXO3, have been singled out in the past as being important to the ageing process and human health.
"It is clear from the association of age-related diseases and the well-known ageing loci APOE and FOXO3 that we are capturing the human ageing process to some extent," wrote the researchers in their paper published in July 2020.
While we're still in the early stages for investigating this association with iron metabolism, further down the line we could see the development of drugs designed to lower the levels of iron in the blood - which could potentially add extra years to our lives.
Besides genetics, blood iron is mostly controlled by diet and has already been linked to a number of age-related diseases, including Parkinson's and liver disease. It also affects our body's ability to fight off infection as we get older.
We can add this latest study to the growing evidence that 'iron overload', or not being able to break it down properly, can have an influence on how long we're likely to live, as well as how healthy we're likely to be in our later years.
"Our ultimate aim is to discover how ageing is regulated and find ways to increase health during ageing," says Joris Deelen who studies the biology of ageing at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany.
"The 10 regions of the genome we have discovered that are linked to lifespan, healthspan, and longevity are all exciting candidates for further studies."
The research has been published in Nature Communications.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17312-3
A version of this article was first published in July 2020.
My heart doc says I have to stop eating cows..............
This is exactly why I am skeptical of the article. It is actually “Nature Communications” which is a subsidiary of Nature. And it is stanger than that; authors pay to have their papers published in this journal. Nature Communications charges a minumum of $5700 to publish a "paper" which is a high price compared to most similar journals.
“Nature realised that there was so much good science now that there was room for another general interest journal, and they invented Nature Communications and made it open access, charging people relatively high production costs (or page charges) to support its operations and turn a profit. It worked. Researchers were happy to publish there because again the journal leveraged the Nature name.”
That is one of the reasons people have issues absorbing nutrients as they age. A lot of it also has to do with changes in the gut microbiome. If people do not eat a variety of foods the bacteria etc, in their guts becomes less and less diverse. Their ability to absorb nutrients and digest various foods eventually becomes severely compromised.
This is a much greater problem as people get older and long term habits begin to catch up with them. That is why cutting out entire food groups such as fruits, vegetables, and grains to avoid carbohydrates can be so harmful in our later years.
...and sufficient stomach acid KILLS bad bacteria so when you’re low, the bad bacteria proliferates. In fact, that causes the gut to bloat which opens the sphincter muscle at the top of the stomach, allowing acid to enter the esophagus, giving people the erroneous idea that they have high stomach acid.
Just look at the leading proponents of the vegan agenda of these present times — Dr. McDougall and Dr. Gregor — and both despite being only 70, look decomposed for their age — showing disturbing signs of brain and muscle shrinkage — because as older people are now often advised to do, eliminate animal proteins and fats from their diets entirely, and consume massive amounts of sugar (carbohydrates) exclusively — which if they are running a marathon a day may be alright, but if largely sedentary, is disastrous and the cause of the epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
And then if they up the fiber thinking it is unlimitedly healthier, they have uncontrollable and unexplanable diarrhea and gastro-intestinal upset — for the remainder of their days that their caregivers have to spend their entire shifts cleaning up.
If iron in the blood is too high, blood-letting, or blood donations, is a productive contribution to society.
Just a small nitpicking, excess iron typically doesn’t cause high iron in the blood, but it causes high iron in the liver, pancreas, or heart.
What worth is there in life if you can’t live it? Not hanging up red meat because I might live longer. Red meat is delicious and serves other purposes. Heart disease itself is still the #1 killer across the globe, but people are eating less red meat than ever. That doesn’t indicate a reduction in red meat consumption means lower incidence of heart disease.
do you have a thyroid issue? Whether you do or don’t, go to this site and read up on iron www.stopthethyroidmadness.com
she does a great job summing up all kinds of imbalances and their fix.
start taking magnesium (i like glycinate form) and your restless leg will disappear.
using an iron skillet can increase iron too
Bookmark
bkmk
So give blood.
My MIL has to....................
thanks very much (no, something else but still THANK YOU for your kindness in thinking about it)
The Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, lived into his 80s. How long would he have lived if he had been the Tin Chancellor?
When I last made an appointment to give blood, I asked about their Covid-positive policy. Turns out that if you have a positive test result but no symptoms for a certain length of time you can give blood.
no, this has been known for years.
Geritol quietly was taken off the market because of this issue.
Ancestry dot com genome comparison requests facilitated with a swab sample?
Does ancestry.com also request blood-iron samples? Are the next-of-kin of members required to report their deaths to ancestry.com? Does ancestry.com include a disclaimer in their "General Terms and Conditions of Business," explaining that members can expect, at any time, a visit to their door of "Men in Black" who will then perform a thorough cavity search?
I apologize for my facetiousness, but my objection stands: Until it is explained (and this should have been done in the article's first paragraph) where and under what circumstances the data came from, this article cannot be taken seriously.
A million voluntary DNA samples - plus the corresponding data on mortality, health history, and iron content... I'm not buying it!
Regards,
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