A friendly genie appears in a puff of smoke and tells you that you’ll develop cancer 20 years hence. However, he offers to send you back in time to an...
Pet dogs on rapamycin are pictures of health
In the lab, rapamycin is a star geroprotector. In addition to boosting lifespan even when used in late life, it’s also been found specifically t...
Healthspan: Is life extension a Faustian bargain?
If you could buy a few more years of life by sacrificing some of your health, would you? When would the trade stop being worth it to you–when yo...
Metformin: Multipurpose marvel, or medical misfire?
Much rests on metformin’s shoulders: as the first drug to begin clinical trials for preventing multiple age-related diseases, it could soon become the...
Does the sandman retire? Why old people sleep poorly
If grandpa nods off in the middle of dinner, it’s not because you’re boring him. The aging process isn’t very kind to our ability to get to sleep at n...
Metformin: Stress versus strength
Imagine pulling a rubber band taut and flicking it with your finger. As long as you don’t flick too hard, the rubber band will always snap back into i...
Metformin: Can you have your cake and eat it, too?
When Americans 50 years ago envisioned the perfect youthful physique, the trim, athletic body would surely have sported a sun-baked complexion. And wh...
A bedtime story
Michael, 25, has had a long day. For the past 16 hours his body has been operating at full power to meet the challenges of daily life, metabolism humm...
Dr. Gordon Lithgow on the future of geroscience (part III)
Dr. Gordon Lithgow of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging spoke to us recently about the Caenorhabditis Intervention Testing program (part I) and...
Dead to the world for longer life
Sleeping is so easy you could, well, do it in your sleep. For now, anyway – you may not always have it so good. By our twilight years many of us...