Longevity, Insulin, and Oxidative Stress

Cynthia Kenyon discovered that a mutation in a single gene in the worm C. elegans could double its lifespan. This is the brief explanation from Dr. Kenyon's website:

Our laboratory discovered that the C. elegans homolog of the human insulin and IGF-1 receptors, and the FOXO-family transcription factor DAF-16, regulate the lifespan of C. elegans. These findings showed that the aging process is subject to endocrine and transcriptional regulation. Our work has now led to the discovery that mammalian aging is also regulated hormonally by insulin and IGF-1 endocrine system and has catalyzed a fundamental shift in the way scientists view the aging process, from one that is inevitable and intractable to one that is plastic and subject to regulation. Our findings have important disease implications, since these long-lived mutants have been found to be resistant to many age-related diseases. This raises the possibility of a new therapeutic strategy based on the ability to postpone the onset of age-related disease by slowing the aging process itself.

The key here is insulin. When Dr. Kenyon made this discovery, she immediately switched to a low-carb diet:

I eat a low-carb diet because we’ve shown that keeping insulin levels low is good for animals, and we’re animals.

Some time back I wrote a post on aging and oxidative stress. The author of the paper I referenced, Wulf Droge, has another paper (pdf, link fixed), Aberrant insulin receptor signaling and amino acid homeostasis as a major cause of oxidative stress in aging. Again, as in Kenyon's research, the key is insulin and its receptor; n-acetylcysteine (NAC), the inexpensive OTC supplement, down-regulates the activity of the insulin receptor. In principle, it's doing the same thing that the mutations in Kenyon's worms do, and by decreasing insulin receptor activity, NAC shows potential as an anti-aging drug.

The down-regulation of the insulin receptor could create potential problems in that one wants enough sensitivity in the receptor to ensure that blood glucose levels stay in the normal range. Droge discusses ways to do that, but one he doesn't mention is a low-carbohydrate diet.

Given the state of anti-aging research, it seems quite reasonable to think that modest doses of NAC, along with a low-carb diet, might very well help to retard the aging process without unwanted side effects.

Snus and Health

As a snus user, this topic interests me; those who have no interest can safely skip this. A recent WSJ article, Tobacco Road Takes a Turn to the Smokeless, discusses the growing popularity of snus and the conniption fits some public health authorities are having, e.g:

"There is no evidence that smokers will switch to smokeless tobacco products and give up smoking," Michael Thun, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, said in a recent article in the journal CA.

Mr. Thun seems to want a double-blind, twenty year study to prove that what tobacco users want is nicotine. We can probably take that for granted.

As I've written about extensively, snus is vastly safer than other smokeless, which in turn is vastly safer than cigarettes. Possibly more than 99% of carcinogens from smoking comes from the act of combustion; hence, no combustion, far fewer carcinogens.

In an accompanying article, Smoke-Free: Confessions of an Addict, the author talks about his taking up of the snus habit and his eventual quitting, and reveals himself a hopeless beta:

But besides the word "dumb," what prompted me to quit was my wife's reaction when she finally found my stash.

Some perspective is in order: I'd bet than snus may very well be less carcinogenic than alcohol, and most people will gladly do the cost/benefit analysis and drink for pleasure.

The Pathogen Theory of Homosexuality

A commenter the other day asserted that the idea that a pathogenic organism - bacteria or virus - may cause homosexuality was just silly. Never having looked into the idea in detail, I found Greg Cochran's article on the topic. The idea, far from being silly, makes a lot of sense. After explaining the characteristics of a condition that would make one believe that it could be infectious, Cochran writes:

But what about homosexuality? Well, from this biological perspective, it's surely a disease. Disinterest in the opposite sex reduces reproduction quite a bit - around 80% in American conditions. Does it hit in early life? Sure. Has it been around a long time? Certainly. Do you find it in non-African populations, people who never lived with malaria? Yes.

Several aspects of homosexuality are puzzling, the main one being its persistence in the face of huge selection pressure against it - gays just don't have many kids.

Update: TGGP has collected (here) many of Cochran's assorted musings on homosexuality, which make for fascinating reading. Cochran makes it clear that much thinking about it has been spectacularly off the mark.

The Meaning of "Reactionary"

At some point which I no longer recall, I decided that "reactionary" was the label that fit my views the most, and the reasons for this have never been crystal clear to me. In (small) part, the word has a nice ring to it, making a counterpoint to the word "rebel", this last term having become one of approbation since the 60s. Most so-called rebels in reality only strike a pose: they get a few tattoos and/or piercings, vote for Obama, and listen to reggae or some other God-awful music, but would melt away at the first charge of baton-wielding police. The reactionary, at least in the particular circumstances in which we find our country and ourselves today, is on the side of the police.

Mencius Moldbug, in his "gentle introduction" to his thinking, writes:

On the other hand, it is also quite easy to construct a very clean value system in which order is simply good, and chaos is simply evil. I have chosen this path. It leaves quite a capacious cavity in the back of my skull, and allows me to call myself a reactionary.

Also, in the exchange between Mencius and Lawrence Auster, Where is Moldbug really at? (the title of which appears to be an allusion to a line in Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"), there is this:

[Mencius writes:] While obviously I agree with this and I suspect you do as well, it has little to do with the word "conservative" as used by most Americans today. Even Waugh in this passage is trying, obviously without success, to redefine "conservative." Therefore I prefer the word "reactionary," meaning one who hopes to see the decay not just stop but reverse. [LA replies: But I call myself a traditionalist, and I have sometimes said that reactionary is a synonym for traditionalist.]

To my way of thinking, "reactionary" and "traditionalist" don't overlap completely, but perhaps that is only a matter of connotation. Reactionaries, from the Duke of Alba to de Maistre and Metternich, have been realists about the use of force in the defense of order, and perhaps not terribly enamored of concepts like human rights. (And in endorsing reaction in general one does not wish to endorse every excess committed in its name.) "Traditionalism", again to my way of thinking, and perhaps because of Mr. Auster's status as the current traditionalist par excellence, I associate more with Anglicanism, small-town America, the Bill of Rights. However, the associations of the two words may be more a matter of emphasis and the areas in which one applies them. Reaction applies more to politics, and is more European and more Catholic; traditionalism applies more to everyday life, and is more American and Protestant.

A reactionary has not only a horror of chaos, but feels that the masses can readily become a mob, that they need to be "kept in line".

Such are my thoughts, and if anyone has better ideas of what it means to be a reactionary, and whether or not it's desirable to be one, comments are open as usual.

Spatial patterns of natural hazard mortality

Graphic is from the paper Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States by Borden and Cutter. The authors state:

Heat/drought ranks highest among these hazard categories causing 19.6% of total deaths, closely followed by severe summer weather (18.8%) and winter weather (18.1%). Geophysical events (such as earthquakes), wildfires, and hurricanes are responsible for less than 5% of total hazard deaths combined. What is noteworthy here is that over time, highly destructive, highly publicized, often catastrophic singular events such as hurricanes and earthquakes are responsible for relatively few deaths when compared to the more frequent, less catastrophic events such as heat waves, and severe weather (summer or winter).

One thing you always hear about California is earthquake danger, but the San Francisco Bay Area is among the safest regions in the country from the point of view of natural hazards. Until the big one hits, that is.

Loss Aversion

German billionaire Adolf Merckle, who in 2008 was listed by Forbes as the 94th richest man in the world, killed himself yesterday. Forbes had estimated his net worth at $9.2 billion.

Merckle apparently lost several hundred million euros in the famous and massive short squeeze in shares of Volkswagen last October.

So, suppose the rest of his portfolio was down 40 to 50%, around what many global stock markets did last year. (The U.S. market was among the world's best performers last year.) Add - or rather, subtract - another few hundred mil for the VW episode, and the man must have been worth around $4 to 5 billion at the time of his death.

Somehow it doesn't seem that losing so much money that you might be kicked out of the Forbes 400 is a good reason to kill yourself. I do think that it illustrates investors' known aversion to losses. Normally, losses makes twice the impact on investors as do profits.

There's also the issue of his age, which was 74. Suicide risk increases with age, and one might imagine Mr. Merckle thinking that this might be a good time to go.

However, it seems that he was about to lose his firm, and maybe he thought it the honorable thing to do. R.I.P.

The Invisible Rich

A column from October 2006 by Knight Kiplinger, The Invisible Rich, discusses the difference between net worth and income - which will be well known to anyone who has read The Millionaire Next Door - and why it's better for one's financial health to forgo purchases of fancy goods and save some of that money. Unfortunately Kiplinger's example wasn't chosen very well:

Know who grasps this best in American society today? Recent immigrants, whether they're from Latin America, Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe. Many of them come to the U.S. almost penniless. They work long hours at modest wages and send some of those earnings to relatives back home. But, miraculously, they still have money left over each month because they live simply. Often they double up with friends and family in crowded housing.

What do they do with their savings? They buy a home, often in a less desirable neighborhood that other strivers are leaving behind. They fix it up, rent rooms to friends and relatives, and then trade up to a nicer home. They may keep their first and second homes as rental properties, becoming hands-on landlords.

A niece of mine sells new homes in the outer Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The houses cost $500,000 -- a "middle market" price in this affluent area. Many of her buyers are Latinos. They don't look or act rich, and they often need translation help. Many of them arrived in the U.S. with nothing but ambition. They worked hard, started small businesses and saved 30% of their incomes.

Someday, when they finally feel as financially secure as they will actually be, they might start living it up. They might buy -- not lease -- a BMW, most likely a used model. High school kids will assume them to be rich and cast admiring glances at them and their fancy cars.
Proudly invisible

But just like overspending, the habit of frugality is hard to break. Maybe these folks will just keep the old Chevy. They will remain proud members of the Invisible Rich -- a growing army of super savers whose net worth is more impressive than their income. They'd rather live within their means, sleep well and forgo the covetous attention of their fellow citizens. Not a bad way to live at all.

The "Invisible Rich", yes that's it. All those Latino immigrants prudently making no-down purchases of half million dollar houses: that's the example all of us spendthrift Anglos ought to follow. What could possibly go wrong?

Predicting the Recession Eleven Years Before Its Start

Fred Foldvary is an economist at Santa Clara University in California (his web page) who, in 1997, wrote a paper called The Business Cycle: A Geo-Austrian synthesis, which attempts to explain the causes behind the business cycle, which apparently are not very well agreed upon by economists. As an investor, my education never stops, and since I quite entirely failed to see the market decline coming, I figure that learning about business cycles would be worthwhile.

After explaining why the cycle tends to last about 18 years, Foldvary writes:

The 18-year cycle in the US and similar cycles in other countries gives the geo-Austrian cycle theory predictive power: the next major bust, 18 years after the 1990 downturn, will be around 2008, if there is no major interruption such as a global war.

That's "predictive power" alright, and a good indication that his theory of business cycles is correct.