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This paper is intended to serve as a traditional Tibetan medical response to advancements in basic longevity research, with particular attention to current models of caloric restriction. This is a complicated task, as Tibetan medicine traditionally approaches dietary modification from a radically different perspective, and relies upon a complex model of health and balance in the treatment and prevention of disease. This paper offers a brief overview of the traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) model and suggests potential areas for collaborative research on dietary modification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interventions that improve health are often associated with longevity. Reduced growth hormone signaling has been shown to increase life span in mice by over 50%. Similarly, reductions in dietary intake of methionine, in rats and mice, result in life-span extension. Many factors affect metabolic health, mitochondrial function, and resistance to stressors, each of which influence aging and life span. This paper presents a comparison of these two interventions, as well as the results of a study combining these interventions, to understand potential mechanisms underlying their effectiveness in enhancing healthy aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yoga breathing is an important part of health and spiritual practices in Indo-Tibetan traditions. Considered fundamental for the development of physical well-being, meditation, awareness, and enlightenment, it is both a form of meditation in itself and a preparation for deep meditation. Yoga breathing (pranayama) can rapidly bring the mind to the present moment and reduce stress. In this paper, we review data indicating how breath work can affect longevity mechanisms in some ways that overlap with meditation and in other ways that are different from, but that synergistically enhance, the effects of meditation. We also provide clinical evidence for the use of yoga breathing in the treatment of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and for victims of mass disasters. By inducing stress resilience, breath work enables us to rapidly and compassionately relieve many forms of suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia is steadily progressing toward an aging population demographic pattern. While aging is a natural process, its impact can be painful individually as well as for the nation. Individually there is a loss of a paying job after retirement, loss of physical and mental fitness, and also occasionally the loss of social integration due to lack of mobility. For a nation, an aging population means a growing dependency ratio, a greater need of care, and more medical facilities for this age group. This article looks at the various economic and social implications of the aging population in Malaysia in general, and in the rural and urban setting specifically. The paper focuses on a research sample of 132 (66 rural, 66 urban) elderly persons. The findings suggest that the demographic patterns of the elderly vary from the rural to the urban setting, with differing issues that need to be addressed to alleviate problems encountered related to loneliness, lack of financial stability, and emotional strain. Policy suggestion will be geared toward providing a solution to problems at hand as well as aiding the working group members to prepare and sustain a comfortable livelihood for the aged in their later years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technologies purported to extend human life are already being marketed widely, and are being used by community members, despite a lack of evidence on their efficacy or safety: in fact, the use of some putative anti-aging technologies (e.g., human growth hormone) is illegal. Existing regulation is proving to be ineffective, especially in the face of Internet sales. Further advances in the field of life extension are a distinct possibility, exacerbating the need for a policy response. This paper presents the preliminary results of a study of community attitudes to life extension, with a focus on attitudes to the control and availability of strong life-extending technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in aging research have added new urgency to the bioethical debate concerning life and death issues, the value of life, and the reasonable limits of medicine. This paper analyzes the basic structures of the liberal and conservative components of this debate, showing that there has hitherto been inadequate analysis on both sides concerning the nature and implications of the value of life, as well as, and as distinct from the value of life extension. Classic concepts of the intrinsic or extrinsic value of life are argued to be tangential or actually irrelevant to the value of life's continuance and so to the value of life extension. An analysis of personhood is proposed which focuses explicitly upon the value of life extension to persons. This analysis shows that persons may only intelligibly be understood as processes, for whom life extension is an inalienable and fundamental value. It is further proposed that, properly understood, such an analysis may significantly narrow the liberal/conservative divide in bioethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]