In article <1169455958.445285.245070@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups .com>,
"Paul Antonik Wakfer" <paul@morelife.org> wrote:
> Actually the correlation referred to is negative.
>
> Note that the first part of the last statement: "These results suggest
> that large body mass presents a
> greater risk of cancer than long lifespan" supports what I have been
> telling muscle builders for years.
> Unfortunately it also applies to tall people who have no control over
> it.
If that were true, wouldn't height and muscle both be known risk factors
for cancer? Is it? Have I just never heard of it? If it's true, there
must be more evidence than this one study. If not, do you think cancer
researchers have just never looked at height or muscle to find out if
they are risk factors?
The life expectancy calculators I've seen use BMI, but I haven't seen
one that uses just weight.
There are huge differences in body mass between someone who is 4.5 feet
tall and thin, and someone who is 6.5 feet tall and muscular. Shouldn't
we see a large difference in cancer rates too?
I feel sorry for all those poor huge body builders.
> --Paul Wakfer
>
> MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
> Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
> The Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
> Rational freedom by self-sovereignty & social contracting
>
> Aging Cell. 2006 Dec 14; [Epub ahead of print]
> Telomerase activity coevolves with body mass not lifespan.
> Seluanov A, Chen Z, Hine C, Sasahara TH, Ribeiro AA, Catania KC,
> Presgraves DC,
> Gorbunova V.
> Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627,
> USA.
>
> In multicellular organisms, telomerase is required to maintain telomere
> length
> in the germline but is dispensable in the soma. Mice, for example,
> express
> telomerase in somatic and germline tissues, while humans express
> telomerase
> almost exclusively in the germline. As a result, when telomeres of
> human somatic
> cells reach a critical length the cells enter irreversible growth
> arrest called
> replicative senescence. Replicative senescence is believed to be an
> anticancer
> mechanism that limits cell proliferation. The difference between mice
> and humans
> led to the hypothesis that repression of telomerase in somatic cells
> has evolved
> as a tumor-suppressor adaptation in large, long-lived organisms. We
> tested
> whether regulation of telomerase activity coevolves with lifespan and
> body mass
> using comparative analysis of 15 rodent species with highly diverse
> lifespans
> and body masses. Here we show that telomerase activity does not
> coevolve with
> lifespan but instead coevolves with body mass: larger rodents repress
> telomerase
> activity in somatic cells. These results suggest that large body mass
> presents a
> greater risk of cancer than long lifespan, and large animals evolve
> repression
> of telomerase activity to mitigate that risk.
>
> PMID: 17173545 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Re: Telomerase activity coevolves with body mass not lifespan. 
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