Turning New Year’s On Its Head

The New Year is nearly upon us. This time of year we think of birth, potential, new chances to accomplish goals. The fresh start is symbolized by the New Year’s baby entering as the old man of the past year exits stage right.

Say hello to the dancing baby, perhaps the world’s original viral

video and internet meme. If you remember when the baby first

showed up, you have seen at least 18 New Years and probably

watched Ally McBeal.

Well, I’m going a different direction. I’m interested today in discovering which living things have seen the most New Years babies. It should be easy, just survey all the species of living things on Earth, find the oldest member of each species, and declare a winner.

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy. Do you volunteer to track every naked mole rat to see which one lives the longest? How will we account for the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of species we haven’t discovered as of yet? Maybe we will just have to use examples for those individuals and species we happen to have data for – that, and maybe some speculation.

A researcher in 1999 proposed a hypothesis that species body mass directly relates to longevity, ie. the bigger the animal, the longer it lives. There are myriad examples that don’t seem to follow his rule, and his hypothesis has met with substantial resistance, but the paper has been cited more than 1500 times so somebody’s buying it. More recent evidence from his group suggests that metabolic rate may be as telling as overall body size. It’s a live fast, die young hypothesis.

One of these images is of Misao Okawa, the oldest living human

as of late 2014. The other image is of Miley Cyrus and some of

her backup dancers. I don’t see Misao, so she must still be

working on her moves (Miley is the one in the middle).

As for humans, Misao Okawa of Okinawa will soon see her 117th New Year’s Day (as of late 2014). She is the oldest female as well as the oldest person, and attributes her longevity to consumption of sushi and a goal of becoming a back up dancer for Miley Cyrus. OK, I lied about one of those………sushi, who’d believe that.

Humans are amateurs when it comes to longevity. Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise (Disochelys hololissa) is said to have seen 182 New Years. This is an estimate; a picture of Jonathan in 1882 shows him to be adult sized, and this takes about 50 years. So they guess he was born about 1832.

Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) are second in size only to Blue whales, and individuals of this species are known to live for 210 years or more, making it the oldest living mammal species. Believe it or not, we can tell this by examining their ears after they die. They build a specific number of layers of ear wax each year, so we can just count the rings, exactly like with a tree – only yuckier.

A new study shows that bowhead whales have altered gene expression that may account for their longevity, especially in terms of fat metabolism and insulin signaling. The same study also shows that bowheads have parallel changes in gene expression that are seen in other species that live longer than one would expect – like the naked mole rat and Brandt’s bat.

The quahog clam isn’t really that big, so it defies the hypothesis

about size and longevity. The bottom image is a micrograph of

a quahog shell. You can count the layers to determine how

many growing seasons it has lived through, not necessarily

how many years. A new study examined the layers to estimate

ocean conditions over the last 400 years.

The ocean quahog clam (Arctica islandica) can live for over 400 years. A recent study indicates that this animal produces much lower levels of damaging molecules in their mitochondria (the energy generators of the cell). If we figure out how they do that we will be able keep our cells healthy for long times.

The oldest living individual organism THAT WE KNOW OF is a bristlecone pine tree in the White mountains of California. It's known to have seen at least 5064 Rose Bowl Parades. People can visit its grove to wish it a happy birthday, but you’ll have to guess which tree is the oldest – only one man knows and he isn’t telling.

In truth, the idea of what is old is not so easy to discern. As humans, we have a prejudiced notion of what “old” means. We are born, we live, we die. The person who remains vertical for the most days wins. But many organisms just don’t play by our rules. As a result, they can “live” for hundreds of thousands of years.

This isn’t the oldest Bristlecone Pine – or maybe it is. The Forest

Service won’t tell anyone which of the pines in this California

locale is actually the oldest. The unnamed tree is 5064 years

old, and shares its forest with another pine named Methuselah,

who clocks in at 4847 years old.

Organisms in harsh environments can just stop growing and go into suspended animation. Humans can only do that in science fiction movies like Interstellar. In the Antarctic, some lichens (a symbiosis of fungus and algae or photosynthetic bacteria) grow only 0.01-1 millimeter each year, and that’s in the good years. They can be in suspended animation for hundreds of years. Does that count as one life or two?

Samples of bacteria were “life suspended” until brought out in a Siberian ice core. Once thawed they began to divide. Are those bacteria several minutes old or 500,000 years old? They wouldn’t be growing and dividing except for the ice coring process. Maybe global warming will bring billions of old species back to life.

Let’s look at another way to circumvent the traditional idea of long life. Quaking Aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) live as colonies of clones. In the Pando clone of Utah, great stands of these trees cover more than 100 acres and constitute the heaviest single organism on Earth – over 6000 tons.

They all stem from one progenitor tree and they are all connected by one root system; roots sent out in a direction will turn upward and give rise to new trunks. Do we count the newest trunk to sprout and the first trunk that may have fallen over 80,000 to 1 million years ago as the same organism and the same life?

When injured, starved or bored, the immortal jellyfish will revert

from adult form to juvenile form and just grow up again. Can you

imagine an infinite number of adolescent periods? Imagine

the parents!

Maybe the weirdest example to demonstrate how hard to determine what constitutes a single life looks like is the immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii). Take the name seriously. This small cnidarian lives in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and off of Japan.

In typical jellyfish species, juvenile jellyfish live as polyps, then become bell-shaped medusae as adults – then die. However, the immortal jellyfish can revert from medusa to polyp and then grow up again. It can theoretically do this indefinitely, making the jellyfish ostensibly able to live forever. In practice, most die from disease or predation, but the possibility of infinite life is there.

One moral of our story – don’t worry about how many New Years Days you may or may not get to see – your number isn’t going to mean anything to anyone else. While studying old things may extend our lives in the future, be sure that you make of the most of the New Year you are being given now.

Contributed by Mark E. Lasbury, MS, MSEd, PhD

As Many Exceptions As Rules

Munro D, Pichaud N, Paquin F, Kemeid V, & Blier PU (2013). Low hydrogen peroxide production in mitochondria of the long-lived Arctica islandica: underlying mechanisms for slow aging. Aging cell, 12 (4), 584-92 PMID: 23566066

Seim I, Ma S, Zhou X, Gerashchenko MV, Lee SG, Suydam R, George JC, Bickham JW, & Gladyshev VN (2014). The transcriptome of the bowhead whale Balaena mysticetus reveals adaptations of the longest-lived mammal. Aging, 6 (10), 879-99 PMID: 25411232

Holland, H., Schöne, B., Marali, S., & Jochum, K. (2014). History of bioavailable lead and iron in the Greater North Sea and Iceland during the last millennium – A bivalve sclerochronological reconstruction Marine Pollution Bulletin, 87 (1-2), 104-116 DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.08.005

Dying To Make Us Laugh

It is the height of irony that Robin Williams (left) played Dr.

Patch Adams (right) in the 1998 film of the same name.

Adams used humor to heal and promote health, while new

research is showing that humorists are susceptible to more

harm when they improve our health with laughter.

One of the five funniest people to ever live died recently. Robin Williams was at least as funny as Jonathan Winters, Bill Cosby, Steve Martin, and Groucho Marx. He was 63 years old at the time of his death, and the others on my list have lived good long lives as well. Jonathan Winters was 88 when he died in 2013, Groucho Marx was 87, and Steve Martin and Bill Cosby are 68 and 77, respectively.

But a long-lived comedian is more of an exception than a rule. John Belushi, Gilda Radner, John Candy, Lenny Bruce, Patrice O’Neal, Madeline Kahn, Chris Farley, Bernie Mac, and Andy Kaufman all died in their 30’s or 40’s. This is sad to be sure, but it's even sadder when you consider that comedians hasten their own deaths while improving our health.

“Laughter is the best medicine.” The saying has been around for years – and it has merit. Laughter reduces cortisol production, which is a stress hormone that taxes our health and makes us gain weight. Laughter may improve our immune system function as well, and this fights off or prevents infection. A 2009 review showed that several studies indicated that laughter improved immune cell function (natural killer cells) and increased antibody levels (sIGA).

Laughter improves respiratory function and cardiac function because it increases respiratory rate and requires increased blood flow. These were reviewed in a very funny Christmas article in the British Medical Journal in 2013.

Laughter works on our brain too. Besides relieving stress, laughter triggers the release of endorphins that help our mood – and a good mood is a definite benefit to our health. Laughter also works on the neural pathways of resilience, so that we bounce back from disappointment better.

Gelototherapy is a pseudoscientific term for laughter therapy.

I say pseudo- because I can’t really find anyone who uses the

 term. But other health ideas have sprung up around laughter

as well. Laughter yoga (hasyayoga) is done in groups with eye

contact. It may start out as forced laughter, which is said to

have much less effect on health, but forced laughter turns

readily to spontaneous or mirthful, laughter, which lengthens

our life so we can go out to more yoga classes.

As far back as the 1970’s, journalist Norman Cousins advocated laughter therapy (gelototherapy) after he was said to have healed himself of heart disease and ankylosing spondylitis using Marx Brothers movies. He was an adjunct professor of Medical Humanities at UCLA where he did more research on the healing aspects of spontaneous laughter. But most of his results were on a case description basis – anecdotal at best.

There have been few if any studies that link laughter to extended longevity; however, a 2013 study of centenarians showed that they do tend to laugh more, as part of the PATL (positive attitude toward life). Linking laughter directly to longevity would be very difficult in the scientific sense, but the above stated health benefits can’t be hurting us, can they?

Apparently all this benefit comes at a cost to those giving us their gift. Comedians don’t just seem to die young, they are dying younger. Several studies have looked longitudinally at the health problems and obituaries of people in different professions, and that funny kids have more health problems later in life.

As part of a study of high intelligence individuals called the Terman Life Cycle Study (1922-1991), those kids rated by their parents as having a good sense of humor tended to have more health problems as adults, including alcoholism and lung disease from smoking.

People say that fat guys are funny. I’m fat and my kids say I’m

not that funny. But the question remains, do fat boys become

funny to survive, or does being funny make guys fat? Curly

Howard of the Three Stooges got fat after a bout of depression

at the end of his first marriage. He had a series of strokes late in

his movie career and died at the age of 49.

In a three-year study of police officers in Finland, those that were rated funnier or more humorous tended to be overweight, smoked more, and have more cardiovascular disease. For funny people who choose to become comedians then numbers just get worse. A 1992 study showed that comedians and humor writers died at younger ages. They tended to have more physical and mental health problems. This might relate to the environments in which they work – smoke and alcohol filled clubs, or it might reflect their tendency to see the humor and positive in things and not pay attention to risks of the unhealthy habits in which they engage.

A recent review of deaths by profession shows that performers of all sorts, including comedians, tend to die younger – health problems most certainly playing a role in their earlier demise. Robin Williams had suffered for years with substance abuse problems, bouts of severe depression, and heart disease. Comedians tend to have more depression than the general population and the suicide rate of performers, including comedians, is twice that of the general population.

But which comes first, do depressives become comedians because their altered thinking lends itself to looking at the world differently, or perhaps it is a way of self-medicating (as is drug abuse they tend to fall into) and fitting in with the world. Or, does comedy and the rejection that often comes with it, lead to more bouts of depression? Whichever it is, the physical and mental health problems of humorists seem all the more tragic when it is considered how much good these people do for us.

Contributed by Mark E. Lasbury, MS, MSEd, PhD

As Many Exceptions As Rules

C.R. Epstein, R.J. Epstein (2013). Death in The New York Times: the price of fame is a faster flame QJM: monthly journal of the Association of Physicians, 106 (6), 517-521

Greengross G (2013). Humor and aging - a mini-review. Gerontology, 59 (5), 448-53 PMID: 23689078

Ferner RE, & Aronson JK (2013). Laughter and MIRTH (Methodical Investigation of Risibility, Therapeutic and Harmful): narrative synthesis. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 347 PMID: 24336308

Bennett MP, & Lengacher C (2009). Humor and Laughter May Influence Health IV. Humor and Immune Function. Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM, 6 (2), 159-64 PMID: 18955287