#steven austad

[afulltimenerd]

You survive, but maybe not quite as intact as you were before.

Steven Austad

Inferior - Angela Saini

[salmonsown]

"When anthropology professor Alison Murray was studying prehistoric human remains at the University of Cambridge, she made a startling discovery about women’s bodies: They were buff. When comparing prehistoric women to modern ones, Murray found their bone structure most closely resembled that of today’s elite rowers—evidence of regular, load-bearing activity and a sign that women played a major role in the development of agriculture.

"In fact, for most of human history, women weren’t meant to be thin; they were meant to be strong. Neolithic women had arm bones 11 to 16% stronger than the rowers to 30% greater than typical Cambridge students, according to a 2017 study. Bronze Age women showed a similar pattern, with arm bones up to 13% stronger than rowers. Our cultural obsession with thinness is a relatively recent invention, born of fashion, patriarchy, and postwar consumerism. When food became more accessible, especially in Western cultures, thinness replaced fullness as a marker of status and self-discipline. It began in the late 19th century, with new warnings about 'corpulence,' the dawn of dieting as a moral virtue, and the invention and rise of the calorie, all of which paved the way for modern food restriction.

"Across time and cultures, women have consistently outlived men by 5 to 20%, says Steven Austad, scientific director of the American Federation for Aging Research. The global life expectancy at birth for a woman is 76 compared with 71 for a man. About three-fourths of centenarians are women.

"The reasons aren’t fully understood—theories include the possibility of a more responsive immune system, an additional X chromosome or the idea that mothering makes women robust—but the pattern is clear.

"And when it comes to strength, women possess a different kind of power. Yes, men typically have more upper-body muscle and larger hearts. But studies show women are often more resilient. Sandra Hunter, chair of movement science in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor has found that women can better withstand muscle fatigue. In fact, Hunter points to a 2016 review of more than 55 fatigue studies that concluded that, on average, women outlasted men by 36%.

"The emerging science paints a clearer picture: women are not the weaker sex. We’re just built differently—and to last.

"Bursts of the “return to skinny” have always surfaced at pivotal moments — right when women are on the brink of claiming more power. It’s no coincidence. The flapper look took hold in the 1920s just as women won the right to vote — a new, boyish silhouette for a new kind of woman, one who was suddenly politically powerful. In the 1960s, Twiggy’s thin, androgynous frame became the face of fashion right as the women’s liberation movement was gaining traction, challenging traditional roles and demanding equality. In the 1990s, heroin chic surged in popularity as women flooded law schools, boardrooms, and newsrooms in record numbers — a visual counterpunch to female ambition."

This photo points to the greater strength of women in present-day societies where they do heavy farm work, and grind or pound grain (or seeds, or yam, or other foods). More pictures in Comments of neolithic grindstones and photos of women grinding grain into flour. Shown here, very ancient grindstones in the Sahara, from a time when plants grew in a greener Sahara.

https://time.com/7293999/bodybuilding-women-skinny-essay/

[biglisbonnews]

One creature’s live fast, live long lifestyle may reveal how to slow aging Hummingbirds are an extreme example, but virtually all of bird biology can be understood in terms of adaptations to the exceptional energy demands of powered flight. https://www.inverse.com/science/longevity-birds

[fiti-vation]

So do you follow Johnson's advice to Florence, "to run as a man, you must train like a man"? One other point, do you think you have plateaued, leveled off and must now move to your next plateau in order to exceed your old times?

Nope I don’t!One thing I’ve never adhered to as anindividual and as an athlete is double standards. I have never agreed with the oldsaying that men are better than women. Physicalstrength can be defined in different ways. Women bubble with a source of powerthat even science has yet to fully understand. They tend to be better survivorsthan men. What’s more, they are born this way. Note, don’t get me wrong here itis true however that biologically speaking men produce more testosterone thanwomen. One of the main reasons why, in my opinion it is near impossible for awoman to ever become the fastest human on Earth is because men have the biological advantage ofproducing more testosterone. But if we think about it, Florence Joyner Griffithis the 4th fastest human on the planet, she is so close to AsafaPowell’s time. I personally believe that a younger Flo Jo given the propertools and conditions could have been the 3rd fastest person on Earth– keep in mind that Flo was 28 when she became the fastest women on Earth. Also,note I’mcertainly not going to engage in a “men versus women” battle. Both men andwomen have strengths and weaknesses. Weare equal but different. Those differences are complementary and should becelebrated rather than eroded.It’s not about training like a man, it’s all about training harder. When I look at men training duringtrack practices they often tend to be physically harder and more demanding thanthose of women. I remember once when I first got into track, it was weightlifting day and the coach separated the guys and the girls – we were doing thesame drills, but different with weight. The twist here is that I was placedwith the boys.I have always been on the thicker side (like Rosa Acosta)and the other females I was training with were more on the petite side. To makea long story short, I was lifting the same weight as the guys. I was so excitedthat day to be honest with you, I’ve always loved to dismantle the old societalbelief that women are not made to lift heavy.All that said, I believe one of the factors that couldexplain why female sprinters have not yet been able to reach Flo Jo’s time orrun as fast as she is because they don’t use the internal robustness they wereborn with to its full potential.

INTERNAL ROBUSTNESS:

Anyhow, back to survival, recent researches havedemonstrated that women are better survivors. You’re probably wondering whatall that has to do with running, well I’ll get into it a bit later on.For almost two decades, Steven Austad, an internationalexpert on ageing, and chair of the biology department at the University ofAlabama, has been studying one of the best-known yet under-researched facts ofhuman biology: that women live longer than men. According to Austad (2016), atevery age, women seem to survive better than men despite suffering morephysical limitations later in life. His longevity database shows that all overthe world and as far back as records have been kept, women outlive men byaround five or six years. He describes them as being more “robust”.What makes baby girls so robust remains mostly a mystery.Research published in 2014 by scientists at the University of Adelaide suggeststhat a mother’s placenta may behave differently depending on the sex of thebaby, doing more to maintain the pregnancy and increase immunity againstinfections. For reasons unknown, girls may be getting an extra dose ofsurvivability in the womb.Robustness,toughness or pure power – whatever it’s called – this survival ability cracksapart the stereotype.

NOW WE’REGETTING TO THE RUNNING PART:

Women are known to be particularly good at endurancerunning, notes Marlene Zuk, who runs a lab focusing on evolutionary biology atthe University of Minnesota. In her 2013 book Paleofantasy, she writes thatwomen’s running abilities decline extremely slowly into old age. They’ve beenknown to go long distances even while pregnant. In 2011, for example, AmberMiller ran the Chicago marathon before giving birth seven hours later. Worldrecord holder Paula Radcliffe has trained through two pregnancies.Why, then, are women not all Amazons? Why do we imaginefemininity to mean small, waif-like bodies? The lives of most ordinary women,outside the pages of magazines, destroy this notion. If you go to India, youwill see female construction workers lining the streets, hauling piles ofbricks on their heads to building sites. In Kenya, there are female securityguards everywhere, patrolling offices and hotels. Out in rural areas, there arewomen doing hard physical labour, often hauling their children in slings. Ourancestors would have done the same.In evolutionary terms, these were the circumstances underwhich our bodies were forged. For an enormous chunk of early human history, aswe migrated through Africa to the rest of the world, women would also havetravelled hundreds or thousands of miles, sometimes under extreme environmentalconditions. “Just reproducing and surviving in these conditions, talk aboutnatural selection” (Saini. 2017).Now going back to what I mentioned earlier on, the reasonwomen are athletically limited when it comes to their physical abilities isbecause they are trained too often delicately as you saw from the example I’vegiven earlier from my track practice. If more women would tap into thatinternal robustness and potentialize it such as Flo Jo did their athletic performancecould be phenomenal I believe.I know there are some people who will be coming at mesaying, well if women start training too hard, they may start to look manly,muscly and unattractive. If there is onething I’ve always hated to hear is that old fashion misconception. A lot ofpeople who are unfamiliar with bodybuilding, athleticism and nutrition sciencehave that mentality.Women do not produce enough testosterone to look like a man.I repeat WOMEN DO NOT PRODUCE ENOUGH TESTOSTERONE TO LOOK LIKE A MAN! It hasnever been scientifically proven that lifting heavy will make a woman growfacial hair, get a deep voice and so on. I have seen girls leg press 400lbs (including myself) and they look just fine! There is no way for a woman to ever achievethat look naturally (see picture below) unless she is using roids or was bornwith an intersex trait or a medical condition such as hyperandrogenism. Womenusing steroids such as high doses of testosterone grow facial hair, their vocalchords thicken, their voices drop, they get hair on their chest and back, theirclitoris grow into a male-like appendage…

Thisis what astronomical doses of testosterone in women do… To make huge gains like that realistically, it’s almost impossible without anabolics, period. That said, I love and support all of my “buff” Barbies out there, I love watching bodybuilding shows, but I have never condoned the use of steroids especially as an ethical athlete. Also, I’m using bodybuilding as an example here, but females abusing steroids happens in every sport.

How fast can humans run? The fastest person clocked on our planettoday is the Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt, who ran the 100 meter sprint at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing in aworld record of 9.58 seconds, which works out to be about 37.6 kilometers perhour or 23.4 miles per hour.For a brief period during that sprint, Bolt reached an astounding 12.3 metersper second (27.51 mph or 44.28 kph).nd (27.51 mph or 44.28 kph).Humanscould perhaps run as fast 40 mph, a new study suggests. Such a feat would leavein the dust the world’s fastest runner, Usain Bolt, who has clocked nearly 28mph in the 100-meter sprint [X]. The new findings come after researchers took a new look atthe factors that limit human speed. Their conclusions? The top speed humanscould reach may come down to how quickly muscles in the body can move and thisapplies to both men and women. Previousstudies have suggested the main hindrance to speed is that our limbs can onlytake a certain amount of force when they strike the ground. This may not be thewhole story, however.“Ifone considers that elite sprinters can apply peak forces of 800 to 1,000 poundswith a single limb during each sprinting step, it’s easy to believe thatrunners are probably operating at or near the force limits of their muscles andlimbs,” said Peter Weyand of Southern Methodist University, one of thestudy’s authors. But Weyand and colleagues found in treadmill tests that ourlimbs can handle a lot more force than what is applied during top-speedrunning.

How to improve your running speed?

Now regarding your second questions, I don’t think that Ihave reached a plateau, but I think that my bad habits are what’s underminingmy full potential, I’ll elaborate on that. No matter what the statistics say,you need to remember that every individual differs from the next. There arefactors such as body type, age, gender, fitness and more that can alsodetermine the speed at which one can run. To keep thing short and simple here I’llonly elaborate on the training aspect.The way I got seriously intofitness is by jogging daily, but as sprinter the problem here is that thisundermines my performance (I would do push-ups and sit ups as strength trainingbut no weight lifting). As a matter of fact, I did not start taken weightlifting seriously until the age of 20 I’d say, so I wasted two years not listeningto my coaches and wasting my potential… In another post, I discussed thedifference between marathoner and sprinter.  The issue with me is that I had a very hardtime letting go of jogging daily – when I first started sprints one of my coachtold me to stop jogging so much, but jogging became such a huge part of my lifethat I completely discredited his advice.Many people are very comfortablewith just jogging. This helps them to maintain a steady pace and moderatespeed. However, runners who like to run jog and take their time with theirruns may not have the best time scores for long distance runs or short distanceones. Instead of training like a sprinter I was training like a jogger. I wasnot developing my fast-twitch fibers. I was doing too much LISS and not enoughHIIT. Fast-twitch fibers are essential to sprinters. I had very low “explosivepower” in my legs. I learned the hard way to listen to my coaches.

NOW YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHYTOO MUCH JOGGING IS BAD FOR SPRINTER

Well for a 100/200 or 300-meterrunner running XC or jogging daily is bad. Not because fast-twitch fibers will convertinto slow-twitch fibers, such as muscles cannot convert into fat and vice versasame applies for muscle fibers – fast twitch fibers can’t convert into slow twitch.However, whatever fiber type breakdown you have can begin to take on thecharacteristics of the type of training you are doing. Run fast fibers getbetter at trying to hand that training. Train slow and you get better atrunning slow for a really long time. I have had discussions with some people whobelieve you can convert fast twitch fibers by about 6%, but this theory needsto be reinforced by research studies… In addition, if your body has a lot of fasttwitch oxidative fibers your training can cause them to look a lot like slowtwitch fibers.A true sprinter will never surpassa marathoner in a marathon and vice versa a true marathoner will never surpassa sprinter in a sprint. Now people will point out some individuals who have hadsuccess in XC were sprinters but the reason you can point to these individualsis because they are rare and special. Understanding this it then leads to thequestion: are these people really sprinters or poorly identified middledistance runners or elite milers?Over the last few years I’ve beentrying to find the right balance of LISS and HIIT. For elite sprinters, I believethat a combination of moderate jogging, fast running/agility training and strength training intoa daily routine can create the perfect recipe for speed and pace improvement. I’mstill trying to figure out the perfect formula…

SOURCES:

Austad,S.N. (2016). Sex Differences in Lifespan. CellMetabolism, Vol 23 (Issue 6), p.1022-1033.

Hirst,K,K. (2017, October 09th). HowFast Can Humans Run? The Physics and Limits of Human Sprinting. Retrievedfrom https://www.thoughtco.com/how-fast-can-humans-run-4152138

Saini,A. (2017). Inferior:how science got women wrong and the new research that’s rewriting the story.Boston: Beacon Press.

Saini,A. (2017, June 11th). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/11/the-weaker-sex-science-that-shows-women-are-stronger-than-men

[currentsinbiology]

“Pretty much at every age, women seem to survive better than men,” says Steven Austad, an international expert on ageing, and chair of the biology department at the University of Alabama. For almost two decades, he has been studying one of the best-known yet under-researched facts of human biology: that women live longer than men. His longevity database shows that all over the world and as far back as records have been kept, women outlive men by around five or six years. He describes them as being more “robust”.

[randybenedict]

UAB aging and longevity experts receive international prize

University of Alabama at Birmingham aging expert -- and once-upon-a-time lion trainer -- Steven Austad, Ph.D., and UAB postdoctoral fellow in longevity research Jessica Hoffman, Ph.D., have won the George C. Williams prize from the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health, or ISEMPH. from The Medical News https://ift.tt/2FBUgYd

[serinakemp]

An Update on the Austad and Olshansky Wager on Future Life Expectancy

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Since it doesn't get much press these days, newcomers to our longevity science community might not be aware of the wager made nearly two decades ago between optimist Steven Austad and pessimist S. Jay Olshansky on the trajectory of future human life expectancy. The core of the wager is whether or not the research and medical communities will develop and implement means of radical life extension sufficient to result in 150-year old humans within next century or so. Given where things stand today, I'd say that betting against this outcome is tough to justify. Fifty years in technology is a very long time in this era of rapid progress in applied science, never mind a century, and the first rejuvenation therapies that work by removing a fundamental cause of aging are already heading to the clinic.

It is possible that someone reading this now will be alive to see the resolution of a $1 billion bet between Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor of public health, and Steven Austad, chairman of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Eighteen years ago, the two friends began their discussion on an issue that long has intrigued scientists and laymen alike: What is the limit of the human life span? Austad, whose research focuses on aging, had made a bold prediction at an academic conference: In the year 2150, he said, there will be a 150-year-old human being. Olshansky, also an expert on aging, wasn't having it.

They decided to make it interesting. They each put $150 into an investment fund, and signed a contract specifying that the heirs of the winner will cash it out in 2150. Early published reports on the wager said the payoff would be from $200 million to $500 million given good market returns, but the men have since doubled their initial investments and they now estimate the final jackpot at roughly $1 billion.

Since they made wager in 2000, average human life spans have inched up. I asked Olshansky if, in light of the galloping progress of medicine on all fronts, he was having any second thoughts about his position. None, he said. If anything he's more certain than ever that his descendants - he has one grandchild so far - will be made fabulously wealthy. "There will certainly be breakthroughs that will slow many of the biological processes of aging. We'll be able to extend the number of years that people can live in good health but the brain is our Achilles heel. There's still no evidence to...

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[lazyupdates]

Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock

We are all more or less aware of the incredible endurance of the female body. From enduring labor pains to its uncanny ability to remember small details, its power and resourcefulness are undeniable.

However, there are many facts about the female body that are less apparent and may surprise you. For instance, did you know that a woman’s body is more durable over time than a man’s? Did you know men and women’s brains are different sizes?

Today, we bring you a list of facts that you may not have known about the female body. Read, enjoy, and learn something new!

1. Women are wired differently. According to a study conducted out of the University of Pennsylvania, maps of neural circuitry showed that on average, women’s brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres. The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also showed that in contrast, men’s brains have a stronger connection between the front and back regions. This means that generally, men’s brains are wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, while women’s brains are wired more for social skills and memory, making them better able to multitask.

Shutterstock | sdecoret

2. Women outlive men. According to Steven Austad, chair of the biology department at the University of Alabama and an international expert on aging: ‘Pretty much at every age, women seem to survive better than men.’ Austad describes women as being more ‘robust.’ Scientists have yet to determine why, but they do know that this isn’t something that occurs with age. A male and female newborn who are given the same level of care don’t have the same survival rate – males are at a 10% greater risk of death. This same durability carries on later in life for females. Kathryn Sandberg, director of the Centre for the Study of Sex Differences in Health, Aging and Disease at Georgetown University, says, ‘Cardiovascular disease occurs much earlier in men than women. The age of onset of hypertension [high blood pressure] also occurs much earlier in men than women. And there’s a sex difference in the rate of progression of disease.’

Shutterstock | SNeG17

3. Women see things differently. A study led by Brooklyn College psychology professor Israel Abramov found that ‘across most of the visible spectrum males require a slightly longer wavelength than do females in order to experience the same hue.’ Longer wavelengths are associated with warmer colors, so an orange may appear more red to a man than to a woman. Moreover, grass almost always appears greener to women than to men, who see verdant objects as more yellow. 

Shutterstock | Lifestyle discover

4. The purpose of oxytocin is different for women. Oxytocin, sometimes known as the ‘cuddle hormone’ or ‘love hormone’ because it is released when people are physically close or bonding socially, has a different effect on women than men. Oxytocin, a powerful hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain, is particularly important in women given its vital role in nursing and bonding with their newborn. It also causes uterine contractions during labor and is responsible for shrinking the uterus after delivery.    

Shutterstock | Robert Kneschke

5. Women have different brains than men. A team of researchers led by psychologist Stuart Ritchie, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, found that on average, women tend to have much larger cortices (the outer layer of the cerebrum that plays an important role in consciousness) than men. Thicker cortices have been associated with higher scores on an array of cognitive and general intelligence tests. Men, on the other hand, showed higher brain volumes than women in every subcortical region the study looked at. However, when researchers adjusted the numbers to observe the subcortical regions in relation to overall brain size, the comparisons became more similar. That is, there were only 14 regions where men had a higher brain volume and 10 where women did.

Shutterstock | Anetlanda

6. Women get drunk quicker. Getting drunk happens because your body cannot break down and digest alcohol before it circulates in your blood and makes its way to your brain. The key to breaking down alcohol in your system is an enzyme in your stomach known as alcohol dehydrogenase which breaks down the alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. Researchers from the University School of Medicine in Trieste, Italy and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx found that women’s stomach lining produces less of this enzyme than the stomach lining of men. This can cause women to get drunk more easily than men if they’re less able to digest the alcohol before it reaches their bloodstream.

Shutterstock | Kookong

7. Women are more likely to suffer from neck pain. A study conducted by Dr. Meda Raghavendra and Dr. Joseph Holtman of Loyola University Medical Center reported that women suffer more from neck pain than men as a result of cervical disc degeneration. Cervical degenerative disc disease is a common cause of neck pain, and symptoms include a stiff or inflexible neck, burning, tingling, or numbness. The resulting pain is more frequent when the individual is standing or moving their head.

Shutterstock | Siriluk ok

8. Women are more likely to have a sleeping disorder. Researchers at SleepGP – a medical education provider that offers specialized sleep medicine training to general practitioners in Coolangatta, Australia – found that women were more likely to have sleeping disorders associated with daytime sleepiness (49% for women versus 36.9% for men). Women were also more likely to report an increased burden of symptoms related to sleepiness. Furthermore, the study showed that women are more likely to feel excessive fatigue or depression, have trouble with concentration and memory, and have difficulty sleeping at night.

Shutterstock | Supawadee56

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[enzocalamo]

Why America's Inequality Is A Threat To Living Longer

Steven Austad, one of the nation's top researchers in aging, offered this warning at the recent Stanford Center on Longevity conference.

[ziadabdelnourinfo]

Why America's Inequality Is A Threat To Living Longer

Steven Austad, one of the nation's top researchers in aging, offered this warning at the recent Stanford Center on Longevity conference. via Forbes - Personal Finance http://ift.tt/2y6vu0R

[serinakemp]

An Illustration of the Cost of Aging on Individual Health and Survival

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The field of aging research could do with more of its scientists choosing to write for laypeople; the more outreach the better. This short column by researcher Steven Austad illustrates one way of looking at aging - that it is all about the mortality rate at a given age, and the inexorable rise of that mortality rate over time, caused by the accumulation of cell and tissue damage. By this metric an individual at age 40 or 50 is already significantly impacted by the processes of aging in comparison with an individual at age 20, manifesting as an increased mortality rate. Given this, there is every chance that a half-way decent first generation rejuvenation therapy would be of some benefit to people at age 40, those the medical establishment currently designates as being in perfect health, but who nonetheless have a mortality rate that is considerably higher than is the case for people at age 20.

I have a pill. If you decide to take my pill, you immediately stop aging and are preserved in your current physical state from this day forward. This hypothetical pill that stops aging, call it the Methuselah pill, will not make you immortal. Immortality does not exist in this world. Whether or not you age, you can still step in front of a bus, eat a contaminated hamburger, catch a stray bullet, or be struck by lightning. In fact, if you lived long enough one of these things would almost be guaranteed to happen to you.

One way that scientists define aging is that it increases the chance that you will die in the coming year. In America, your chance of dying doubles every 8 years after about age 35. But with the Methuselah pill that no longer happens. You have the same chance of dying, you look the same, you feel the same, as the age at which you took the pill, forever. Would you want to be frozen in time with the physical looks, the energy, strength and agility you had when you were 20? Give this some careful thought because half of you - the male half - may remember 20 as the testosterone-soaked age at which you were more than a little crazy. Maybe you'd like to be preserved at age 50, when people will take you more seriously. You would be more settled in life, a bit more thoughtful, a bit less swift.

One thing to consider. The age you choose to stop aging has a great deal to do with how much longer you can expect to live. A little simple algebra with U.S. government statistics shows that with a 20 year old male survival rate lasting...

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