How to be Happy and Never Get Sick or Grow Old.

Is science on the cusp of confirming the existence of the elixir of youth?

If you want to stay younger for longer and remain healthy all the way into a youthful longevity, then paying some attention to your  sleep, diet and exercise, as well as avoiding chronic stress, and meditating, all have a part to play. This is the advice contained in the new  book, 'The Telomere Effect' by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel laureate and President of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, and Dr. Elissa Epel, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, at University of California, San Francisco.

But, in an increasingly health-conscious society, most people are already aware of the benefits of all the prescribed paths to self-maintenance.What may not be so widely-known is that all these life-enhancing activities merely support but do not cause youthful longevity. Irrespective of our life-style choices, the body has an  in-built capacity for a disease-free, non-ageing existence. The mechanism for this is at cellular level in the 'caps' at the ends of chromosomes, which are called 'telomeres'.

We age because our cells age. Cellular ageing or cellular senescence occurs when the telomere lengths shorten to a critical point with each repeated cycle of cell division until the number of divisions hits the 'Hayflick limit' and the cell stops dividing.

Since cell division is a 'rejuvenating' function, when the cell stops dividing, then it's downhill all the way and the body becomes subject to all the illnesses and diseases attendant on ageing, such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, arthritis and Alzheimers.

However, the body has a certain class of cells that are not subject to the Hayflick limit and these are the stem cells. Furthermore, the Hayflick limit can be overidden in ordinary cells due to the presence of an enzyme called Telomerase, which restores the length of telomeres and so preserves them and therefore preserves cellular rejuvenation. It's this exciting potential that's the subject of the book, The Telomerase Revolution, by Dr. Michael Fossel, former Professor of clinical medicine at Michigan State University.

So is Telomerase the elixir of youth and can we bottle it?

The answer may be a No. Despite the fascinating nature of the discovery, the suggestions for capitalising on it seem relatively prosaic, such as the recommendation to meditate. But could the ability to 'meditate' have a larger role in the human scheme of things than we currently fully understand?

It was Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn herself who discovered the anti-ageing effect of meditation. In her book, the negative impact of  stress is discussed at some length, as well as certain habitual mental modes most of us exhibit such 'wandering mind' and rumination which actually age us.

If thinking can have it's downside, then the ability to 'rest the mind' by not thinking must have an upside. And indeed it does . In some recent research[1] Dr Katya Rubia , Professor of Neuroscience at King's College, London , and colleagues  showed the positive neuroplastic effects from achieving a state of mental silence.

While mindfulness and other forms of meditation have also been shown in other studies to have similarly postive effects, there is a qualitative difference between learning how to focus in the present moment which mindfulness teaches and the ability to switch off the mind altogether in mental silence/'thoughtless awareness' - see below:

The state of mental silence is referred to as 'nirvichar samadhi' in the source book of yoga , The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. In the canons of yoga there is a practice called 'Khechari Mudra' which purportedly leads to the flow of a 'rejuvenating nectar' from the crown of the head into the throat during deep meditation.

So, in review, we have a biological mechanism for rejuvenation/non-ageing represented by telomeres and telomerase. This has been linked to meditation. And meditation has been linked to an Elixir .

To make the leap, the following could be suggested:

It is possible in the future, that people will no longer have to suffer old age or illness, but live a pleasant life of healthy and youthful longevity. This will come about as a result a of a new and effortless ability to be in a state of 'thoughtless awareness' or mental silence.

 How far into the future before we reach this elysian existence?

To quote the author William Gibson: " The Future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed"

And this 1 minute video record may be the proof: How to be Happy and Never Get Sick or Grow Old.

Ref:
 [1] Gray Matter and Functional Connectivity in Anterior Cingulate Cortex are Associated with the State of Mental Silence During Sahaja Yoga Meditation.

Solution to Projected Global Food Shortage? It's the Water.

According to United Nations projections, the population of the world is set to hit about 9.8billion in 2050. It raises the obvious question of how the world is going to feed itself, given that the total arable land available for food production is fixed or could even shrink due to creeping urbanisation and climate change, amongst other things.

We're clearly going to have to increase food production.  According to Agronomist Mitch Hunter,

"The common prescription is for a “sustainable intensification” of agriculture that both increases yields and reduces the harmful side effects of tilling and fertilizing billions of acres of land. " 

This seems like a tall order since ramping up production necessarily entails putting more strain on the land. Indeed, the term 'sustainable intensification' itself may be an oxymoron. The only real sustainability it could be argued is where human intervention is solely to direct Nature's beneficent hand.

Just such an arrangement has been proven in a remarkable agricultural experiment carried out in Vienna where  'vibrated ' water was used to increase crop yield. A write up of the experiment is given below bur first what is 'vibrated' water?

What is 'vibrated' water?
 As all schoolchildren know, a water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom and written as H₂O.

The structure of the water molecule can be depicted as below:

The angle betweeen the hydrogen atoms is shown as 104.45 degrees, which is described as being part of the stereochemistry information about the molecule.

It turns out that the stereochemistry of a molecule has a big bearing on the properties of that molecule. Just how big a bearing is demonstrated in the stereochemical property known as chirality or the concept of left-handedness or right-handedness in a molecule.

An everyday encounter with chirality is when we purchase citrus fruit from the supermarket. The lemons and oranges may smell different but it's the same limonene that produces the smell. What's different is that the limonene in lemons and oranges are chiral twins - in lemons, the limonene is "right-handed" and in oranges it's "left-handed". The twins are called stereoisomers.

It's well-known in drug research that the one stereoisomer of a molecule could have biological effect whereas the other stereoisomer might have none. This is shown in illustration below:

 So what this shows is that some modification to the stereochemistry of a water molecule could give it properties that have a biological effect that it would not otherwise have.



Slideshow of results of agricultural experiment viewable here.

The Sunflowers at Pratisthan

Comments by H.H.Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi:

In Sahaja Yoga, you take the ordinary seeds and you vibrate them. If you vibrate them, then what happens that you start getting seeds which are even better than hybrid. I tried an experiment with a sunflower; so I developed a sunflower about 2 kilo weight, about one foot diameter and such big, big seeds, that you can’t make them out to be sunflower seeds, so the collective was so amazed at it and they felt that this kind of seed will solve all of our oil problem.
(Shri Ganesha Puja, Madrid, Spain, 6/11/87)

Material development is much faster and in balance when you get Self Realization. These vibrations help agriculture very much. We have a scientist, Dr. Hamid, in Austria, who has experimented with vibrations and has found out that even non-hybrid seeds give you greater than hybrid seeds. In my own field I sowed about 60 kilos of rice in one acre of land. And they told me: “It’s a special rice. It won’t grow here.” But it turned out to be 1700 kilos. One of the best rices. And even the sunflower was so big, two feet diameter. You could not lift; one person could not lift. Giving oil six to ten times more!
(Press Conference, Sofia, Bulgaria, 25/7/90)

Dr Hamid's (Hamid Mehrani-Mylany) account of experiment with 'vibrated' water.

The effect of vibrated water on plant growth

The first study we made to test the effect of vibrated water on different kinds of plants took place on 27th May, 1986. The experiment was made on a 300m2 block of land with the foundations of a building nearby.  We were able to use the electricity supply from this building to construct an automatic watering system.  This small farm was situated about 15 kilometers east of Vienna, Austria.

1. Climate
The weather data was provided by the weather observation station in Enzersfield.  It was a rather rainy summer with an average rainfall of 54.5mm during the test period.  The average temperature during the test period was 24.50C and in this area quite a strong north-west wind was blowing which dries the soil very rapidly.  Because of the late setting up of the test area it was heavily overgrown with annual and perennial weeds.  That is why the field was sprayed with Gesaprim on the 25th May.

2. Preparation of the soil
The soil type was brown earth i.e. sandy, clay and loam.  For this experiment we did not analyse the soil because it was not necessary or helpful.   As we began late it was not possible to supply any sort of fertilization.

3. Pattern of experiment
The test area was divided into four strips, each 4m x 20m = 80m2 in size.  Each strip was sub-divided into four plots each 4m x 5m = 20m2 in size.  I selected sunflowers which grow well in this type of soil and maize which is planted by the local farmers of this area.

4. Irrigation
The “drip irrigation” system from the firm “Salen”, Vienna 21, was chosen.  Normal drinking water from the building was brought to the field via a 1 inch hose, from which 3 half inch hoses were connected.  In order to cut out the possibility of human error, the irrigation equipment was automated with the help of one seven day timer and two 24 hour timers and three magnetic valves.  Seven days after setting up the farm, on 4 June, 1986, the irrigation was put to operation.  The test area (i.e. vibrated and unvibrated areas) was irrigated for 1½ hours from 1.00 a.m. to 2.30 a.m. early in the morning.  After 30 days irrigation took place once a week, also for 1½ hours each time.  On 26th October, 1986, irrigation was suspended.  The water was vibrated at a certain point in the test area.

5. Discussion
Photographs and graphs were  taken at different stages of the plants development, the vibrated plants were greener, more vital and showed significant lead in their growth over the unvibrated plants.  The vibrated water not only activates the growth of the plants, it also enlarges and improves the sprouting potential of the seeds.  For example, the sprouting ratio of sunflowers rated normally between 75% – 80%.  Through the use of vibrated water the ratio was increased to about 95% – 100%.  Because of the high germination ratio and the strong growth of the plants in the vibrated portion of the test area, you can well imagine this caused a severe competition for space, water and light.  Such a condition usually inhibits the growth of plants but despite the density in the vibrated plot, its harvest was about 20-25% better than the control plots.