As a dietary supplement, it is thought to have antioxidant properties that speed healing and slow aging.

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Meanwhile, studies in animals dating back to the 1980s show caloric restriction can extend lifespan and slow aging.

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Guarente feels that drugs that target SIRT1 might slow aging and have wide effects on other, more testable diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.

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"This is the first compound that has been shown to slow aging when initiated in middle age, " ways Matt Kaeberlein, a researcher at the University of Washington.

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" Adds Donald Ingram, who studies for the National Institute on Aging whether ultralow-calorie diets slow aging in monkeys:"I think increasing maximum life span by 25 to 30 years is possible.

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Guarente and Kenyon are among the co-founders of Elixir Pharmaceuticals , a startup that hopes to turn its work into medicines to slow aging and fight a litany of diseases from cancer to heart disease and diabetes.

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Researchers at the University of Texas argue that older people can slow the aging process through regular exercise.

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Longevity genes appear to slow down the aging process by making cells and tissues more stress-resistant, better able to withstand the inevitable environmental insults that accumulate over a lifetime from bad diet, inflammation, radiation, genetic mutations and toxic chemical by-products called free radicals.

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Throughout the trial, John Dowd seemed like a great aging elephant, slow and ponderous but still capable of inflicting damage.

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