Hunger of Life ... Fountain of Youth Part II

Hunger of Life .....................................................................Shrikant Soman
Fountain of Youth - Part Two
My Experiments with Life

The Scientists have been able to extend the life span of a worm named Caenorhabditis Elegans (CE) by 6 times over. As against the normal life span of CE of 24 days, the Scientists were able to make the worm survive for 124 days. If we were able to apply the same technique to the humans, we would live for 500 to 600 years ! This feat was achieved by altering the signaling pathways for a protein called Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1). This same protein controls the longevity in humans. This is an extreme case of treating human body like a machine – completely and totally different and independent from our own Self. This is horrible – simply horrible. I am not talking of any ethical or moral issues involved. If we were able, with the help of science alone, to increase our life span without any corresponding life system development, it would drive us to commit suicides, get killed by accidents or kill each other in anarchy. To give you a simple example, consider the case of a car. If we were to produce a car which has an exceptionally high speed of say 400 km per hour, and if we, who are used to drive at 200 km per hour start driving the car, how far can we go ? We are already having cars which give much higher than even this speed of 400 kms. But for these cars to drive safely, we have racing car drivers and specially made racing tracks. The scientific research in all directions, including longevity research, is very helpful and good part of human development. However, if other part of our life systems does not cope with this research, it will cause stress and strains and will cause more damage than good. It will be like a very fast racing car with wrong alignment of wheels.
Interestingly, the subsequent research on CE has revealed that in much the same way that we humans do, the CE worm has sagging muscles and a growing middle as it ages. The survival does not automatically bring with it robust life system. Even if we assume that with some scientific breakthrough in future, we are able to have good muscle strength of CE worm even at its old age, still, for us the humans, the basic problem of improving the level of our life system needs to be tackled.
We need to develop our life system in a robust and healthy manner in all its aspects. The joy of life is an integral part of our life system. Without joy, what is left is only the survival. Even if we do not fall physically sick and live for say 200 years, it will still be a sick life nonetheless, unless there is a joy in life. Joy in life is in the beginning, it is in the middle and it is in the end – it is everywhere. The life of cells give a very interesting insight to the life system on a larger level.
A very important process involved in digesting the food is called ‘metabolism’. It is commonly understood that metabolism indicates uptake of nutrients from the blood and their conversion to energy usable for cellular activities. Actually metabolism involves two diverse processes – anabolism and catabolism. Anabolism is constructive metabolism. It builds up tissues by the construction of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Anabolism is destructive metabolism. It causes the chemical breakdown of complex substances to produce energy as well as waste matter. This process of metabolism is present in our whole life system. It holds the key to good health as well as to longevity. The commonly held belief that lack of sufficient nutrients in our food causes malnutrition is absolutely wrong. It hold good only in about 5 % of the cases. In 95 % of the cases, the problem lies not in the insufficient amount of nutrients in our daily food, but in the lack of our capacity to effectively metabolise the food intake. The effectiveness of metabolism depends, among many other things, our love and respect for food and for life in general. Sri Anand Yoga has yogic practices to increase the metabolic effectiveness by many fold. It is founded on thankfulness for all the players in our Universe – our parents, the persons cooking the meal, farmers, the Mother Earth, our House and this beautiful life in general. It is powered by our ‘hunger’ for food. We need to have the same intensity of hunger as the hardworking poor man earning just enough to feed himself and his family. It is made joyful by the blessing of the food we eat. Eating food is a very important part of the life system of Sri Anand Yoga.
Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is a key molecule that powers our cellular activities. Cells produce ATP from glucose and glucose is derived from sugar (carbohydrates). Another key hormone is insulin. It influences the glucose used by the cells. It serve s as the key that opens the cell doors to the sugar. Metabolic processes involving glucose and insulin greatly influence life span. It is a paradox that while ATP is absolutely essential for cellular life, the abundance of it is also the cause of cell degeneration. We need to have ATP just in right quantity. The caloric restriction reduces the supply of glucose to the cells. It helps in keeping ATP in check. However, in Sri Anand Yoga, we believe that the culprit is not caloric abundance but our inability to make good of the calories available to us. Any excess amount of calories need to be thrown out of our bodily system. If we are not able to do this, the science wrongly advises us to eat less food. Overeating is certainly bad. But under-eating is equally bad. The ‘right’ quantity and type of food is not decided by any ‘table of nutrients and their calorific values’ and the ‘calorie burning’ activities. It is naturally and spontaneously decided by our body if we treat food as an integral part of our life system.
Here we again come to the black sheep ‘free radicals’. Much of the free radicals are produced by the ATP making machinery of the cells. All this leads us to the absolutely absurd and stupid hypothesis that the food we eat is the culprit. If we have this attitude towards food, how on earth can we improve our life system ? It is certainly true that meat, excessive oils, aerated soft drinks, junk food etc are bad for health. However, there is no point in making a fetish of the ‘nutrition’ theory of food.
It is interesting to learn as to how the calorie restriction is supposed to help us. The reduced amount of the food intake is taken by the body as a signal of famine. The cells then shift their gear to self-preservation mode. Its main focus now is only in cell maintenance and repair. The other major activity of reproduction is neglected. This way the cells are able to make the maximum use of the scarce energy. This hypothesis of ‘virtual famine’ in cell world is confirmed by the production of hormones that protect cells from excess heat and other stresses – similar in real life when actual famine happens. In Sri Anand Yoga, we ask the question – why the hell we have to ‘simulate famine’ in order to live longer ? Are we ‘cursed’ by the abundance of food ? The master key to this paradox lies in looking beyond ‘mathematics’ of ‘calorific values’ and into the ‘life values’ of food and everything else that this life offers us.
Similarly, insulin is essential for the cells to convert glucose into energy. Insufficient insulin will deprive us of the sufficient energy and excessive sugar in the blood. Paradoxically, the same insulin can contribute to heart disease and to undesirable cell proliferation – cancer. It is an interesting topic as to the real role of insulin in our health and life system. It will be covered sometime later. At this stage we just mention that in Sri Anand Yoga, we look beyond physical process of insulin and into the spiritual aspect of it.
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