Let’s formulate the task of life extension slightly differently. Something like this…How can we extend sex appeal?
Gyms and beauty salons are in charge of this question now. There is some success, but it’s mostly superficial. Plastic surgery only masks, but doesn’t delay the processes of aging.
Expanding sex appeal is a complex task. Its aspects include both beauty and the activity of the brain. To be sexually attractive we have to be smart and fun. One cannot solve the problem of dementia with makeup.
We have to be in an excellent physical shape to be sexually attractive, but also things should be running smoothly with our hormonal regulation.
The task of extending the period of sex appeal is extremely science-intensive. It is not only the Viagra, but a complex impact on the whole organism. It is obvious that molecular biology is responsible for sex in the modern world.
What do we know so far? Biological studies of various aspects of sexuality are on very different stages.
In some areas, like rejuvenating skin and muscle, science is on the verge of inventing effective therapies.
In other areas, like rejuvenating the brain, for example, the first fundamental discoveries have been done just very recently. I’d like to mention several “growth points” that may become key in extending sex appeal.
1. Creating artificial stem cell niches for skin rejuvenation. Interestingly, stem cell niches can be used for stimulating hair growth.
2. Studying the possibility to rejuvenate muscle satellite cells to fight sarcopenia and restore muscle tone and strength.
3. Identifying the systemic factors that facilitate rejuvenation in parabiosis (that’s when two animals share their blood systems). This model demonstrated how not only the muscle, but also the nervous system could be improved.
4. Hormonal regulation, but not using the hormone replacement therapy, but rather stimulating the endocrine glands directly.
5. The impact of diet on health.
I’d like to highlight a very powerful solution in improving sexuality – it’s gene therapy.
Right now many issues are being dealt with in this area ranging from the choice of nucleic acid intracellular delivery systems to increasing safety. However, I’m quite confident that the biological nature of human being will be radically improved and you cannot avoid using gene therapy for these applications.
Rejuvenating hypothalamus and delivering telomerase gene into various tissues get the most attention when we are talking about extending sexuality.
I’d like to note that there will be an explosive growth in the area of rejuvenating technologies soon. Out of 200+ papers, published in the Nature Journal on the topic of rejuvenation, more than 100 date within the last 2.5 years.
I am planning to write several posts about interesting research and trends in the area of extending sex appeal.
Maria Konovalenko 
This might be an effective tactic in a world that cares more about looks and sex than about life itself, but aren’t you concerned about fanning the flames of stupidity? Though we are driven without choice, as are the lowest beasts and even plants, to have sex at great personal expense, it seems that elevating this drive into something to be vigorously pursued is a capitulation and reinforcement of backward consciousness.
I am not concerned at all. Boosting sex appeal is on the minds of all people and is already vigorously pursued. The only thing that I am saying is that the most effective way to do that is via increasing longevity.
I am surprised at Walt’s response. I emphatically support your aim to the point that I thought it was self evident. Of course sex appeal through rejuvenation…and it is a most honest and effective route to such.
Let’s compare how many times your sex DRIVE (not a chosen thing) has made you feel good, versus how many times it has made you feel frustrated or out of control. Even as someone who has been relatively lucky in the sex/looks/money lottery, I know the answer very well, and could rest my case on that alone, but let’s look a bit further.
Sexuality is something we are stuck with, and make the best of. Like food. Like death. Why not write an essay on Endless Eating, or Endless Dying? A better article would be titled Endless Creativity, or at least Endless Intimacy because these titles point a way forward to a brilliant future, not backward to endless gratification of our instinctive drives.
You have valid points in line with non attachment and seeking a more mature or sophisticated language. I am clearly more hedonist/attached, either way yours and other’s points are bringing out discomfort which is something for us all to figure out how to communicate about. If, Maria, is taking a pubic voice to engender more support for what, attending this space, I presume we all want then what would be a best conciliatory language appealing to this spectrum of potential interpretations…you mention and I support uses of “creativity”, “intimacy” and other slightly more nuanced language… is “vitality” in line? I would suggest that this is potentially nontrivial and somewhat related to the ongoing culture wars in the US…that said, controversy can also be good marketing.
Endless Vitality? Not bad! My latest dream title was Endless Love.
It is noteworthy that if you look at the various FB sites surrounding longevity and especially transhumanism, where a good 80% of the members appear to be male, you can hardly go a month without some enthused articled about sexbots. There’s your endless sex, eh? The boys can turn them off when they are done, and take a nap, while the girls can turn on their “discussion of feelings and unfinished chores” program. Hopefully, there is another robot to clean them in the morning. Ewww!
Bad tasting jokes aside, the perspective of the endlessly pursued (beautiful Maria must know this space) and the endlessly pursuing (most guys) is not quite the same. Ironically, neither species has near as much sex as they would wish, because of a thousand cultural and medical concerns. A gorgeous and brilliant woman abstractly tempting us with endless sex in a sexual desert is rather like The Donald, surrounded by bodyguards, advocating endless yachting to street people in Harlem.
There’s ample interest that sexuality and enhancing one’s own sex appeal is endlessly fascinating to most humans. If that fact can be used to advance interest in and support for life extension, then I’m all for it.
Sorry, meant to say ample evidence.
If we are denying human intimacy as sublime what are the lofty other aims…given our multicellular existence I could make an argument that most if not all alternative pursuits are means of just the same… what is intelligence for anyway if not for mate discrimination…as you are moralizing intelligence… I would suggest most good and bad science is really just like a sort of sexual signaling… one of many human equivalents of peacocking and we best believe better health => better brains and probably also more sex hormones will mean more motivation to take all types of creative and intellectual risks.
Let the animals worry about never ending sex. Let the enlightened ponder on everlasting consciousness.
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I am all in favor and sex is what sells as we say,..and most products clearly fail to deliver despite their continued success. We presuppose success which is a marketing advantage. Of course if we have more time we also have more time for Tantra etc…ideally with the cardiovascular ability to maintain. What is the major change? A wording shift from “health” or “longevity” to “virility” or “beauty” … for most people health and sexual fertility are nearly synonymous. You might say this is not expressed when lay people think of living longer as it seems today….is this your emphasis?
Exactly, when I say life extension people immediately think of extending the frailty for longer, which it definitely is not about. This is another emphasis that I would like to bring to the topic.
Roger….guess I have some sort of insiders bias. The science and appealing speech is all well and good…much better than other approaches, but from a marketing perspective this community needs real transformation stories and spokes people…older risk takers who actually change themselves or deny aging. Someone (ideally a public woman) who succeeded with a BioViva or related AAV therapy service to visibly “get hot” would pretty much be like a singularity event…Suzanne Summers is probably already in line to be that (public ) person… As a leading indicators I look to Bill Andrews or Michael Fossil as likely first men to legitimately de-age…looking forward to your upcoming posts.
This is very true. I write about age intervention methods and people’s knee jerk reaction is often predicated by the presumption that living longer means living longer drooling on yourself in a wheel chair, chin on chest, TV blaring.
So, I emphasize “bending” or “rectangularizing” the age curve, and in fact predominately present such a curve on my home page. Rather than the typical age curve wherein you’re pretty much healthy till middle age and then health starts curving down till death, “bending” the age curve simply means maintaining health right up to death.
Who doesn’t want that!
And, in fact, as Ray Kurzweil would say, we have the means to bend the age curve w/ currently available lifestyle choices and interventions… what he calls “Bridge One”, the goal of which is to bring us to “Bridge Two” where nanobots and other technologies and reverse various aspects of aging… leading, alas, to “Bridge Three”, the merging of (wo)man and machine — eternal life.
Maybe.
I’m wondering if there’s a conspiracy regarding stem cells and mammary gland hypertrophy big breath without implants. How would society function? I will leave it at that while we are on this topic. Thanks
I had no “sex appeal” as a young man to begin with, so the sexual aspects of my aging haven’t made much practical difference.
When popularizing adult gene therapy, I have found that it needs to be made very clear that this technology DOES NOT affect the germ-line (i.e. future generations). Also, you have a very good point that the promotion of adult gene therapy ought to be as much cosmetic as health because of the inordinate amount of money the average person spends on that category of consumer spending.
Let me add that BioViva already has a tested adult gene therapy technology, so we only need to find human genes that when “tweaked” will produce beautiful results. Such a treatment (wo)men would kill for, and would dramatically popularize a major element of Transhumanism (i.e. morphological freedom).
“BioViva is a new company offering experimental medical services outside US borders. Their team includes that a lab that provides genetically modified viruses with a gene payload, made to order. (This has now become a reliable and predictable technology.) A doctor who has experience with experimental gene therapy, and who had the courage to experiment on himself five years ago, with good outcome thus far. Sites in Colombia and Mexico where doctors will administer therapies for which there is not yet FDA approval. Most important, a Scientific Advisory Board that includes two of the most prominent, senior biochemists who developed the science of telomerase in the 1990s and before. They are Bill Andrews and Michael Fossel. What they offer is gene therapy with hTERT and a proprietary myostatin inhibitor “in the same family with GDF-11,” according to CEO Elizabeth Parrish.”
I am mindful of the “Wandering Jew” trilogy of novels about immortals, where one of the themes is “unendurable pleasure infinitely prolonged” or some such phrase.
The contrary is chemotherapy, where if the patient can survive weeks of the paroxysm of disgust (ie vomiting) then his cancer may be cured. It is interesting that the universe doesn’t seem to support therapies of unending pleasure… Or maybe male “power over other men” doctors can’t contemplate.
Here is an interesting related article that was published recently: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/07/genetic-switch-determines-longevity-in-animals.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Today-s-Headlines-MERS-Aging-and-AR-Conference&utm_campaign=eclips072815
This implies that sexual maturity itself (or the biochemical changes involved) initiates the decline of aging by shutting off the animal’s cell stress protective mechanisms.
That makes sense, because according to the actuarial tables, ten year old children, at the age right before puberty, have the lowest probability of dying. The probability increases monotonically every year thereafter.
People with high levels of cognitive function seem most highly interested in enhancing their cognitive function. So it should not be too surprising that someone (you) with high sex appeal should be interested in enhancing sex appeal. But as you indicate, sexual health is an aspect of healthy longevity. In Robert Ettinger’s (sexist titled) MAN INTO SUPERMAN he speculated on transhumanist enhancement of sexual function (“supersex”, chapter 5 http://www.cryonics.org/images/uploads/misc/ManIntoSuperman.pdf). Saul Kent wrote a book on FUTURE SEX and the life-extensionist biogerontologist Alex Comfort was most famous for his book THE JOY OF SEX. Alcor Board Member Michael Riskin is a sex therapist who co-authored a book on simultaneous orgasm with his wife (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0897932218/). There are plenty of life-extensionists whose joy of life is motivated by a desire for joy of sex, among the many other joys of being alive. I am somewhat resigned to being an old man, but have hope of sexual rejuvenation. A bonus of being sex-deprived is that I have avoided cytomegalovirus, and I am (as I have always been) paranoid about the health risks of sexual activity. I have hope for future medicine to eliminate all sexually-transmitted diseases along with achieving full rejuvenation — to say nothing of enhancement of all aspects of health (including sexual) far above what is currently “normal”.
Assuming that you could rejuvenate people some day, including their sexual functioning, I don’t see how you can “de-experience” them. Sexual experience has the paradoxical effect of enriching men, at least up to a point, while impoverishing women.
This is a little off topic, but I will soon graduate as an engineer. I found out about efforts to stop ageing and transhumanism a few months ago and I am thinking on how to participate.
I want anyone to have the opportunity to live longer, ideally as long as we want. My parents are 50 years old so I am hoping there is still time. I am wondering if there is a way for me to help out in this effort? Is there an open source project or something else that would allow for remote work? Is there a MOOC on ageing 101, website on material to learn the necessary basics to understand the problem and potential solutions? What can be done to speed up the process of finding a solution to ageing, either by assisting researchers or participating directly?
If there is no direct way for me to assist I will probably go into automation with the aim of freeing up more time in people’s lives so more people can help with this and other problems overall.
Hope we reach the future we want
I think the most common objections to the idea of sexual enhancement (by increasing drive, pleasure or sex appeal) stem from three basic misunderstandings:
1. That there is some kind of a conflict between sex and intellect, and that we can, as in Freudian theory, either indulge in the gratification of “primitive drives” or “sublimate” them into higher pursuits. Which is, of course nonsense.
Generally, the happier and more motivated one is, the greater sex drive one has. Diminished desire is correlated to depression , not to intelligence or interest in science.
Intellectuals dedicated to work and study can be less sexually active, but it doesn’t mean their drive is weaker or that they don’t fantasize. We all have limited energy, different abilities and opportunities. It takes a lot of effort and time to find a mate and build a relationship. Sometimes, people have problems of psycho-social nature and consequently suffer from frustration and loneliness.
2. That the same problems and diseases that plague human sex lives in the present will continue to do so in the future.
Hedonic engineering can potentially eliminate or greatly reduce all the emotional barriers to having a great sexual experience. With psychiatric disorders cured and people brought to much higher levels of well-being, interaction and romance will be easier for everyone. STD-s will also be eliminated in the future.
3. That sex will always remain an interpersonal affair.
Today, how much sex you have depends on the willingness of another human being. Men typically want more sex and are attracted to women physically, while women want less sex and are attracted to men’s abilities and possessions.
Historically, female body has always been a prized “value” that men fought and competed for. Such struggle is hard wired in our biology – men have evolved to be performers, women to be judges. Therefore, only men can be “losers” in this game, and there is quite a large number of them.
Things will change, however, in men’s favor. Imagine ultra-realistic sex androids in the shape of beautiful women, custom designed to satisfy individual preferences, endowed with powerful AI and capable of fulfilling any fantasy. Such technology will become reality, saving men from their dependency on women. If one can have a perfect “sexual object” in his bed whenever he wants, there is no reason to look at real women this way any more. Interaction between sexes can become more friendly and relaxed, without tension and sexual pressure.
Rather than physical robots, it is worth checking out total immersion virtual reality. There is a lot about virtual reality on
I still think that a human companion of the opposite sex would be better on account of the fact that really there is more to life than just sex. But neureformer is right in his analysis of the differences between men and women, and maybe if I wasn’t in my 70s I would think differently.
Incidentally, (this is a bit off topic) all this fuss over the dentist and Cecil the lion does also indicate the differences between men and women. Men are the predatory sex, and as the Marquis de Sade observed, power over another man is the best aphrodisiac there is.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3180682/QUENTIN-LETTS-fear-dentists-natural-born-killers.html
Research has suggested that both sexes are more willing to accept pain from a woman on account of the mother child relationship, This suggests that most dentists should be women, not men.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/5775.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3461591.stm
Another important issue,apart from enhancing our sexuality,is to cure sexual dysfunctions.E.g. Post SSRi Sexual dysfunction is a very dangerous issue.
Has anyone experience with this?Are there any successful treatments on the horizon?
thanks
Beauty or sex appeal is eternity ( Totality ) gazing at itself in a mirror ( Neural Circuitry or Biological circuitry ) . Humans are the eternity as well the mirror . Beauty is all that exists . Rest all is form in the making . Hence beauty or sex appeal has nothing to do with biological structures as they are shaped by the energy that creates them . Harmonize the templates of bioenergy and material biology will form accordingly . Form follows frequency . Antimatter shapes matter .
Also consider shared experience, similar mental outlook, a similar sense of wonder, similar desire for discovery. The are so many more things than just shape or form to make a satisfying relationship, even if shape or form is the trigger that starts it. Maybe in this age of the dating websites, initial shape recognition based on genetic preferences will become less important.
Humans are energy beings . All relationships are at energetic levels first before the mental constructs come into picture . Unfortunately senses overrule all wisdom leading to relationship decisions which are not sustainable . If we understand space time , then matter based relationships cannot survive without enough space considerations . By space it means that a human is 100 trillion celled organism with 100 trillion atoms in each cell which have 100 trillion Planck units in one proton cannot overrule the 99.99999 % of space that they are made of . Sustainable relations are based upon mutual harmony and coherence of existence . Unfortunately humans get this wisdom only when they are out of sensory veils .
I love it. Appeal to what motivates people the most.