[ExI] Increase Longevity And Intelligence With Boosted Klotho Levels

[James Clement]

According to Louie Helm, of Rockstar Research, taking "activated vitamin D"
drugs, like Calcitriol
<http://mandrillapp.com/track/click.php?u=30248609&id=3ff86b1313b048fc92f0aa7a8a402d2c&url=http%3A%2F%2Frockstarresearch.com%2F%3Femail_id%3D11%26user_id%3D848%26urlpassed%3DaHR0cDovL2VuLndpa2lwZWRpYS5vcmcvd2lraS9DYWxjaXRyaW9s%26controller%3Dstats%26action%3Danalyse%26wysija-page%3D1%26wysijap%3Dsubscriptions&url_id=4a43edd23d9ab31f6e86f6461a153c9a2dbf575a>
 or Paricalcitol
<http://mandrillapp.com/track/click.php?u=30248609&id=3ff86b1313b048fc92f0aa7a8a402d2c&url=http%3A%2F%2Frockstarresearch.com%2F%3Femail_id%3D11%26user_id%3D848%26urlpassed%3DaHR0cDovL2VuLndpa2lwZWRpYS5vcmcvd2lraS9QYXJpY2FsY2l0b2w%253D%26controller%3Dstats%26action%3Danalyse%26wysija-page%3D1%26wysijap%3Dsubscriptions&url_id=4a43edd23d9ab31f6e86f6461a153c9a2dbf575a>
could
give a person the increased longevity and ~6% IQ boost that the Klotho gene
provides to people lucky enough to have the "GT variant." Anyone going to
try this?


Here's the article:

Increase Longevity And Intelligence With Boosted Klotho Levels

<http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2814%2900287-3>
 Original story
<http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2814%2900287-3>

Researchers recently found that a single gene
<http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2814%2900287-3> may
account for as much as 3% of total variation in human intelligence
<http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21601809-potent-source-genetic-variation-cognitive-ability-has-just-been>.
If this result holds, it suggests some obvious strategies for developing
new kinds of cognitive enhancers since it implies that a single protein
(klotho) may be responsible for as much as a 6 point IQ boost.

To put this in perspective, there were previously no other single-point
genes believed to account for even a 1 point IQ gain. And a 6 point IQ
boost is almost the difference between the average farm laborer and the
average elementary school teacher
<http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/ssris-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/>.
So this could be a big deal.

And the longevity benefit of klotho
<http://www.pnas.org/content/99/2/856.full> is even more well studied and
potentially larger than the cognitive benefit. For example, when
researchers checked to see how common the KL-VS gene is at different ages,
they found that by age 79+,there’s a 1.57x odds ratio in favor of having
this gene despite there being a 4x odds ratio *against* having it at birth
<http://genomics.senescence.info/longevity/gene.php?id=KL>. Klotho gets
this effect by being extremely cardio-protective via a unique pathway that
helps regulate blood calcium levels much better as folks age
<http://www.nature.com/ki/journal/v82/n12/full/ki2012338a.html>.

So how can you benefit from this? For one, you can check 23andMe right now
and look up if you have a functional copy of KL-VS
<https://www.23andme.com/you/explorer/snp/?snp_name=Rs9536314>. Either click
the link to 23andMe
<https://www.23andme.com/you/explorer/snp/?snp_name=Rs9536314> or check
your raw data file <https://www.23andme.com/you/download/>: look for
Rs9536314 and if it’s GT, you’re already one of the lucky folks (1 in 5)
with high klotho levels and potentially boosted longevity/cognition.

But what if you’re TT or GG? That’s where it gets interesting. All the articles
recently published about klotho
<http://clubhousenews.com/anti-aging-drug-boosts-intelligence/> are
repeating boilerplate from the researchers about how “someday maybe someone
will find a drug to boost klotho levels”. Well, since Google Scholar
<http://scholar.google.com/> and Library Genesis
<http://gen.lib.rus.ec/> exist,
that day is today and that researcher is me.

It turns out that lots of people get their klotho levels increased as a
side-effect of taking prescription forms of “activated” vitamin D
<http://www.nature.com/ki/journal/v82/n12/full/ki2012338a.html> (VDRAs
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511664/>) for chronic kidney
disease <http://www.pdiconnect.com/content/28/Supplement_2/S33.full.pdf> (CKD).
But there’s no reason to wait until you’re almost dying and need dialysis
to start benefiting from this knowledge. Instead, this implies that taking
something like 0.25 mcg/day <http://www.drugs.com/dosage/calcitriol.html>
 of Calcitriol <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcitriol> or 1 mcg/day
<http://www.drugs.com/dosage/zemplar.html> of Paricalcitol
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paricalcitol>right now for someone without
the beneficial KL-VS variant of the KL gene might actually give a huge
longevity and IQ boost. The intelligence boost is so large, that if this
new study is right and the effects of klotho are at all acute, you should
be able to measure it directly with something like quantified mind
<http://quantified-mind.com/> or perhaps even just raw introspection.
Hopefully lots of researchers follows up on the most obvious implications
of these two currently unconnected research findings and investigate
activated vitamin D as a way to boost longevity and cognition in the 80% of
the population lacking functional, klotho producing KL-VS genes.



James Clement
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