Puhh, this is a heavy topic. Since years I am aware of the fact that biestmilch is used as anti-aging substance. We even picked up some Hollywood stars (I don’t remember their names, because this is not exactly my life focus ;-)) applying biestmilch to their skin with their daily cosmetic treatment.

We at Biestmilch.com decided not to bring biestmilch into the anti-aging territory. Too little knowledge we have about the underlying processes of aging, too many anti-aging strategies are dominated by theories and even ideologies. Most of them are more or less spin-offs of Darwins evolution and natural selection theory. Science tries since round about 140 years to subordinate all biological phenomena known to us under these 2 paradigms. Science makes this split in many ways, one example is to differentiate between non-aging and aging creatures (senescense). Sciences of course ask for the cause and for the sense of ageing. The answers given are sparse and in parts absurd, overloaded with theories, and thus the range of assumptions wide: e.g. is ageing in the genes, is it the acumulation of damages during a life time that finally kills us or is it the fault of altered genetic traits? Is it reproduction that controls the aging process? Is there a deeper sense in aging or is it simply a defect? And so on and so on…

Excuse me, I stop this nonsense now. I got into this turmoil today because I decided to write my monthly biestmilch ciruclar about the aging process and those events in our lifes that accelerate this process, and about approaches that could eventually slow it down. I opened the Pandora box as you can see.

Here a snippet from the box: the rockfish* (Sebastes aleutians). The oldest fish found on dinner tables was 205 years old. And interestingly enough this creature seemed to be still young inspite age. The fish was not weak or sick, its vigor and reproductive capacity not reduced, no decline in strength and agility with age was observed, amazing.

Is it really only a predator attack, fighting enemies, an accident, a contracted disease or food shortages that finally kill the guy? Or is it simply growing old that much slowlier that our observation span is too short to detect the process of aging, but gives us the impression of a condition (state)?

More details the rockfish species…

Emerging Area of Aging Research: Long-lived Animals with "Negligible Senescence" http://www.agelessanimals.org/

AgelessAnimals.org is a research effort started in 1995 by Director John C. Guerin. The project’s focus is understanding how long-lived animals are so successful at retarding aging, and applying this knowledge to extend the healthy lifespan of humans. These animals include rockfish, turtles and whales, all documented to live 200 years or longer without showing signs of aging.

Focus rockfish:

In 1997 the project received data from the Alaska Fish and Game on randomly sampled Yelloweye rockfish, commercially caught off of Sitka, Alaska. The charts they provided showed that 16% of the fish going to people’s dinner tables were 50 years of age or older, with several over 100 years old! With the knowledge that long-lived animals of this age were commercially available, rockfish became the major research effort of the AgelessAnimals project.
In a very intriguing analysis, the project’s Fish Ecologist, Gregor M. Cailliet, determined that rockfish have both short-lived and long-lived members in the same genus (Cailliet 2001). He found that maximum rockfish longevity ranges in age from 12 years for the calico rockfish to 205 years for the rougheye rockfish. Future studies on the project will compare genetic and biochemical measurements between short-lived and long-lived rockfish.