Marios Kyriazis
Encyclopedia
Marios Kyriazis (born 11 March 1956 in Larnaca
, Cyprus
) is a medical doctor
and gerontologist who helped launch and formalise the concept of ‘Anti-aging medicine’ worldwide. He also contributed to the topic of human biological immortality
and to the movement aiming to abolish involuntary death by ageing.
, he studied Medicine
at the University of Perugia
and then the University of Rome (Italy
). In 1982 he received his medical degree and went on to train as a junior doctor in a variety of hospital posts in Cyprus
, New York
(USA), Sheffield
and Northampton
(UK). In 1987 he gained a Bachelor of Arts
degree and then studied for a Master of Science
degree in gerontology
at King's College London
(1990). He was awarded a Diploma in Geriatric Medicine by the Royal College of Physicians
in 1990, and subsequently became a Chartered Biologist
, Member of the Society of Biology
(UK).
, a non-profit organisation aiming to provide research-based information on healthy ageing to the general public. He wrote on the subject of free radicals and antioxidants, and his paper on ‘Free Radicals and Ageing’ (Care Elderly 1994;6(7):260-262), was the first to address the subject in a formal mainstream UK medical journal. He was the medical columnist for the consumer periodical ‘Yours magazine’ for a period of four years, reaching over one million readers every month. In a series of almost 700 articles, lectures and media appearances worldwide, he discussed the subject of ‘Healthy Ageing and Longevity
’ both for scientists and for the general public.
His work received media attention nationally, and internationally. He has been interviewed widely by the daily and weekly national newspapers, television and radio in the UK on matters related to healthy ageing. He has also featured on other media in several countries.
, beauty products and quick-fix remedies. Instead, he defined antiageing medicine as :
a branch of medical science and clinical medicine, aimed at treating some of the underlying processes of ageing and at alleviating or postponing any age-related ailments, with the ultimate goal of extending the healthy lifespan of humans.
Kyriazis wrote several books, including The Anti-Aging Plan (Element Books 2000 (republished as 'Stay Young Longer', Vega 2001), The Age Defying Cookbook (Lorenz Books 2001, and several editions worldwide), The Look Young Bible (Foulsham 2002), and Anti-Aging Medicines (Watkins 2003, and Italian edition 2007).
He introduced the di-peptide carnosine
as a general antiageing supplement to the lay public.
His two books on this subject were ‘Carnosine and other Elixirs of Youth’ (Watkins Publishing, London 2003, and Chinese edition 2005) and The Cataract Cure, iUniverse
, New York
2005).
Applying the concept of hormesis
on anti-ageing medicine, Kyriazis controversially suggested that leading a stressful, irregular and constantly stimulating lifestyle may be a way of reducing the impact of age-related disfunction. The rationale for this was based on the suggestion that ageing is accompanied by a loss of physiological complexity, and it is thus necessary to increase the amount of external stimulation in order to restore the loss.
Kyriazis also wrote on the subject of Calorie Restriction Mimetics, compounds that reproduce the biological effects of calorie restriction. His first article appeared in 2003. In another paper he described several of these compounds and suggested ways of classifying these.
In the book Mavericks of Medicine he was collectively described as “a creative and controversial thinker who is changing the future of medicine” and, one of those who “are shaping and re-defining the limits of medical thinking”
philosophical school of thought supporting determinism
and a non-dualistic approach to science. In relation to human biological immortality he uses the Stoic notions of reason
and logic
in order to study and modify the process of human evolution
He states that :
"It is nonsensical and counter-intuitive to believe that Nature (or God) created human life only to allow it to end after a definite period of time. A human being, must be able to live indefinitely, or to put it in another way, it should not be allowed to die through ageing. There must be something inside us, that can be modified (perhaps at conception) that will shift the entire death pathway into another, parallel pathway, that will have no predetermined end. This ‘something’ is in fact, the evolutionary impetus to achieve higher levels of complexity in the quickest way possible. There should be a way to enhance this process and accelerate our transition from the process of evolution by natural selection to a post-Darwinian, transhumanist domain where indefinite life-spans are the norm".
Quotations:
"Thinking within the boundaries of hard empirical science is safe and constructive, but these boundaries thwart true enlightenment".
"Vision, ambition and persistence are the tools that lead to human excellence, and thus eventually to indefinite life-spans".
"Mediocrity and routine dampen the intellect and obstruct the process of longevity"
with support from the Welcome Trust. In 2001, in association with the Larnaca
Municipality, he organised a major exhibition on the medical history in Cyprus with the theme 'Medicine in Ancient Kition and Old Larnaca', accompanied by a book on the matter with the same title
.
Following the tradition of other benefactors in the family (such as his grandfather Dr Neoclis Kyriazis
and his great- uncle Damianos Kyriazis
), in 2008 he founded the Kyriazis Medical Museum, a cultural charitable foundation aiming to safe keep old medical items and traditions of Cyprus
, and to educate the public on the Cypriot Medical History.
in real life, Kyriazis set up the Caridi Estate in Liguria
, Italy
, transforming 13 acres (52,609.2 m²) of abandoned scrap-land into an organised estate of vineyards, orchards and woodland. Students and young people from abroad visit the estate in order to work the land and gain life-enhancing skills.
Larnaca
Larnaca, is the third largest city on the southern coast of Cyprus after Nicosia and Limassol. It has a population of 72,000 and is the island's second largest commercial port and an important tourist resort...
, Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
) is a medical doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
and gerontologist who helped launch and formalise the concept of ‘Anti-aging medicine’ worldwide. He also contributed to the topic of human biological immortality
Biological immortality
Biological immortality refers to a stable rate of mortality as a function of chronological age. Some individual cells and entire organisms in some species achieve this state either throughout their existence or after living long enough. This requires that death occur from injury or disease rather...
and to the movement aiming to abolish involuntary death by ageing.
Education
Marios Kyriazis received primary and secondary education in Larnaca (Cyprus), and after military service with the Cypriot National GuardCypriot National Guard
The Cypriot National Guard , also known as the "Greek Cypriot National Guard" or simply as "National Guard", is the combined arms military force of the Republic of Cyprus...
, he studied Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
at the University of Perugia
University of Perugia
University of Perugia is a public-owned university based in Perugia, Italy. It was founded in 1308, as attested by the Bull issued by Pope Clement V certifying the birth of the Studium Generale....
and then the University of Rome (Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
). In 1982 he received his medical degree and went on to train as a junior doctor in a variety of hospital posts in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
(USA), Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
and Northampton
Northampton
Northampton is a large market town and local government district in the East Midlands region of England. Situated about north-west of London and around south-east of Birmingham, Northampton lies on the River Nene and is the county town of Northamptonshire. The demonym of Northampton is...
(UK). In 1987 he gained a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree and then studied for a Master of Science
Master of Science
A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...
degree in gerontology
Gerontology
Gerontology is the study of the social, psychological and biological aspects of aging...
at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
(1990). He was awarded a Diploma in Geriatric Medicine by the Royal College of Physicians
Royal College of Physicians
The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...
in 1990, and subsequently became a Chartered Biologist
Chartered Biologist
The term Chartered Biologist is a British professional qualification in biology. The title "Chartered Biologist" is legally protected in the UK, and Chartered Biologists have the exclusive entitlement to use the designation CBiol after their names....
, Member of the Society of Biology
Society of Biology
The Society of Biology is a charitable organization in the United Kingdom created to advance the interests of biology. Formed in 2010 by the merger of the Biosciences Federation and the Institute of Biology, the Society has some 10,000 individual members and through its corporate specialist member...
(UK).
Medical Work
In 1992 Kyriazis founded the British Longevity SocietyBritish Longevity Society
British Longevity Society is a non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, dedicated at informing the general public about developments in the fields of biogerontology, ageing and life extension.-Background:...
, a non-profit organisation aiming to provide research-based information on healthy ageing to the general public. He wrote on the subject of free radicals and antioxidants, and his paper on ‘Free Radicals and Ageing’ (Care Elderly 1994;6(7):260-262), was the first to address the subject in a formal mainstream UK medical journal. He was the medical columnist for the consumer periodical ‘Yours magazine’ for a period of four years, reaching over one million readers every month. In a series of almost 700 articles, lectures and media appearances worldwide, he discussed the subject of ‘Healthy Ageing and Longevity
Longevity
The word "longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography or known as "long life", especially when it concerns someone or something lasting longer than expected ....
’ both for scientists and for the general public.
His work received media attention nationally, and internationally. He has been interviewed widely by the daily and weekly national newspapers, television and radio in the UK on matters related to healthy ageing. He has also featured on other media in several countries.
Anti-ageing medicine
As a Biogerontologist Kyriazis did not share the view that antiageing medicine comprises cosmeticsCosmetics
Cosmetics are substances used to enhance the appearance or odor of the human body. Cosmetics include skin-care creams, lotions, powders, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail and toe nail polish, eye and facial makeup, towelettes, permanent waves, colored contact lenses, hair colors, hair sprays and...
, beauty products and quick-fix remedies. Instead, he defined antiageing medicine as :
a branch of medical science and clinical medicine, aimed at treating some of the underlying processes of ageing and at alleviating or postponing any age-related ailments, with the ultimate goal of extending the healthy lifespan of humans.
Kyriazis wrote several books, including The Anti-Aging Plan (Element Books 2000 (republished as 'Stay Young Longer', Vega 2001), The Age Defying Cookbook (Lorenz Books 2001, and several editions worldwide), The Look Young Bible (Foulsham 2002), and Anti-Aging Medicines (Watkins 2003, and Italian edition 2007).
He introduced the di-peptide carnosine
Carnosine
Carnosine is a dipeptide of the amino acids beta-alanine and histidine. It is highly concentrated in muscle and brain tissues....
as a general antiageing supplement to the lay public.
His two books on this subject were ‘Carnosine and other Elixirs of Youth’ (Watkins Publishing, London 2003, and Chinese edition 2005) and The Cataract Cure, iUniverse
IUniverse
iUniverse, founded in October 1999, is a self-publishing company, co-located with AuthorHouse in Bloomington, Indiana. Publishers Weekly notes iUniverse has partnerships with The Writers' Club and the Writer's Digest .-History:iUniverse initially focused on business-to-consumer print-on-demand...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
2005).
Applying the concept of hormesis
Hormesis
Hormesis is the term for generally favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors. A pollutant or toxin showing hormesis thus has the opposite effect in small doses as in large doses...
on anti-ageing medicine, Kyriazis controversially suggested that leading a stressful, irregular and constantly stimulating lifestyle may be a way of reducing the impact of age-related disfunction. The rationale for this was based on the suggestion that ageing is accompanied by a loss of physiological complexity, and it is thus necessary to increase the amount of external stimulation in order to restore the loss.
Kyriazis also wrote on the subject of Calorie Restriction Mimetics, compounds that reproduce the biological effects of calorie restriction. His first article appeared in 2003. In another paper he described several of these compounds and suggested ways of classifying these.
In the book Mavericks of Medicine he was collectively described as “a creative and controversial thinker who is changing the future of medicine” and, one of those who “are shaping and re-defining the limits of medical thinking”
Thoughts on ageing and mortality (ELPIs Theory)
Following a Kuhnian line of thinking, Kyriazis uses a post-positivist approach in his discourse, nevertheless acknowledging a belief in objective scientific truth, the value of experimental methodology and that of ontological realism. In addition, he belongs to the StoicSTOIC
STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...
philosophical school of thought supporting determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
and a non-dualistic approach to science. In relation to human biological immortality he uses the Stoic notions of reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
and logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
in order to study and modify the process of human evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
He states that :
"It is nonsensical and counter-intuitive to believe that Nature (or God) created human life only to allow it to end after a definite period of time. A human being, must be able to live indefinitely, or to put it in another way, it should not be allowed to die through ageing. There must be something inside us, that can be modified (perhaps at conception) that will shift the entire death pathway into another, parallel pathway, that will have no predetermined end. This ‘something’ is in fact, the evolutionary impetus to achieve higher levels of complexity in the quickest way possible. There should be a way to enhance this process and accelerate our transition from the process of evolution by natural selection to a post-Darwinian, transhumanist domain where indefinite life-spans are the norm".
Quotations:
"Thinking within the boundaries of hard empirical science is safe and constructive, but these boundaries thwart true enlightenment".
"Vision, ambition and persistence are the tools that lead to human excellence, and thus eventually to indefinite life-spans".
"Mediocrity and routine dampen the intellect and obstruct the process of longevity"
Medical History
In 1995 Kyriazis created the Historical Medical Equipment Society (http://hmes.org.uk), which aims to study old medical instruments related to the history of medicine in the UK. The first public lecture was given at the University of LondonUniversity of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
with support from the Welcome Trust. In 2001, in association with the Larnaca
Larnaca
Larnaca, is the third largest city on the southern coast of Cyprus after Nicosia and Limassol. It has a population of 72,000 and is the island's second largest commercial port and an important tourist resort...
Municipality, he organised a major exhibition on the medical history in Cyprus with the theme 'Medicine in Ancient Kition and Old Larnaca', accompanied by a book on the matter with the same title
.
Following the tradition of other benefactors in the family (such as his grandfather Dr Neoclis Kyriazis
Neoclis Kyriazis
Neoklis Kyriazis b.1877 Nicosia, Cyprus – d. August 1956 was a historian and member of the National Council of Cyprus who made significant contributions to the history of Cyprus. He was also a medical doctor.-Family:...
and his great- uncle Damianos Kyriazis
Damianos Kyriazis
Damianos Kyriazis was a Greek politician, industrialist, collector, and benefactor from a Kissos family, in Mt Pelion, who left a significant legacy of important historical documents.-Family:...
), in 2008 he founded the Kyriazis Medical Museum, a cultural charitable foundation aiming to safe keep old medical items and traditions of Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, and to educate the public on the Cypriot Medical History.
Other interests
Partly in an attempt to diversify and apply the concept of hormesisHormesis
Hormesis is the term for generally favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors. A pollutant or toxin showing hormesis thus has the opposite effect in small doses as in large doses...
in real life, Kyriazis set up the Caridi Estate in Liguria
Liguria
Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and good food.-Geography:...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, transforming 13 acres (52,609.2 m²) of abandoned scrap-land into an organised estate of vineyards, orchards and woodland. Students and young people from abroad visit the estate in order to work the land and gain life-enhancing skills.