While a monolithic fountain of youth may never come to pass, I wouldn’t be in this line of business if I actually thought that humanity was incapable of overcoming the deadly and terrible problems of aging.  Instead, it’s my suspicion that humans will come to find that “aging” as we think of it today is really a conglomerate of natural and un-natural processes acting against healthy bodily function… in other words, what we refer to as “aging” turns out to be a many headed beast.

Most of us can agree that sugary foods are delicious.  I’ll be the first to tell you that I particularly enjoy the two sodas Big Red and Ale-8-1 (it’s a Kentucky thing probably).  Perhaps you remember my previous discussion of the large-cola breakfast regime that first encouraged me to buy bigger clothes, then led me to develop the first Longbar recipe.  And while I can almost always enjoy a good sweet snack, it’s rewarding to know that my conviction to generally avoid sweets and eat healthier is supported by the findings of researchers.

Physorg.com has an interesting report on the findings of scientists from the University of Alabama Center for Aging and Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  They studied normal and precancerous human lung cells. Over a few weeks, the cells were grown in an environment with normal or reduced levels of glucose. According to the article, the researchers have discovered a connection between calorie reduction and extended lifespan of normal human cells.  Their findings indicate that between the two groups, normal cells given less glucose were able to live longer and many of the precancerous cells died off as compared to cells which were given normal amounts of glucose.  They also found that lower glucose had beneficial results for telomerase levels.  Telomerase is an enzyme related to aging, that affects a cell’s ability to divide and replace itself.

That’s a far cry from being able to definitively state that decreasing sugar intake will extend human life.  Be that as it may, I’m willing to avoid sugars for more immediate health benefits… specifically being able to fit in to my clothes comfortably.

Perhaps you’re already familiar with some of the troubles ascribed to sugar consumption already, perhaps not.  Many of our customers will not be surprised by what I’m about to suggest, but it seems very important to state it anyway:

The fountain of youth will not be a soda-fountain

Already, a number of well funded research groups (ex: Methuselah Foundation, SENS Foundation) are suggesting aging is just the sort of beast I mentioned above; a culmination of systemic biological and environmental factors resulting in the diseases people die from.

Nobody seems to be born with an expiration date.  Instead, we all have to make decisions about what we are willing to do to stay healthy as long as we can.  Perhaps someday there will be a cure for aging.

Until then, we’ll have to rely on our wits.  That’s where Longbars come in…

Longbars were formulated to be very low in sugar.  There are increasingly more bits of information suggesting that sugar and excess calories generally impact health negatively over the long term.  That’s part of the reason why I decided to formulate Longbars as they’re currently made.  When I encourage the people I know and care about to support their health, I always suggest that they avoid sugary foods… and most of the time I suggest a Longbar for them.

Longbars are great.  Try one today for free, we just ask you to help pay the shipping.  Or you could order a box to keep in your desk at work.  Or perhaps you already love them, and want send one to somebody you would like to have around in your old age.  Whatever your reason, thanks to our wonderful customers for their support.  We do this for you.

And as always, you can contact the owners directly if you have any questions.

Went to a party this past weekend.  This was the sort of party that I don’t typically frequent… e.g. there were productive members of society there.  All of them seemed fairly interested in the idea behind Longbars, and I was glad to make some new connections.

Unfortunately, I didn’t bring any business cards. You’d think that Longbars.com is easy enough to remember, but I still felt like a fool for not having cards.

Thanks to everybody there for the good ideas and encouragement.  Also, special thanks to Lanie (& her folks) for hooking up the bagpipes… good job there.

Just added a new wordpress plugin to the roster.  You can see the links that Sexy Bookmarks leaves underneath posts on the site.

Here’s a link to their site: http://sexybookmarks.net/

I haven’t yet sent a donation, but don’t let that discourage you.

Our page is currently under development, but you can get an idea of what we’re striving for.  We hope that this site will eventually become home to a new breed of business… remember, it’s a work-in-progress.

Longbars is being built on entirely open-source tools.  We are also building to be flexible to our customer’s needs.  Please let us know if you have any questions or comments or suggestions… or if you just feel like getting in touch with us.  You can either leave a comment at the blog, or contact us through the “Contact Us” page.  Don’t hesitate… let us know you’re looking.

To start, Longbars has been developed entirely on Open Source tools… that includes our WordPress webpage, and the Linux based server we’re running it on.  As the company gets bigger, we may need to change our webpage, or if our customers tell us that we need to get fancier… you might see changes to our logos and color-schemes.  But you will never see us change our message.

We believe that the community of an open source project create an exciting product that is better than any small group could create.  Accordingly, our goal is to create a community that we serve by providing lots of information in addition to some products that we are proud to stand behind.  However, we won’t just provide the product to the community, we will give that community the opportunity to influence the product and collectively steer it towards being better than what we could accomplish on our own.

We hope that you will enjoy our product, but even if you don’t, we hope that you will join our community that has the common goal of:

Health. Integrity. Happiness.

A lot of time has been spent trying to really nail down our message.

That’s what we’re about and that’s what we care about in companies that we trust… but without action, it’s really only a slogan.

Stay tuned for some actions.