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With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

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161–170 of 245 posts

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect most people's experiences when they're unemployed are colored by being... unemployed. You're not retired or on vacation, you're jobless. You're not supposed to be having a good time following your passions, you're supposed to be looking for more work or skill-building so you can get work. And money is going to run out eventually and who is going to want to hire you when you haven't had a job in six months or…

I’m not talking about the people who are unemployed against their will, but the people who are not unemployed and say “no, they couldn’t take a load of time of work[1] because they would be bored”. I took some time off a while back, to destress and work on my own ideas for a while and the amount of people who said they couldn’t do it, they’d be bored was mind blowing. > who is going to want to hire you when you haven…

Yes, I think even when people choose to stop working, they often still fall into the trappings of joblessness and stress about the uncertainty of what they're going to do when it's time to go back to work. And so they don't enjoy it.

Not everyone, of course.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#162
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with crossfit training, though. If you favour crossfit style classes, just make sure you focus on your form. The worst form I've ever seen has come out of crossfit classes. The way people learn to use ergometers in those classes makes me cringe—just asking for a ruined lower back. And lifting—it just looks painful. Form, form, form. Can't stress it enough.

They pay a lot of attention to posture when lifting. Not so much when rowing, and at first I sometimes felt it in my lower back. There's a lot of focus on strengthening core muscles though, and I now feel like my abs and back are a lot stronger already, and I haven't felt any back trouble in ages. (Well, weeks, I guess; I've been doing this for half a year now.)

Some groups are probably better than others for it, admittedly.

I just know I had seen some horrific lifting practices—or rather that no instruction was given except for "Go for it!".

That's good to hear.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#163
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok then. Let's just take this broad conversation about "most people" and distort it with wildly pessimistic and self-contradictory assumptions. I can only repeat myself here. If you want to live longer, you want better health. If you don't want better health because "there's no prospect for improvement", then I don't know what to tell you. That's a contradiction. In any case, slowing the decline due to aging doesn't…

I agree that it's very useful to prolong the amount of time spent in earlier, healthier stages of life. The treatments described in the New Yorker article sound quite promising. However, you aren't taking the elderly seriously. It's not "wildly pessimistic" to spend time thinking about what happens after people get beyond that point. This is something that happens to everyone who doesn't die first. It's a normal part…

Look, you're the one saying that elderly people are so miserable that we should not prolong their lives.

>It's not "wildly pessimistic" to spend time thinking about what happens after people get beyond that point.

Your thoughts are pessimistic, not the fact that you are thinking. The main purpose of a nursing home is to extend the length of people's lives. If you think this is inhumane, then perhaps you would prefer a crematorium to a nursing home?

There is nothing about extending the life of people who are in a place specifically to have their lives extended that is 'not taking the elderly seriously.'

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#164

Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as…

I think the rapid mental and physical decline in your twilight years dissuades most people from wanting to live much longer than that, not some inane moral compulsion to live within our "rightful" lifespan.

Everyone advocating and working towards increasing lifespan wants to eliminate that mental and physical decline. The goal is to give you more years feeling 30-40, not just more years feeling 90-110.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#165
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try eating dark chocolate with minimal added sugar. It contains fewer calories and if you buy the good stuff it's quite tasty.

Darker chocolate should trend towards being higher in calories, containing proportionally more fat.

You're confusing Dark and White chocolate.

100% Dark chocolate isn't 100% cocoa butter, it's the non-fat solids. If you eat some it's quite obviously not fatty, it's bitter and dry like a burnt coffee bean.

Edit: I'm mistaken here, dark chocolate is half fat, TIL.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#166
post #142
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could find room for a squat rack+ bench at home I'd agree with you. :) Nothing beats proper squatting, deadlifting, bench and shoulder presses. I cycle a lot but the benefits for this desk jockey are marginal compared to doing stronglifts twice or thrice a week.

Depends on the body type and age and history. these movements are super hard on the spine. Try planks and step ups

While there is some percentage of people who these compound movements would be bad for, the beauty of the progressive overload is that you can start incredibly light and strengthen your body overtime. When you compare older people who deadlift versus those who do not, you will often see a great difference in back pain and overall mobility. And for most people it is never too late to start.

And planks/step ups may be great, but they are no replacement for deadlifts and squats.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#167

Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as…

These are the same people who complain that they would be bored if out of work for too long. I personally have so many personal or passion projects that I would like to undertake, but don’t have the time for, that I’d happily fill a few lifetimes with interesting things to do. Of course, there’s a difference between a few lifetimes and thousands of years or immortality.

As someone who has been incredibly fortunate to be able to do pretty much whatever I want for the last 15 years I can tell you from personal experience: you can get sick and tired of pretty much anything and everything, and it happens a lot faster than you would expect (or at least a lot faster than I expected).

One of the really serious problems is that your brain generalizes, so once you get sick and tired of one thing, it's easier to get sick and tired of the next thing because your brain says, "Oh, this is kinda similar to this other thing that I already got sick and tired of."

Managing all this can be a real challenge. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, it's an incredibly nice problem to have, and I wouldn't trade it for the world (literally!) But even nice problems to have can still be real problems.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#168

Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as…

> it's all "it would drive you crazy with boredom!"

People really underestimate of how much o their life they forget as the decades pass.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darker chocolate should trend towards being higher in calories, containing proportionally more fat.

Sure, but a nibble of dark chocolate is very satisfying and satiating. I can easily eat a bar or two of milk chocolate but naturally stop with a square or two of the good dark stuff.

Oh for sure, sweeter chocolate is way easier to eat too much of. Just pointing out that dark isn't actually lower in calories.

Re: With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent

#170
post #152

isn't this happening already? From totally unscientific perspective, if you look at pictures of people from olden days (say high school seniors from 1970s/1980s vs from 21st century) as well pictures of 60+ people from 1940s/1950s, you will notice people now look a lot younger. It isn't only the sense of grooming/clothing but also physical attributes which have changed

Sunblock.

Cigarettes too
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