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

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

#231

Post by skybrian »

magduf wrote: post #200
skybrian wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too simple. Slowing the decline for people who are in at least moderately good health who can enjoy life is of course a good thing. But in poor health, with no prospects of improvement... well, when's the last time you've visited a nursing home? The experience of helping taking care someone in hospice care makes it very clear that at some point they can't do much of anything, or enjoy much of anything, and pro…

>Slowing the decline for people who are in at least moderately good health who can enjoy life is of course a good thing. But in poor health, with no prospects of improvement This is a really silly and non-sensical line of reasoning. We're talking here about achieving biological immortality: stopping the aging process. This would necessarily require understanding human biology and cellular processes at an extremely de…

You're engaging in one-bit reasoning where longevity treatments are either a magic fountain of youth, stopping aging and disease completely, or they don't work at all. But how can we know how well they will work?

I think it's more likely that the first ones could add years or decades of life without being nearly that good, and perhaps still having significant side effects or just not affecting some aspects of aging. If so, difficult decisions about what to do when closer to death won't go away.

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

#232

Post by magduf »

skybrian wrote: post #231
magduf wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Slowing the decline for people who are in at least moderately good health who can enjoy life is of course a good thing. But in poor health, with no prospects of improvement This is a really silly and non-sensical line of reasoning. We're talking here about achieving biological immortality: stopping the aging process. This would necessarily require understanding human biology and cellular processes at an extremely de…

You're engaging in one-bit reasoning where longevity treatments are either a magic fountain of youth, stopping aging and disease completely, or they don't work at all. But how can we know how well they will work? I think it's more likely that the first ones could add years or decades of life without being nearly that good, and perhaps still having significant side effects or just not affecting some aspects of aging.…

Those difficult decisions are there right now; life extensions just push them further away. I don't see the problem here. And yes, longevity treatments will necessarily involve reducing disease and aging, or else they won't increase your lifespan. Aging is simply a disease, where much like AIDS causes your immune system to fail which causes other diseases to kill you, with aging some other aging-related disease finally kills you, such as Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, etc. Longevity treatments will necessarily result in less disease, even if they can't figure out how to stop all diseases right away. I don't see how they'll result in hordes of centenarians on life support.

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

#234

Post by skybrian »

magduf wrote: post #232
skybrian wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're engaging in one-bit reasoning where longevity treatments are either a magic fountain of youth, stopping aging and disease completely, or they don't work at all. But how can we know how well they will work? I think it's more likely that the first ones could add years or decades of life without being nearly that good, and perhaps still having significant side effects or just not affecting some aspects of aging.…

Those difficult decisions are there right now; life extensions just push them further away. I don't see the problem here. And yes, longevity treatments will necessarily involve reducing disease and aging, or else they won't increase your lifespan. Aging is simply a disease, where much like AIDS causes your immune system to fail which causes other diseases to kill you, with aging some other aging-related disease final…

I'm not saying there is any new problem, just that the problems of aging may still be rather similar to today, just happening later.

If life doesn't really go on forever and people still eventually die of some disease or other, that's a lot of old people who are on life support at some point in their lives, right? Just like today.

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

#235

Post by AstralStorm »

Madmallard wrote: post #217
deytempo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to do with mitochondrial metabolic processes being the most efficient to break down smaller quantities of sugar. There are mitochondrial mechanisms to break down a lot at once that are turned on in the presence of more sugar but they just aren’t as finely tuned and thus generate free radicals which can cause cellular problems. There really wasn’t a point throughout evolutionary history where there was a prol…

Ask your father about drug induced mitochondrial dysfunction. I had ciprofloxacin 4 years ago and my exercise tolerance swiftly dropped in the months afterward. Research tells me this is due to mtdna depletion and dna damage and I just want to know how to get better. I now have stage 1 diastolic dysfunction and a plethora of seemingly unrelated problems, coming from none before.

It's probably not fixable if it's really that. Even if mtDNA is fine the mitochondria have their own mechanism for senescence based on other damage, just like cells. It does not even have to be caused by radicals.

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

#236

Post by AstralStorm »

ohaideredevs wrote: post #98
novaRom wrote: post #7

Yes we can. Calorie restriction is well known slowing biological aging process. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction

>Calorie restriction is well known slowing biological aging process Cut calories and you cut the amount of cardio and strength training you can do. This cuts muscles mass, bone density, and takes away the IQ-increasing brain simulation factors away. I am not sold at all.

Do you now? Is there any actual study on this after the few weeks of adaptation or even at target reduced weight?

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

#237

Post by AstralStorm »

fizwhiz wrote: post #155
TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #150

Yes. Don't eat sugar. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Eat fruits and vegetables. Exercise regularly. Walking counts, but you probably want to throw some upper-body stuff in there as well. Working in the garden counts. That's about 80-95% of "how to stay healthy using forces under your control" as far as I can tell.

> Don't eat sugar. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Oh but where's the fun in that? :)

Vegetables are delicious, most low in sugar. If you really want to ingest nicotine, use gum or patches.

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

#238

Post by AstralStorm »

skybrian wrote: post #234
magduf wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those difficult decisions are there right now; life extensions just push them further away. I don't see the problem here. And yes, longevity treatments will necessarily involve reducing disease and aging, or else they won't increase your lifespan. Aging is simply a disease, where much like AIDS causes your immune system to fail which causes other diseases to kill you, with aging some other aging-related disease final…

I'm not saying there is any new problem, just that the problems of aging may still be rather similar to today, just happening later. If life doesn't really go on forever and people still eventually die of some disease or other, that's a lot of old people who are on life support at some point in their lives, right? Just like today.

Therefore being no worse than today and having more productive years. Clear improvement, you made a good argument why it should be pursued.

Note that extending lifespan does not mean overpopulation necessarily nor lack of jobs.

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

#239

Post by AstralStorm »

mcv wrote: post #227
AstralStorm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wear a tight thing that holds the gut up? Like whatever power lifters wear. Maybe a belt too.

I'd have to wear it on the inside. It's not that my gut is so large that it bounces, it's that I bounce while running. It seems to me everybody else does too, but it doesn't seem to be causing the same problems in other people.

A corset should still help with that by stabilizing whatever is sloshing around.

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

#240

Post by magduf »

skybrian wrote: post #234
magduf wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those difficult decisions are there right now; life extensions just push them further away. I don't see the problem here. And yes, longevity treatments will necessarily involve reducing disease and aging, or else they won't increase your lifespan. Aging is simply a disease, where much like AIDS causes your immune system to fail which causes other diseases to kill you, with aging some other aging-related disease final…

I'm not saying there is any new problem, just that the problems of aging may still be rather similar to today, just happening later. If life doesn't really go on forever and people still eventually die of some disease or other, that's a lot of old people who are on life support at some point in their lives, right? Just like today.

As AstralStorm said, you just made the argument for why it should be pursued. If you look at humans as economic units, we as a society invest an incredible amount of time and resources into every person to make them a productive adult: it takes a bare minimum of 18 years, and generally more like 22-26, with a lot of education and other resources. Then if they're too feeble to be productive by the time they're 70, that's only 40-something years. If you extend the lifespan just so they can be productive until 110, you've now doubled your return on that investment!

On top of that, now with people delaying parenthood so much, or not even having kids, we're facing demographic problems (too many old people being supported by too few young workers). If people have significantly longer adult lives, this could very well make it more feasible and desirable to have kids at older ages, which could stabilize the population problem. (People could have two kids at 40, and two more at 60, and two more at 80, for instance.)

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