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Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

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Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#131
post #123

I've been trying some of the David Sinclair NMN + resveratrol stuff for a couple of months. I think I can safely state there has been no noticeable effect in my case. There's a guy on the internet been trying it for 6 months with seemingly some positive effects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWx77ARQ9lo And it seems to do stuff in mice. https://khn.org/news/a-fountain-of-youth-pill-sure-if-youre-...

Mouse models are just that. Models. A lot of the results in mice don't carry over to humans. A positive result in mice is only weakly indicative of potential efficacy in humans. [1,2] Pop-sci articles seldom acknowledge this or draw attention to this. Re reservatol, the jury is really out on that one too. [3,4] [1] https://theconversation.com/of-mice-and-men-why-animal-trial... [2] https://www.nature.com/news/chilly-…

Yeah it's a bit hard to tell either way - works or does nothing much. The enthusiasts like Sinclair take DNA methylation tests which seem to indicate some effect but whether that translates to longer life I dunno. I've been too tight to try those as they tend to run $300 per test.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#132
I’m a 51 year old interested amateur.

While I’m hopeful bio/chemistry/genetic research will help enhance life quality/longevity my focus has been largely lifestyle to go along with a few supplements.

Sleep: minimum of 7 hours Fitness: strength & movement, yoga/stretching, low impact long duration activity to protect joints Mental Fitness: intellectual challenges such as reading long-form and learning to code Mindfulness: managing stress/anxiety Engagement: with family/friends Environment: trying to maximise time in healthy environments and limiting my time in unhealthy environments Hydration: lots of water, no juices/sofa, rarely any alcohol Nutrition: Intermittent fasting(18/6 5 days a week), ketogenic diet, no processed sugars

Supplements used:

Resveratrol Ubiquinol NAD Thiacin Fish Oil Ginkgo

Before I hit 50, I made the shift away from trying to maximise performance and shift focus towards durability/longevity.

I have an outlier score( to the good side) for telomere length, so I’m biased towards believing it helps, but all I can do is all I can do and make the most of every day and remember to have fun along the way.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#133
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eat well, live well, still die. I agree with everything you’ve written there, apart from the idea that diet & exercise will extend your life by quite a lot, and the idea that you’ll have to gamble with interventions now if you’re in your 40s. There’s simply no behaviour or treatment today that will significantly extend the maximum human lifespan; unfortunately doing so will require years of scientific and technologic…

> apart from the idea that diet & exercise will extend your life by quite a lot But there's quite a lot of research on this? > and the idea that you’ll have to gamble with interventions now if you’re in your 40s You don't have to . Feel free not to. But if your goal is life extension based on research, you only have what's available today, and around your 40s is, again from my layman reading, when your body starts to…

But there’s quite a lot of research on this?

Yes, the numerous studies and meta-analyses I’ve seen suggest an effect of between 1–10 years of healthy lifespan added. That’s certainly not nothing, but considering that life expectancy at birth is around 80 years in developed countries, you’re talking about something that represents 1/8 of that context.

around your 40s is [...] when your body really starts to age hard

I guess from a technical standpoint, you’re really ageing from birth. You certainly start to see the Gompertz curve start to bite in your 40s though, as the net metabolic damage starts to compound.

Living longer, sure, but mostly it’s about living better

I’ve never really understood this argument. Avoiding the diseases of ageing will ultimately lengthen your life. Avoiding them all indefinitely would lengthen your life almost indefinitely (there is still a non-zero risk of dying without ageing of course).

Look, death and disease are scary. They’re existential threats. Focusing on diet and exercise is great fun, has a host of incidental benefits, and returns the locus of control to yourself; however it cannot do all that much to really deflect the asteroid of ageing in the long run. I just want people to be aware of what the magnitude of the effects actually are, and not get sucked into the hype machine. I suppose sometimes it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive...I certainly hope that the state of the art advances fast enough to save us all, and that’s basically based on nothing. Supplements like Niacin are just a flat-out bust: https://www.cochrane.org/CD009744/VASC_niacin-people-or-with...

In fact, it’s highly improbable that any one oral drug or supplement will significantly alter the core pathology of ageing (and therefore reduce the risk of all age-related disease in one go). That’s because the human body is a highly complex, tightly-coupled system that is not designed to be reverse-engineered or modified, and because the soma and the germ line split so long ago.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#134
post #59

In 1897, philosopher Paul Janet came up with the model that current moments of time in our lives might be perceived by their "fraction of life lived thus far". This would seem to undermine the value of longevity somewhat: according to this visualization of the idea: https://www.maximiliankiener.com/digitalprojects/time/

That was a really cool visual, thanks for sharing.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#135

I’m a 51 year old interested amateur. While I’m hopeful bio/chemistry/genetic research will help enhance life quality/longevity my focus has been largely lifestyle to go along with a few supplements. Sleep: minimum of 7 hours Fitness: strength & movement, yoga/stretching, low impact long duration activity to protect joints Mental Fitness: intellectual challenges such as reading long-form and learning to code Mindfuln…

Does fasting and depriving your brain of nutrients like calcium, magnesium etc. impair your cognitive abilities?

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#136

I’m a 51 year old interested amateur. While I’m hopeful bio/chemistry/genetic research will help enhance life quality/longevity my focus has been largely lifestyle to go along with a few supplements. Sleep: minimum of 7 hours Fitness: strength & movement, yoga/stretching, low impact long duration activity to protect joints Mental Fitness: intellectual challenges such as reading long-form and learning to code Mindfuln…

How did you measure telomere length?

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps stagnation is due to experience, perhaps it's due to accumulated, age-related brain damage. I doubt we'll know until people do live hundreds or thousands of years. Surely you can be a beginner again. Pick something you've never done before, and do that. As fledgling as humanity is, humans already have millions of different traditions and areas of study. Just pick one (or many).

> Pick something you've never done before, and do that. You run out of those things shortly after birth. The vast majority of the aspects of everything that you attempt are familiar, and you have already developed habitual approaches to them. Having "never done something before" is shorthand for some experience having some aspect that you have never experienced before, not complete novelty. I'm going to build the str…

Get some help man

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#139
post #90

I stopped reading after seeing the cancer/hearth disease chart. It reinforces the belief that most deaths are caused by cancer, while actually it's hearth disease. So if you make a chart, please make it accurate. Therefore I couldn't trust the rest, since it might all be "drawn from the wrist".

If you unify all cancers into one category, then cancer is the top cause. If you split them up into the different types, then heart disease is bigger than any single of them. So you are wrong. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-... Shows heart disease as #1 with 3 million deaths but separates the cancer types. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer Says there were 9.6 million…

The second link says:

"Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally, and is responsible for an estimated 9.6 million deaths in 2018. Globally, about 1 in 6 deaths is due to cancer."

> So you are wrong.

Please be more careful in making this statement. The evidence you present should allow the reader to make their own decision.

Re: Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research

#140
post #136

I’m a 51 year old interested amateur. While I’m hopeful bio/chemistry/genetic research will help enhance life quality/longevity my focus has been largely lifestyle to go along with a few supplements. Sleep: minimum of 7 hours Fitness: strength & movement, yoga/stretching, low impact long duration activity to protect joints Mental Fitness: intellectual challenges such as reading long-form and learning to code Mindfuln…

How did you measure telomere length?

I’ve used the teloyears service a few times with results that put me in the 96-99% percentile.

It’s an interesting concept with one of the founders Dr Elizabeth Blackburn awarded the Nobel Prize for her work on telomeres.

It’s worth mentioning I’d probably question and disparage The results if they were poor :)

Apparently it’s common for poor results to lead to bad feedback and excellent results to lead to good feedback.

So be warned I’m pretty biased!

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