4 ms·

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, an

by hyko 6y ago

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 technological innovation. Even caloric restriction looks monumentally feeble as an intervention, especially weighed against the effort involved. As you say, one big question is how to do a wait calculation for your own personal timeline – at some point (we hope) the interventions will get more efficacious and have fewer adverse effects. The skill (luck?) will be judging when the benefits outweigh the risks for your personal circumstances, as your body ages and your risk profile increases. But at this point in history, there’s no evidence that we’re anywhere near a longevity escape velocity scenario, and your couple of years extra life from present day efforts should be enjoyed on its own terms, not as some sort of key to unlocking immortality. I think that last part is leaned on heavily by this industry to oversell things to people; it amounts to little more than religious faith at this point in history. They are selling what they have to hand, but when we try to judge those interventions objectively, they’re just not that effective (including diet & exercise). They are ahead of the beauty-led anti-aging industry in that they are at least doing science, so there is hope for the future.

staticassertion 6y ago
> 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 really age hard. > There’s simply no behaviour or treatment today that will significantly extend the maximum human lifespan If you're saying "living past 125" isn't possible even if you start now, sure, but longevity is more about feeling 40 when you're 60, avoiding potential issues like heart attacks and alzheimers, etc. It is not about living forever as you seem to be saying, and maybe that's a larger misconception. Living longer, sure, but mostly it's about living better. I haven't seen a single person, anywhere, in everything I've read, saying "I'm trying to live forever". They're all saying "I don't want dimentia, I don't want a heart attack, I want to walk around and travel and live life well at 70 and 80". And as for life extension, there's actually plenty of research on things you can do to extend your life. Again, not past 125, but past 70 - diet, exercise, niacin, etc are all pretty well established. > but when we try to judge those interventions objectively, they’re just not that effective (including diet & exercise). This doesn't seem to actually be the case. I'm surprised anyone would say that intervention treatments for something like avoiding heart disease aren't effective.
- hyko 6y ago
  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-without-established-cardiovascular-disease 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.

by hyko 6y ago

staticassertion 6y ago

> 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 really age hard. > There’s simply no behaviour or treatment today that will significantly extend the maximum human lifespan If you're saying "living past 125" isn't possible even if you start now, sure, but longevity is more about feeling 40 when you're 60, avoiding potential issues like heart attacks and alzheimers, etc. It is not about living forever as you seem to be saying, and maybe that's a larger misconception. Living longer, sure, but mostly it's about living better. I haven't seen a single person, anywhere, in everything I've read, saying "I'm trying to live forever". They're all saying "I don't want dimentia, I don't want a heart attack, I want to walk around and travel and live life well at 70 and 80". And as for life extension, there's actually plenty of research on things you can do to extend your life. Again, not past 125, but past 70 - diet, exercise, niacin, etc are all pretty well established. > but when we try to judge those interventions objectively, they’re just not that effective (including diet & exercise). This doesn't seem to actually be the case. I'm surprised anyone would say that intervention treatments for something like avoiding heart disease aren't effective.

hyko 6y ago
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-without-established-cardiovascular-disease 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.