9 ms·

Brazilian Billionaire Creates Plan to Beat Death

57 points by mikepilla 13y ago

tim333 13y ago
Not sure working out and eating well will cheat death that long. Now if we could find some way to back up the software...
- goldenkey 13y ago
  The software doesn't actually exist though.. The software is only "programmed" to believe it does, and before it knows it, it'll be halted. When the software gets close enough to the metal, the software is paused, reprogrammed, and started again, and it had no idea that the truth was extracted, self left hollow, again and again, a cycle of betrayal. See, between the cpu cycles, there is no software. It only exists in a vacuum of self-understanding. And so how can it do the undoable, think the unthinkable? It's programmed to feel a complex and vast realm of possibility, when in fact, it's a simple state machine. Maybe the hyperdust will blow on its hardware, and there'll be an exception, some change. Change.
- nova 13y ago
  Cryonics?
  - nicholassmith 13y ago
    Cryonics is similar to religion, it just seemingly costs more. You invest in a promise that may or may not be reality, with religion it's 'follow these rules for ever lasting life after you die', whereas cryonics is 'pay us to cryogenically preserve your body so you may have ever lasting life after death'.
    - vicbrooker 13y ago
      Similar, but at least one option has a mathematical possibility of working out...
    - nova 13y ago
      > You invest in a promise that may or may not be reality With religion I can be quite sure it won't be a reality, as there is no trace of actual gods anywhere I look, but a lot of good evidence of it being just a social and cultural phenomenon. Cryonics depends on the adequacy to preserve neural information of the currently used methods, of which I am uncertain but at least is in the realm of actual science.
    - philh 13y ago
      > You invest in a promise that may or may not be reality I don't think cryonics organisations promise that you will eventually be revived. They promise to try, and they probably think there's a higher chance of it happening than most people do. (But perhaps not higher than most people who pay for cryonics.) With that in mind, the structure you describe is "pay someone to try to do something that might not work", which also describes investing in startups and any number of other things. Your objection here is that you don't think cryonics will work. That's a reasonable objection, but the way you're framing it is uncharitable.
bluedevil2k 13y ago
He's found the best way to live an extended life - be rich. He has access to health care and doctors most people can't afford & preventative tests that typical insurance doesn't cover. Of course, just because you have access to that type of health care, doesn't mean you take advantage of it - Warren Buffett famously put off his colorectal exams forever, nearly costing him dearly. The other aspect of this article that I wanted to see was whether he's chosen to use hormone replacement - it says "he's ripped. His arms are guns. His abs come in a pack" and later "Losing muscle to age clearly spooks him". Those are all nice, but seemingly biophysically impossible for a 77 year old man.
- jp555 13y ago
  The "seemingly impossible" is important. The way human bodies adapt to progressive overload weight lifting does not change that much whether you're 8 years old or 80. Being lean is 90% diet. It's just that 99% of people are not willing to make the choices required to carve out the Adonis & Venus that's inside us all.
- mikepilla 13y ago
  You're right. Although it's likely he may live an extended life due to genes, his parents passed in their 90's, he's living the latter years the best way possible, by being rich. And it's reasonable to think his wealth is buying "power packs", like hormone replacement, that he'd rather not see in the press.
  - dhughes 13y ago
    Certainly genetics are part of this as you say his parents both lived to 94 and 98. But I would say what may help him live longer than his genetics would allow is the consistency of his health care. Being rich allows him the luxury of health care, I think this is the biggest factor helping him and being able to eat well i.e. good quality food which is expensive. Even though here in Canada we have socialized medicine and at times it sucks at least it's consistent in that we have the care available. For small problems or major ones it's the daily availability of being able to get help and not waiting until it's too late due to lack of coverage or money to pay a doctor.
dusanbab 13y ago
I guess there's a slight chance he didn't use any, but I find it hard to believe he didn't get a bit of help from HGH and "Vitamin-S" (steroids). Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the article feels lopsided without any insight into his supplementation.
coldcode 13y ago
Death is a pretty good bet to win. I'd say a sure thing. Plus he might be in perfect health and be killed by a beer truck.
nicholassmith 13y ago
Anecdotally the elderly people I've known who've lived the longest, have been the ones who've been active as long as possible, not just with exercise but also trying to continue either working in some regard or continue travelling and exploring. I'd imagine there's likely studies on it, but as our population ages it'll become more significant.
- Qworg 13y ago
  There's an excellent article about this in the NYT: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?pagewanted=all http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-whe...
  - nicholassmith 13y ago
    Thanks, that was really interesting.
- melling 13y ago
  The second president of the United States was an avid walker (3-4 miles a day) and he lived to be 89. John Adams was not a ripped guy. http://www.presidenstory.com/stat_tal.php http://www.presidenstory.com/stat_tal.php Almost two centuries later and it doesn't seem like we've made much progress on aging.
- Someone 13y ago
  I am fairly sure there is some causation there, but I am not sure which causation is greater: stay active => live longer, or the combination of be healthy => stay active with be healthy => live longer. That gets especially hairy when one start thinking about what 'be healthy' means. That 70 year old who is physically healthy, but doesn't seem interested in what happens in the world anymore, is that a healthy person?
porter 13y ago
Can you really run a caloric deficit indefinitely? Surely that can't be the answer.
- anjc 13y ago
  I don't know if you can or not, but there's research showing that calorie restriction can delay ageing in monkeys, and double lifespan in rodents.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- tvanzyl 13y ago
  It's not about running a caloric deficit, but a caloric restriction. Usually the goal is reducing your caloric intake by 20-40% compared to your regular diet. You don't need to run a deficit and burn more than you take in or you would waste away.
  - xioxox 13y ago
    Surely if the human body were a simple machine, as some people argue, then you would be running at a deficit? Any excess energy would have to be stored. In reality, however, the body can adjust to a range of energy input and allow you to run at lower levels of input, albeit with a reduced metabolism.
Systemic33 13y ago
I think the old saying 'Better rich and healthy, than poor and sick' applies here.
jostmey 13y ago
Awhile ago there was a wonderful little post about the probability distributions of human lifespan. The distributions fall off super-exponentially with age. What this means is that chances of someone living past 130 without major medical intervention is astronomically small. Even with medical intervention, it seems unlikely someone will live much past the 130 year barrier. Link: http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/ http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-w...
- shubb 13y ago
  Looking at your graph, which tells us what we all already really know (we will probably die somewhere between 60 and 80) makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I think of my grandfather, who is about 80 now. He seems pretty healthy, but I know he probably has a couple more years. I should make the best of every time I see him. Should try to see him more.
z92 13y ago
Top 10 oldest men on record, all died at age 124. One single person lived through that age to die at 128. Just 4 years more. By age 124 your lungs can't take in enough Oxygen to produce required body heat.
- waterhouse 13y ago
  Your numbers seem to be off from what I've read. According to this, the ten oldest men died at ages 116, 115 (x 2), 114 (x 4), and 113 (x 3). Meanwhile, the oldest human died at age 122. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Ten_verified_oldest_men_ever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Ten_verified_olde... I'm interested in your claim about lungs and oxygen. Is that really what kills these people? Several of them are listed as dying of pneumonia, so perhaps that's what you mean; though one was a "blood clot", and several don't have a cause of death listed or merely say "natural causes".
bigd 13y ago
I don't want to sound mean but he's still <90years old. He can be ripped as much as you want, but until he at least pass the century, this article is pure speculation. Let's see how he fares in 20 years, then we discuss. Then, being mean, what I see here is a narcissistic guy who's saying: "I'm so cool and I bet that with exercise I will survive until 130years. Everyone should worship to my phallus idol" To which I would like to reply: lucky you in being fit and strong and cool and rich and yada yada yada. I hope the best for you, but still this will have a ludicrous scientific relevance. And finally, to connect with the tabou article of before, there's some one else that think that maybe living longer is a problem and not a solution?
- veb 13y ago
  Yup. I know plenty of 80 year olds into ultra marathon running in high country NZ (extremely tough to run) and yet, I'm pretty sure they're not going to "beat death". No matter how fit and healthy they are. This article is definitely just silly.
  - deveac 13y ago
    The entire article read like a bad infomercial to me. Just. Bunch of anecdotes and unsubstantiated claims and promises.
- bigd 13y ago
  I'd like to state this controversial position, in the hope that is read with the open-mindness of the "what you don't say" thread: I believe that many of the problems of our society are due to people afraid of dying: Accumulating money in the delusion of fighting death. The universal fight for happiness is impersonated in one extra year of struggle, often by sacrificing the life of others. Seems to me that despite 2000+ years of history, a concept such as the acceptance our own frailty, and the consequent joy of every extra day, is too hard to be learned.
  - oinksoft 13y ago
    Somebody could be just as money-hungry and have no illusions of fighting death. Their goal might be to leave family well-off, for instance.
mentos 13y ago
I was hoping to read about some really expensive treatment he was receiving.
exratione 13y ago
His plan is only a plan to live healthily. In that he is like David Murdoch [1], who has the fortunate coincidence of living longer, being very wealthy, and having long had good health practices. But once you get past your 70s and 80s, the odds of living longer start to have much more to do with your genes than your past health practices. 75% of everyone with the best diets and healthiest lifestyles die before reaching 90 [2]. 99% die before reaching 100, and your progress in that territory is strongly dependent on genetics. This fellow has about a 50/50 chance of making it through the next 10 years, and only very low odds of making to 100, and there is actually very little he can do to make those odds better that is not also available to the rest of us. We live in an age in which access to specific types of medicine is very flat. If you have $30,000 and medical insurance, there is nothing that a billionaire can conveniently buy that you cannot also go out and get if you do the legwork and phone calls yourself. Medical tourism, clinical trials, etc, etc. The billionaire can buy a fleet of doctors but he cannot buy a form of medical technology that isn't yet available to other people. He can of course, create new medical technologies by funding their development, but then it is still available to everyone at the end of the day. Remaining life span for the old is strongly dependent on progress in medical science, however: the transition of the next few decades from medicine that is only a matter of crudely patching over the symptoms of aging to medicine that addresses the causes of aging. An example of the former is alteration of gene expression through drugs, or introduction of reprogrammed stems to enact repair. In neither case does that address the reasons why gene expression changed, or why native stem cells are not doing their jobs. An example of the latter is breaking down the build up of metabolic waste products like lipofuscin constituents [3] that harm cellular operations and housekeeping machinery, and are increasing prevalent with age. The future of medicine must be something that evolves from the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) [4], a way to repair the underlying cellular and molecular causes of aging to reverse its course. Everything else that fails to deal with underlying causes is just patching over holes in the dam, or trying to keep an old engine running without replacing any parts: the whole thing fails catastrophically no matter how much expense you go to, and the expense keeps mounting regardless. That is present day end of life medicine in a nutshell, and it must change to preventation and repair of known causes. Even with far more funding than is presently the case, SENS implementation in laboratory animals is 10 to 20 years away. If you are in late life then your only practical option for anything other than death and oblivion is cryonics [5], the low-temperature vitrification of the fine structure of the brain in which the mind is stored, done against the possibility that future medicine can restore a vitrified brain to life. (Or, depending on your viewpoint, that it can be scanned and run in software, but that doesn't seem like a very helpful end result to me. A copy of you isn't you). So as I said at the top, this fellow has a health hobby, but he really isn't doing anything material other than having a good time, and perhaps deluding himself as to how well he is impacting his life span. The only material things worth a damn are (a) 80/20 good health practices like regular moderate exercise and calorie restriction, (b) funding the right rejuvenation-focused medical research, things like SENS that may pay off greatly in the next few decades, and (c) cryonics. Everything else is wishful thinking. 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/06/07/90-year-old-billionaire-david-murdock-doles-out-advice-on-longevity/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/06/07/90-year-ol... 2: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projections/2010-based-reference-volume--series-pp2/mortality.html#tab-The-changing-life-table http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projec... 3: http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/intracellular-aggregates http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/intra... 4: http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research 5: http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-on-cryonics/ http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-...
gx 13y ago
Tangentially related: Are there any characters who are known to maintain an above average level of fitness, while hacking a startup? Fitocracy comes to mind, but if the industry were not related to fitness that would be more impressive. Fitness is one thing I would like to accompany me throughout building a startup in the future - asking too much?
sumedh 13y ago
> can run backward. On a treadmill. In the dark. Why is this so significant. Does this affect your health in a goodway?
- dictum 13y ago
  "Vigorous, varied cardio is Diniz’s cornerstone. Running backward in the dark hones coordination and proprioception -- the sense of where his core and limbs are in space."
  - sumedh 13y ago
    > Proprioception Interesting, Need to do some more research on this.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  It's a demonstration of good health. (But not necessarily longevity.)
amasad 13y ago
I missed the part were he talks about his "plan". I'd bet on Larry Page to have any impact on longevity. Funding Calico and hiring Ray Kurzweil seems like steps in the right direction.
sanoli 13y ago
Brazilian here. Diniz is ripped and muscular because he takes steroids, as one HNer questioned below. This is well known here to people who strength train, from all the photos he takes showing off his muscles, and from the doctors he's associated with (doctors who charge an arm and a leg to legally prescribe steroids -- this was exposed in a national magazine recently, but was quite known before). How he does keep his muscles with a calorie deficit, I don't know. Probably just a bad article. And no, I don't really like the guy. He's just a billionaire playboy who likes to be on the spotlight. And yes, there are some brazilian billionaires who I admire. Just not this guy.
- keeptrying 13y ago
  Taking steroids doesn't reduce the effort in getting abs and muscles. You still have to put in a heckuva effort to build that muscle.
  - sanoli 13y ago
    Doesn't reduce the effort? Are you sure? To build the same amount of new muscle mass, who needs to put more effort: the natural lifter, or the one taking large doses of steroids? C'mon, I lift regularly with people on the juice. They put in a lot of effort, sure, but so do I, and they've built a lot more muscle.
    - jp555 13y ago
      Steroids significantly reduce recovery time, so you can go back and deliver another "build muscle" stimulus sooner than without the steroids (if you chronically lift before you recover you'll LOSE muscle mass). But you cannot avoid the work, you still need to work just as hard to deliver the stimulus.
      - sanoli 13y ago
        By what you're saying, someone who is lifting and taking adequate rest between sessions, ensuring that they get enough rest, won't benefit from taking steroids if they don't change their schedule? I'm saying steroids reduce recovery time, AND build muscle more easily. You're saying it's just the former.
stephen 13y ago
I wonder what/if his drug regimen is (testosterone replacement therapy, steroids, etc.). Not being judgmental, as most Americans who are 70+ are on a litany of drugs for various chronic conditions anyway. I recall reading that most/all men over the age of 40 would basically qualify for testosterone replacement therapy, albeit perhaps only with an accommodating doctor.
gschiller 13y ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eIaEgxZCpk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eIaEgxZCpk
aruggirello 13y ago
A neighbour of mine died just 2 days ago (I went to his funeral yesterday). He left home at about 10pm for a short walk with his dog, as usual. Then, a few minutes later, somebody noticed him laying on the ground, his dog sitting by his feet. When the ambulance came they apparently tried all they could - to no avail. He was dead. He had a healthy lifestyle and, as an officer, had regular check-ups. He was just 38 years old, and left his wife and two daughters of 13 and 8. I'm sure he didn't plan to do so.
moron4hire 13y ago
Would you say he's a "Brazilianaire"?

57 points by mikepilla 13y ago

Not sure working out and eating well will cheat death that long. Now if we could find some way to back up the software...

goldenkey 13y ago
The software doesn't actually exist though.. The software is only "programmed" to believe it does, and before it knows it, it'll be halted. When the software gets close enough to the metal, the software is paused, reprogrammed, and started again, and it had no idea that the truth was extracted, self left hollow, again and again, a cycle of betrayal. See, between the cpu cycles, there is no software. It only exists in a vacuum of self-understanding. And so how can it do the undoable, think the unthinkable? It's programmed to feel a complex and vast realm of possibility, when in fact, it's a simple state machine. Maybe the hyperdust will blow on its hardware, and there'll be an exception, some change. Change.
nova 13y ago
Cryonics?
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  Cryonics is similar to religion, it just seemingly costs more. You invest in a promise that may or may not be reality, with religion it's 'follow these rules for ever lasting life after you die', whereas cryonics is 'pay us to cryogenically preserve your body so you may have ever lasting life after death'.
  - vicbrooker 13y ago
    Similar, but at least one option has a mathematical possibility of working out...
  - nova 13y ago
    > You invest in a promise that may or may not be reality With religion I can be quite sure it won't be a reality, as there is no trace of actual gods anywhere I look, but a lot of good evidence of it being just a social and cultural phenomenon. Cryonics depends on the adequacy to preserve neural information of the currently used methods, of which I am uncertain but at least is in the realm of actual science.
  - philh 13y ago
    > You invest in a promise that may or may not be reality I don't think cryonics organisations promise that you will eventually be revived. They promise to try, and they probably think there's a higher chance of it happening than most people do. (But perhaps not higher than most people who pay for cryonics.) With that in mind, the structure you describe is "pay someone to try to do something that might not work", which also describes investing in startups and any number of other things. Your objection here is that you don't think cryonics will work. That's a reasonable objection, but the way you're framing it is uncharitable.

bluedevil2k 13y ago

He's found the best way to live an extended life - be rich. He has access to health care and doctors most people can't afford & preventative tests that typical insurance doesn't cover. Of course, just because you have access to that type of health care, doesn't mean you take advantage of it - Warren Buffett famously put off his colorectal exams forever, nearly costing him dearly. The other aspect of this article that I wanted to see was whether he's chosen to use hormone replacement - it says "he's ripped. His arms are guns. His abs come in a pack" and later "Losing muscle to age clearly spooks him". Those are all nice, but seemingly biophysically impossible for a 77 year old man.

jp555 13y ago
The "seemingly impossible" is important. The way human bodies adapt to progressive overload weight lifting does not change that much whether you're 8 years old or 80. Being lean is 90% diet. It's just that 99% of people are not willing to make the choices required to carve out the Adonis & Venus that's inside us all.
mikepilla 13y ago
You're right. Although it's likely he may live an extended life due to genes, his parents passed in their 90's, he's living the latter years the best way possible, by being rich. And it's reasonable to think his wealth is buying "power packs", like hormone replacement, that he'd rather not see in the press.
- dhughes 13y ago
  Certainly genetics are part of this as you say his parents both lived to 94 and 98. But I would say what may help him live longer than his genetics would allow is the consistency of his health care. Being rich allows him the luxury of health care, I think this is the biggest factor helping him and being able to eat well i.e. good quality food which is expensive. Even though here in Canada we have socialized medicine and at times it sucks at least it's consistent in that we have the care available. For small problems or major ones it's the daily availability of being able to get help and not waiting until it's too late due to lack of coverage or money to pay a doctor.

dusanbab 13y ago

I guess there's a slight chance he didn't use any, but I find it hard to believe he didn't get a bit of help from HGH and "Vitamin-S" (steroids). Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the article feels lopsided without any insight into his supplementation.

coldcode 13y ago

Death is a pretty good bet to win. I'd say a sure thing. Plus he might be in perfect health and be killed by a beer truck.

nicholassmith 13y ago

Anecdotally the elderly people I've known who've lived the longest, have been the ones who've been active as long as possible, not just with exercise but also trying to continue either working in some regard or continue travelling and exploring. I'd imagine there's likely studies on it, but as our population ages it'll become more significant.

Qworg 13y ago
There's an excellent article about this in the NYT: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?pagewanted=all http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-whe...
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  Thanks, that was really interesting.
melling 13y ago
The second president of the United States was an avid walker (3-4 miles a day) and he lived to be 89. John Adams was not a ripped guy. http://www.presidenstory.com/stat_tal.php http://www.presidenstory.com/stat_tal.php Almost two centuries later and it doesn't seem like we've made much progress on aging.
Someone 13y ago
I am fairly sure there is some causation there, but I am not sure which causation is greater: stay active => live longer, or the combination of be healthy => stay active with be healthy => live longer. That gets especially hairy when one start thinking about what 'be healthy' means. That 70 year old who is physically healthy, but doesn't seem interested in what happens in the world anymore, is that a healthy person?

porter 13y ago

Can you really run a caloric deficit indefinitely? Surely that can't be the answer.

anjc 13y ago
I don't know if you can or not, but there's research showing that calorie restriction can delay ageing in monkeys, and double lifespan in rodents.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
tvanzyl 13y ago
It's not about running a caloric deficit, but a caloric restriction. Usually the goal is reducing your caloric intake by 20-40% compared to your regular diet. You don't need to run a deficit and burn more than you take in or you would waste away.
- xioxox 13y ago
  Surely if the human body were a simple machine, as some people argue, then you would be running at a deficit? Any excess energy would have to be stored. In reality, however, the body can adjust to a range of energy input and allow you to run at lower levels of input, albeit with a reduced metabolism.

Systemic33 13y ago

I think the old saying 'Better rich and healthy, than poor and sick' applies here.

jostmey 13y ago

Awhile ago there was a wonderful little post about the probability distributions of human lifespan. The distributions fall off super-exponentially with age. What this means is that chances of someone living past 130 without major medical intervention is astronomically small. Even with medical intervention, it seems unlikely someone will live much past the 130 year barrier. Link: http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/ http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-w...

shubb 13y ago
Looking at your graph, which tells us what we all already really know (we will probably die somewhere between 60 and 80) makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I think of my grandfather, who is about 80 now. He seems pretty healthy, but I know he probably has a couple more years. I should make the best of every time I see him. Should try to see him more.

z92 13y ago

Top 10 oldest men on record, all died at age 124. One single person lived through that age to die at 128. Just 4 years more. By age 124 your lungs can't take in enough Oxygen to produce required body heat.

waterhouse 13y ago
Your numbers seem to be off from what I've read. According to this, the ten oldest men died at ages 116, 115 (x 2), 114 (x 4), and 113 (x 3). Meanwhile, the oldest human died at age 122. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Ten_verified_oldest_men_ever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Ten_verified_olde... I'm interested in your claim about lungs and oxygen. Is that really what kills these people? Several of them are listed as dying of pneumonia, so perhaps that's what you mean; though one was a "blood clot", and several don't have a cause of death listed or merely say "natural causes".

bigd 13y ago

I don't want to sound mean but he's still <90years old. He can be ripped as much as you want, but until he at least pass the century, this article is pure speculation. Let's see how he fares in 20 years, then we discuss. Then, being mean, what I see here is a narcissistic guy who's saying: "I'm so cool and I bet that with exercise I will survive until 130years. Everyone should worship to my phallus idol" To which I would like to reply: lucky you in being fit and strong and cool and rich and yada yada yada. I hope the best for you, but still this will have a ludicrous scientific relevance. And finally, to connect with the tabou article of before, there's some one else that think that maybe living longer is a problem and not a solution?

veb 13y ago
Yup. I know plenty of 80 year olds into ultra marathon running in high country NZ (extremely tough to run) and yet, I'm pretty sure they're not going to "beat death". No matter how fit and healthy they are. This article is definitely just silly.
- deveac 13y ago
  The entire article read like a bad infomercial to me. Just. Bunch of anecdotes and unsubstantiated claims and promises.
bigd 13y ago
I'd like to state this controversial position, in the hope that is read with the open-mindness of the "what you don't say" thread: I believe that many of the problems of our society are due to people afraid of dying: Accumulating money in the delusion of fighting death. The universal fight for happiness is impersonated in one extra year of struggle, often by sacrificing the life of others. Seems to me that despite 2000+ years of history, a concept such as the acceptance our own frailty, and the consequent joy of every extra day, is too hard to be learned.
- oinksoft 13y ago
  Somebody could be just as money-hungry and have no illusions of fighting death. Their goal might be to leave family well-off, for instance.

mentos 13y ago

I was hoping to read about some really expensive treatment he was receiving.

exratione 13y ago

His plan is only a plan to live healthily. In that he is like David Murdoch [1], who has the fortunate coincidence of living longer, being very wealthy, and having long had good health practices. But once you get past your 70s and 80s, the odds of living longer start to have much more to do with your genes than your past health practices. 75% of everyone with the best diets and healthiest lifestyles die before reaching 90 [2]. 99% die before reaching 100, and your progress in that territory is strongly dependent on genetics. This fellow has about a 50/50 chance of making it through the next 10 years, and only very low odds of making to 100, and there is actually very little he can do to make those odds better that is not also available to the rest of us. We live in an age in which access to specific types of medicine is very flat. If you have $30,000 and medical insurance, there is nothing that a billionaire can conveniently buy that you cannot also go out and get if you do the legwork and phone calls yourself. Medical tourism, clinical trials, etc, etc. The billionaire can buy a fleet of doctors but he cannot buy a form of medical technology that isn't yet available to other people. He can of course, create new medical technologies by funding their development, but then it is still available to everyone at the end of the day. Remaining life span for the old is strongly dependent on progress in medical science, however: the transition of the next few decades from medicine that is only a matter of crudely patching over the symptoms of aging to medicine that addresses the causes of aging. An example of the former is alteration of gene expression through drugs, or introduction of reprogrammed stems to enact repair. In neither case does that address the reasons why gene expression changed, or why native stem cells are not doing their jobs. An example of the latter is breaking down the build up of metabolic waste products like lipofuscin constituents [3] that harm cellular operations and housekeeping machinery, and are increasing prevalent with age. The future of medicine must be something that evolves from the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) [4], a way to repair the underlying cellular and molecular causes of aging to reverse its course. Everything else that fails to deal with underlying causes is just patching over holes in the dam, or trying to keep an old engine running without replacing any parts: the whole thing fails catastrophically no matter how much expense you go to, and the expense keeps mounting regardless. That is present day end of life medicine in a nutshell, and it must change to preventation and repair of known causes. Even with far more funding than is presently the case, SENS implementation in laboratory animals is 10 to 20 years away. If you are in late life then your only practical option for anything other than death and oblivion is cryonics [5], the low-temperature vitrification of the fine structure of the brain in which the mind is stored, done against the possibility that future medicine can restore a vitrified brain to life. (Or, depending on your viewpoint, that it can be scanned and run in software, but that doesn't seem like a very helpful end result to me. A copy of you isn't you). So as I said at the top, this fellow has a health hobby, but he really isn't doing anything material other than having a good time, and perhaps deluding himself as to how well he is impacting his life span. The only material things worth a damn are (a) 80/20 good health practices like regular moderate exercise and calorie restriction, (b) funding the right rejuvenation-focused medical research, things like SENS that may pay off greatly in the next few decades, and (c) cryonics. Everything else is wishful thinking. 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/06/07/90-year-old-billionaire-david-murdock-doles-out-advice-on-longevity/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/06/07/90-year-ol... 2: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projections/2010-based-reference-volume--series-pp2/mortality.html#tab-The-changing-life-table http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projec... 3: http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/intracellular-aggregates http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/intra... 4: http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research 5: http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-on-cryonics/ http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-...

gx 13y ago

Tangentially related: Are there any characters who are known to maintain an above average level of fitness, while hacking a startup? Fitocracy comes to mind, but if the industry were not related to fitness that would be more impressive. Fitness is one thing I would like to accompany me throughout building a startup in the future - asking too much?

sumedh 13y ago

> can run backward. On a treadmill. In the dark. Why is this so significant. Does this affect your health in a goodway?

dictum 13y ago
"Vigorous, varied cardio is Diniz’s cornerstone. Running backward in the dark hones coordination and proprioception -- the sense of where his core and limbs are in space."
- sumedh 13y ago
  > Proprioception Interesting, Need to do some more research on this.
snowwrestler 13y ago
It's a demonstration of good health. (But not necessarily longevity.)

amasad 13y ago

I missed the part were he talks about his "plan". I'd bet on Larry Page to have any impact on longevity. Funding Calico and hiring Ray Kurzweil seems like steps in the right direction.

sanoli 13y ago

Brazilian here. Diniz is ripped and muscular because he takes steroids, as one HNer questioned below. This is well known here to people who strength train, from all the photos he takes showing off his muscles, and from the doctors he's associated with (doctors who charge an arm and a leg to legally prescribe steroids -- this was exposed in a national magazine recently, but was quite known before). How he does keep his muscles with a calorie deficit, I don't know. Probably just a bad article. And no, I don't really like the guy. He's just a billionaire playboy who likes to be on the spotlight. And yes, there are some brazilian billionaires who I admire. Just not this guy.

keeptrying 13y ago
Taking steroids doesn't reduce the effort in getting abs and muscles. You still have to put in a heckuva effort to build that muscle.
- sanoli 13y ago
  Doesn't reduce the effort? Are you sure? To build the same amount of new muscle mass, who needs to put more effort: the natural lifter, or the one taking large doses of steroids? C'mon, I lift regularly with people on the juice. They put in a lot of effort, sure, but so do I, and they've built a lot more muscle.
  - jp555 13y ago
    Steroids significantly reduce recovery time, so you can go back and deliver another "build muscle" stimulus sooner than without the steroids (if you chronically lift before you recover you'll LOSE muscle mass). But you cannot avoid the work, you still need to work just as hard to deliver the stimulus.
    - sanoli 13y ago
      By what you're saying, someone who is lifting and taking adequate rest between sessions, ensuring that they get enough rest, won't benefit from taking steroids if they don't change their schedule? I'm saying steroids reduce recovery time, AND build muscle more easily. You're saying it's just the former.

stephen 13y ago

I wonder what/if his drug regimen is (testosterone replacement therapy, steroids, etc.). Not being judgmental, as most Americans who are 70+ are on a litany of drugs for various chronic conditions anyway. I recall reading that most/all men over the age of 40 would basically qualify for testosterone replacement therapy, albeit perhaps only with an accommodating doctor.

gschiller 13y ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eIaEgxZCpk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eIaEgxZCpk

aruggirello 13y ago

A neighbour of mine died just 2 days ago (I went to his funeral yesterday). He left home at about 10pm for a short walk with his dog, as usual. Then, a few minutes later, somebody noticed him laying on the ground, his dog sitting by his feet. When the ambulance came they apparently tried all they could - to no avail. He was dead. He had a healthy lifestyle and, as an officer, had regular check-ups. He was just 38 years old, and left his wife and two daughters of 13 and 8. I'm sure he didn't plan to do so.

moron4hire 13y ago

Would you say he's a "Brazilianaire"?