Hi Richard, very interesting post; I wish you luck and I look forward to your updates. I came to terms with my own inevitable death about 5 years ago, and I also decided that I want to live longer. But I took a different route, I changed my perception of time and I have caused time to slow down. There is a lot of research on the topic, but basically, it involves practicing mindfulness, stop multi-tasking, delete your social media, etc. There may be a 20% chance that these supplements increase your lifespan, but I'm willing to bet that there's a similar chance that there are unintended side effects (what about cancer at 75?). What if you spent a month off Twitter, left your phone at home, and genuinely engaged/be present with your family instead? You may find that the month feels more like 3 months (in a good way)
Joseph Heller pioneered this technique in his famous novel Catch 22, in which a character named Dunbar seeks to live longer in the midst of the Second World War by doing things that cause his perception of time to slow to a crawl. I believe his favorite activity for this was shooting skeet because an hour shooting skeet was so boring and awful that it seemed like a lifetime.
It could be real. But I tried to listen to David's podcast, and he explained his routine saying he never eats anything before noon except a cup of coffee and a shot of olive oil. Then 5 minutes later an ad came on and he insisted with all the same sincerity that he drinks these meal replacement shakes every single morning. So my money is on total charlatan.
You're right, that does sound contradictory! The problem is the state of science in aging/nutrition is nowhere near solid enough for us to be able to infer "total" charlatanism from 1 snake oil claim. In physics, sure, but not here - it is entirely possible that he is make X percent snake oil claims, and Y percent totally true ones. In fact, his book contains "anti-aging" recommendations that are largely totally conventional health wisdom that any number of regular doctors would recommend to you.
If your goal is to figure out what works, you gotta address each claim individually. If you just want to reduce Sinclair in status, then sure, go for it!
I suppose my aim with this comment is to decrease his status. My impression of him as a person is that he is a liar selling snake oil. Besides lying about what his own anti-aging routine even is, he talks about NMN like it has already solved the problem of aging. My understanding of reality is that if it were true it would be plastered all over the cover of every scientific journal on earth.
Okay, and I agree that his claims in the beginning of the book are totally overblown! Then later on he makes very boring claims about exercise and stuff that almost everyone agrees on - and I don't think we should dismiss those (probably true) claims just because he was wrong, or lying before. But the goal of RH's original post is not "determine if Sinclair is a snake oil salesman" but instead "which anti-aging interventions work." That's the problem with people working in an immature science (which future generations will surely consider early 21st understanding of aging/nutrition to be), you get snake oil mixed in with gold, or even situations where the snake oil works, but only at 5% of the efficacy that the salesman claimed.
Isaac Newton (I am explicitly not equating the two, I am arguing that the question here should not be the person at all) discovered some very true things about physics and some very untrue things about alchemy.
So all this stuff is great, provided you already have sleep, diet, and exercise in check. Until you get that nailed down, the anti aging stuff isn't going help you as much.
Spend that money on a power rack and some plates. Put on 20lbs of muscle. Do sprints and push a sled. This has a 100% chance of working. Then you can get back to this stuff.
the primary thing I get from every single one of these books, and meta-studies about the effectiveness of various anti-aging things (I think Scott Alexander put one together) is that regular exercise ( specifically weight-lifting and low level stuff like walking/hiking - but maybe not high levels of cardio/long distance running) beats the crap out of every single other intervention, both in efficacy and cost-benefit ratio.
there are mindset benefits to exercise (and periodic fasting). it is not easy, but if you do it you overcome the negative part of your brain that is lazy and undisciplined. I am not suggesting that everyone needs to be a David Goggins, but there is carryover to overcoming obstacles in your daily life if you can maintain periodic fasting and exercise regimens.
re: vitamin D - most people (on the internet?) who recommend D say to take far more than the "daily amount" officially listed. There's a whole debate about the recommended levels being from 60 years ago or something, but certainly I'd go with 3-4000 IU at least. Overdose levels are vastly higher than that.
After reading the same book, I take 2 of the Elysium supplements a day ("Signal" and "Basis") for about a year now (41yo). I haven't noticed anything, and my labs aren't radically different. If they have affected my numbers, the effect has been swamped by my high fat diet, intermittent and 4day water fasts and weightlifting, which (combined, so not entirely sure which is to blame) has had a big positive effect on my metabolic lab scores (from Quest, yearly).
As you might imagine, there is a huge amount of snake oil in the industry, but metformin at the very least is pretty well-studied and has positive metabolic effects that likely make you healthier. Notice I make no claims about longevity, but I can perform the old two step of "it improves health indicators that are themselves associated with longevity."
Vitamin D -- it's actually more of a hormone-modulator than a true vitamin -- intake via sun exposure is not the same as supplementation and likely superior. People spend far less time outdoors now that we did ancestrally, and even when we do, we slather on sunscreen, which blocks the D mechanism entirely. My choice is to deal with superficial skin cancers when they occur but gain the greater benefit of sun exposure.
"Sunshine may be the best way to get enough vitamin D, because exposure to solar radiation has other benefits besides. The action of sunshine on the skin raises the level of nitric oxide (NO), which is a very important blood vessel dilator that’s highly correlated with good arterial health. It lowers blood pressure and protects against cardiovascular disease. Safe sun exposure is important, since excess sun on the skin can lead to skin cancer; but the benefits of sun exposure far outweigh the risks, since far more people die of heart disease than skin cancer, of which the non-melanoma type is rarely fatal. Skin cancer is a marker for sun exposure, and people diagnosed with skin cancer have a nearly 50% reduced risk of death from any cause – sun exposure is that powerful. In fact, “avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking. Compared to the highest sun exposure group, life expectancy of avoiders of sun exposure was reduced by 0.6–2.1 years.”" (P. D. Mangan, Best Supplements for Men)
yep, I've definitely been given the "if you get mild skin cancer, that's good, because it meant you got enough sun to not get X Y and Z other diseases that are worse" talk. I am pasty-skinned enough that I try to hedge my bets with sunblock. :) Definitely moderate sun exposure is good for you, and should be added to the list of whatever the author above decides to do for Health Improvement 101.
There IS evidence that it does the opposite. Studies go both ways. I haven't dug into the details enough to have a strong opinion but it concerned me enough to stop for now. One study found a faster rate of decline among Alzheimer's patients who had the APOE4 variant.
A quick search suggests more papers showing preventive effects. I'm about to leave on a trip so can't figure out where I saw the negative recent results, sorry.
looking at that link makes me think of my wife, a physician, describing some researchers who refer to alzheimer's as "type 3 diabetes." I don't know enough to know if they are reflecting conventional wisdom or not, but it seemed interesting.
I've been taking 5,000 IU vitamin D daily for over 6 months now and exactly nothing adverse has happened. I plan on reducing it soon but it seems proper dosage is not well understood.
I take 10,000 IU daily. It gets my blood levels where I want them -- around 50-55 ng/mL. I'm pale skinned and have red hair, so I may need more than most people.
Yep, and definitely people have been taking that amount (and more) for many years now without any vitamin D overdoses. "proper dosage being not well understood" may be an understatement - I don't even think the medical community has a great understanding of dosage, limits, how well it absorbs in different formats, how much you create from the sun, why some people make more/less, what effects it has/doesn't have, how dosages affects the vitamin D blood levels you see in labs, what effects those levels have, if you need to keep taking large doses to maintain that - the list could go on.
"A review of vitamin D meta-analyses reporting on all-cause mortality yields a meta-analytic result of RR = 0.96 with little heterogeneity or signs of bias. Reproducing it as a Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis gives a posterior predictive probability P = 84% that RR<1.0. The expected life expectancy gain is 0.33 years or $16,800, while total cost of vitamin D supplementation is estimated at $761, for a profit of $15,300. The probability of being profitable is estimated at P = 83%. The optimal beginning age is 24yo."
Similar discussions of the other supplements discussed by Richard and Sinclair.
I turned 86 last week. Here's my anti-aging practice
Walk 4.5 miles every day
75 minutes stretch-weights
Eat lots of meat & fish, minimize carbs
Take no medications or supplements
Keep working; I may retire some day when I'm tired, but not yet.
Spend time with family and friends.
If I read a book by an author who claims his 76 year old father "runs around like a teenager", close the book and write a note to myself to pick it up again on my 150th birthday.
Although I find this quite interesting, it all sounds like pure fantasy to me. While it is true that human lifespan has been gradually increasing over time, the idea of immortality seems to be the latest fad. The fact of the matter is that we are mortal beings, and whether we like to think about it or not, we cannot escape our own mortality. As portrayed in the The Fault in Our Stars, we need to come to terms with the reality that they will eventually pass away. It is important that we recognize this truth head-on and face the music.
"Immortality" is a TERRIBLE framing. I wish my fellow prolongevists would stop using that term. It sparks negative reactions like yours. Immortality is not an option. The universe will not support life indefinitely. Well short of that, even with zero aging, you can die of many causes. The goal is not immortality. It is the abolition of aging and degeneration. This is entirely possible and a complex bioengineering problem.
I'm going to second all the posts that stress diet and health and cast a lot of skepticism on miracle supplements. I take creatine and a greens powder, but mainly I think lifting hard 4-5 times a week, dialing in diet, and finding a form of conditioning that allows you to compete with other men (I play basketball and softball) are all good choices. As I enter my late 30s I've found diet and sleep are huge - I used to hate the idea being one of those dorks who goes to bed early, drinks less alcohol and tracks macros every meal, but now that I do it I really feel a lot better and more energetic. Again, I firmly believe that if you haven't fully dialed in training, diet and sleep, those 3 will do more for your health and wellness than any supplement or bio-hack, with the exception of steroids, which come with their own set of risks and downsides. When I get into my 40s or 50s I'll consider TRT, but for now that's in the "cross that bridge when I get to it" territory. You've written posts in the past about how boring middle class advice like "no substitute for discipline and hard work" has a lot of wisdom, and I think that's extremely true in regards to fitness and health.
I mean, for Jeff Bezos it’s incredibly obvious he’s on more than just TRT. The amount of men who can get that jacked 100% naturally even in their 20s is tiny. Which is fine, really! I’m sure he has a whole team around him and is following a safe protocol with guidance from professionals. I’m sure he also feels great. I just hate how even when it’s incredibly obvious and everyone knows it, there’s still this weird taboo around talking about steroids. It gives people unrealistic expectations for the level of progress they can expect, and without the knowledge from someone like Jeff Bezos who’s likely being safe with it, other guys go all in and end up suffering from long term side effects from their steroid misuse.
I don't agree. He's not THAT jacked. TRT plus a regular workout program done properly should produce similar results in many people. The evidence-based guys at Strength by Science have surveyed the literature and think poor gains are primarily due to inadequate volume and not working hard enough. Apparently, many people think they are close to failure but can do twice as reps. Possibly he also takes human growth hormone. He can afford it!
He’s extremely jacked, he’s a 60 year old man for Christ’s sake. Look at his arms, he’s the biggest guy in the room most of the time. I agree it’s possible to look like that if you’re natty, if you start in your 20s or have good to great genetics. Look at picture of bezos in his 20s and 30s, he’s not an athlete. Guys who look like that at 60 AND are all natural are mostly former athletes who’ve never stopped training. Not even hating, good for him, I just doubt he’d look like this just putting his testosterone at baseline. For comparison look at Joe Rogan, who (as far as we know) only does TRT. He was an elite athlete (tae kwan do national champ), who trains religiously since his 20s, is known to be strong as fuck, and doesn’t look nearly as big/beefy as Jeff Bezos.
I'm more jacked than Bezos. I'm 59. True, I've always been stronger than almost everyone I know, but not especially large. I reached my strongest ever at 50 after a couple of years of working especially hard. I'm on TRT to bring my level up to high-normal but no steroids or HGH. I'm looking at his pictures and just seeing anything terribly exceptional. Good but not unbelievable.
Practically guaranteed Mr. Bezos is doing TRT. That's not a terrible thing; many men do. But this is common and normal in the modern era.
Now, you do not automatically lose BF by getting the patch/pill/shots. It takes work to restore muscle mass, reduce BF and in general do a recomp at 45+. He has definitely put oi the effort.
But don't think for a minute that he's not getting hormone therapy.
I’d recommend taking a look at two books that take very different approaches to longevity. Peter Attila’s book Outlive, which tries to offer a broad strategy for approaching the topic, and Michael Greger’s How Not to Die, which tries to survey the vast nutritional literature and draw broad conclusions from it. Both are very good.
Years ago, I read Andy Weil’s Healthy Aging. Rather than extend life, his goal was really to delay decline so that we live to our fullest and then croak after a short period of decline, rather than suffer a long decline like many or most folks. He tried admirably to glean the available. evidence from nutritional literature to recommend the right foods and supplements, though after he first published, the evidence on the benefits of substances like antioxidants seemed to be changing. What I like is the book was devoid of any sensational claims, or unsupported claims, which added to its credibility.
you/Brenner are almost certainly correct that the specific scientific claims that Sinclair rests his "grand theory of aging" on are not (mostly? some? 46.7%?) true, but after the first few chapters of "my theory is totally correct and will magically reverse aging very soon" the book has a large # of actual recommendations that range from "unjustified and you pay Sinclair's company for" to "definitely work, have been scientifically studied, but lots of people know about them already" to "maybe work, don't know, but don't cost much?" to "total banal like exercise more."
I am 100% not defending him or the grand theory, but if your goal is to "figure out what slows aging" then there are claims in the book that should be tested, (and some of which are definitely good for you!) regardless of the "main line of work looks to be mostly fake" and "Other scientists hold[ing] him in disdain."
When someone recommends supplementing Vitamin D, it’s a sure sign they aren’t capable reading science. There’s plenty of correlation with any favorable health outcome you can think of, but when a large trial is done, it always fails (e.g. here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzOR1hAg2OA) . The causality seems to go the other way, Vitamin D is marker of good health.
I hear the other book on aging by Andrew Steele (who seems to understand methodology) is supposed to be far more accurate and still somewhat optimistic about slowing down aging.
Sinclair is definitely a borderline charlatan. Human immortality isn't achievable. It's like pretending thermodynamics doesn't exist. There are some tiny margins for supplements and pharmaceuticals to improve healthspan. Genetics, diet (basically total caloric intake) and exercise are more important on the aging front. Even then we're not headed toward a society with a sizable centenarian population lol
There's a big difference between immortality and say doubling our lifespan. I'm not saying Sinclair isn't a charlatan or that we have any idea how to do it, but it seems rash to predict we'll never figure out how to live a lot longer.
It's weird that we keep jumping from the idea of longevity to immortality - just like AI risk people slide from AI destroying humanity to AI turning the whole galaxy into paperclips. Scale.
Right, it is actually basic scaling principles that allow us to know that human lifespan won't possibly double from current averages today. Check out the Geoffrey West's Scale and the chapters on allometry and metabolics.
It does seem notable that even as average lifespan has increased, the maximum hasn't changed much (and the highest recorded lifespan is likely fraudulent).
That's right. We are only going to raise the maximum lifespan with new scientific understanding and new methods for intervening in aging. Current methods don't work on humans to any significant degree. That doesn't mean there will never be a solution. Claims that life extension is impossible are arrogant claims to know all possible future developments.
Hi Richard, very interesting post; I wish you luck and I look forward to your updates. I came to terms with my own inevitable death about 5 years ago, and I also decided that I want to live longer. But I took a different route, I changed my perception of time and I have caused time to slow down. There is a lot of research on the topic, but basically, it involves practicing mindfulness, stop multi-tasking, delete your social media, etc. There may be a 20% chance that these supplements increase your lifespan, but I'm willing to bet that there's a similar chance that there are unintended side effects (what about cancer at 75?). What if you spent a month off Twitter, left your phone at home, and genuinely engaged/be present with your family instead? You may find that the month feels more like 3 months (in a good way)
Joseph Heller pioneered this technique in his famous novel Catch 22, in which a character named Dunbar seeks to live longer in the midst of the Second World War by doing things that cause his perception of time to slow to a crawl. I believe his favorite activity for this was shooting skeet because an hour shooting skeet was so boring and awful that it seemed like a lifetime.
Having kids can do this too
It could be real. But I tried to listen to David's podcast, and he explained his routine saying he never eats anything before noon except a cup of coffee and a shot of olive oil. Then 5 minutes later an ad came on and he insisted with all the same sincerity that he drinks these meal replacement shakes every single morning. So my money is on total charlatan.
You're right, that does sound contradictory! The problem is the state of science in aging/nutrition is nowhere near solid enough for us to be able to infer "total" charlatanism from 1 snake oil claim. In physics, sure, but not here - it is entirely possible that he is make X percent snake oil claims, and Y percent totally true ones. In fact, his book contains "anti-aging" recommendations that are largely totally conventional health wisdom that any number of regular doctors would recommend to you.
If your goal is to figure out what works, you gotta address each claim individually. If you just want to reduce Sinclair in status, then sure, go for it!
I suppose my aim with this comment is to decrease his status. My impression of him as a person is that he is a liar selling snake oil. Besides lying about what his own anti-aging routine even is, he talks about NMN like it has already solved the problem of aging. My understanding of reality is that if it were true it would be plastered all over the cover of every scientific journal on earth.
Okay, and I agree that his claims in the beginning of the book are totally overblown! Then later on he makes very boring claims about exercise and stuff that almost everyone agrees on - and I don't think we should dismiss those (probably true) claims just because he was wrong, or lying before. But the goal of RH's original post is not "determine if Sinclair is a snake oil salesman" but instead "which anti-aging interventions work." That's the problem with people working in an immature science (which future generations will surely consider early 21st understanding of aging/nutrition to be), you get snake oil mixed in with gold, or even situations where the snake oil works, but only at 5% of the efficacy that the salesman claimed.
Isaac Newton (I am explicitly not equating the two, I am arguing that the question here should not be the person at all) discovered some very true things about physics and some very untrue things about alchemy.
The ads they generally just read off a script the company gives them, I wouldn’t read too much into that.
I don’t see the contradiction here. He doesn’t eat anything but he does drink.
If that was the case he wouldn't say he had coffee and olive oil but neglect to mention the shake.
So all this stuff is great, provided you already have sleep, diet, and exercise in check. Until you get that nailed down, the anti aging stuff isn't going help you as much.
Spend that money on a power rack and some plates. Put on 20lbs of muscle. Do sprints and push a sled. This has a 100% chance of working. Then you can get back to this stuff.
Go read Peter Attila’s take on it too--less sensational and a lot harder. But he’s in the LA area (I think)
I’m reading it now. Convinced me to exercise a lot more.
the primary thing I get from every single one of these books, and meta-studies about the effectiveness of various anti-aging things (I think Scott Alexander put one together) is that regular exercise ( specifically weight-lifting and low level stuff like walking/hiking - but maybe not high levels of cardio/long distance running) beats the crap out of every single other intervention, both in efficacy and cost-benefit ratio.
And there are short term benefits too in terms of looks and how you feel. Exercising is an easy choice.
there are mindset benefits to exercise (and periodic fasting). it is not easy, but if you do it you overcome the negative part of your brain that is lazy and undisciplined. I am not suggesting that everyone needs to be a David Goggins, but there is carryover to overcoming obstacles in your daily life if you can maintain periodic fasting and exercise regimens.
re: vitamin D - most people (on the internet?) who recommend D say to take far more than the "daily amount" officially listed. There's a whole debate about the recommended levels being from 60 years ago or something, but certainly I'd go with 3-4000 IU at least. Overdose levels are vastly higher than that.
After reading the same book, I take 2 of the Elysium supplements a day ("Signal" and "Basis") for about a year now (41yo). I haven't noticed anything, and my labs aren't radically different. If they have affected my numbers, the effect has been swamped by my high fat diet, intermittent and 4day water fasts and weightlifting, which (combined, so not entirely sure which is to blame) has had a big positive effect on my metabolic lab scores (from Quest, yearly).
As you might imagine, there is a huge amount of snake oil in the industry, but metformin at the very least is pretty well-studied and has positive metabolic effects that likely make you healthier. Notice I make no claims about longevity, but I can perform the old two step of "it improves health indicators that are themselves associated with longevity."
Vitamin D -- it's actually more of a hormone-modulator than a true vitamin -- intake via sun exposure is not the same as supplementation and likely superior. People spend far less time outdoors now that we did ancestrally, and even when we do, we slather on sunscreen, which blocks the D mechanism entirely. My choice is to deal with superficial skin cancers when they occur but gain the greater benefit of sun exposure.
More on sun…
"Sunshine may be the best way to get enough vitamin D, because exposure to solar radiation has other benefits besides. The action of sunshine on the skin raises the level of nitric oxide (NO), which is a very important blood vessel dilator that’s highly correlated with good arterial health. It lowers blood pressure and protects against cardiovascular disease. Safe sun exposure is important, since excess sun on the skin can lead to skin cancer; but the benefits of sun exposure far outweigh the risks, since far more people die of heart disease than skin cancer, of which the non-melanoma type is rarely fatal. Skin cancer is a marker for sun exposure, and people diagnosed with skin cancer have a nearly 50% reduced risk of death from any cause – sun exposure is that powerful. In fact, “avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking. Compared to the highest sun exposure group, life expectancy of avoiders of sun exposure was reduced by 0.6–2.1 years.”" (P. D. Mangan, Best Supplements for Men)
yep, I've definitely been given the "if you get mild skin cancer, that's good, because it meant you got enough sun to not get X Y and Z other diseases that are worse" talk. I am pasty-skinned enough that I try to hedge my bets with sunblock. :) Definitely moderate sun exposure is good for you, and should be added to the list of whatever the author above decides to do for Health Improvement 101.
I recently quit metformin because of evidence that it may increase the risk of dementia. That's a big deal! Further study needed.
naively, I would've thought it would have the opposite effect - could you link the study you're looking at?
There IS evidence that it does the opposite. Studies go both ways. I haven't dug into the details enough to have a strong opinion but it concerned me enough to stop for now. One study found a faster rate of decline among Alzheimer's patients who had the APOE4 variant.
https://www.alzdiscovery.org/cognitive-vitality/ratings/metformin
A quick search suggests more papers showing preventive effects. I'm about to leave on a trip so can't figure out where I saw the negative recent results, sorry.
looking at that link makes me think of my wife, a physician, describing some researchers who refer to alzheimer's as "type 3 diabetes." I don't know enough to know if they are reflecting conventional wisdom or not, but it seemed interesting.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/whats-the-relationship-between-diabetes-and-dementia-202107122546
Also, great name - we chose the same one for my son, albeit with an extra "o" in the last. ;)
I've been taking 5,000 IU vitamin D daily for over 6 months now and exactly nothing adverse has happened. I plan on reducing it soon but it seems proper dosage is not well understood.
I take 10,000 IU daily. It gets my blood levels where I want them -- around 50-55 ng/mL. I'm pale skinned and have red hair, so I may need more than most people.
Yep, and definitely people have been taking that amount (and more) for many years now without any vitamin D overdoses. "proper dosage being not well understood" may be an understatement - I don't even think the medical community has a great understanding of dosage, limits, how well it absorbs in different formats, how much you create from the sun, why some people make more/less, what effects it has/doesn't have, how dosages affects the vitamin D blood levels you see in labs, what effects those levels have, if you need to keep taking large doses to maintain that - the list could go on.
The essay "Longevity" by Gwern was what finally convinced me to start taking Vitamin D (2,000 IU) and aspirin (83 mg) daily, a few years ago.
https://gwern.net/longevity (written 2015, updated 2018)
Here's his summary on D:
"A review of vitamin D meta-analyses reporting on all-cause mortality yields a meta-analytic result of RR = 0.96 with little heterogeneity or signs of bias. Reproducing it as a Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis gives a posterior predictive probability P = 84% that RR<1.0. The expected life expectancy gain is 0.33 years or $16,800, while total cost of vitamin D supplementation is estimated at $761, for a profit of $15,300. The probability of being profitable is estimated at P = 83%. The optimal beginning age is 24yo."
Similar discussions of the other supplements discussed by Richard and Sinclair.
I turned 86 last week. Here's my anti-aging practice
Walk 4.5 miles every day
75 minutes stretch-weights
Eat lots of meat & fish, minimize carbs
Take no medications or supplements
Keep working; I may retire some day when I'm tired, but not yet.
Spend time with family and friends.
If I read a book by an author who claims his 76 year old father "runs around like a teenager", close the book and write a note to myself to pick it up again on my 150th birthday.
Love this
Although I find this quite interesting, it all sounds like pure fantasy to me. While it is true that human lifespan has been gradually increasing over time, the idea of immortality seems to be the latest fad. The fact of the matter is that we are mortal beings, and whether we like to think about it or not, we cannot escape our own mortality. As portrayed in the The Fault in Our Stars, we need to come to terms with the reality that they will eventually pass away. It is important that we recognize this truth head-on and face the music.
"Immortality" is a TERRIBLE framing. I wish my fellow prolongevists would stop using that term. It sparks negative reactions like yours. Immortality is not an option. The universe will not support life indefinitely. Well short of that, even with zero aging, you can die of many causes. The goal is not immortality. It is the abolition of aging and degeneration. This is entirely possible and a complex bioengineering problem.
I've heard shitposting on Twitter works too! Might want to check it out.
I'm going to second all the posts that stress diet and health and cast a lot of skepticism on miracle supplements. I take creatine and a greens powder, but mainly I think lifting hard 4-5 times a week, dialing in diet, and finding a form of conditioning that allows you to compete with other men (I play basketball and softball) are all good choices. As I enter my late 30s I've found diet and sleep are huge - I used to hate the idea being one of those dorks who goes to bed early, drinks less alcohol and tracks macros every meal, but now that I do it I really feel a lot better and more energetic. Again, I firmly believe that if you haven't fully dialed in training, diet and sleep, those 3 will do more for your health and wellness than any supplement or bio-hack, with the exception of steroids, which come with their own set of risks and downsides. When I get into my 40s or 50s I'll consider TRT, but for now that's in the "cross that bridge when I get to it" territory. You've written posts in the past about how boring middle class advice like "no substitute for discipline and hard work" has a lot of wisdom, and I think that's extremely true in regards to fitness and health.
I mean, for Jeff Bezos it’s incredibly obvious he’s on more than just TRT. The amount of men who can get that jacked 100% naturally even in their 20s is tiny. Which is fine, really! I’m sure he has a whole team around him and is following a safe protocol with guidance from professionals. I’m sure he also feels great. I just hate how even when it’s incredibly obvious and everyone knows it, there’s still this weird taboo around talking about steroids. It gives people unrealistic expectations for the level of progress they can expect, and without the knowledge from someone like Jeff Bezos who’s likely being safe with it, other guys go all in and end up suffering from long term side effects from their steroid misuse.
I don't agree. He's not THAT jacked. TRT plus a regular workout program done properly should produce similar results in many people. The evidence-based guys at Strength by Science have surveyed the literature and think poor gains are primarily due to inadequate volume and not working hard enough. Apparently, many people think they are close to failure but can do twice as reps. Possibly he also takes human growth hormone. He can afford it!
He’s extremely jacked, he’s a 60 year old man for Christ’s sake. Look at his arms, he’s the biggest guy in the room most of the time. I agree it’s possible to look like that if you’re natty, if you start in your 20s or have good to great genetics. Look at picture of bezos in his 20s and 30s, he’s not an athlete. Guys who look like that at 60 AND are all natural are mostly former athletes who’ve never stopped training. Not even hating, good for him, I just doubt he’d look like this just putting his testosterone at baseline. For comparison look at Joe Rogan, who (as far as we know) only does TRT. He was an elite athlete (tae kwan do national champ), who trains religiously since his 20s, is known to be strong as fuck, and doesn’t look nearly as big/beefy as Jeff Bezos.
I'm more jacked than Bezos. I'm 59. True, I've always been stronger than almost everyone I know, but not especially large. I reached my strongest ever at 50 after a couple of years of working especially hard. I'm on TRT to bring my level up to high-normal but no steroids or HGH. I'm looking at his pictures and just seeing anything terribly exceptional. Good but not unbelievable.
Somewhat more sober take https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/book-review-david-sinclair-lifespan
Practically guaranteed Mr. Bezos is doing TRT. That's not a terrible thing; many men do. But this is common and normal in the modern era.
Now, you do not automatically lose BF by getting the patch/pill/shots. It takes work to restore muscle mass, reduce BF and in general do a recomp at 45+. He has definitely put oi the effort.
But don't think for a minute that he's not getting hormone therapy.
I’d recommend taking a look at two books that take very different approaches to longevity. Peter Attila’s book Outlive, which tries to offer a broad strategy for approaching the topic, and Michael Greger’s How Not to Die, which tries to survey the vast nutritional literature and draw broad conclusions from it. Both are very good.
Years ago, I read Andy Weil’s Healthy Aging. Rather than extend life, his goal was really to delay decline so that we live to our fullest and then croak after a short period of decline, rather than suffer a long decline like many or most folks. He tried admirably to glean the available. evidence from nutritional literature to recommend the right foods and supplements, though after he first published, the evidence on the benefits of substances like antioxidants seemed to be changing. What I like is the book was devoid of any sensational claims, or unsupported claims, which added to its credibility.
Didn’t see you had recommended literally the exact same two books I did later on in the comments 🤦♂️
Sinclair's main line of work looks to be mostly fake. Other scientists hold him in disdain: https://twitter.com/CharlesMBrenner/status/1492903671041904641?t=rwpZzxE60vibfjtm0OaLLQ&s=19
you/Brenner are almost certainly correct that the specific scientific claims that Sinclair rests his "grand theory of aging" on are not (mostly? some? 46.7%?) true, but after the first few chapters of "my theory is totally correct and will magically reverse aging very soon" the book has a large # of actual recommendations that range from "unjustified and you pay Sinclair's company for" to "definitely work, have been scientifically studied, but lots of people know about them already" to "maybe work, don't know, but don't cost much?" to "total banal like exercise more."
I am 100% not defending him or the grand theory, but if your goal is to "figure out what slows aging" then there are claims in the book that should be tested, (and some of which are definitely good for you!) regardless of the "main line of work looks to be mostly fake" and "Other scientists hold[ing] him in disdain."
When someone recommends supplementing Vitamin D, it’s a sure sign they aren’t capable reading science. There’s plenty of correlation with any favorable health outcome you can think of, but when a large trial is done, it always fails (e.g. here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzOR1hAg2OA) . The causality seems to go the other way, Vitamin D is marker of good health.
I hear the other book on aging by Andrew Steele (who seems to understand methodology) is supposed to be far more accurate and still somewhat optimistic about slowing down aging.
Sinclair is definitely a borderline charlatan. Human immortality isn't achievable. It's like pretending thermodynamics doesn't exist. There are some tiny margins for supplements and pharmaceuticals to improve healthspan. Genetics, diet (basically total caloric intake) and exercise are more important on the aging front. Even then we're not headed toward a society with a sizable centenarian population lol
There's a big difference between immortality and say doubling our lifespan. I'm not saying Sinclair isn't a charlatan or that we have any idea how to do it, but it seems rash to predict we'll never figure out how to live a lot longer.
It's weird that we keep jumping from the idea of longevity to immortality - just like AI risk people slide from AI destroying humanity to AI turning the whole galaxy into paperclips. Scale.
Right, it is actually basic scaling principles that allow us to know that human lifespan won't possibly double from current averages today. Check out the Geoffrey West's Scale and the chapters on allometry and metabolics.
It does seem notable that even as average lifespan has increased, the maximum hasn't changed much (and the highest recorded lifespan is likely fraudulent).
That's right. We are only going to raise the maximum lifespan with new scientific understanding and new methods for intervening in aging. Current methods don't work on humans to any significant degree. That doesn't mean there will never be a solution. Claims that life extension is impossible are arrogant claims to know all possible future developments.
Yes, exactly what I was getting at. There's more or less a sort of hard ceiling on human lifespan - generously estimated at 125 by Geoffrey West.
Immortality is not the goal. It's ending the plague of involuntary aging and infirmity.