

The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday - ojbyrne
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06murdock-t.html?pagewanted=all

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AngryParsley
_He doesn’t count calories or believe in extreme caloric restriction as a way
to extend life._

Not only has caloric restriction been shown to work in mammals (including
primates), but it has known mechanisms of action. That's some hefty evidence
to ignore.

 _But he does believe that excess weight is a sure way to abbreviate it, and
reprimands friends, acquaintances and even strangers who are heavy._

The latest studies (<http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/293/15/1861.abstract>)
show underweight and obese people have higher mortality in old age. The mildly
overweight need not worry.

 _Sure, the rinds and peels — which he explains by saying that the parts of
fruits most directly sun-kissed are bound to harbor the most energy — may be a
little strange._

This makes it clear he has no idea what he's talking about.

~~~
Evgeny
This is interesting, however. Let's think about it for a minute.

    
    
        - Caloric restriction has been shown to work. Caloric
        restriction would most likely result in individuals
        being at least slightly underweight.
        - Underweight have higher mortality in the old age.
        Mildly overweight need not worry.
    

So how does that work together?

~~~
AngryParsley
Practically nobody does CR. The underweight people in the study likely had
diseases or nutrient absorption problems.

~~~
Evgeny
_Practically nobody does CR_

Fair enough. I personally wouldn't even try CR - I don't have enough willpower
to be slightly hungry for the rest of my life. I'm trying to incorporate some
Intermittent Fasting in my life though, since it has some similar benefits.

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julian37
_Indeed, he speaks so loudly at times, and in such a declamatory manner, that
it cows people, who sometimes assume they’ve angered him. “When I open my
mouth,” he noted, “the room rings.”_

 _“I’ll match wits with anybody,” he says. “I don’t care if they have the top
degree in the world.” He notes that everyone on his research campus’s board is
a Ph.D. or an M.D. But he, the high-school dropout, presides over the
meetings._

This guy must be fun to work for...

~~~
waterlesscloud
Sounds like he's got tiger blood.

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burgerbrain
_“I never have anything go wrong,” he said later. “Never have a backache.
Never have a headache. Never have anything else.”_

I guess his doctors are too kind to tell him that he's senile as hell.

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rwmj
"If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually
live longer; it just seems longer" -- Clement Freud (died aged 84).

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postfuturist
Some folks are just healthier. It's a single data point. Who knows if it has
_anything_ to do with his diet? Staying fit and avoiding tobacco are proven to
extend life. His specific dietary restrictions? Meh, who knows?

~~~
ZoFreX
My grandmother lived to 95, and was very healthy into her early ninties. Her
diet, while generally good, made plenty of room for curries and lager, and she
liked to get pretty sloshed on her birthdays. Single data points: Useless.

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nickpp
It is interesting that him, and other rich men like Kurzweil are choosing
plant-base diets instead of the Taubes, paleo crowd-pushed meat and fat diets.

They can't be both right.

~~~
snprbob86
My bet is that neither is right...

Eat when you're hungry. Stop when you're full. Laugh often. Play (physically)
more than occasionally. Drink and be merry. Stop worrying. You'll live
forever.

And even if you only live a short while, it's better than living a boring life
for a slightly longer while.

~~~
nickpp
Sadly it is not so simple for an increasingly large number of people suffering
from diabetes, obesity, arterial and heart diseases.

They are looking for solutions to get healthy so they can enjoy life in the
ways you are presenting.

So far the 2 main camps claiming to have the solution to everything are
pushing 2 completely opposed strategies, none of them seemingly more proven
than the other...

~~~
patrickgzill
Sufficient exercise can reverse or minimize many of those diseases you
mention.

~~~
travisp
Except that carefully controlled studies have failed to support your claim
that sufficient (whatever that is) exercise can reverse or minimize most of
those diseases.

~~~
kragen
Neither of you have provided any evidence to support your assertions. I don't
understand how either of you can have positive karma scores.

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patrickgzill
Such articles put me in mind of Jack LaLanne, who by most accounts did
everything (that he knew of) right in terms of exercise and diet.

He lived to 96 ... his brother Norman LaLanne lived to 97.

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phil
_“I went back in my mind: what am I not eating enough of?” he told me.
Definitely not fruits and vegetables: he crams as many as 20 of them,
including pulverized banana peels and the ground-up rinds of oranges, into the
smoothies he drinks two to three times a day_

Wait, banana peels?

~~~
MikeCapone
Well, it's not like they're toxic... Have you seen the movie K-Pax?

~~~
Tichy
I would expect banana peels to be quite toxic on average. Lots of pesticides,
and unless you live in a place where bananas grow, who knows what they do to
the bananas to prepare them for shipping.

~~~
jlazarow
Wouldn't organic bananas avoid that?

~~~
Tichy
I wouldn't count on it, as there are varying definitions of organic.

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lionhearted
Whenever a thread comes up about someone taking a sincere interest in
nutrition and making difficult sacrifices to try to enjoy a better life, you
start to see people come out and mock it and make jokes and assert a certain
"well I'm having more fun" type superiority.

Well, I'm not so sure about that. Most of the people I know who work to live
really healthy have the guts to go counter-cultural/counter-mainstream in
other ways too. They live good lives filled with adventure, have lots of fun,
live healthier, and on average die later. Smoking is cool - I used to _love_
good tobacco. Red meat is amazing. I used to _love_ good steaks. But funny
enough, the net pleasure you have after quitting that stuff doesn't really go
down. It's hard to do, but you really do live better across the board if
you're willing to put in the initial willpower and sacrifices.

~~~
iuguy
I'm not so sure if I agree with what you're saying. I have few vices. I cook
everything from scratch, don't smoke, rarely eat red meat and have a very
nutritious diet. My main vices are a lack of exercise and alcohol (as I like
to make cocktails, learn new ones and experiment I probably drink more of them
than most).

Exercising more would probably give me more enjoyment, but at the opportunity
cost of what I'm doing instead. Cutting out alcohol will no doubt extend my
life (after all, alcohol is a fairly poisonous chemical to start off with)
cutting it out would reduce the net pleasure I get not just from drinking
cocktails, but introducing new ones to others and watching the pleasure they
get from experiencing them.

You can't consistently make great cocktails if you're teetotal anymore than
you can consistently cook incredible meat dishes if you're vegetarian as
there's no direct feedback mechanism.

I'm not saying that the net pleasure doesn't go down in all cases, but there
are definitely some. I'm sure giving up mountain climbing can extend life, but
there's a drop in pleasure for a mountain climber too.

~~~
StavrosK
> You can't consistently make great cocktails if you're teetotal

Of course you can, just don't swallow.

------
stjohn
Living to 125 would be exceptional, but not all that incredible when you
consider that the longest living woman on record lived to 122.5.

~~~
JacobAldridge
And that she quit smoking at 120! A beautiful case study for those who see
causation in correlation.

~~~
sp332
Obviously, smoking causes death!

/troll

~~~
Evgeny
But in this particular case it looks like _stopping smoking_ causes death.
Smoked to 120, stopped, died at 122.5.

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robryan
I think for most people, if these extreme measures brought them another 50
years it may be worth the effort of being perfectly disciplined. But even if
he is onto something, which may think they are using conflicting methods, it's
probably going to buy him an extra few years over just being healthy without
being obsessive.

~~~
burgerbrain
One might even suspect that obsessing over your heath so much is actually
unhealthy...

~~~
RK
A few doctors are starting to use the term orthorexia to describe the
obsession some people have with "eating right".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthorexia_nervosa>

These questions unfortunately remind me of a few people I know:

* Does their diet make it difficult for them to eat anywhere but at home, distancing them from family and friends?

* Has the quality of their life decreased as the quality of their diet increased?

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nazgulnarsil
is he contributing to SENS?

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sayemm
Cool read, it reminds me of this post by James Altucher on "How to Live
Forever", some great tips in there - <http://jamesaltucher.com/2010/11/how-to-
live-forever/>

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6ren
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