
Longevity FAQ: A beginner's guide to longevity research - apsec112
https://www.ldeming.com/longevityfaq
======
chriselles
I’m a 51 year old interested amateur.

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

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

Supplements used:

Resveratrol Ubiquinol NAD Thiacin Fish Oil Ginkgo

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

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

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

~~~
chriselles
I’ve been on a disciplined ketogenic diet for 3 years now.

I had put on weight due to a few persistent training injuries.

I lost 22kg fairly quickly combined with a return to durability/longevity
focused fitness.

Anecdotally, I actually feel my cognitive ability has improved. I feel sharper
and able to focus better/longer and have been published far more after than
prior.

However, I have to admit that I need to stay quite well hydrated or else I
start feeling slower/foggier, I reckon it could be both diet and age related.

I feel like I am fastest/sharpest in the morning prior to a late lunch when my
eating window opens.

I do eat breakfast on weekends and have the occasional cheat meal approx once
per month.

Just my anecdotal experience.

------
turing_complete
I want to get involved in longevity - first as a side project, maybe later
full-time. What would be the best way to support the cause as a software
engineer or data scientist?

~~~
apsec112
Laura's website also has a "How Can I Help?" page:

[https://www.ldeming.com/how-to-help](https://www.ldeming.com/how-to-help)

------
thadk
In 1897, philosopher Paul Janet came up with the model that current moments of
time in our lives might be perceived by their "fraction of life lived thus
far". This would seem to undermine the value of longevity somewhat:

according to this visualization of the idea:
[https://www.maximiliankiener.com/digitalprojects/time/](https://www.maximiliankiener.com/digitalprojects/time/)

~~~
GuB-42
I don't like this argument, it has a singularly at age zero.

The visualisation sidesteps the problem by starting at year one. You can also
add arbitrary constants or other tweaks, but then the idea lose its elegance
and you can make it say anything you want.

~~~
pessimizer
My recalled experiences approaching age zero closely resemble an asymptote. I
can accept that the subjective time between 0.0 seconds (when is time zero,
anyway?) and 0.1 seconds was infinitely longer than the last 40 years. Recall
of things since I was five only gets moderately difficult, while recall of
experiences from one year old or earlier is almost completely inaccessible.

One could say that's because I lacked the experience to interpret and store my
sensations at the time, and that those were gradually gained, but to my view
that's not a refutation but actually reenforcement of the argument. I'm still
learning higher level abstractions every day; the tools to more efficiently
store sensation are gathered as new sensations are gathered.

When I was 14, every day at work was radically different than the last. At 44,
they're pretty much the same. When I was 14, 8 hours was like forever. These
days, if you asked me at 9PM, there might be a 2-3 second delay for me to
remember if I worked at all that day.

------
jz_
List of companies working on the biology of aging:
[http://agingbiotech.info/companies/](http://agingbiotech.info/companies/)

------
apsec112
HN discussion from three years ago, although I think this page has been
updated since then:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098176)

------
SMAAART
Food intake is regulated primarily by dietary protein and carbohydrate • Low-
protein, high-carbohydrate diets are associated with the longest lifespans •
Energy reduction from high-protein diets or dietary dilution does not extend
life

[https://www.cell.com/cell-
metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(14)...](https://www.cell.com/cell-
metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131\(14\)00065-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1550413114000655%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)

~~~
0-_-0
...in mice, which evolved to eat mainly carbohydrates, while humans evolved to
eat whatever they could

~~~
swyx
what's that rule about research that most research should come with the
disclaimer "in mice"?

~~~
larssorenson
You're probably thinking of the twitter account @justsaysinmice,
[https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice](https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice).

For the uninitiated and otherwise unaware, many studies regarding illnesses,
disease, nutrition, exercise, medicine, etc. perform clinical trials with
mice. Resultant publications are picked up by news outlets who headline the
results, without the caveat that the results were only found in mice. Mice
are, notably, not humans and the results don't (in fact, rarely ever) carry
over 1:1.

------
sci_prog
Veritasium has a good, relatively recent video on this topic:
[https://youtu.be/QRt7LjqJ45k](https://youtu.be/QRt7LjqJ45k)

------
tim333
I've been trying some of the David Sinclair NMN + resveratrol stuff for a
couple of months. I think I can safely state there has been no noticeable
effect in my case. There's a guy on the internet been trying it for 6 months
with seemingly some positive effects
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWx77ARQ9lo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWx77ARQ9lo)
And it seems to do stuff in mice.

[https://khn.org/news/a-fountain-of-youth-pill-sure-if-
youre-...](https://khn.org/news/a-fountain-of-youth-pill-sure-if-youre-a-
mouse/)

~~~
moh_maya
Mouse models are just that. Models. A lot of the results in mice don't carry
over to humans. A positive result in mice is only weakly indicative of
potential efficacy in humans. [1,2] Pop-sci articles seldom acknowledge this
or draw attention to this.

Re reservatol, the jury is really out on that one too. [3,4]

[1] [https://theconversation.com/of-mice-and-men-why-animal-
trial...](https://theconversation.com/of-mice-and-men-why-animal-trial-
results-dont-always-translate-to-humans-73354)

[2] [https://www.nature.com/news/chilly-lab-mice-skew-cancer-
stud...](https://www.nature.com/news/chilly-lab-mice-skew-cancer-
studies-1.14190)

[3] [https://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/2019/10/29/david-
sincl...](https://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/2019/10/29/david-sinclair/)

[4] [https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diet-rich-resveratrol-
of...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diet-rich-resveratrol-offers-
health-boost-201405157153)

~~~
tim333
Yeah it's a bit hard to tell either way - works or does nothing much. The
enthusiasts like Sinclair take DNA methylation tests which seem to indicate
some effect but whether that translates to longer life I dunno. I've been too
tight to try those as they tend to run $300 per test.

------
sg47
I watched a documentary on Fred Beckey and then Valley Uprising. For a group
that took a lot of risk, many of them seem to live or have lived till the age
of 75. Fred Beckey himself lived till the age of 94. His entire lifestyle is a
list of things to not to live long except for the exercise.

------
flyinglizard
Actual substantial longevity - beyond quality of life enhancements - is
something I greatly fear. It would change everything.

Imagine life with no kids and the joy they bring, a stagnation in all societal
structures, no turnover of ideas (loosely quoting "agendas don't die; people
die").

I'm sure such a civilization would be very stable, but won't have any extreme
sports.

~~~
lachlan-sneff
Do you not want to live longer?

~~~
millstone
"Science advances one funeral at a time." \- Max Planck

"Death is very likely the best single invention of life. It is life’s change
agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." \- Steve Jobs

I know my life is accreting old biases and obstacles. Today and for years to
come (I hope) I have more to do, but some day I will become an agent of
stagnation instead of advancement.

Nobody wants to die. But in the big picture, the alternative is worse.

~~~
kiba
For the vast majority of our history, there had been little to no
technological changes.

Only difference is that in the last few centuries, there had been
technological and scientific changes.

What changes? it's certainly isn't that old men die faster so that we embrace
newer ideas faster. The old guards probably lived longer on average thanks to
medicine.

~~~
millstone
Progress (technological or otherwise) is exponential by nature, because it
builds on itself. What has changed is that its pace has outstripped our
capacity to integrate it. So our age of peak contribution trends lower,
towards the younger generation, which has less to unlearn.

As I grow older, I can see how my thinking is affected by my past. Someone
with an unencumbered perspective will do the new thing, when I cannot.

~~~
antepodius
It's an economic problem. Right now, there's this torrent of new minds to come
up with new ideas thanks to their lack of preconceptions, so there's no effort
put towards alternatives.

There's a lot of possibilities that will open up as our tech advances. Say,
wiping all memories of your field so you can learn it again with a fresh mind.
Spawning short-lived digital clones of your mind with the mental 'temperature'
turned up, in whatever way that's possible- maybe just dose them up with
synthetic lsd in different doses- and observe the results. Lots of ways to get
novel ideas without having to rely on wastefully growing billions of brains
(and the attached bodies!) before throwing them, and most of the information
in them, away to rot.

------
artir
You can find another FAQ here for more related reading
[https://nintil.com/longevity](https://nintil.com/longevity)

------
TedDoesntTalk
I remember reading recently that Peter Thiel gets blood transfusions from
children (parabiosis). Is that accurate?

~~~
tim333
>Mr Thiel said: "I want to publicly tell you that I'm not a vampire. On the
record, I am not a vampire."

>When questioned further on the matter, he denied that he has ever injected
himself with a "young person's blood,"

[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/ne...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/news/peter-thiel-vampire-donald-trump-life-extension-blood-transfusion-
ambrosia-palantir-a8614061.html)

------
mindhash
Wow. This is awesome. Thank you Laura for taking time and writing this.

------
staticassertion
So the tl;dr from what I've found so far is that:

* What you eat

* When you eat

* How much you eat

* Exercise

Are by far the simplest, cheapest, and most well documented way to extend life
by quite a lot. We have lots of evidence to back calorie restriction. We know
that eating more earlier in the day vs later means your insulin levels can
recover better (or something?). We know eating certain types of fats is bad
for you, and eating certain types of other things are good for you. Exercise,
or at least the right kind of exercise (seems like there are open questions
here, like how much is actually important) is healthy.

Then there are a number of pills you can take. When it comes to the pills we
have a lot less evidence. From what I've seen there are probably a dozen or so
pills, each one with bits and pieces of science surrounding them, that will
_maybe_ have some impact on mortality or aging. Some of the research does seem
quite compelling - niacin, for example, seems to be pretty well researched and
is actually prescribed at times. Niacin is also one of the pills you'll see
come up a lot if you start looking into anti-aging. Others like resveratrol
(which, actually, appears to be old news - people have moved on, it seems, to
more bioavailable substances) have a lot less research, though they're
promising.

If you're willing to spend 100-200 dollars a month or so it seems that you can
get most or all of these. I don't think _any_ research has been done on what
taking _all_ of these will do to you, but there is research on how the
chemicals behave and I suppose from there people seem to draw conclusions on
interactions.

Interestingly, from what I've read a lot of the popular "anti aging" trends
like anti-oxidants are, more or less, very much debunked. My understanding is
that while anti-oxidants absolutely do what their name implies in a lab
setting, most of them tend to not do a damn thing in humans with regards to
oxidation. So who knows what is or isn't going to work.

From my layman understanding, if you're ~20 years old you can basically just
not fuck up super hard and wait another decade and we'll know a lot more. If
you're 30, definitely start taking health seriously but maybe don't worry so
much about downing 50 supplements that only have a bit of backing research. If
you're 40 and above, and your goal is life extension... you might have to take
a gamble.

If you're interested, I found this channel quite interesting - I appreciated
the guy always citing studies (and he explicitly calls out why he thinks the
study is or is not high quality).

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpcvPcHJVOkO9Qp79BOagTg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpcvPcHJVOkO9Qp79BOagTg)

This FAQ definitely seems to be a good 'one stop shop' for learning the state
of things, without being prescriptive.

I'm not a doctor. I just got interested in the last few weeks about this
stuff. None of this is without risk - that much is obvious. Only just the
other day I was reading a post by someone who ended up in the hospital with
liver failure that very possibly could have been tied to their
supplementation. If you start taking pills that you don't understand you seem
_very_ likely to fuck things up - some pills require that you _take other
pills also_ , for example lots of nootropics will fuck you up if you don't get
enough choline in your diet. All of this is to say, there's cool and promising
stuff here, but do your own research, and if you're very young and healthy
don't stress about this stuff yet - the first step is always diet and
exercise.

~~~
hyko
_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
> 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
_But there’s quite a lot of research on this?_

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

 _around your 40s is [...] when your body really starts to age hard_

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

 _Living longer, sure, but mostly it’s about living better_

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

Look, death and disease are scary. They’re existential threats. Focusing on
diet and exercise is great fun, has a host of incidental benefits, and returns
the locus of control to yourself; however it cannot do all that much to really
deflect the asteroid of ageing in the long run. I just want people to be aware
of what the magnitude of the effects actually are, and not get sucked into the
hype machine. I suppose sometimes it’s better to travel hopefully than to
arrive...I certainly hope that the state of the art advances fast enough to
save us all, and that’s basically based on nothing. Supplements like Niacin
are just a flat-out bust: [https://www.cochrane.org/CD009744/VASC_niacin-
people-or-with...](https://www.cochrane.org/CD009744/VASC_niacin-people-or-
without-established-cardiovascular-disease)

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.

------
thiagotomei
If people were dying in troves of a disease (...) every effort would be put on
saving them, right? How come some deaths are considered "fine", but others
aren't?

No. Just No.

Let longevity come. Let immortality come. Let us live forever, sail the
heavens, and travel to every world, every star, every galaxy, everywhere.

------
alirsgp
Anyone don't want longevity for humans? I think death is a beautiful thing and
for a lot of us including myself life has been really tough at times. The fact
that there is an equalizer in death makes life comforting at times.

~~~
ALittleLight
I think people who feel this way should be perfectly free to, but not everyone
does, and they should be free not to die as per their preference.

I think of it as, if my loved one (or me) were in the hospital with a fatal
disease, but there was a cure, I would want the cure. I can't really see
myself saying "Yeah, but death is so beautiful..."

I see aging the same way, as another fatal disease and I'd cure it if I could.
I don't hope for an indefinite period of old age, but an indefinite period of
good health, like 20-30s.

~~~
catgary
I don’t know, I think one of the kindest things an older generation does is
die off and let the younger generations take the reigns.

~~~
ALittleLight
I don't feel that way at all. I don't need my parents to die to do my own
thing. They can keep and continue to grow their stuff and I can build mine.
Indeed, I'd be much happier in this case, I don't want to take their reins, I
want to live in a world with them and share in life and experiences together,
while having my own reins to my own wagon.

------
coldelectrons
I want to outlive all the bastards, fix every problem they've ever created,
and live well past their loathesome names passing from memory.

------
koonsolo
I stopped reading after seeing the cancer/hearth disease chart. It reinforces
the belief that most deaths are caused by cancer, while actually it's hearth
disease.

So if you make a chart, please make it accurate.

Therefore I couldn't trust the rest, since it might all be "drawn from the
wrist".

~~~
est31
If you unify all cancers into one category, then cancer is the top cause. If
you split them up into the different types, then heart disease is bigger than
any single of them. So you are wrong.

[https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-
top-10-...](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-
top-10-causes-of-death)

Shows heart disease as #1 with 3 million deaths but separates the cancer
types.

[https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/cancer](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer)

Says there were 9.6 million deaths caused by cancer, so more than 3 times the
heart disease amount.

~~~
Supermancho
The second link says:

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

> So you are wrong.

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

~~~
est31
> "Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally

Huh missed that, thanks for pointing it out!

I guess that this statement compares combined cancer types with the combined
cardiovascular diseases [1]. Then, yes, cancer is #2. But the cardiovascular
diseases can't really be summarized by "heart disease" because they include
stuff like stroke as well.

So I wouldn't really say that OP is right.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate)

PS: Also note that in a sibling comment I already stated that I got the death
count of heart disease wrong.

~~~
koonsolo
> So I wouldn't really say that OP is right.

If you look at improving your health, I am right.

Most people think you should prevent getting cancer (as I did before). But
actually, you should put more emphasis on preventing hearth and artery
disease, since it is the cause of more deaths! (I hope this last part is
cleared out).

Plus, it is also more clear on how to prevent that, than how to prevent
cancer.

