
Brazilian Billionaire Creates Plan to Beat Death - mikepilla
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-19/brazilian-billionaire-creates-plan-to-beat-death.html
======
sanoli
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
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
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
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
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.

~~~
jp555
I would say the way steroids build muscle more easily is via reducing
recovery. The person you present would get that benefit, be able to train more
frequently and grow faster than a person doing the exact same things except
not taking steriods. Steroids also allow one to exceed their genetic strength
maximum, but unless you're already banging up against that wall (say 10-15
years of sustained excellent programming, diet, & rest; and maybe half that if
taking steroids the whole time) their benefit is almost entirely speeding
recovery time.

~~~
sanoli
I didn't know that. Do you have any links that explain this so I could read
more on it?

~~~
jp555
here's a great overview of maximum genetic muscular potential which touches on
the role steroids can play.

[http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-
geneti...](http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-
muscular-potential.html)

------
bigd
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?

~~~
bigd
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.

~~~
jganetsk
History is a lot longer than 2000 years.

~~~
bigd
indeed. I was roughly counting 2000 since stoics philosophy

------
bluedevil2k
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.

~~~
taf2
I don't know, my grandfather now pasted away in his 70s could run a mile
faster than me back in my teens and I could run the mile in just under 5
minutes. We used to race at the track. He lived until he was 91. The reality
is you can be pretty active and enjoy life well into your 80s but it only
takes one thing to go wrong at that age for pretty much everything to stop. He
has a stomach issue where is large intestine just burst... this by itself does
not kill someone today - medicine is very good, but eventually it's the lack
of nutrients and the body just takes forever to heal itself that eventually
will catch up to all of us... The most promising thing I've read about with
this regard is the gdf11 discovery by the scientists at Harvard - but like any
discovery... there's a lot probably missing from it... at any rate, exercising
is without a doubt a good thing, but eventually our bodies will just fall
apart... literally.

~~~
swimfar
Not that it contradicts the point you are making, but the world (recorded)
mile record for a 70 year old male is just under 5:20. (or 4:53 for the 1500m)
[http://www.world-masters-athletics.org/records/outdoor-men](http://www.world-
masters-athletics.org/records/outdoor-men)

(Irrelevant, but I added the 1500m time for people not familiar with mile
times. But actually this mile record was set in the Netherlands, while the
1500m record was set in California. :P )

------
jostmey
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-w...](http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-
built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/)

~~~
shubb
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.

------
nicholassmith
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
There's an excellent article about this in the NYT:
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-
whe...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-
forget-to-die.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
nicholassmith
Thanks, that was really interesting.

------
Systemic33
I think the old saying 'Better rich and healthy, than poor and sick' applies
here.

------
dusanbab
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.

------
exratione
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-
ol...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/06/07/90-year-old-
billionaire-david-murdock-doles-out-advice-on-longevity/)

2: [http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-
projec...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-
projections/2010-based-reference-volume--series-pp2/mortality.html#tab-The-
changing-life-table)

3: [http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-
research/intra...](http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-
research/intracellular-aggregates)

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-...](http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-on-
cryonics/)

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _A copy of you isn 't you_

Actually, it is.

The current laws of physics don't have the notion of identity. So swapping two
identical particles not only doesn't have any effect, it doesn't even make
physical _sense_. Like the rest of physics, this principle stays valid at the
macroscopic scale.

Teletransportation is a genuine form of transportation. It doesn't kill you,
and the result is not a mere copy. It was traditionally a philosophical
question, but thankfully, physics has the answer.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/)

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/pl/no_individual_particles/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/pl/no_individual_particles/)

~~~
ericb
Just because physics doesn't have a notion of identity, doesn't mean there is
no such thing.

Identical particles have different identities because they have a different
location in space-time. The location in space-time creates the identity.

There's also a problem with the math of your claim. They can't "be the same
particle" if you can have two of them. 1 != 2

~~~
endtime
> Just because physics doesn't have a notion of identity, doesn't mean there
> is no such thing.

How is that not exactly what that means?

~~~
randallsquared
Identity, like beauty, fun, and spiciness, is[1] something that's built _on_
physics, not requiring a fundamental property, just as asking how much
spiciness an electron has is futile.

[1] Well, presuming it actually does exist as something other than confusion,
which I'm not currently arguing, though I'm sympathetic to the notion.

~~~
endtime
Beauty has physical structure on a couple levels. You can either talk about
certain synapses lighting up (or whatever happens in the brain when someone
experiences beauty) or you can talk about facial symmetry and 1.618.

Fun is an extremely vague notion, I'm not sure what it means or if it even has
a consistent set of synaptic patterns (or whatever), but I think that's
probably because people don't use the term consistently (or are confused,
etc., as you say).

Spiciness is absolutely purely chemical.

------
tim333
Not sure working out and eating well will cheat death that long. Now if we
could find some way to back up the software...

~~~
nova
Cryonics?

~~~
nicholassmith
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'.

~~~
philh
> 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.

------
coldcode
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.

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

~~~
tvanzyl
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
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.

------
aruggirello
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.

------
z92
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
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_olde...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Ten_verified_oldest_men_ever)

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".

------
gx
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?

------
stephen
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.

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

------
amasad
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.

------
moron4hire
Would you say he's a "Brazilianaire"?

------
gschiller
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eIaEgxZCpk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eIaEgxZCpk)

------
sumedh
> can run backward. On a treadmill. In the dark.

Why is this so significant. Does this affect your health in a goodway?

~~~
dictum
"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
> Proprioception

Interesting, Need to do some more research on this.

