It is very likely that, in the next ten years, it will be possible to stay healthy indefinitely due to the fast-accelerating science of aging. It has long been a mystery as to how older adults can produce pristine offspring from sperm and egg. Shinya Yamanaka wondered too, so he treated old skin cells scraped from his arm with hormones that are present in the womb only at conception to test whether those hormones are responsible for the rejuvenation.
He succeeded, and the treated skin cells were changed into pluripotent stem cells that could be cultured into any cell. The experiment has been replicated 1,000s of times with every cell we have. Whole litters of mice have been produced from the ‘mother’ cell. The experiment proves that any cell can be converted into any other cell, its aging damage can be cancelled and reproduction can be artificially replicated. This finding has made cell engineering and rejuvenation the foundation of a whole new approach known as regenerative medicine that is growing rapidly in power and relevance.
A variation on the experiment is to vary the duration of treatment and the number of hormones. Dr. David Sinclair treated an old rat's optic nerve with some of the hormones, known as Yamanaka factors in his honour, and succeeded in reversing the ageing rat’s optic nerve whilst retaining the cell identity. The rejuvenated cells were identical to those of a young rat. This experiment has been replicated with all tissues. It means that when mature, this technology could, in principle, replace any age damaged organ to youthfulness.
It is expected that treatments for senescent cells and inflammation, two key causes of damage, will be available in the next few years and general rejuvenation technology will be mature by about 2030-35. So, if we look after our health, we will probably be around to benefit from the technology as new products emerge between now and then. Even if you are still sceptical, it is still worth staying healthy, at no extra cost, by doing the now, well established and understood measures, of eliminating simple carbs and ultra processed foods, and taking vitamin D, omega 3 and taurine, to protect your health, looks, etc.
Yoshinori Ohsumi studied the mechanism by which senescent cells, that accumulate as we age and contribute to aging, are removed. A process known as autophagy. He discovered that hormones are responsible for autophagy activated by three main kinds of stress; a shortage of glucose or BCAAs [a protein] that signals hunger; lower oxygen levels for exercise; and a change in temperature for a change in the environment or season. These are very ancient mechanisms that gave evolutionary advantages to those organisms that could survive hunger, hunting and migration until the time or season when food was available. The autophagy mechanism has been preserved in all living things.
The rejuvenation industry now attracts trillions of £s of investment annually. Many 1000s of startups, major firms such as Alphabet [parent of Google], Apple, and some establishment pharmaceutical firms have entered the rejuvenation business. Bezos, Amazon's founder, has spent £2bn on a start-up called Altos labs with enough funding to recruit many of the best scientists to turn Yamanaka’s finding into a technology. The industry attracts such funding because the business opportunity is enormous and viable treatments are imminent. All ailments, medical or cosmetic, either don't happen at all, are very treatable or are trivial when patients are biologically young, and staying biologically young will require regular treatment for life. It will use the same, basic, cell regeneration approach, so the potential for standardisation and mass production is huge and the firms that dominate the industry will be immensely powerful. We are at the same stage in biotech as IT was in the 1980s but with millions of times more technological power available so the growth and impact will be much faster.
Governments are usually followers not leaders and there is huge resistance, and ignorance, in the political and medical establishment. But the accelerating crisis of elder care, treatment, welfare and pensions with no solution in sight is over-ripe for revolution. It has been calculated that $83trn could be saved over 30 years in the US alone just by lengthening the health span by two years, which is very easy and cheap to do, now. And just declaring aging a disease would cost governments nothing but would redirect a tiny bit, but enough of the vast R&D science budgets, to aging to transform the prospects of finding cost effective treatments of aging in the near future. The focus should be on good health as longevity is its side effect.
Longevity Escape Velocity [LEV]. is the point when life expectancy advances faster than time is passing, effectively, indefinite lifespans. General LEV will be invisible after it becomes a reality because life expectancy is a retrospective population statistic. Millions of people are now doing what they can to make it to the time when rejuvenation treatment is good enough for LEV. Average life expectancy [for men] at 78 is 9.4 years, far more for healthy and conscientious people, so getting to the time of general LEV fit and well is very realistic for all but the very ill.
Ray Kurzwel is a futurist who has been predicting technological development for 40 years with 85% accuracy. In the 1980s he predicted that the technology to halt aging would be available by the 2030s. In 2023 he predicted that LEV could occur by 2029 due to acceleration in AI and other technologies. George Church, a highly respected and prolific geneticist predicts 15 years [2037]. DeGray, chief scientific officer of the SENS research foundation has always been more sceptical but even he is now forecasting better than 50% by 2037.
We need to get strong and fit. Fitness is the most potent factor in longevity. Don’t sit for more than 20 mins at a time. Walk briskly for at least 5000 steps a day. As you get fitter, use the HIIT exercise method to run out of breath so that you cannot speak [low oxygen], for 15 mins a week. Fat generates inflammation and cancers, overburdens our cardiovascular system and clutters our metabolism raising blood pressure that damages organs. Fatness is due to your diet, usually because of excess carbohydrates. So cut carbohydrates and get most of your calories from fats and protein.
Carbohydrates become glucose in the body and stimulate the production of insulin that enables the glucose to be taken up by cells for energy, and for any excess to be converted into fat so fat is prevented from being used for energy. As the glucose dissipates, we may feel very hungry if our bodies are accustomed to using glucose, then we may snack to ’refuel’. Studies show that on a simple carb-based diet we consume 300 calories per day extra; that's a lot of fat to accumulate over 30 years. Simple carbs make up 60% of British, US, and others’ daily calories mostly in the form of white bread, pasta, pizza, rice, chips, breakfast cereals, alcohol, cakes, snack bars, biscuits, etc. Sugar is added to 75% of foods and is 30-99% by volume of all snacks. Simple carbs have little if any nutritional value or fibre, so we suffer malnutrition too. Unsurprisingly, 64% of Brits are overweight or obese and diabetes is a national emergency in the UK, US, China and elsewhere.
But carbs are not necessary in our diet. They became normal with the neolithic revolution because more calories in wheat, rice, etc could be produced per acre at a time when avoiding starvation was the priority and we seldom lived long enough to suffer aging diseases. Whole carbohydrate foods such as beans, peas, whole rice and wheat are fine in moderation but they are too often genetically engineered and treated to be amenable to factory production and a long shelf life so we need, where possible, to use the natural non-factory produced product.
Insulin is inflammatory, mildly increased by protein and not at all for fat and quickly cleared after a low-carb meal but virtually permanently raised by snacking. Inflammation increases the production of CD38 that consumes large amounts of NAD. NAD is essential for all cellular functions, including activating rejuvenation hormones, we’d die in 20 seconds without it, and it decreases with age and lifestyle so by age 80 we may be down to about 5% of a 20 year old.
In the 1970s, Ancel Keys became convinced that saturated fat was responsible for heart disease so falsified data to support his theory and used it to bully the medical establishment to advise a carb based, low fat diet followed by most other medical elites. Other good research showed that saturated fats were irrelevant. A study of Maasai warriors who ate only milk, blood and meat had no increase in blood pressure with age, no increase in arterial plaque and normal life expectancy. Sugar and cigarettes were more responsible for CVD and cancers, but Keys so viciously attacked opponents that they backed off. This was a windfall for major food manufacturers because carbs based foods are easy and cheap to grow, process in factories, have a long shelf life, carry any flavour, are yummy, easy to prepare and simple ready-made meals and snacks can be mass produced and sold profitably to working families.
So, an action plan is to take two to six weeks to wean ourselves off carbs then we become ‘fat adapted’, that is, we can readily use fat for energy and do not get so hungry by going without making it easy to lose weight. Fat and protein intake stimulates leptin, so it is difficult to eat too much. Use complex carbs moderately, as in chickpeas, lentils, beans, peas, etc. instead of simple carbs.
To mimic food shortage, skip meals at the beginning or end of the day a few times a week aiming for 17-20 hours calorie free, which reduces insulin and its consequences, allows fat and cluttering and damaging
senescent cells to be used for energy instead taken from blood vessels, organs, etc and stops inflammation and fat deposition in arteries, etc. Seed oils are inflammatory because of the heat, and sometimes chemical,
treatment to extract the oil so use untreated olive oil, coconut oil, ghee or butter for cooking. Olive oil and avocados contain oleic acid that activates rejuvenation hormones. Snack on nuts, sugar free chocolate, keto snacks, protein bars, etc.
The body works better on ketones [from fat]. Cancers [tiny starters are always present but killed off by rejuvenation hormones and a youthful immune system] cannot survive on ketones, only glucose. The liver
produces all the glucose we need from fat and protein. Have between 1g and 2g of protein per kilo of body weight per day. I can't do that from meat, etc so I have protein shakes. Low BCAAs [From animal protein] and
glucose turns off the mTOR hormone responsible for building up and turns on the repair hormones. Vegetable protein is low in BCAAs so use mostly that. The key supplements are vitamin D, omega 3 and taurine. The over 50s need NMN or NR to renew NAD, a critical molecule. Other key molecules that decline with age include methyl folate, glycine, TMG and spermidine [abundant in fermented food like sauerkraut, kimchi, aged cheese and especially mushrooms].
Dystopian Fears are Misplaced. The approximate current rate of death is 150,000 a day, 55 million pa, which is less than 1% of the population of the world pa, far less than the projected numbers lost by the global decline in family sizes. And the surviving people will be productive adults, not children. Whilst age increases linearly one year at a time, technological power doubles per £ annually and AI at twice a year at least. We don’t really have too many people, we consume and pollute too much. 80% of land is used for agriculture. If death stopped now we would only have 1.1bn more people in 20 years who would be 20 years older on average, fitter and not a burden so hardly noticed. On current trends, IT and associated AI, robotics, etc will be millions of times more powerful per £ in 20 years excluding synergy and mass production. Pollution, disease, poverty and hunger will have vanished. We will have moved to clean energy, factory food production eliminating 95% of land currently used for food production.
Transport will be automated and probably much more electric power generated from solar or even fusion. Eventually, advanced materials and technologies such as carbon nanotubes may mean we can live in and house vertical farms or factories in buildings a mile high using even less land and getting more light and power. People may continue having babies but without the need for a legacy and enjoying youthfulness, who knows? In 1,000 years we could build an artificial planet or terraform Mars.
Making a hobby of staying alive and anticipating the next 30 years, and beyond, without existential dread is incredibly invigorating and motivating. This is possible for anyone healthy under the age of around 70, older if they have already done their best for some years. Some imagine that life will be boring but with such exciting change, energy and youthfulness in prospect, this is doubtful. There's no justification for pessimism so do your best, now.