Reading this book, aging feels like an area where we might see huge advances in the next 15-20 years.
There are already really strong results for extending vital life by significant margins in other species, including rhesus monkeys. There are already drugs people take that seem to have some of this effect, though I think currently they come with some dangerous side-effects that might not be worth it if you didn't have the underlying disease the drug was intended for.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...
[2] https://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-779...
The book Lifespan by Dr David Sinclair is really interesting. Sinclair is a professor at Harvard. He's highly optimistic that something will come of the various ideas looking at slowing aging.
https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...
https://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-amer...
- Less time commuting (companies get better at managing a distributed work force)
- the 50% of people not connected to the internet start to get access
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/18/almost-50...
- wages are driven down globally by this additional 50% coming online creating more backlash in democracies.
- Increasingly countries will use China's great firewall tech to keep out Western influences and grow local internet competitors
- high speed internet gets deployed in war zones with drones and we understand why the US is against Chinese 5G companies.
- high speed internet (5G etc) means that many jobs that couldn't be off-shored are near shored for a mixture of tax and cost savings - taxi drivers, pilots, delivery trucks, fork lifts with a mixture of AI and people
- cashiers become sales people as stores fight against online sales
- percent of people working in manufacturing drops to 6.5% from 10.5%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAPEFANA
- a group of people add 30% to their life span due to drugs that reproduce intermittent fasting and other drugs that seem to work on mice.
https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...
- China goes to 30% of world GDP and US reacts by going to cold war
https://www.statista.com/statistics/270439/chinas-share-of-g...
- Japan builds up its military in reaction to china
- Housing manufacturing and education continue to not have productivity gains.
- Nuclear fusion is still not any closer to wide scale deployment
- Cities in Europe and Asia go E-bike friendly while Americans stick to their cars.
- The muslim world will become more pro-women's rights based on Saudi Arabia's lead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k0SvAEvM-I&vl=en
- Banks will stop touching cash except via ATMs and will convert branches into sales offices to push their online offerings. Goldman Sachs in reaction merges with Revolut.
Aside from multivitamins and idiosyncratic drugs, Sinclair takes the following supplements every day:
- Resveratrol – 1g in the morning (this is synergistic with NMN)
- Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) – 1g in the morning
- Metformin (prescription drug) – 1g in the evening – except on days when exercising, since metformin reduces muscle growth after exercising
(As an aside, he also engages in intermittent fasting, to reduce his total feeding hours. There’s a theory that intermittent fasting triggers a beneficial stress response whereby your body becomes more “efficient” in a way that prolongs life. Intermittent fasting has been shown to prolong lifespan in mice. Interestingly, resveratrol is expressed in plants as a defense mechanism akin to what intermittent fasting does in humans, and that’s one of the supplements that Sinclair recommends.)
Sinclair is very careful not to recommend that cocktail for anyone, since anti-aging research is still very preliminary. The relevant human trials are underway. However, NMN in particular has had astonishing effects on mice. Mice that took NMN lived significantly longer than other mice. Old mice that took it ran for so long that the measuring device on their running wheel timed out, because they weren’t expected to ever run that long.
In old age, the NMN mice were conspicuously stronger, had more hair, saw better, and were more mentally intact. In short, NMN might reverse the underlying epigenetic causes of aging. Sinclair subscribes to the information theory of aging, where, over time, your epigenome accumulates damage and errors, and protective mechanisms die out. It’s like scratches on an overplayed analog vinyl disc which slowly declines in function and eventually stops playing altogether. You lose a majority of your NAD+ as you get older (NAD+ is fed by NMN), which is problematic because NAD+ feeds biological mechanisms which mitigate informational damage. That’s why supplementing with NMN is theorized to have anti-aging effects.
Sinclair wrote a great book synthesizing aging research if you want to read more about it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501191977/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_awdo_...
The book Lifespan [2] from David Sinclair is also a fantastic source. Finally, if you can wade through some of the questionable statements and claims, the book The Longevity Paradox [3] from Steven Gundry does have some useful info.
[1] https://peterattiamd.com/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Paradox-Young-Ripe-Plant/dp...