33 replies to this topic

[jaydfox]

With good (not great) nutrition, moderate exercise, and basic supplementation, one can probably reach a median life expectancy in the low 80's for men, mid 80's for women. This is excluding the typical American, as Justin pointed out.

Tweaking from there, which is what we should really be using as a baseline, might get you ten years. I've seen the mortality statistics, and regardless of how long the statistical outliers might live, most of us are still condemned to at best a 90 or 95 year lifespan if we're men, and 95 or 100 if we're women. Living longer than 95 as a man is not going to come from the most optimized nutrition, exercise, and supplementation. It's going to come from luck (or genes).

When you study the gompertz curve long enough, you realize that a lot of it is luck. Genetically identical organisms (clones), given the same exact diet and exercise and supplementation programs, don't all die at the same time. You still have a distribution, i.e. luck. Living to 100 for a man will always be luck, at least until true anti-aging medicine is invented. We might figure out a perfect diet and supplementation program that can take the average man to 100, but we won't know until the 22nd century, and by then, it'll just be an academic curiosity.

Make sure you're at least eating a "good" diet. Don't shoot for the super-optimized, better-than-everybody-you-know diet. You have to stick to it for the rest of your life for that to matter, and 99% of us (by us, I mean immortalists; it's more like 99.99% for the average person) can't do that. Shoot for good. That'll probably add 10-15 years right there. Going from there to the super-optimized, better-than-everybody-you-know diet will at best get you another 10 years, and it'll be damn hard.

More likely, all your effort will only buy you five extra years. And I'm talking about 20-40 hours a week of managing every detail of your diet, and spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on expensive food items and supplements. That's time and money better spent advocating real anti-aging medicine. If you're less than 50 years old, and you eat a sensible diet, exercise regularly, and take basic supplementation as appropriate, you most likely have a better chance of seeing the first real anti-aging therapies if you help advocate them. There are so few people advocating the research necessary, that you could probably help bring the real cure for aging a few days or months earlier. A hundred of us working together could help bring such a cure months or years earlier. Thousands of us could help bring such a cure several years earlier. But only if those thousands of us aren't busy weighing every gram of food and trying out all the latest fads in "optimization" and spending several hundred dollars a month on supplements that could be used to support the MPrize and other advocacy efforts.

Go for good. Maybe even go for really good. But going on a quest to have the best diet in the country is probably hurting the rest of us by distracting you from what's really important: advocating and supporting, with your time and money, real cures for aging.

[eternaltraveler]

If you're less than 50 years old, and you eat a sensible diet, exercise regularly, and take basic supplementation as appropriate, you most likely have a better chance of seeing the first real anti-aging therapies if you help advocate them. There are so few people advocating the research necessary, that you could probably help bring the real cure for aging a few days or months earlier.

This I think is the most important thing you can do. I've already gotten my organic chem, biochem, and cell biology professors interested in the possibility. Heck, they might even read this thread. People like them have a lot of power to move others toward the possibility, not the least of which are other scientists, and future scientists to be.

[Matt]

jaydfox

all your effort will only buy you five extra years. And I'm talking about 20-40 hours a week of managing every detail of your diet, and spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on expensive food items and supplements

There are two ways that I look at CRON diet in terms of helping me reach a time when real anti aging therapies are available.

First of all I look at the possibility that it may work and will take me into close to the 22nd century, atleast. By looking at results that are consistant in short lived animals it shows that it may be possible in humans, but our current longevity around 80 years gives more time for more damage to accumalate. I think it's worth a try anyway.

Now lets imagine a scenario that CR doesnt work as some people expected and only brings about 5 years max in humans, even starting at early age. This big and long life effort of doing something like CR to extend your life is showing benifits in humans already. As aubrey has pointed out, it might take some time for anti aging therapies to bring people back from the brink than to reverse aging in someone that is around 60. Meaning the best bet is to try and be as active and fit as possible for when these therapies arrive. In studies done on mice they show that the mice were quite active right up untill their death and have less amount of time of being ill at the end of their life... Also by then we might of added just a few more years by having most of the major diseases cured. Also having quick and effective methods for curing infections that kill frail people easily.

[jaydfox]

Meaning the best bet is to try and be as active and fit as possible for when these therapies arrive.

Definitely. Just realize that, after doing what's necessary to get pretty good nutrition, exercise, and basic supplementation, you will definitely begin to see diminishing returns. Each potential extra year of gain will cost much more in time, effort, and money, than the previous extra year. You reach a point where the extra time, effort, and money to get one more extra year could probably be used to help bring anti-aging technologies a year earlier.

At this early stage of the game, joining the 300 probably is a better use of $85 a month than spending it on supplements. If a couple dozen people who read the Health Forum here at ImmInst are spending more than $250 a month on supplements, they could reduce that by one third to $165 a month, and join the 300, and that would probably have a better chance of saving those couple dozen people's lives than the extra $85/month in supplements would! A couple dozen people joining the 300 would add $600,000 to the MPrize! Think about that for a moment.

Then question whether it's more important for everybody here to optimize every last detail of their diets, and buy as many supplements as they can afford; or, if it's more important for everybody here to eat a pretty good diet, get basic to moderate supplementation, and help advocate life extension! If 40 people join the 300, that's a million dollars! Two hundred people is $5,000,000!