Hi Jeff,
I'm in the process of reading 'Lifespan - Why We Aage and Why We Don't Have To' by Harvard professor of genetics, David Sinclair. While I suspect you are quite familiar with his work, I was hoping to garner some of your thoughts on it. Sinclair's work aim's at moving the needle on both healthspan and maximum life span including radical life extension. Of course, the book examines how lifestyle practices can impact aging. Interventions like fasting, exercise, and caloric restriction increase sirtuin activity, which positively impacts healthspan/lifespan. Reducing animal protein intake downregulates mTOR and IGF-1, which also positively impacts healthspan/lifespan. Exposure to conditions outside of our thermoneutral environments that we live in (i.e. gently warmed homes) leaves us without exposure to cold/heat, the stress of which again activates longevity circuitry. And of course, eating plants, particularly those that are richly colored and stressed, can produce a xenohormetic effect in the body which once again signals the body to move away from reproduction and towards repairing damaged cells in our body, increasing autophagy, and so forth.
Sinclair himself is not afraid to test pharmaceuticals interventions on himself after they have shown to have positive effects in laboratory species. He is looking to develop molecules that essentially mimic the activation of the above circuitry through interventional means (though he believes that there is the possibility for the effects to be additive - i.e. lifestyle + pharmacological). Unfortunately, human lifespan studies may never happen but they may not be needed as there are many markers (the quality/nature of which are changing all the time) that can be used to measure this. It sounds like there may be a time in the near future when aging is treated as a disease just like other conditions are today. If you assume any rate of progress on tackling aging, then inevitably aging will be halted, provided that the Earth (or humanity) doesn't succumb to some other catastrophic event related to climate change, nuclear war, etc.. However, if a cataclysmic event that ends humanity does not occur, it seems likely that aging will be defeated and we will enter the age of radical life extension, whether in 50 years or 250 years.
I realize that the objective of your work is to get people to focus on what matters today and has decades of evidence behind it. To maximize healthspan and lifespan today, yes, it's the food! There is no doubt that this will add years to your life and life to your years.
I'm hoping you can entertain some of David's ideas or the topic in general and offer a reflection of sorts that is not simply 'Let's focus on what matters right now for 99% of people." The reason is, I'm in the 1% of people. I've been plant-based for 8.5 years and am one of the most compliant people you'll ever meet.
Care to offer a reflection or some thoughts on the topic?