Reflecting on the work of Harvard geneticist, David Sinclair

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Reflecting on the work of Harvard geneticist, David Sinclair

Postby Drew_ab » Wed Nov 20, 2019 10:24 pm

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? :D
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Re: Reflecting on the work of Harvard geneticist, David Sinc

Postby JeffN » Fri Nov 22, 2019 9:29 am

Drew_ab wrote:Care to offer a reflection or some thoughts on the topic? :D


Briefly...

I think the most important thing we can do is to stop killing ourselves prematurely. Period!

Most people will die prematurely and the majority of premature death is from easily preventable lifestyle related disease. We know that 5 simple strategies have been clearly proven to add 12-14 good years, even if you are 50 and these strategies can prevent over 90% of heart disease, T2 diabetes, stroke and up to 70% of cancers.

“Researchers at Harvard University used lifestyle questionnaires and medical records from 123,000. Adherence to 5 low-risk lifestyle-related factors (never smoking, a healthy weight, regular physical activity, a healthy diet, and moderate alcohol consumption) could prolong life expectancy at age 50 years by 14.0 and 12.2 years for female and males. (Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population Circulation, April 30, 2018, Volume 137, Issue 23)

Yet, less then 5% of the population meets the criteria for all 5 and less than 1% even meet the criteria of the basic dietary recommendations.

All of this is covered in more detail in my Triage Your Health and The Real Dirty Dozen threads.

Now, for someone already doing all of these, I could add in a few more on living a toxic free healthy life but I can’t guarantee they will add anything to length of life (maybe somewhat to quality if one has any related issues). The single most important things is to stay focused on the basics and not get lost in all these fountains of youth.

Outside of that, I am not concivnced that any of these proposed strategies are going to give us any meaningful return on our efforts as we run into the law of diminishing returns. Watch how fast some of them have come and go. Some of the supplement/drug ones people are experimenting with may even end up doing more harm then good.

In Health
Jeff
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