https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2023/09/25/some-claim-human-lifespans-can-be-lengthened-indefinitely
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There is a story about a blues musician who, when questioned on his 100th birthday about his decades of smoking and drinking, responded that if he’d known he was going to live so long, he’d have taken better care of himself. Bryan Johnson is that apocryphal bluesman’s polar opposite. He has been taking care of himself for years to a degree as remarkable, in its way, as the deepest devotion to bourbon and bad choices. …
The daily regime which he and his many doctors have devised makes life in Biosphere 2 look sybaritic. A kilogram of vegetables, all before 11am, rigorous workouts lasting 45-60 minutes, and 100 pills, including metformin and rapamycin. His vital functions are subjected to the sort of continuous scrutiny more usually associated with laboratory animals. He says he is ageing at 69% of the normal rate. Mr Johnson, who has been described as the most measured man in the world, can afford the team of medics, trainers and dieticians who minister to him because selling Braintree, an electronic-payments company which he founded, left him with a net worth of more than $100m. For mere mortals, however, a range of less intensive options are available.
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Some claim human lifespans can be lengthened indefinitely
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December 11, 2023Eating fewer calories can ward off ageing
December 11, 2023https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2023/09/25/eating-fewer-calories-can-ward-off-ageing
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Take the mtorc1 pathway. The complex of proteins which gives it its name first came to attention because an immune suppressant called rapamycin has a strong effect on it: hence “mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1”. That gives no real clue, however, to the fact that the signalling pathway in which mtorc1 sits is a complex set of controls and feedbacks designed to regulate metabolism in response both to the availability of nutrients …
The ambit of this regulatory power is broad; it influences the rate at which cells break down damaged internal structures (“autophagy”), the balance of their protein content (“proteostasis”) and the reproduction of their mitochondria, components responsible for turning the calories it receives into a form of energy its proteins can use. Autophagy, proteostasis and mitochondrial reproduction are three more of the 12 hallmarks of aging.
What is more, rapamycin, the effects of which give mtorc1 its name, turns out to lengthen the lives of lab animals even though it curbs their immune responses. …There is thus a search for “rapalogs” which provide the benefits of a tuned-up mtorc1 pathway without so many costs.
Another pathway which calorie-restriction studies have marked out as promising is named after a protein called ampk (don’t ask). This regulates the production of ATP, a small energy-carrying molecule produced in mitochondria. When atp levels fall, the ampk pathway increases a cell’s sensitivity to insulin.
Metformin, a drug used to treat type-2 diabetes, does so by activating the ampk pathway. Like rapamycin, it extends the lifespans of healthy mice.
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Results from nine months on Blueprint | by Bryan Johnson | Future Literacy | Medium
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December 11, 2023https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/09/they-studied-dishonesty-was-their-work-a-lie QT:{{
the Data Colada team sent a dossier to Harvard that outlined an array of anomalies in four of Gino’s papers. In her lab study for the car-insurance paper, for example, several observations seemed to be out of order, in a way that suggested someone had moved them around by hand. Those data points, they found, were disproportionately responsible for the result. The team was unable to conceive of a benign explanation for this pattern. They had examined only four papers but noted “strong suspicions” about some of her published data going as far back as 2008. On October 27, 2021, Harvard notified Gino that she was under investigation, and asked her to turn over all “HBS-issued devices” by 5 p.m. that day. According to Gino, the police were called to oversee the process.
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