Top products from r/longevity

I'm not sure if this qualifies for what you're looking for, but I'll re-post my highlights from a few weeks ago in case it helps:

• Exercise. “In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the way you think“. Source: https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522973939&sr=1-1&keywords=Spark%2C+The+Revolutionary+New+Science+of+Exercise+and+the+Brain
  
• Eat a healthy diet and follow some of the practices taken from Blue Zones, which are populations that have an unusually high number of centenarians. Some key take-aways from studies blue zones (Source: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1426216556/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_cmps_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews):
  
  • Long-lived people live on a high-carb, low-fat, plant-based diet;
    
  • Long-lived people eat a lot of vegetables, including greens;
    
  • Whenever they can get it, long-lived populations eat a lot of fruit;
    
  • When animal products are consumed, it’s occasionally and in small amounts only;
    
  • Long-lived people had periods in their life when a lot less food was available and they had to survive on a very sparse, limited diet;
    
  • Long-lived people live in a sunny, warm climate;
    
  • Long-lived people consume beans in some form or another;
    
  • Nuts appear to be good for health;
    
  • The typical diet is very simple and many essentially eat the same simple foods every day
    
  • Quality food over variety is more important;
    
  • They had an active lifestyle and moved a lot
    
  • Many of them got 5 to 6 hours of moderate exercise per day;
    
  • Many of them loved to work and had a sense of purpose in life;
    
  • Many had large families;
    
  • None of them smoked or ate massive amounts of food.
    
• Be a super-ager – “Which activities, if any, will increase your chances of remaining mentally sharp into old age? We’re still studying this question, but our best answer at the moment is: work hard at something. Many labs have observed that these critical brain regions increase in activity when people perform difficult tasks, whether the effort is physical or mental. You can therefore help keep these regions thick and healthy through vigorous exercise and bouts of strenuous mental effort.” Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-become-a-superager.html
  
• Boost your microbiome by eating a diverse diet. “Diet is perhaps the biggest factor in shaping the composition of the microbiome,” he says. A study by University College Cork researchers published in Nature in 2012 followed 200 elderly people over the course of two years, as they transitioned into different environments such as nursing homes. The researchers found that their subjects’ health – frailty, cognition, and immune system – all correlated with their microbiome. From bacterial population alone, researchers could tell if a patient was a long-stay patient in a nursing home, or short-stay, or living in the general community. These changes were a direct reflection of their diet in these different environments. “A diverse diet gives you a diverse microbiome that gives you a better health outcome,” says Cryan. Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140221-can-gut-bugs-make-you-smarter
  
• Have a healthy mind-set – don't ever succumb to the stereotypical mind set that getting older = decline. “To Langer, this was evidence that the biomedical model of the day — that the mind and the body are on separate tracks — was wrongheaded. The belief was that “the only way to get sick is through the introduction of a pathogen, and the only way to get well is to get rid of it,” she said, when we met at her office in Cambridge in December. She came to think that what people needed to heal themselves was a psychological “prime” — something that triggered the body to take curative measures all by itself. Gathering the older men together in New Hampshire, for what she would later refer to as a counterclockwise study, would be a way to test this premise. The men in the experimental group were told not merely to reminisce about this earlier era, but to inhabit it — to “make a psychological attempt to be the person they were 22 years ago,” she told me. “We have good reason to believe that if you are successful at this,” Langer told the men, “you will feel as you did in 1959.” From the time they walked through the doors, they were treated as if they were younger. The men were told that they would have to take their belongings upstairs themselves, even if they had to do it one shirt at a time. At the end of their stay, the men were tested again. On several measures, they outperformed a control group that came earlier to the monastery but didn’t imagine themselves back into the skin of their younger selves, though they were encouraged to reminisce. They were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller — just as Langer had guessed. Perhaps most improbable, their sight improved. Independent judges said they looked younger. The experimental subjects, Langer told me, had “put their mind in an earlier time,” and their bodies went along for the ride.” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magazine/what-if-age-is-nothing-but-a-mind-set.html
  
• Live a life that has meaning – or, in other words, have a personal mission statement in life. Strive to accomplish something or to help others. “It is the pursuit of meaning is what makes human beings uniquely human. By putting aside our selfish interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves -- by devoting our lives to "giving" rather than "taking" -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.” Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/
  
• Volunteer and help others. “Volunteering probably reduces mortality by a year and a half or possibly up to two years for people who are in their senior years,” says Stephen G. Post, a professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and the author of The Hidden Gifts of Helping and Why Good Things Happen to Good People. “If you could put the benefits of helping others into a bottle and sell it, you could be a millionaire in a minute.” Source: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Why+do+we+hesitate+to+help%3F-a0352848707
  
• Do strength training – there is an association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008). Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/2/4225/927.4
  
• This is also a great book: 'How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease' by Michael Greger: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25663961-how-not-to-die . You can find a summary of it here: https://www.allencheng.com/how-not-to-die-by-michael-greger-summary/

Hi there, this comment is overdue but severely needed, my apologies for the delay my stat mech exams interrupted my happy redditing. This post replies more in depth than my previous one which admittedly was too short to reply fully to the others.

The Mediterranean diet

In response to the third message “It’s the Mayo Clinic, bud, the Mayo Clinic” regarding the health aspects of the traditional Mediterraean diet being a plant based diet, we can look at the link provided and see that this it is clearly not a plant based diet. According to the presented pyramid therein, assuming that it is accurate, we see that the Mediterranean traditional diet consists of 4 parts animal products and 6 parts plant products. To designate this as “plant based” is like saying the United States is a liberal nation. It completely disregards basically half the thing. Actual plant based diets such as vegetarian, vegan and traditional Okinawan diets consist of upwards of 90% plants. Incidentally all of this does support the original point I was trying to voice, namely that the more plants people eat, the healthier they get. Since the Mediterranean diet contains more plants than the Standard American Diet, and it has an equivalent (and probably slightly better) healthcare system, the expected result would be high life expectancies. It just doesn't go far not enough to get more than Andorran level life expectancies.

"Acclimatized phenotypes", Inuit & Maasaai

The main argument mentioned against the plant based position involves the claim that two major metabolic phenotypes exist due to acclimatization to hot and cold climates, neatly summarized as "monkeys don't eat salmon and Inuits don't eat bananas". Despite the 'catchiness' of that phrase, it turns out to be wrong. Orang-utans for example do eat fish. They are known to furnish spears and hunt for all kinds of fish in the Borneo rainforests (what is left of them anyway). And while the Inuit may not traditionally eat bananas this does not mean that they wouldn't if they could. And that if they did it wouldn't mean a measurable improvement of their health. Banana's just happen to be very expensive to bring all the way to some remote village by motor sled. So getting such an addition to the diet is just difficult not necessarily useless or genetically harmful. The idea that Inuit are fine regardless of their intake of animal products is seriously questionable. The same goes for the Maasaai.

Furthermore if the acclimatization hypothesis purported by hastasiempre is correct we can cure all cardiovascular disease, diet related cancers, Alzheimer's disease and a great number more, simply by changing the thermostat.

In addition to these two points the story presented in the three posts above is inconsistent. The Chinese traditional diet is included in the “heat acclimated phenotype” which is especially odd since Beijing regularly looks like this. China does contain some extreme regions like Hainan Island and the disputed islands in the South China Sea which are tropical but the region where the vast majority of the population lives is as temperate as Northern Europe. The climate of the northern part of the Yellow River valley is comparable with the climates of southern parts of Sweden, Poland and Lithuania, albeit with higher concentrations of rainfall in the summer. And Southern China mostly has a temperate climate equal to the climate of Serbia or the Russian Black Sea shores.

Finally, and this is why I referenced to Dawkins earlier, even if a careful rational evaluation of the available were to indicate differences in cholesterol and animal protein adaptation this would not occur due to acclimatization but due to evolutionary change in the genome. Acclimatization is not a way to get major changes in the body such as the ones in question here. This is because acclimatization, as far as it is long term and goes beyond mere direct physiological reactions like shivering, relies on changes in gene expression (activation). You can't express genes for eating additional cholesterol from ones diet if those genes do not exist. Consequently the evolutionary history of an organism is vastly more important than the acclimatization of it to its surroundings during its life time (this is one of the cornerstones of Darwinism and one of the main reasons why Lamarckism was eventually discarded).

Though I do go into a bit more detail below the general gist of this essay can be summarized by this source which also provides ample references to the medical literature.

5 out of 7 figure

>you are right that the prevalent traditional diets are plant-based, maybe around 5 out of the 7 Bil people eat diets which are mainly carbs

While it is nice to hear someone say “you are right”, in this case I’d rather you didn’t because the 5 out of 7 figure you are giving is, as far as I can tell, not true. The figure (which I have been unable to find in any literature so far, which adds to my doubts about it) I must assume refers to plant vs animal based diets. In populations where over the course of evolutionary history (the last 2 million years in very broad terms, the last 100,000 years in general terms after the migration out of Africa and the last 10,000 years in particular since the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry) animal products have outweighed plant based ones adaptation to meat eating for example could have occurred. Based on the current pastoralist population of the planet however, see this rough estimate I made, pastoral societies form approximately 2% of the world’s population. And this tally includes groups such as the Fula of western Africa of which only a third is pastoral, therefore likely overestimating the total pastoral population. In this small pastoral population it may very well be that genetic mutations have occurred that would allow its members to consume any level of animal based products without negative consequences. The Maasaai could be such a group, although the Inuit are not. However, more importantly most of the world's population does not belong to this category. Consequently there is no way to get a animal product adapted phenotype in the human species based on our evolutionary history (genetic engineering would be a whole different case of course, but so far people balk at such practices because they consider them unethical).

This estimate is probably to high even as most of the pastoral population does not belong to the adaptation capable group and the Maasaai are probably more exception than rule here. For example the Fula and the Inuit are not capable of regulating the LDL and HDL cholesterol levels to optimum ranges regardless of intake as the Maasaai are. Because of this they either suffer similar levels of cardiovascular dissease (Inuit) or have to resort to energy intake restriction and high levels of activity (Maasaai). The fact that some pastoralists do not have this adaptation is explained by this general reference, the fact that pastoralist societies are often cut of from one another by agricultural societies, and finally the fact that mutations such as those didn’t tend to spread through agricultural societies because they exact energy costs on populations that don’t use them. This of course does mean that Maasaai genes do have an evolutionary advantage in modern day North America but there is clearly not enough genetic transfer nor generational overturn for the mutation to spread through the North American population at this time. A little later on in the longer post the Tuoli people are also mentioned as having a similar condition as the Maasaai, literally the first hit on google however states that the evidence on them should be taken with “a whoppin’ huge grain of salt” and that it should not be used for quoting to the benefit of meat nor citing it as evidence, because the Tuoli were feasting the day the researchers of the China Study came. Thus they seemed to consume a lot of meat yet they had the health of plant eaters (which they really were the rest of the year).

Conclusion

>there is NO single HEALTHY diet

Yes there is, a plant based one, that is at least 90% or ideally more, of energy intake from a wide variety of non-toxic plants, while ensuring either via micro intake of animal products or supplements that B12 and Omega-3 intake stays sufficient. Ample evidence in favour of this assertion has been posted in this thread for anyone to verify this statement, but also here, here, here and here.

Cheerio, :) !

Michael Lustgarten is the author of 'Microbial Burden'.

Profile on Leafscience.org: https://www.leafscience.org/dr-michael-lustgarten-using-an-evidence-based-approach-for-optimal-health-and-longevity/

In the video he goes over some of his educational background, experience with researching associations between gut bacteria and health. Currently the field is immature and we don't know, maybe in the future there will be individual recommendations for ways to alter the microbiome for better health - currently there is a gap. He thinks a high fibre diet (>65g of fibre) is likely beneficial for improving gut barrier function and keeping things out of the blood that should only be in the gut.


He says he does regular blood testing while making changes to his diet to self experiment around biomarkers of aging, based on CBC blood panel which costs him $30 a pop. He inputs the results of this standard blood test into the aging.ai website, a deep-learned predictor of your age made with a deep neural network trained on hundreds of thousands anonymized human blood tests, built by insilico medicine. He suggests anyone can do this too.

Epigenetic age, he thinks may be more reliable (predictive of health), but is currently cost prohibitive ($300 per test) for regular testing based on his income.

Concluding stuff: he hopes that all the bright minds will converge on figuring out aging as he'd like to live healthy for a long time.

The book you mention, Handbook of the Biology of Aging is probably the best I've run across for what you are looking for. It is very much like review articles. They cover the major research up to publication date (in 2015), and dive into specifics going over experimental design and methodologies.

A simpler, shorter, and more accessible intro for those who don't have your credentials is Biology of Aging. But if you wanted a very general sweep that is still focused on those with a biology education to supplement the deeper dive, this would be a good choice. (For example the Handbook of the Biology of Aging focuses on animal and human aging whereas the Biology of Aging has a section on plant senescence as well).

Laura Deming also has a good Longevity FAQ that covers the aging research landscape but more importantly for your needs contains links to papers and clinical trials at the bottom.

It's reassuring to know that these tech billionaires really are afraid of death and that this is their motivation. This is because that motivation isn't likely to go away (until they cure death), and also because likely most tech billionaires will have the same fear and motivation to cure aging.

Has anybody read the book referred to in the article - Homo Deus? I wonder if the author's argument that Sergey Brin wont live to see aging conquered is a philosophical one (like John Gray's in 'The Immortality Commission') rather than scientific? https://www.amazon.com/Immortalization-Commission-Science-Strange-Quest/dp/0374533237

Well, Brin is 43 so 2 years younger than me. I believe the life expectancy of an average 43 y.o. American male right now is close to 80 or (37 more years of life). Given his wealth, his clear motivation to live as long as possible, and his access to the latest knowledge and science as to how to do so, I would suppose his life expectancy should be at least 85. So he has around a 50/50 chance of reaching 2060, given only current projections. With all the money and research being put into anti-aging, of which his efforts are a part, I would say it's quite pessimistic to state he wont live to see aging defeated by 2060.

You can ask Aubrey de Grey [email protected] , hovewer, would you like to work in molecular nanotechnology? Make CAD program for designing nanomachines for medicine?

https://www.amazon.com/Nanomedical-Device-Systems-Design-Possibilities/dp/0849374987

A couple of years ago, in a talk, Aubrey waved two big books when the topic came up about how to get started. The books were:

• Essential Cell Biology
  
• Molecular Biology of the Cell
  
  (and SENS would most likely also recommend keeping Ending Aging handy).

Yes, I believe it is. As far as I know, all the present 'NAD precursors' have limited bio-availability and most longevity insiders don't believe they will do anything much. Jim Mellon, the author of Juvenescence, recommends we wait for David Sinclair's own product to come out, which is indeed supposed to be bio-available. Not sure what if any links he (Jim Mellor) might have to Sinclair.

​

There is one NAD supplement that Jim Mellor admits to taking daily, although he doubts its effectiveness. 'Basis' by Elysium, is backed by a number of Harvard professors (including George Church). It's supposed also to be more bio-available than most NAD precursors.

https://www.elysiumhealth.com/en-us/basis

​

https://www.amazon.com/Juvenescence-Investing-longevity-Mellon-Jim/dp/0993047815/

​

The good news is that there are actually multiple, up-to-date textbooks on the biology of aging:

• Biology of Aging (2nd Edition) - Roger B. McDonald (Published 2019)
  
• Biology of Longevity and Aging: Pathways and Prospects - Robert Arking (Published 2019)
  
• Human Biological Aging: From Macromolecules to Organ Systems - Glenda E. Bilder (Published 2016)
  
  Caleb Finch also wrote a textbook, The Biology of Human Longevity: Inflammation, Nutrition, and Aging in the Evolution of Lifespans, but it was published in 2007 and hasn't been updated since. There's also the 8th Edition of the Handbook of the Biology of Aging, published in 2015.

I took it for a couple weeks and it gave me some mild side effects, possibly because I was taking it in a fasted state. Side effects: a little too much energy and some anxiety. I'm going to start taking it again, but this time with my meal. (I do OMAD)

What I was using: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NPXDXNA/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A1H4J1GB42KZ6X&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Relaxation-Response-Herbert-Benson/dp/0380006766

Ending Aging

Also The Alzheimer's Solution.

anyone tested this one?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07TC7M13T/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_GNhKDbP0DNGPD

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the main reason aging happens
and it is already relatively easy to fix: Identify the microbes in question and kill them.

The author has also written a book:
https://www.amazon.com/Microbial-Burden-Major-Age-Related-Disease-ebook/dp/B01G48A88A/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1526332350&sr=1-8&keywords=lustgarten

This is one of the problems with anti-aging that isn't enjoying as much coverage. If you define aging as a disease, then you risk medicalizing and over-treating well people, which could harm their psyche and their sense of invincibility and competence to cope with the challenges of getting older. I think a lot of people in this sub would find interesting the books written by Nortin Hadler M.D., particularly this one. Also, if insurance payers such as Medicare don't view aging and it's sequelae as a disease, then these drugs are going to have an enormous out-of-pocket cost for consumers.

Cardiovascular diseases and cancer are the leading causes of death.

• keep blood pressure in normal range
  
  
• keep homoscystine in check
  
  
• keep blood glucose in check
  
  
• do exercise that includes HIIT (improves collateral blood vessels)
  
  
• restrict calories
  
  
• eat enough fibre
  
  
• maintain normal weight range
  
  
• reduce salt
  
  
• stand rather than sit when working
  
  
• don't die in childbirth
  
  
• eat a range of antioxidant rich veges of different colours, to ensure you get enough nutrients and minerals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys86ZgjQQYg
  
  
• avoid carcinogens eg processed meat
  
  
• read https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Die-Discover-Scientifically/dp/1250066115
  
  
• read https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Zones-Lessons-Living-Longest/dp/1426207557