Life Extension as Backup Plan

[jordansparks]

Most cryonicists I talk to describe cryonics as their backup plan in case life extension doesn't work out. I've alway treated it the other way around, with life extension as my secondary goal. The reason for this is that I've never thought that life extension could happen in my lifetime. Nevertheless, I've always tried to stay somewhat current with the research, and I have remained hopeful in spite of my opinion.
As I was growing up in the 80s, my father was trying to use antioxidants to extend his life. A prominent book in our household was Life Extension, A Practical Scientific Approach by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. I took beta carotene pills from time to time. That book promoted the free-radical theory of aging, which has since been overturned.
In the 90s, I read The 120-Year Diet and other books by Roy Walford, MD. His books promoted the idea that you could significantly extend your life with calorie restriction with adequate nutrition (CR or CRAN). I remember the statements in the books as being overly confident. It was stated flatly that it would work and that the author would certainly live to that age. He didn't of course. I followed a CR diet for 3 years. But it turns out that it's very hard to get adequate nutrition. Looking back, mine was more of a starvation diet, and I don't think it was healthy. I got tired of the disapproving looks and the social stigma. I quit the diet because some evidence was emerging that it didn't work as well in long-lived animals, but I did continue a lite version off and on and I kept my BMI low.
In the 2000s, I read Aubrey de Grey's Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS). He listed seven causes of aging and strategies for combatting them. The strategies looked very complicated to me and very unlikely to be possible in my lifetime, so I became more resigned to missing the boat completely.
In the 2010s, I heard about resveratrol, NAD boosters, and metformin. I tried each of them for a year or two, quitting after struggling with whether they were effective and whether there might be side effects.
Now it's the 2020s. I turned 50, and got fed up with my sarcopenia. I had been completely sedentary for 20+ years and I had never tried to build back the muscle lost during CR. I started lifting weights a year and a half ago. I also bumped my protein levels up a lot to match a body builder diet. Predictably, I gained 15 pounds of muscle.
Then, David Sinclair's most recent research made headlines. He used 3 of the Yamanaka factors (OSK) to completely reverse aging in mice. This is stunning. I never imagined for a moment that something like this would be possible with our current low level of technology. I fully realize that it's going to be very hard to adapt this to work on humans, but this is major progress. Now I have to figure out how to survive long enough to take advantage of epigenetic reprogramming.
My tentative approach is going to be daily weightlifting, a bit of cardio, NMN, metformin, and daily intermittent fasting. In that style of fasting, you eat all your daily calories in a roughly six hour window, for example between 11am and 5pm. Even if eating the same number of calories as before, that pattern seems to have all the benefits of CRAN without the downsides. It's also a very flexible diet that does not interfere at all with social eating. I will not be reducing my calories and I will still be including plenty of milk and chicken while I study the BCAA issue. I really have no idea how much I can increase my lifespan, but I will push it as hard as I can to give enough time for more breakthroughs. I'm now giving myself 50-50 odds of avoiding cryopreservation through life extension, but my uncertainty is very high. I will pursue both goals equally, and we'll see how it works out. I have a feeling many other people are struggling with the same issues.

[dennis]

Most cryonicists I talk to describe cryonics as their backup plan in case life extension doesn't work out. I've alway treated it the other way around, with life extension as my secondary goal.

The 2 are NOT mutually exclusive for me. Even with infinite lifespan, I do not see why the value of cryonics should diminish for me. But of course one can can prioritize when it comes to where on has to direct efforts or limited resources but that's a different subject.

On diet and supplements:
1) I have been on nearly an all red meat diet for the last 11 years. Besides red meat I have coffee salt and water . That's it. I may fancy half a fruit once in three of four months. I probably have not had a vegetable in years. Other indulgences: eggs.
2) Metformin - I do recollect two people mention not too many good things about Metformin one was Jason Fung, I don't recollect who the other person was. These are not casual skeptics. Jason Fung, if I recollect is a physician who has expertise on diabetes/obesity slash/intermittent fasting.

There's a larger point that I'm trying to make with 1) and 2), that common wisdom can be spectacularly off mark. I take Aubrey de Grey pretty seriously, everyone else with a pinch of salt, even a broken clock is correct twice a day. Overall it looks like we are making progress, albeit very slowly.

p.s: If someone makes a counter point on 1) make sure you've done your research, or you approach it from an angle of ignorance. I take well to ignorance but I do not take well to casual flippant skepticism.

[jordansparks]

Wow, that's an extreme diet. It seems to lack any controlled studies. Shouldn't we instead follow diets that science has shown to be beneficial? There is strong scientific consensus that a carnivore diet is a bad idea. I don't understand how you can ignore that. It has nothing to do with common wisdom and everything to do with evidence. Everything I suggested is well supported by decades of research and strong scientific consensus that it's either beneficial or at least not harmful. Notice that I do not need to get into any detail about the diet, such as a discussion about nutrients. Because it's irrelevant. All I'm looking at is what the vast majority of scientists would have to say about it. That's all. That's not casual flippant skepticism. It's ordinary rational skepticism. There's no other way.

[dennis]

All I'm looking at is what the vast majority of scientists would have to say about it. That's all. That's not casual flippant skepticism. It's ordinary rational skepticism.

I think it's fair enough start to your skepticism ( at least you are not dismissive). What I have found is that medical/health/nutrition "sciences" as practiced is terribly, terribly flawed. When observed results in practice do not match what the current consensus by a LARGE margin then one has to question stuff.

When I started the way I eat about 11 years back it was through a trial and error process. Today you will find that there are sufficient anecdotes out there, including from clinicians ( which includes MDs if you're particular about titles, and one clinic that treats cancer patients). As you can imagine a proper study cannot be done, without funding. A seemingly outrageous as a diet like this will never get any funding to start with. It's a chicken and egg situation. There was one formal study that was done about 100 years back on 2 volunteers, for about 2 years( they where observed full time for nearly six months to make sure they were not cheating, followed by around 1.5 years of data collection.

There is a larger point I'm trying to make: On a given subject occasionally most 'scientists' can be wrong most of the time. I almost spent an obsessive amount of time on health related literature to the best extent that I can.

When one digs into literature, I found that some heretics, who had different views were right. The way I eat has probably been practiced for a few 100 years by a minuscule minority, some of them physicians ( who often have a non-trivial 'data' from the people they treat)

For anyone who is a sincere skeptic, here is a shortcut (without having to read vast amounts of literature or listen to anecdotes): self experimentation. If you have a chronic condition ( like arthritis, Crohn's, diabetes) , the results are profound and immediate. If you're healthy then your mileage will be lesser, but still to the best of my knowledge, very discernible.

The bigger barrier is, your own view of the world: how can so many people with the right credentials, be wrong, simultaneously? It is not about science but it is about humans , their politics, biases etc. This is not a barrier that I can help with. It depends on your own past experiences, IQ, conformist tendencies etc.

Caveat: do not experiment without either talking to me or reading the literature, for example it's common for people who start on this diet to eat a lot of lean meat. While it won't kill you, it will certainly cause a lot of discomfort. Another example: normally pork is considered red meat, but I will not recommend pork, simply because pigs can be fed virtually anything, and the quality of meat can be sometimes bad to the point where you could fall sick.

[jordansparks]

On a given subject occasionally most 'scientists' can be wrong most of the time

Absolutely not. The scientists are always more right than anyone else could ever be. That's the whole point of the scientific revolution. This is not even up for debate.

You used the example of self experimentation on an intractable disease as an example of where scientists are wrong. They are not wrong. They've carefully figured out the symptoms, possible causes, and potential treatments. Beyond that, their answer is that they don't know. That doesn't make them wrong. If you've reached the limit of scientific knowledge, then experiment away as long as you don't try something that they've explicitly said you should not. Scientists are not neutral about a carnivore diet. They strongly agree that it's a bad idea, so you are more likely to be causing harm than good.