Ageing
Both descriptive and prescriptive
January 11, 2022 — January 21, 2025
Suspiciously similar content
General theory of ageing and avoiding it. Placeholder.
See also biomarkers.
Lifespan/healthspan/ageing is not my area of research. I’m not qualified to assess in specific detail the outlandish claims made by snake-oil sellers since I do not know how biology works. I am not triaging the literature review high enough on my list. That said, I can assess crap statistics and bad reasoning well enough to report that it is sometimes tedious.
There is a danger of pseudoscience and quackery in this area, so beware. The incentives are clearly not great: since cashed-up older people rarely want to die, selling them small trials with marginal benefits and low reproducibility is a lucrative enough business to prop up a lot of bad science indefinitely.
Which interventions make us live healthier longer?
Quantified self/nutrition etc. for lifespan extension. Probably best read in concert with biomarker tracking.
1 Sirtuin stuff
As seen in Sinclair (2021), who recommends taking various supplements that affect the sirtuin pathway, whatever that is.
Berberine, resveratrol, metformin, NAD+ precursors, fasting, etc.
See also
More metformin stuff:
- Does Metformin Work as an Anti-Ageing Drug?
- (Campbell et al. 2017; Kulkarni et al. 2018; Kulkarni, Gubbi, and Barzilai 2020; Mohammed et al. 2021)
I’m interested in the observation that fasting also benefits the immune system. It seems to work in mice (Brandhorst et al. 2024).
2 GlyNAC
This is also on the podcastosphere.
“Supplementing Glycine and N-Acetylcysteine (GlyNAC) in Older Adults Improves Glutathione Deficiency, Oxidative Stress, Mitochondrial Dysfunction, Inflammation, Physical Function, and Aging Hallmarks: A Randomized Clinical Trial” (Kumar et al. 2023)
3 Blood plasma dilution
Blood boys etc.
Or do you even need blood boys?
See this Open Philanthropy summary:
The challenge: Given the central role ageing plays in disease progression, a better understanding of the ageing process could lead to improvements in a broad range of health outcomes.
The research: Dr. Irina Conboy, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley, has made significant strides in the scientific understanding of how blood factors—hormones, proteins, and other molecules circulating in the bloodstream—influence ageing. Though Dr. Conboy’s work had already gained recognition by the time of our first grant in 2017, we believed it was still neglected relative to its potential in a field that had received much private investment but little public research funding.
With support from our team and other funders, Dr. Conboy:
- Developed micro-apheresis for mice, an innovative technique that allows filtration of blood to remove small molecules.
- Identified 10 novel biomarkers of ageing.
- Uncovered a major mechanism for rejuvenation through modulation of the TLR4 receptor, which appears to play a key role in age-related inflammation.
- Revealed (Kim et al. 2022) that diluting old blood (with saline and purified albumin (Yilmaz et al. 2011)) — rather than adding young blood, which has garnered provocative headlines—can have rejuvenating effects on muscle, liver, and brain tissue.
The impact: Dr. Conboy’s research offers a new perspective on how factors in blood affect ageing. Her findings suggest that identifying and counteracting pro-ageing factors in blood could potentially slow or reverse certain effects of ageing, opening new avenues for improving human health and longevity.
4 What biomarkers are cheap to track to assess the effectiveness of ageing interventions?
TODO
5 Collagen
Why would collagen supplementation (some sources recommend a protocol with vitamin C and exercise) help with collagen production? It all gets digested, right? Some small studies suggest eating collagen is nonetheless good for collagen production (Czajka et al. 2018; DePhillipo et al. 2018; Shaw et al. 2017). I would like a meta-analysis and some extra data.
6 Alternatives
7 Incoming
- Watch Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever about Bryan Johnson.
- Longevity and the Mind