Comment by seer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seer | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Maybe you’ve missed the longevity science developments in the last 5-10 years. We’ve mostly understood exactly what “aging” is, and are now on our way of nudging it in various directions with very promising results in mice. The lifespan podcast can be a nice primer to where we are right now. Though its such a fast moving field it might be out of date now already.

The last paper I saw had some great results in primates, human trials maybe this year. https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/167917867074373224...

So while we’ve “always” been about to cure aging, this time its actually closer to real than ever before.

More over, since we understand the reasons for aging, there are things you can do to extend life that don’t involve medication. Like traditional techniques that we know work, but now we’re aware exactly why. Like fasting for example. And its not just the actual age you die that can be affected but how you feel throughout your life - e.g. how “young” you feel. And the great thing is that those techniques have been tested in various cultures around the world for centuries, so there is some actual data to back things up, and with the recent discoveries we can separate the things that actually made a difference with the pageantry and the irrelevant or bad stuff, and get you to live at the longest your genes can do, maybe even a bit longer.

The truly great thing for me is that we now apparently can measure biological age accurately without having to wait for people to die to add to a datapoint, so that we can quickly iterate, and obviously we’ll need to wait for decades to be sure and prove stuff without a shadow of doubt, but seems to me we might be closer than ever before!

We all know what to do to extend our lifespan but with 70% of the west being obese or overweight and the average westerner walking like 2500 steps a day as their sole physical activity we also know people don't care about extending their lifespan

Sure, great thing though is that bad choices other people are making don’t affect your body too much. You’re free to fast a few weeks a year / intermittently regardless of how much everyone else is eating.

Also west =/= usa, europe is not as obese and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is actually quite easy, since most of it is far from car dependent, lots of nature and healthy food options.

I’ve recently found out it’s actually way harder to do all that in south asia where a lot of the fasting traditions come from, since most people live much further away from nature (big unregulated cities) and transport options are as bad if not worse than USA

> europe is not as obese

It's getting there don't worry

> Overweight and obesity affect almost 60% of adults and nearly one in three children (29% of boys and 27% of girls) in the WHO European Region.

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/353747/9789...

There isn't a single country in EU with under 50% overweight rate

> since most of it is far from car dependent, lots of nature and healthy food options.

We must not be living in the same world then, every mid sized / big city is the same in every country in the west, people barely walk or exercise and everybody's overweight

There is no reliable scientific evidence that fasting extends lifespans for humans who are already at a healthy weight and body composition. In fact, there is reason to expect the opposite effect due to the increased risk of sarcopenia. Studies in mice and other small animals living in safe, sterile lab cages can't be extrapolated to humans living in the wild.

Other than calorie restriction, is there a method to extend mice lifespan?

I mean actually extending it. For example if the natural lifespan is 3 years, can we now reliably get 4 or 5 years?

Lifespan extension has been observed in studies which have restricted either calorie intake or protein intake or only methionine intake.

I have not seen any studies that clarify whether calorie restriction has any effects beyond those caused by the protein restriction included in the calorie-restricted diet and whether protein restriction has any effects beyond those caused by the methionine restriction inherent to a protein-restricted diet.

Methionine is required for the initiation of any protein synthesis, so presumably when it is deficient the global rate of protein synthesis in the body is lowered, which is what might be the cause of the extension of the lifespan.

However this may cause problems when a high rate of protein synthesis is needed, e.g. in cases of diseases or accidents.

Maybe for mice living in safe little cages where they don't have to worry about falling down the stairs and breaking a hip. Telling humans to restrict protein intake is idiotic, bordering on irresponsible. Sarcopenia is a huge risk factor for the elderly. Lack of lean muscle mass is a risk factor for metabolic disease (type-2 diabetes) and disabling falls. We need a large amount of protein (including the right mix of essential amino acids) to build and maintain muscle. And as we age the digestive system becomes less effective at absorbing protein, so we should increase consumption a bit as we age.

https://peterattiamd.com/category/nutritional-biochemistry/p...

Part of the reason not to be too optimistic is that success in mice means living as long as a human toddler...

So what is aging then? And no BS about telomere length, please.

Where can get a scientifically validated test for "biological" age? What does that even mean?

Aging is the breakdown of your biological functions. We can measure it therefore we can fix it. Be it with genetic engineering or with a external treatment.

Come on, that answer is so vague as to be meaningless.

Why you consider telomere length to be BS?

There is no reliable scientific evidence that changing telomere length affects human life expectancy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com