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Notes -
Life Extension is Mostly Fake (So Far)
With modern technology, humans are very limited in being able to control how long we live. Beyond avoiding obvious own goals such as smoking or becoming obese, there's really not much one can do to dramatically increase his lifespan. Only about 2% of people will live to 100, and it's mostly down to genetics.
One naive belief that some life extension advocates have is that life expectancy will increase linearly over time. This has not been happening. From 1900–2000, life expectancy in the U.S. increased from roughly 50 to 78. But since then, the number has barely budged. Most of the dramatic increase in life expectancy starting in 1900 was due to better public sanitation that eliminated a handful of deadly infectious diseases. But now the low hanging fruit has been picked. There's not much more we can do by treating disease. For example, if we completely cured skin cancer, it would only increase life expectancy by a few days. And if we somehow cured ALL cancer it would only increase life expectancy by 3.2 years.
People's bodies simply break down over time. We are not machines that have interchangeable parts. We're more like a piece of metal that rusts until it is so fragile the merest touch will shatter it. Until we can address the root cause of death (aging), no amount of medical care can keep a person alive indefinitely.
And we've made very little progress.
Some people had hoped that by eating a near-starvation diet they could slow the course of aging. Unfortunately, as more data has come in it turns out that caloric restriction tends to work really well for worms, less well for mice, and maybe not much at all for larger animals.
In more online places, a man named Bryan Johnson has become famous for his anti-aging "Blueprint" that includes hundreds of daily supplements and other quirky behaviour such as not eating after 11:30am. Johnson insists that, in his mid-40s, he has the mind and body of a man in his 20s. But looking at pictures, it's obvious that this isn't true. Rather than looking like a young man, he looks like an uncanny middle-aged man.
When we look at centarians, we don't see any obvious traits that led to their long life spans except for having long-lived relatives. High IQ is a positive, as is having lots of social connections. But there's no silver bullet and father time comes for everyone. By age 120, it's inevitable you will die, unless we can arrest the aging process. Perhaps a breakthrough is right around the corner. But there haven't been any incremental steps in that direction.
Wasn’t there a tech billionaire who bought blood from teenagers to try to extend his life that way? What happened with that?
I know that it happened in Silicon Valley the TV show.
But it does apparently work, not to increase life span, but to make one feel rejuvenated. Unclear if it saps the equivalent amount of vitality from the donor.
I am actually a little bit unsettled that certain interventions that do seem to preserve youthfulness, such as sleeping a lot, avoiding the sun (and other radiation), reducing your metabolism/body temp, and consuming the blood of virgins really resembles vampire behavior.
Isn't donating blood supposed to be good for your health too? Within limits, obviously.
ALLEGEDLY it helps clear out toxins, heavy metals, and other 'forever' chemicals that the body can't otherwise process.
I believe it.
Also supposed to help with blood pressure, which anecdotally seems to be the case for me (I give blood, sometimes double red, on a very regular basis).
Yeah, the idea is that new blood is less polluted. You're dumping all of that on whoever gets your blood, but I think if you're in that situation, that's the least of your worries.
Do they really do no advanced filtering before donation? I guess I thought they would for some reason.
Depends on the clinic. The high end ones will offer ultra filtered blood with an option for enriched adrenechrome levels
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