Introduction to Longevity - Who Wants to Beat Aging?
This is post going to be compilation of my learnings about longevity from a book, some interviews, and web searches. Let's start by defining what longevity means first, and then I'll emphasize the key things based on "recent" literature that still I'm trying to digest.
The philosophy of longevity might be summarized with below bullet points:
- Starting with accepting that aging is a disease
- Aging can be slow down, stop, and reverse back
As in all other disciplines to understand how we can extend our life time and being aged without feeling it is hidden in the nature. As engineers inspired by nature quite often to built things or solve the problems, in the field of longevity it is same, nature is our source of inspiration again.
Woody Allen's statement emphasize the importance of longevity: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
There are some estimations in terms of achievements in the longevity era and according to some scientists we will figure out to stop aging by 2030 (it doesn't mean that we won't have a farewell party to this planet, when we get to the age of 80's we may look like 30) and around 2045 reversing the age will be possible.
| Animal | Average Life Time [years] |
|---|---|
| Rough-eyed rockfish | 205 |
| Aldabra giant tortoise | 255 |
| Quahog clam | 507 |
| Greenland shark | 400 |
| Hydra | In theory, under normal circumances infinite |
| Immortal jellyfish (IJ) | Biologically infinite |
As you can see, hydra and IJ are the best examples that we can try to understand how they are able to leave "forever" biologically, and they are under the attention of science to solve the problem as engineers designed helicopters (by inspiration of hoverfly), airplanes (eagles, etc...). We have mainly 2 issues to be not to able to leave forever, and those are as following:
- During cell renewal process, telomer erosion occurs (telomer shortening). Telomer is kind of a shell for our DNA
- Our stem cells deteriorate overtime
Hydra's stem cells do not deteriorate overtime and it can regenerate itself through FoxO genes that almost every living creature has. But hydra's FoxO gene is expressed more dense than us, that's why it can live forever under normal circumstances. And, IJ can do reverse aging that's why it is biologically immortal.
- Genomic instabilities: Mutations and DNA damage
- Epigenetic changes: Mistakes of reading/interpreting of DNA code by the cells. This reflects on protein production
- Telomer erosion: It causes limiting the DNA replication
- Loss of proteostasis: Radical waste accumulation at cell level
- Mitochondrial disfunction: Energy producing issues
- Irregular Food Perception: A bit complex topic, I'll write down my notes on it in upcoming blog-post but simply ability of losing to detect the type of food and quantity at cell level.
- Cell aging: Zombie cells issue
- Stem cell deplete: Damaged tissues can not be regenerated
- Communication issues between cells
- Insufficient Autophagy
- Inflammation
As you can see, there are many reasons of aging process, the good news is this field is quite attractive and many scientist are working on it. Let's summarize what we should do and what we should stop doing at least to slow-down the aging and live a life like as if we are always 20s or 30s even in 80s.
- Decreasing total amount of calory (not for the kids, If my understanding is correct)
- Simple carbs and sugar is our biggest enemy, do not consume them as much as you can
- Between each meal, at least, put 4 hours break
- Have your dinner earlier than before (try to finish your dinner at 17)
- This one is quite cliché but let's put it here, exercises
- High quality sleep, very important to start autophagy process
- Stress management; meditation, hiking, etc. whatever makes you relief
- Cold and hot shocks; cold shower in the morning to wake up your body, once per month sauna
- Supplements: Vitamin-D and magnesium are the most critical for everyone
I'd like to extend the food part at least a little more for this post, let's write down some general statements what we should not do/eat, and what we should do/eat.
Other things related our digestion; eating fast, insufficient stomach acid, constipation, insufficient vitamin-D and vitamin-A, lack of good bacteria
Chew as long as you can, increase the level of vitamin-D and A, take care about your intestine
| List of foods | |
|---|---|
| Good Foods | Bad Foods |
| Yogurt, cheese, almond milk | Milk |
| Brownish bread (If I'm not wrong, better to avoid it) | Refined sugars, white bread, desserts (especially cheap ones), |
| Kefir, homemade juices, green tea, homemade milkshake | Packaged juices |
| Fat free meat, chicken, fish, legumes | Protein bars |
| Blueberries, apple, carrot, avocado, ... | --- |
| Chia seed (it goes well with home made smoothies), | --- |
There will be other posts that will provide more details, and I’d also like to explain some mechanisms — for example, how mitochondria work, what NAD+, mTOR, IGF-1, Sirtuins (SIRT), AMPK are, and more. These posts will give you a solid understanding of how our body functions at the cellular level, just as they did for me. As a result, everything mentioned here will make much more sense.