Ask HN: What are scientifically valid ways maximize my life expectancy?

[mxschumacher]

Fasting? Blood transfusions? Avoiding UV-radiation, smoking alcohol? A plant based diet? Regular exercise? High mental activity?

Ignoring genetic predispositions and accidental death, how can I maximize my life expectancy? Bonus points for peer reviewed scientific sources

[rthomas6]

Here are some scientifically valid answers that are more interesting.

* Restrict calories to 30% less than you want to eat. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19075044)

* Starve your father when he was a child. (https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,195...)

* Don't sit down very much. (http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/02/19/27946075...)

* Don't take Prilosec/Nexium/Prevecaid. (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heartburn-drugs-proton-pump-inhi...)

[mars4rp]

I am going to have a short life then :) I better enjoy it!

[anon4728]

Also:

* Do take Metformin.

* Consume sufficient Omega-3 (many fish-oil capsules or fewer small, oily fish).

* When > 50, take either aspirin or triflusal.

* Exercise to minimize resting heart rate.

* Meditate.

* Use sunscreen to protect against UVA.

* Don't smoke or chew tobacco.

* Minimize inflammation and inflammatory processes.

* Don't live next to a highway or urban pollution.

* Don't be poor.

* Resolve depression or sleep apnea.

* Don't eat meat, eat mostly plants. (Raw vegan is a bit hipster extreme.)

[Mz]

1. Eat right.

2. Exercise, preferably strenuously and several times per week.

I am not going to back that up with sources. It is easily googled and routinely ignored by people wanting fancy, quick fixes with a lot of flash.

Re accidental death:

I paid accident claims for over five years. Very few of the claims I paid were genuinely "Wrong time, wrong place. Shit happens." Not counting people gaming the system, even most legitimate claims had an element of "Why the fuck were you doing that to begin with???" In some cases, this element was glaring enough to make the claim deniable under the list of provisos that boiled down to "If you are doing something egregiously stupid and dangerous, we won't cover your so-called accident when this results in injury or death."

Some basics you probably already know:

Do not drink or do recreational drugs.

If you do choose to drink or drug, arrange ahead of time to do so under safe circumstances.

Follow the safety instructions on medication or dangerous equipment. Don't make an exception "just this one time."

Do not consistently be a horrible, horrible asshole to people. (I paid a claim where that basically got someone shot.)

If you own guns, dangerous equipment, etc, strictly follow safety practices. No exceptions.

[miguelrochefort]

> 1. Eat right.

That doesn't meat anything.

[csbrooks]

I can't remember where I heard this, but supposedly a surprising number of people's last words are "you wouldn't have the guts to shoot!"

[PaulHoule]

Blood transfusions are pretty dangerous. Isaac Asimov died of AIDS thanks to blood transfusions after cardiac bypass surgery, and even though there is better surveillance of the blood supply there will always be new infectious agents, see

http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/journal/v2/n6/full/ncpneuro02...

[mxschumacher]

I mentioned it because of this recent article: https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/217249...

[AnimalMuppet]

Of course, not getting one when you need it is pretty dangerous, too...

[tyrw]

HN is probably the wrong forum for health advice, as it's not really something you'd "hack". Your best bets are mostly mundane according to the large, peer-reviewed studies that have been done, and you could summarize them as:

* Eat a balanced diet, avoiding excess

* Exercise regularly, avoiding excess

* Don't smoke

* Don't drink more than a glass of alcohol each day, if at all

* Cross your fingers and hope for the best

[blacksmith_tb]

I am skeptical many people could manage to exercise to 'excess', a little digging online suggests there isn't much evidence[1] there's a real danger, with the possible exception of some competitive athletes - one example that comes to mind is Graeme Obree[2]

1: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/can-you-get-too-mu...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree#Taking_the_record

[lordCarbonFiber]

On the other side of the question: why do you want to increase/maximize life expectancy? I'd focus on living a fulfilling life now, as opposed to trying to squeeze out a few more years after your body has started to fall apart.

[jf22]

The alternative approach is to maintain a healthy lifestyle so those last 10 years can be as fulfilling as possible.

This video inspired me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo6QNU8kHxI

[gozur88]

Unless you're one of those people who needs the sort of adrenaline rush you get from hard drugs or skydiving, you can do both.

[mxschumacher]

A valid question, but I think the answer really is a personal one (one could debate in another thread).

I know that I want to live as long as possible while maintaining the best possible health - I just need to know how to pull it off.

[awkwarddaturtle]

Just a caveat. A lot of these scientific studies tend to be funded by industries with an agenda. So I'd take scientific sources with a grain of salt. Every other day there is a study saying coffee is good for your heart, tea is good for your liver, so on and so forth.

Though most scientific publications are "peer reviewed", most of them are not "peer replicated".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713953

As sad as it is, a significant portion of the published scientific material are false or can't be replicated.

I suppose peer reviewed scientific articles are better than old wives' tales but not by much.

> smoking alcohol? A plant based diet? Regular exercise? High mental activity?

Well according to some people, moderate drinking can reduce risk of heart attack by 30%. But who knows how valid those studies are.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/21/health/wine-healthy-food-draye...

[Graziano_M]

I'd avoid taking it with a grain of salt... that'll kill ya.

[db48x]

The problem with your question is that we can deal only with averages and statistics rather than with individuals. We might find that X increases the average lifespan of humans by 10 years, but that's no guarantee that it will help any particular individual human at all.

That said, I suggest jogging regularly; just don't get hit by a bus.

[mxschumacher]

Okay, but that means keeping an eye out for personalized medicine based on genetics; what does the scientific frontier have to say about that?

One good way to live long is certainly not to die young (e.g. avoid risk factors) - would be helpful to know which of those are not as well known.

[mxschumacher]

Also: which datapoints would you need to give pointed advice?

[jerrylives]

I'm 65 and still coding. My secret is to vape weed every day, which I've been doing since my late twenties when my then boyfriend showed me how to "hot knife" hash.

[mxschumacher]

65 is a good start, I'd like to take aim at 100+

[KitDuncan]

Dank

[Top19]

Look at the book "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger.

His two big things were cruciferous vegetables, so mainly brocolli, and the Indian spice turmeric. He hammered away at the importance of these two items across 500+ pages.

[irremediable]

From my understanding of general health evidence, your best bet is:

* Avoid smoking and excessive drinking (excess is easier to reach than you think!).

* Eat a healthy diet (not too many calories, not too many carbs, not too much saturated fat -- in order of descending importance).

* Get regular exercise. Aerobic and anaerobic, plus flexibility. You want to be supple, strong and healthy.

* Avoid occupational hazards -- for the HN crowd, probably eye problems and posture problems. Just taking regular breaks from the screen will go a long way here.

* Make sure you get good healthcare, especially when you're older (60+).

* Have good genetics. (Sorry, not much you can choose about this one.)

[miguelrochefort]

What's wrong with saturated fat?

[SirLJ]

I think it is about the quality of life, otherwise you might not live 100 years, but you might feel like it... My recepie is enjoy everything in moderation and this includes single malt and cohibas

[mxschumacher]

also, who knows whether putting the system under some stress (sipping cohibas) doesn't have some positive effect in an antifragile sense.

I agree with this notion, my practical solution to this is to not worry about drinking moderately in social situations, because it makes many of them more enjoyable

[NHern031]

I couldn't have said it any better.

[paulcole]

Do you want to maximize your life expectancy or figure out a balance of how to achieve a life that's as enjoyable as possible for as long as possible. A bunch of shitty years at the end really aren't likely worth it. But dying at 40 from partying too hard isn't likely worth it either.

[mxschumacher]

if that really is a tradeoff (I suspect it is not) - I want to maximize the time in great health.

[sotojuan]

Exercise and fitness in general has worked for a while. I know 75 year olds that have exercised their whole lives and others who haven't - completely different.

Sure, it's not guaranteed but I think we can all agree that it's a good start.

[vajrapani666]

I'm really surprised intermittent fasting hasn't been mentioned. I've found eating one meal/day or restricting eating to a 3 hour window to be very beneficial for my energy levels, focus, time, and financial habits. I'll probably live longer too,

> In recent studies conducted in overweight humans, caloric restriction has been shown to improve a number of health outcomes including reducing several cardiac risk factors (Fontana et al., 2004, 2007; Lefevre et al., 2009), improving insulin-sensitivity (Larson-Meyer et al., 2006), and enhancing mitochondrial function (Civitarese et al., 2007). Additionally, prolonged caloric restriction has also been found to reduce oxidative damage to both DNA (Heilbronn and Ravussin, 2003; Heilbronn et al., 2006; Hofer et al., 2008) and RNA, as assessed through white blood cells (Hofer et al., 2008). Thus, findings of initial human clinical trials appear to support the promise of caloric restriction demonstrated in animal studies, at least in overweight adults.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622429/

> In this review article we describe evidence suggesting that two dietary interventions, caloric restriction (CR) and intermittent fasting (IF), can prolong the health-span of the nervous system by impinging upon fundamental metabolic and cellular signaling pathways that regulate life-span. CR and IF affect energy and oxygen radical metabolism, and cellular stress response systems, in ways that protect neurons against genetic and environmental factors to which they would otherwise succumb during aging.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3919445/

> The most common eating pattern in modern societies, three meals plus snacks every day, is abnormal from an evolutionary perspective. Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16647.full

One last study, separate because this is on rats.

> Among the 137 rats, the male rat which lived the longest died at 1057 days and the oldest female died at 1073 days. Both rats fasted for 1 day in 2, but the optimum amount of fasting was on the average 1 day in 3. With this amount of fasting, the life span of the males was increased by 20 per cent, and that of the females by 15 per cent., but the life span of the fasted males just reached the life span of the female controls. Pre-experimental nutritional conditions and genetic factors had a considerable influence on any specific life span. There was a high degree of genetic uniformity in spite of different regimes of feeding and fasting.

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.extract

[atmosx]

Can you elaborate on the eating habits you are proposing?

What/how do you eat in a week?

[FullMtlAlcoholc]

Besides restricting calories, limiting intake of orocessed foods, and exercising, maintain healthy social relationships and maintain a level of curiosity about the world

[mxschumacher]

feel like the latter two are counter intuitive (how could one's drive possibly impact biological life?) but possibly true (some data would be interesting here)

[wcummings]

Smoke alcohol? What?

[JPLeRouzic]

There is an efficient way to maximize life expectancy, it does not involve taking risks with proposals bordering snake oil and it minimizes the medical knowledge you must acquire:

Employ at every time three personal high profile doctors at a salary far above what they could expect, and fire one of them each year. The choice of who is fired is based on written proposals by each of them. Having three doctors makes it possible to use majority logic. Make sure that two of them do not collude.

[drakonka]

> Make sure that two of them do not collude.

How? This alone would have the potential to bring down the entire plan even if someone did have the money to hire three doctors.