[untilHellbanned]

In general, you don't want to take anything if you can.

Drugs usually inhibit biological processes. Metformin inhibits mitochondria. This can be good for diabetes and good for aging, but it depends. Hopefully your doctor understands when to prescribe it.

[nikolay]

What do you mean by "inhibits mitochondria"? Actually, the lack of proper mitochondrial QC is the biggest culprit of chronic disease. Cycling from mito fission to fusion is the best approach to fix this and that's why people use metformin wisely in protocols, which do the cycling.

[ve55]

With that said however, the average American diet is generally messed up enough that a lot of substances could benefit them, because there's so many existing problems that have room for improvement which are created by bad diet.

With a perfect diet, the amount of drugs you may want to take would definitely go down, perhaps even to zero.

[derefr]

Given that we’re talking about longevity extension here, that “perfect diet” would have to be perfect indeed, to make you immortal.

[saiya-jin]

How about fixing the crap average american joe eats starts with the crap itself, rather than some substance that would magically fix bad effects?

It can be far from perfect, nobody actually eats that, just normal food, in normal portions, like our ancestors ate.

For many europeans the scale of how crappy US food can get while also being calorie-dense is hard to comprehend. Its not like US is a 3rd world country where most of population can't afford better - most simply don't even try.

[downerending]

Not sure why this is getting downvoted--it's a fundamental truth. Especially given how truly little we understand about biology.