What his father is experiencing is luck mixed with good genetics. Plus, additional support of good diet and exercise. Yes, we all can control our diets and exercise. However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. There are so MANY other factors.
If his father grew up somewhere where lead is a problem, I have a feeling the outcome might have been different.
The whole article is useless. My grandfather was an awful person, smoked all his life, drank most of it, and ate whatever he could. Lived to 78 and was healthy, at that point he committed suicide as he could not live without his wife, which passed away few months earlier. Ironically he was an awful husband.
There is ample evidence in medical research that diet (to the extent that people have control over what they eat) has huge impacts on quality of life at high ages.
All of this is about taking actions that reduce risk statistically. None of this is about a magic action that will prevent all disease.
Nonsense. No one is trying to establish a causal link here. Still, a concrete example of what's possible is useful and inspirational. If you do this, will you get this outcome? Probably not. Does it help me imagine a possible path? Yes, definitely.
I agree that the father appears lucky to have avoided issues such as debilitating disease due to random genetic mutation. Even the father acknowledges that "lots of good luck" was involved. The article does not appear to overstate the significance of this single example.
Anecdotes are not useless. They can be inspirational and they can help illuminate possibilities and methods that are otherwise opaque in large-sample statistics. Anecdotes that are consistent with our best scientific understanding are powerful ways of communicating knowledge and providing inspiration for change to those who don't have the ability or inclination to evaluate the studies. In this case, the father is doing several things that large studies tell us are beneficial to health. These unmentioned studies suggest that the father has probably improved his quality of life. Most people I know are far more motivated by such anecdotes than they are by credible statistical analysis.
I disagree with your list of uncontrollable variables. All of them are largely controllable. Much of the medication consumed today is either outright unnecessary or can be reduced with lifestyle changes. You can control the air you breath by controlling where you live and when/where you are most active. You can lower your risk of cancer and many other diseases by lifestyle and environmental changes. The fact that complete control and certainty are impossible is no reason for inaction.
“Genetics” is the ultimate excuse people love to use nowadays, and I say this as a person with somewhat eugenic views.
The fact is, genetics has a much smaller role than what people think it does. If you make good life choices and stay consistent with optimizing your health your genetics won’t have much relevance. Even if your bloodline is prone to cancers or other diseases you can mitigate dying to those conditions if you have awareness to catch problems early.
We can control much of the medication that we take. Sometimes medications are absolutely necessary, and we have to accept the negative side effects in order to prevent death or serious symptoms. But too often medications are used as a "patch" to treat chronic conditions that would be better addressed over the long term with lifestyle changes. For example, some fraction of chronic depression cases can be treated effectively with frequent exercise and sunlight exposure instead of SSRIs. I am not trying to discourage anyone from seeking allopathic medical treatment but it's worth investigating all the options.
Of all the things you listed, I think this is controllable.
But I agree genes play a huge role. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger do no exercise and have famously bad diets, yet both are fully productive and healthy at 91.
> However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects.
What makes you say that? The medications one takes are due in part to decisions made earlier in life, which result in conditions experience later for which the drugs are prescribed.
Also, drugs aren't the only solution to certain medical problems. For example, you can take weight loss pills, or you can actually cut your caloric intake.
My grandfather is 88, he has definitely slowed down quite a bit lately, but his recipe for a long-life was 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day, alcoholic for most of his adult life, rarely slept more than 4 hours a day and I never ever, saw him eat a vegetable or break a sweat from exercise in my entire life.
I figure if I got just some of those genes, and since I never smoked, not an alcoholic and eat pretty well, I should live to be 150 or so - either that or he will be a pall-bearer at my funeral.
> pallbearer (n): a person helping to carry or officially escorting a coffin at a funeral.
TIL. As a non-native speaker, I've never seen it written and always heard it like "pole bearer", which kinda makes sense: horizontal poles under a coffin.
> His resting heart rate is just below 60 beats per minute. The steps pushed it up to 155 beats per minute. (His maximum heart rate should be 220 minus his age, 80. That’s only 140 beats per minute — far below what he is capable of!)
Sorry, that's not how this works.
220 - age is a very crude and not very good guess at the heart rate for a population. It is not YOUR max heart rate, and your max heart rate being higher or lower than that is not a sign of health. It is likely just a sign of your particular heart. It's worth checking in on it every few years and knowing yours.
On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better.
> On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better.
Not true in the general case. Asymptomatic bradycardia without increased risk of death may be present in athletes but assuming that's always the case can be dangerous. Other causes include a number of heart diseases, hypothyroidism, sleep apnea, medications such as betablockers...
> On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better.
At which point does that becomes bradycardia and a sign of a health problem? My understanding is that, unless you are an athlete, your resting heart rate won't be that low (as in, < 50)
Yeah, that's covered very clearly in the article: "Dad’s been generous to share what he does each day with us all. But let me be clear: all of the standard caveats apply to his approach. This is NOT necessarily a prescription for a healthy life."
If you work backwards from what kills people, you can theoretically work out what will improve your chances.
In the elderly, heart disease and a rapid decline in health after a broken hip are high on the list of events that lead to death. So keeping the cardiovascular system healthy, and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense.
Strength training and a sufficient, consistent amount of exertion each week make sense. They do not, of course, guarantee you'll never have a genetic condition, or some other unfortunate incident. That's not how biology and bodies work. But it does help prepare you as you age.
Diet seems much trickier, because dietary needs do vary somewhat depending on your specific body! The hacker approach of experimenting (and journaling) and figuring out what leaves you feeling healthy and energetic is what I'd recommend to anyone who cares!
So write it off as "yet another" anecdote if you please. But also consider whether these ideas are good for your quality of life, and if they are a trade-off worth making.
> and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense.
Unclear how stronger muscles prevent broken hips. It's the bone that breaks.
I've read a comment from a nurse that was pretty interesting. She said that people say that 'someone fell and broke a hip'. While in reality it the more common scenario is: 'someone's hip broke, and due to that, they fell'.
Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (< 70 years). Those who didn't usually lived to be at least 85. My grandfather, who never did any type of sports, ate meat every day, who came home after worked and watched TV until bedtime and who drank 1-2 liters of cider per day after retirement died at 92 and was completely healthy up until a few hours before his death.
> Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (< 70 years)
I never tried to stay healthy until after I started having health problems (GI issues, mild concussion, etc). I wonder how many other people do the same and how that affects the statistics. Sort of like how "drink a glass of red wine a day" doesn't correlate to health but rather the money to have red wine handy and the circumstances to drink one and only one glass.
Funnily enough the “ate meat every day” part might be the key. Red meat boosts testosterone and testosterone plays a big role in mens health, especially as they age and experience the natural drop in testosterone levels.
same with my grandfather, drank a lot everyday and died at 82. My other grandfather died at 60 of a sudden heart attack, he was the model of a "good husband, father, community member and, responsible citizen", i sometimes think the stress that is caused by living such a clean life was what killed him.
A healthy lifestyle definitely helps, and some genetic luck. My grandfather recently passed away unexpectedly at age 88.
He was working in the garden daily or going for walks / riding a bike. He had a more active social life than I did before COVID hit. He read daily, did crossword puzzles at night, and ate healthy. No mental or physical issues.
Lifestyle plays a role, but he was dealt good cards genetically as well which I am aware of.
Generally life extension runs up against three non-technical problems:
Addicts will fight VERY hard in support of their addiction. Try telling a life long sugar addict to fix their T2 diabetes by eating fewer carbs; they'll completely explode at you. People who die from smoking were usually told about a million times to quit smoking before their diagnosis, LOL.
Innumerate people seem to actively oppose statistics. There is only it works or it doesn't and they'll have a complete meltdown at the concept that maybe 80% of lung cancer is caused by smoking and 20% for other causes therefore there is nothing they can do to alter their pre-determined destiny. Arguably belief in predestination and/or innumeracy could be considered a mental illness (see below) but I'm specifically referencing the stubborn desire to beat the odds by ignoring the odds. (edited to emphasize, the type of thing I'm referring to is the aggressive proselytization of the idea that finding one counterexample or anecdote disproves the entire corpus of all theoretical and applied statistical mathematics)
Most people decline and die younger for some kind of psychological reason. They're depressed so they can't do anything so they can't exercise so they get fat and die of a heart attack, they did in a certain technical sense die because they were fat, but they got fat because they were depressed. Or they have an addiction problem. Or they follow quacks because they think if martyrdom is religiously superior then punishing themselves is superior even if it shortens their life, or they follow medical advice based mostly upon making money off prescriptions, or they follow medical advice that was proven obsolete via research last century, or they are so into collectivism and "fitting in" that they would literally rather die than think for themselves or read a book, whatever the TV (or social media) says is not just good enough, but should be forced on people, even if it kills them.
What we really need is robust treatments that either slow down the ageing process or reverse it to some extent. There is some promising research relating to both slowing and reversing. The current approach where we treat age related disease as individual things will never really work out in the long term
One thing right now that is available is rapamycin which basically improves health span and lifespan for every animal it is given, won't make you live to 150 but will probably reduce risk of disease.
I am considering starting rapamycin myself as my mom was diagnosed with ALS few months ago (doesn't seem strictly genetic as her mom and dad lived relatively long and didn't get that disease), so I might have some risk genes..
World where people live to 90-100 and where increasing amount have dementia or other age related disease won't be a nice place
] Although the overwhelming majority of studies on the effect of rapamycin on longevity in mice have shown a significant increase in lifespan, there are five studies that have reported either no effect or reduced lifespan when treated with rapamycin.
When you write "every animal it is given" .. do you mean only flies and mice?
I've been having a hard time finding results for any other animals.
There's a decade of research with marmosets (here's a 2012 mention about it in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/492S18a ), but none of the papers I find report lifespan, only secondary measures (eg, "Long-term treatment with the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin has minor effect on clinical laboratory markers in middle-aged marmosets" - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.22927 ).
Since marmosets live for about 15 to 16 years, surely there should be something concrete by now if it has the same effect on middle-aged marmosets when the research started.
I found there's research for dogs, but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507265/ says it's also ongoing. I haven't found any published results on lifespan only, again, on secondary effects (eg, quoting the paper, "An initial randomized, double-blind veterinary clinical trial confirmed the safety of this treatment and provided indications of potential efficacy (benefits for cardiac function) in dogs".)
What other animals have shown improved lifespan with rapamycin?
If it's only flies and (most) mice, is that really enough to call it "promising" in humans?
Last summer I bought my 80-year-old father a bicycle. Just a few weeks later, his doctor said, "last time I saw you, you were pre-diabetic, now your readings look great. Whatever you're doing, keep doing that."
Unfortunately he didn't keep up, kept complaining about the seat being uncomfortable… what I eventually figured out is, he was riding in boxer shorts >_<
And this fall, in Africa, I got to see him in action again. Over 16 days of “go, go, go,” my dad, who’s now 80, always seemed to be at the head of the pack. On most days we started at 6 a.m., crisscrossing the dry Serengeti, or climbing rugged rainforest terrain for hours before returning to our home base, where we ate and drank late into the night. We climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and traversed deserts. Dad was right there the whole time, pushing us all to our limits.
This sounds like superior genes more so than lifestyle . Some people's bodies give out earlier in life...stuff like heart disease, stoke, cancer, hypertension which may or may not be related to lifestyle.
My father is 84. Never ate junk food, never smoked, never drank. He plays pickle ball four hours every day and kicks my ass when we play. Also plays volleyball and goes for long walks daily. In his 80's, he's in better shape and has a better life than I do at 51.
my father is the same way, he kills it in pickle ball and is a minor celebrity in Florida. He's always been at least somewhat active for as long as i can remember and probably in better health than i am.
While staying active and eating healthy are very important contributors to a longer life, it seems one also needs to have a healthy social life and sense of purpose to foster the will to live longer.
exercise at 80 if you never did before is not optimal
My two grandfathers never went to the gym yet strong physic and mind. One died in his garden, the other one died while stone cutting. Both 80+, no any supplements whatsoever
avgDev|3 years ago
What his father is experiencing is luck mixed with good genetics. Plus, additional support of good diet and exercise. Yes, we all can control our diets and exercise. However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. There are so MANY other factors.
If his father grew up somewhere where lead is a problem, I have a feeling the outcome might have been different.
The whole article is useless. My grandfather was an awful person, smoked all his life, drank most of it, and ate whatever he could. Lived to 78 and was healthy, at that point he committed suicide as he could not live without his wife, which passed away few months earlier. Ironically he was an awful husband.
This is all anecdotal and useless.
dekhn|3 years ago
All of this is about taking actions that reduce risk statistically. None of this is about a magic action that will prevent all disease.
methehack|3 years ago
mandeepj|3 years ago
>We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases.
Seriously? The answer to all of the above - Yes, we can!
1e-9|3 years ago
Anecdotes are not useless. They can be inspirational and they can help illuminate possibilities and methods that are otherwise opaque in large-sample statistics. Anecdotes that are consistent with our best scientific understanding are powerful ways of communicating knowledge and providing inspiration for change to those who don't have the ability or inclination to evaluate the studies. In this case, the father is doing several things that large studies tell us are beneficial to health. These unmentioned studies suggest that the father has probably improved his quality of life. Most people I know are far more motivated by such anecdotes than they are by credible statistical analysis.
I disagree with your list of uncontrollable variables. All of them are largely controllable. Much of the medication consumed today is either outright unnecessary or can be reduced with lifestyle changes. You can control the air you breath by controlling where you live and when/where you are most active. You can lower your risk of cancer and many other diseases by lifestyle and environmental changes. The fact that complete control and certainty are impossible is no reason for inaction.
xwdv|3 years ago
The fact is, genetics has a much smaller role than what people think it does. If you make good life choices and stay consistent with optimizing your health your genetics won’t have much relevance. Even if your bloodline is prone to cancers or other diseases you can mitigate dying to those conditions if you have awareness to catch problems early.
jl6|3 years ago
nradov|3 years ago
paulpauper|3 years ago
Of all the things you listed, I think this is controllable.
But I agree genes play a huge role. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger do no exercise and have famously bad diets, yet both are fully productive and healthy at 91.
yuan43|3 years ago
What makes you say that? The medications one takes are due in part to decisions made earlier in life, which result in conditions experience later for which the drugs are prescribed.
Also, drugs aren't the only solution to certain medical problems. For example, you can take weight loss pills, or you can actually cut your caloric intake.
Bellamy|3 years ago
ejb999|3 years ago
I figure if I got just some of those genes, and since I never smoked, not an alcoholic and eat pretty well, I should live to be 150 or so - either that or he will be a pall-bearer at my funeral.
abdusco|3 years ago
TIL. As a non-native speaker, I've never seen it written and always heard it like "pole bearer", which kinda makes sense: horizontal poles under a coffin.
brianwawok|3 years ago
Sorry, that's not how this works. 220 - age is a very crude and not very good guess at the heart rate for a population. It is not YOUR max heart rate, and your max heart rate being higher or lower than that is not a sign of health. It is likely just a sign of your particular heart. It's worth checking in on it every few years and knowing yours.
On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better.
matheusmoreira|3 years ago
Not true in the general case. Asymptomatic bradycardia without increased risk of death may be present in athletes but assuming that's always the case can be dangerous. Other causes include a number of heart diseases, hypothyroidism, sleep apnea, medications such as betablockers...
outworlder|3 years ago
At which point does that becomes bradycardia and a sign of a health problem? My understanding is that, unless you are an athlete, your resting heart rate won't be that low (as in, < 50)
michaelmcdonald|3 years ago
The author's father is apparently blessed with no genetic predisposition for memory/cognitive disorders, degenerative physical disease, etc...
Everybody is different. What works for the author's father may not work for everybody else. Take the above article with a grain of salt.
awillen|3 years ago
neogodless|3 years ago
In the elderly, heart disease and a rapid decline in health after a broken hip are high on the list of events that lead to death. So keeping the cardiovascular system healthy, and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense.
Strength training and a sufficient, consistent amount of exertion each week make sense. They do not, of course, guarantee you'll never have a genetic condition, or some other unfortunate incident. That's not how biology and bodies work. But it does help prepare you as you age.
Diet seems much trickier, because dietary needs do vary somewhat depending on your specific body! The hacker approach of experimenting (and journaling) and figuring out what leaves you feeling healthy and energetic is what I'd recommend to anyone who cares!
So write it off as "yet another" anecdote if you please. But also consider whether these ideas are good for your quality of life, and if they are a trade-off worth making.
dugmartin|3 years ago
https://www.bones.nih.gov/health-info/bone/bone-health/exerc...
outworlder|3 years ago
> and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense.
Unclear how stronger muscles prevent broken hips. It's the bone that breaks.
I've read a comment from a nurse that was pretty interesting. She said that people say that 'someone fell and broke a hip'. While in reality it the more common scenario is: 'someone's hip broke, and due to that, they fell'.
lqet|3 years ago
stryan|3 years ago
I never tried to stay healthy until after I started having health problems (GI issues, mild concussion, etc). I wonder how many other people do the same and how that affects the statistics. Sort of like how "drink a glass of red wine a day" doesn't correlate to health but rather the money to have red wine handy and the circumstances to drink one and only one glass.
perth|3 years ago
pj_mukh|3 years ago
strikelaserclaw|3 years ago
cma|3 years ago
Insanity|3 years ago
He was working in the garden daily or going for walks / riding a bike. He had a more active social life than I did before COVID hit. He read daily, did crossword puzzles at night, and ate healthy. No mental or physical issues.
Lifestyle plays a role, but he was dealt good cards genetically as well which I am aware of.
VLM|3 years ago
Addicts will fight VERY hard in support of their addiction. Try telling a life long sugar addict to fix their T2 diabetes by eating fewer carbs; they'll completely explode at you. People who die from smoking were usually told about a million times to quit smoking before their diagnosis, LOL.
Innumerate people seem to actively oppose statistics. There is only it works or it doesn't and they'll have a complete meltdown at the concept that maybe 80% of lung cancer is caused by smoking and 20% for other causes therefore there is nothing they can do to alter their pre-determined destiny. Arguably belief in predestination and/or innumeracy could be considered a mental illness (see below) but I'm specifically referencing the stubborn desire to beat the odds by ignoring the odds. (edited to emphasize, the type of thing I'm referring to is the aggressive proselytization of the idea that finding one counterexample or anecdote disproves the entire corpus of all theoretical and applied statistical mathematics)
Most people decline and die younger for some kind of psychological reason. They're depressed so they can't do anything so they can't exercise so they get fat and die of a heart attack, they did in a certain technical sense die because they were fat, but they got fat because they were depressed. Or they have an addiction problem. Or they follow quacks because they think if martyrdom is religiously superior then punishing themselves is superior even if it shortens their life, or they follow medical advice based mostly upon making money off prescriptions, or they follow medical advice that was proven obsolete via research last century, or they are so into collectivism and "fitting in" that they would literally rather die than think for themselves or read a book, whatever the TV (or social media) says is not just good enough, but should be forced on people, even if it kills them.
suryong|3 years ago
One thing right now that is available is rapamycin which basically improves health span and lifespan for every animal it is given, won't make you live to 150 but will probably reduce risk of disease.
I am considering starting rapamycin myself as my mom was diagnosed with ALS few months ago (doesn't seem strictly genetic as her mom and dad lived relatively long and didn't get that disease), so I might have some risk genes..
World where people live to 90-100 and where increasing amount have dementia or other age related disease won't be a nice place
eesmith|3 years ago
Note every animal. Quoting https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-020-00274-1:
] Although the overwhelming majority of studies on the effect of rapamycin on longevity in mice have shown a significant increase in lifespan, there are five studies that have reported either no effect or reduced lifespan when treated with rapamycin.
When you write "every animal it is given" .. do you mean only flies and mice?
I've been having a hard time finding results for any other animals.
There's a decade of research with marmosets (here's a 2012 mention about it in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/492S18a ), but none of the papers I find report lifespan, only secondary measures (eg, "Long-term treatment with the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin has minor effect on clinical laboratory markers in middle-aged marmosets" - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.22927 ).
Since marmosets live for about 15 to 16 years, surely there should be something concrete by now if it has the same effect on middle-aged marmosets when the research started.
I found there's research for dogs, but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507265/ says it's also ongoing. I haven't found any published results on lifespan only, again, on secondary effects (eg, quoting the paper, "An initial randomized, double-blind veterinary clinical trial confirmed the safety of this treatment and provided indications of potential efficacy (benefits for cardiac function) in dogs".)
What other animals have shown improved lifespan with rapamycin?
If it's only flies and (most) mice, is that really enough to call it "promising" in humans?
bovermyer|3 years ago
eesmith|3 years ago
> At age 111, America's oldest veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and loving life
> Richard Overton smokes 12 cigars a day, eats grits for breakfast and spends his days on the front porch of his Austin home.
https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2017/06/02/at-...
Eric_WVGG|3 years ago
Unfortunately he didn't keep up, kept complaining about the seat being uncomfortable… what I eventually figured out is, he was riding in boxer shorts >_<
paulcole|3 years ago
paulpauper|3 years ago
This sounds like superior genes more so than lifestyle . Some people's bodies give out earlier in life...stuff like heart disease, stoke, cancer, hypertension which may or may not be related to lifestyle.
gotrythis|3 years ago
chasd00|3 years ago
terran57|3 years ago
Avlin67|3 years ago
exercise at 80 if you never did before is not optimal
My two grandfathers never went to the gym yet strong physic and mind. One died in his garden, the other one died while stone cutting. Both 80+, no any supplements whatsoever
steve_john|3 years ago
Markoff|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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unknown|3 years ago
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