I think this applies to longevity, too. Centenarians love to credit ridiculous stuff for their long lives, but they really don’t have a clue. If I live to be 100 and someone asks me what my secret is, I’m gonna say “luck and statistics.”
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The only longevity interventions available before this decade that current and past centenarians could have used are diet and exercise. That probably explains Asian longevity right there.
We are in a brave new world where we can take supplements and medications to extend lifespan and healthspan (or inadvertently decrease them). Hopefully we don’t look back in 20 years and say what a bunch of idiots we were.
I think the studies done with Rapa on model organisms will prove that we weren’t wrong.
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Certainly applies to the “blue zones” where populations live longer, but when it comes to individual centenarians, I think it’s almost all genetics.
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Well, the good news is that if the positive results / research don’t continue to roll in, or if new research suggests significant risks, we can always adjust course. Its not like we’re on a 20 year clinical trial and have to wait until the end to figure out if things are working or not.
I think we have to take the approach that for any individual you never know exactly what will work… but we can try things that have good research backing, test and see our results, and recalibrate as we go. I suspect we’ll all be recalibrating, testing and adjusting course during our entire life… and thats fine. Longevity therapies will always be about risk/reward tradeoffs, and seeing how things actually work in our bodies.
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