Hi everyone! Emmet here. I’ve been a lurker for a while & excited to dive deeper into longevity.
How do people here reconcile their fitness goals with the longevity protocols?
For context, I’m in my 20s & used to compete in powerlifting. I went from being very skinny to quite muscular & would like to keep improving my physical performance & physique. The quality of life improvements have been fantastic.
However, I am also interested in doing everything possible to boost my healthspan. I feel particularly conflicted when it comes to fasting & protein restriction to reduce mTOR.
I read that strength training can increase bone density and healthspan. But it requires a high-protein diet & a slight caloric surplus to make gains. These both seem like longevity “no-nos.” I currently eat around 190g of protein per day and 3,200 calories (200-300 cal surplus) while training 4-5x week + cardio.
I’ve been experimenting with IM & looking into metformin / rapa later in my 20s.
How would you balance quality-of-life fitness goals with longevity given the current studies?
PR extrapolated from mice isn’t significant if we generously overlook flaws and limitations in research. The potential effects of CR far exceed that of PR in mice. And CR isn’t guaranteed in humans. Some people may have a negative lifespan from CR.
Not only that, older adults may benefit from higher protein intake as older mice had a robust increase in lifespan with higher protein intake along with human trials. I’m leaning towards age 50 to increase protein intake, assuming with “perfect” exercise.
Meanwhile, healthspan is far more important when you realize we are not mice in a cage.
Rapa doesn’t lead to 100% mTOR inhibition. Mice don’t get sarcopenia from rapa so clearly lean mass isn’t just about mTOR - partly influenced by the “bro science” aspect of pro bodybuilder forums. So why are you worried so much?
Mice die from cancer more often. They don’t get Alzheimer’s or heart attacks essentially. Are you going to ignore CVD risk and brain health just because exercise doesn’t increase maximum lifespan in mice?
Do you know of any studies on fasting / IM, but the total calories consumed in a day/week are not “restricted?”
This would be like only eating during a small window to activate the benefits of fasting, but still hitting your daily protein and caloric goals for recovery/muscle growth.
I have a friend on the OMAD diet, who swears by it, but I’m skeptical.
I can go down the rabbit hole, but for the average person, one can get far more ROI on optimizing the exercise side, rather than fretting about the nutrition side per unit time spent, once you hit “80%” of the benefits from concise and simple recommendations. At best most people will eek out an extra 5% with a disproportionate amount of time, effort, and money if they are extremely careful (Just throwing relative numbers out here). There are an extreme amount of vocal people on the internet who spend endless amounts of time talking about tiny details of the dietary factors that are highly uncertain and probably marginal if not useless, when they can’t even do 10 pullups or run a 10 minute mile.
Don’t rely on non high-quality anecdotes and always be wary of anecdotes in the first place as diets often quickly become religious or ideological even if it is higher quality. I presume it is likely your friend is almost certainly not doing well-designed crossover trials with an extreme level of knowledge but correct me if I’m wrong. Precise nutrition is individualized and anything claimed today could be different 10-20 years later. People don’t realize nutrition is far harder than astrophysics and often have illusory knowledge or confidence in what they recommend. Nutrition often can be perceived as deceptively simple by anyone.
If you really dig in even CR for nonhuman primate that is most likely to translate to humans that is still uncertain of a benefit when considering a “healthy” diet vs “healthy” diet with CR for humans in a complex environment.
I think the key is cellular efficiency. This is improved by autophagy. That can come from inhibiting mtor by rapamycin, fasting and exercise (but not too much exercise). I dont think CR per se is material, but fasting is. If i were you i would run a cycle where every so often you go for a fast combined wirh rapamycin.
I think its important to come to this question with a “Non-Binary” perspective - its not all or nothing, its refining something that is working for you pretty well, and tweaking things along a continuum.
As a basis for this - I recommend you learn more about mTOR inhibition and its modulation. Here is a good video below to do this:
Dr. Brian Kennedy covers the mTOR modulation issue in this video here:
I have never met a centenarian, but I knew a guy who came close. John lived to be 98. He was still riding motorcycles at 89. John was only about 5’ 6" and very lean. When wearing swim trunks he looked like 120 lbs of beef jerky. There is a phenotype for long lived mammals. Chihuahua live longer than Great Danes. You cannot get shorter, but you can stay lean and mean. Try to keep insulin low. Blogosklony is right–aging is an unfortunate side effect of growth processes.
While size to longevity is a true association - I’d also point out that the longest-living dog is a medium-sized Australian Cattle Dog with almost 3x longer than average chihuahuas.
Wow - I did not know that there was a “longest lived dog” that had ever been tracked. The Jeanne Calment of dogs…
Bluey, an Australian cattle dog, entered the Guinness Book of World Records by living to the ripe old age of 29 years and 5 months, setting the record for oldest dog ever. The record was set in 1939 and still stands, but many Australian Cattle Dogs have tried to beat it by living good long lives of their own.
Yeah, thinking of it like a continuum makes sense. Given how much is up to chance, then it’s an individual decision to add habits or compounds that tip the scales one way.
Thanks for the video – I definitely want to improve my understanding of the mTOR mechanism.
I am a proponent of time-restricted feeding (TRF). It improved just about everything in my blood work. Several studies indicate that time-restricted feeding is as beneficial as calorie restriction. IMO, it gives the pancreas some rest every day. I eat a semi-Mediterranean diet. I don’t count calories and eat what I want. Currently, I am using an 18/6 window give or take an hour. The results from that and my exercise gave me better markers than rapamycin has so far.
Early time-restricted eating compared with daily caloric restriction: A randomized trial in adults with obesity
Rapamycin answers your concerns quite well: while promoting longevity, it also preserves muscle mass (probably in enhancing autophagy and reducing inflammation). It won’t promote muscle gain, but fortunately it does not have to taken continuously. You can do strength training throughout the weekly rapamycin dosing, but you’ll make most of your gains toward the end of the week. I expect fortnightly dosing will give a larger window for muscle gains, though less frequently. Also, you could take a very intermittent approach, especially since you are young: take a month on, then a month off, or whatever. No one knows the best schedule: just take the rapa and allow as much time as you want for muscle gains.
I think I’ll continue experimenting with TRF or IM to hopefully get the autophagy benefits of being hungry while still getting enough nutrients to build strength.
As far as autophagy goes i would think there is a synergistic benefit of combining a number of pro autophagy stimuli at the same time. Hence take rapa when fasting and whilst fasting and sleeping some extra melatonin (if you dont ordinarily do this). Becklin 1 is produced by a long gene so if you are cycling pro gene expression factors do this also
I like this approach – means I can clearly separate “muscle building” time from “autophagy time” (fasting + rapa). Will consider adding it to my monthly fast, thanks!
It’s physically impossible to eat a healthy diet while doing OMAD. I don’t even know how it would be possible to do OMAD with an unhealthy diet if calorie requirements are high.
Intermittent fasting, etc, have such weak benefits if the diet isn’t healthy. Especially if type of dietary fat and its atherogenic lipoprotein concentration isn’t right.
If your athletic goals are conflicting with healthspan/longevity, you could dial back slightly and get good benefits at the cost of maximally improving athletic goals. I don’t know how much protein you are consuming per gram of bodyweight. But you could for instance have 1.62 g / kg protein which is recommended for athletes and have the strongest evidence.
With protein supplementation, protein intakes at amounts greater than ~1.6 g/kg/day do not further contribute RET-induced gains in FFM.
When I used to train (I want to start again) I also tried to find science about the caloric surplus and muscle gain, and I couldn’t find any. Unless you’re very certain you need a surplus, you could experiment with maintenence calories.
The strength training that improves bone density and healthspan isn’t being optimally perfect. It’s like a middle age person going to the gym three times a week and maintaining strength and drinking a protein shake afterwards. There are diminishing returns.
You can also just accept that you want to maximally optimize athletic goals. That is perfectly fine. There are trade offs with everything. I do certain things that doesn’t perfectly optimize health.
If you just keep a check on your atherogenic lipoprotein concentration (apoB), many refer to it as LDL cholesterol, maybe start rapamycin soon, you will be better than 90%+ of people in this area.
