Don’t overthink this. It’s largely rubbish. A bunch of biomarker levels which correlate with “health”, but completely disconnected from extreme longevity. The title is the giveaway that you’re dealing with bunk - because past about the age of 90-95, you really are down to genes. Pegging 100 as the goal almost by definition says: you won’t get to that point by anything you do or don’t do (within reason), it’s down to the genes.
Get a database of centenarian biomarkers and health related behaviors. You will likely not find ONE centenarian who hits all of them, and many, if not most, will not hit any of them.
If you tell me “here’s what to do to hit 90 years” (while you only focus on non-drug interventions) I might listen to you. The moment you tell me “here’s what to do to hit 100 and beyond” (and you don’t involve any drugs) I know you’re full of …
And so it is here. Vast majorities of people will never hit 100, no matter what they do. The only - possible - way out with average run of the mill genes to get to 100 is maaaaybe with a good combo of medications. Maybe. At that point you might eke out another 5-8 years past to where your genes took you if you have decent genes of a 95, now add 5-8 years thanks to DRUGS (not lifestyle and the rubbish list by this coach) and hit the 100-105 mark - you might not, but maybe the drugs at least will make your healthspan better than it otherwise would’ve been. And I’m being optimistic, if you get your med stack just right plus a good pinch of luck. YMMV.
I agree. Of course any study of centenarians is, by definition, looking at outliers who have survived against the odds. So they are certainly blessed with good genetics, and have been lucky. A 100 year old today was born in 1926 and has survived through a major world war, very few vaccinations, rubbish antibiotics, no statins etc. I had one great aunt of mine live to 101, and another to 96, and I don’t think either of them did anything “right” in terms of their health (aside from both of them never having children!). Both died of fairly non-specific causes: one was gradual kidney failure, and the other died in her sleep.
Looking at causes of death is pretty interesting. Nowadays the largest cause of death globally is ASCVD, even in very poor countries. That’s good really, because it means we have already mostly addressed the majority of basic things like sanitation, vaccines, antibiotics. And in a wealthy country ASCVD is pretty much preventable if you intervene with the right medications. As we go forwards, we will chip away at ASCVD deaths with better and earlier treatments, and then cancer will become the top cause of death. The good news is we also have better early detection and cures for a good number of cancers now. Vaccines are chipping away at many virus-related cancer deaths in younger people, and colon cancer and cervical cancer are highly preventable too. Plus of course smarter drugs, immunotherapies and maybe more exotic things that I can’t imagine right now. If/when we get xenotransplantation solved, many organ failures may not be terminal either if we can do heart, lung, liver, kidney etc transplants.
However, the real question (and I think you’re alluding to this) is whether there’s some hard cap to lifespan. i.e. if you took care of all the “preventable early” causes (heart disease, cancers, infections etc) would there still be a general degradation of our bodies which is incompatible with living far beyond 100, and most people simply don’t have the genetics for it?
That’s my suspicion. There is a tremendous variety amongst centenarians, and indeed the very old in general. And yet, in all that endless variety of phenotypes, even a child could visually identify markers of old age by presentation. Why is that? Clearly, there is some kind of universal process that progressively degrades the organism in extremely characteristic ways. But actually, forget centenarians and the very old, or indeed the old at all. Because exactly the same progressive stages are present at every age. It’s never the case that somehow between the ages of x and y, say, 20 and 40 the organism seems frozen in time with no identifiable characteritics of increasing age. This is so universal, that everybody has the same experience - you can look at a person from the back, at a distance, and still roughly guess the age bracket (and nothing to do with clothes - it’s true at the beach too). Think of the sheer diversity of genetic backgrounds, and yet, there are no exceptions to this progressive presentation - it is, simply put, aging, whether 20 to 30 or 70 to 90, nothing to do with lucky genes, no combination of genes arrests the presentation of aging in very obvious ways. Now, if no 90 year old, or 100 year old ever looks like a 20 year old, why wouldn’t you think there is a hard cap to max lifespan of our species? Take any 100 year old, no matter how chipper, look at their body, and think to yourself “yep, I can definitely see this barely animated carcass lasting another 50 years” whereas you have no issue thinking that of a 20 yo. Find me a body of a single centenarian who would inspire such confidence. A hard cap, I’m afraid is looking like a biological limit for our species, somewhere around 130 at best. YMMV.
I’m not sure about a hard cap, because we don’t know what discoveries we will make in the future. I think a lot of the decay of the body is degradation of collagen and elastin, and failure to regenerate it.
Of course there are other aspects but this is what cause the older look. It’s part of the scaffolding of skin, veins, arteries and organs. It almost seems vain to focus on such a thing but if we can solve these we might get a significant boost to aging.
What IF we did have someone of 70 years who looked 30-40. I think we would have something there. It won’t just be biomarkers, if we achieve real anti-aging it will be visible.
A very informative x account but do not engage with him, one wrong word and he’ll block you! Do follow him though because he also frequently closes off his account, that way you can continue reading his tweets
A VO2max > 50 is unlikely for an 80 year-old. But their chances of living to 100 are pretty good compared to any 40 year-old. Does this checklist need more detail, adjusted for age and sex?
I think they all have value (but all are imperfect), but you’ll have to pick a set of benchmarks that make sense for you (adjust as necessary) and your priorities and time. Everyone needs something that is reasonably attainable; you won’t want something that is so far away from your current measures that it’s de-motivating.
You’ll find crocodiles incredibly interesting then! I even made a thread about them: A thread about crocodiles
They break the rule, where they don’t get frail, don’t lose fertility and don’t get sicker as they get older. That shows us that it’s possible for a large animal to have extreme longevity, though obviously they are very different to mammals. There’s one crocodile called “Henry” which is verified to be 125 years old, and he has more than 10,000 offspring. They also seem to very rarely get cancer, and their immune systems are very excellent. They live in dirty water and constantly get injured, but they can clear almost any infection. (In fact, their blood contains hundreds of anti-bacterial and anti-cancer peptides which scientists are exploring).
Agreed. If we can really take CVD, cancer etc off the table, what’s left? IMO, it will be things like heart valve failures, arrhythmias, arterial ruptures, which are related to general breakdown and loss of resilience in tissues.
I hit on all of these markers except for 6+hours of movement a day. I’m trying to get my life to a place where that is also possible. I think Alan Cousins is a very smart man but he is missing his biomarker for strength: body weight bar hang 60-120 seconds?
Oh yeah, I know about crocks. Same is true of giant tortoises. But what’s even more interesting from my point of view are birds. Birds are physiological marvels. With reptiles you can sort of try to explain longevity by rate of aging with slowed down metabolism and long periods of torpor - crocks can last a year plus without food. But birds can be at the opposite end, with metabolism even more active, with more turnover, higher body temperature and insane energy output compared to almost all mammals. And in face if all that - greater longevity especially when looking at expected longevity vs body size (in mammals the NMR is a famous exception). With parrots and macaws hitting 100+. And no immediately visible sgns of aging, with female sea birds laying eggs in their 80’s. Personally I think hummingbirds break some kind of laws - I don’t know which, biological, chemical or even physical - with metabolism revving at such otherworldly levels, energy output like a mini quasar, and still managing lifespans of 10+ years (many banded ones at 11+ years), despite tiny, tiny, tiny body size. Man, we got nothing on birds. And don’t get me started on molluscs and crustaceans, or it’ll really get depressing, we’re talking 400+ years, take that, greenland sharks and bowhead whales!
Although hummingbirds do enter a state of torpor every night. Otherwise, they would simply “run out of fuel” before the morning!
But yes; birds are fascinating creatures. And very long lived.
Use it or lose it. I don’t know the right amount of “not-sitting” but I’d like to do less sitting. I understand it’s the long periods of sitting that do the most damage so I try to get up frequently but it still adds up to a lot of telling my body to get better at sitting (instead of better at moving, balancing, holding my body upright, etc).
For specifically training/increasing my VO2Max I made a small free app called “vo2max hiit workout” where I automated the norwegian 4x4 protocol (and a few more but it’s the one with the most research) and I automated the cooper test too
haha feel free to !
(I have some QoL features that I’ll publish sometime so feel free to ask me anything you’d like in the app or anything that should be improved. I use it daily (hiit) and twice weekly (4x4 protocol) so my usage is a bit biased)
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