Healthspan should be differentiated from Longevity approaches, but does not mean they are alway separate. @RapAdmin pointed out some of my approaches were not longevity proven. In an effort to see what the community ( Rapa-newsy’s - play on the Rapa Nui’s ) values most in both areas, list your top 3 of each. Healthspan therapies would be ones you do because of quality of life improvements that you value. Longevity may or may not help with healthspan, but have some evidence that it may improve your time of the planet. Lets give your top 3 in each area. Lets assume Diet, exercise, sleep and spiritual wellness are all taken care of. These are mine, but want to know yours.
I don’t accept that these pillars which hugely impact healthspan and longevity (we know they do), are are at “optimal levels” in every person, such that you can stack additional extending interventions as a completely independent matrix? Just look around, diet and exercise are major comorbidity inducers, limiting both healthspan and lifespan.
Diet, exercise, and TRT have profoundly improved my healthspan trajectory so far (57 yo). I truly have no idea about escapism longevity (centenarian). Rapamcyin is the only true moonshot in my toolbox so far, because it address fundamental systemic root cause pathways of “aging” (from all the animal models, it shows significant slowdown in chronic disease, the critical element in longevity attainment). At time of writing, I am going to do everything possible to harness until something (s) more compelling comes along.
If my blood markers are any indication, I was doing better before starting rapamycin and just using diet, TRF and exercise.
Please tell me if your blood markers improved after taking rapamycin.
I was referring to my own regimen of time-restricted eating/feeding. I attribute this to keeping my blood glucose under control which is very good for a man of my age. Lastest test. 98mg/L, HEMOGLOBIN A1c, 5.2%. I also attribute TRF/TRE to keeping my blood glucose unchanged while taking rapamycin. Some taking rapamycin have reported increased blood glucose levels.
“Chronic inhibition of mTORC1 with rapamycin impairs insulin secretion and causes insulin resistance. It would be prudent to monitor glucose homeostasis in patients treated with rapamycin or other mTOR inhibitors to minimize the risk of developing metabolic syndromes.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/oby.22449
100% with you on keeping glucose AUC as low as possible, one of my central biohacks.
Regarding your glucose unchanged on rapamycin…I might suggest you didn’t veer anywhere into cancer/transplant chronic high dose intervention (eg. trough level 10 ng/mL for months/years).
@MAC - Bad communication on my part. Let me re-try. With sleep, diet and exercise as being the top 3 that we all should strive to maximize - what would your next three theraputic modalities be if it were limited to only three. I saw a video (below) awhile ago that Dr. Rhonda Patrick was asked what are 4 foods that she would eat if that’s all she could eat. I liked the question because it pushed her to really place a high value on specifics rather that the shot gun technique that many of us use without a true quantification one modality vs. another. Dr Tong @tongMD has a fairly extensive longevity regimine and others minimalistic. Where do you place your highest value? Why do you pick one over the other? I also wanted to differentiate things we do because we feel better vs. things we do because we feel like it will help us live longer.
Is it really extensive, if it’s just the longevity parts that more broadly apply? I have two psychiatric disorders from the mixed bag of genetics I got…but at least there are quite a few genes I’m happy about. At least ADHD is one of the most treatable, and GAD is not too far off. Not treating ADHD would likely lead me negative 12 years on average healthy lifespan if not more.
Eating 4 foods is really difficult to get complete nutrition or diverse gut flora (I recall somewhere around 30+ plants per week), assuming no supplementation.
4 foods, assuming no supplementation:
Salmon Roe, fresh
Purple Sweet Potato, fast steamed 10 min
Broccoli sprouts, quick cooked for 10 min
Genetically modified “human” milk, fresh & raw - just enough to get the other nutrients missing (this might be considered “cheating”)
@Basil_Dev Nice list!! I know sleep is a high priority. The higher your progesterone, the higher your sleep effect can be. Also, magnesium at night can help. Others of considerations may be Sermorelin and Testosterone. Tru Dream and Dream water can be nice for help when needing sleep…Amazon, but check ingredients to make sure you don’t have any conflicts. You probably already know, but video below talks of improvement in all cause mortality with sauna use. I want to get one - slow to make it happen. Dasatinib is new to me and appreciate the opportunity to research and learn more.
That is a list. I really appreciate your points and when we say that sleep, diet and exercise are the corner stone, we do leave out mental health and spiritual health. I believe that I read an article on common traits in centurions and life purpose and faith were a common trait.
I think Dr. Patricks list was Wild caught salmon, blueberries, Kale and Avocados. Later she added Broccoli sprouts ( frozen has a higher yield of sulforaphane ). She did mention Roe, but human milk is so good…like throwing down 4 aces…Nice!
@David it’s not hard to make your own infrared sauna if you’re handy with the tools (or know someone who is. I believe the NIR lights are the safests, with very low EMF.
I just bought a portable unit with 4 lights for $1000AUD, then my husband built a very basic 1.5 sqm box with a door and we use that. It heats up fantastically and because of the enclosed space, you can build up a great sweat.
Eventually we bought a second unit so we could make it hotter.
But in reality, a portable unit can be used anywhere - in a shower cubicle or a walk-in cupboard, for example.
I notice you don’t mention any “supplements” other than rapamycin. I am not sure which country you live in, but I lived in Stuttgart, Germany for about seven years and many of the supplements that were common and available in the U.S. were unavailable in Germany.
As I recall, l some told me that in Germany supplements were not approved unless there was proof that they actually worked. Unlike the U.S., where basically they just have to show they are a natural substance or do no harm. Is this generally the case in the EU?
I see the basic of stress management in alignment with striving after the hormetic response. To strive after the stress level that makes us stronger and not weaker. Many people have for example to low stress levels when it comes to physical fitness which makes them weaker every year that goes by. On top of that they have to high stress levels when it comes to working life (mental stress) which also makes them weaker. So it’s important to find a balance and a feeling for when to push more stress in a specific area and when to take steps back. That is how I see successful stress management when it comes to keeping the health up us long as possible.
One thing that I have noticed in the longevity community throughout the years is that there are people who most likely are pushing them way to hard when it comes stress. For example one guy he had the goal to do a 40 day water only fast. This is most likely not aligned with longevity. It is very easy to go to the extreme and thinking that more is better but this is seldom the case. So a skill to master in life is stress management were you find the balance between to little and to much. It’s about finding the dose of stress and rest that is aligned with longevity.
Every time I see my wife, I tell her how thankful I am that she is taking care of our sons’ education and helping them develop into better young men. It blunts her stress (and therefore mine) and makes us feel better about everything in general.
Honestly, there’s too much negativity in the world these days (just turn on the news) or self-comparison and degradation of your self-image (see Facebook, Instagram, and social media) and this causes stress that we don’t need. Now all I have to do is retire to get rid of the rest of the stress…
Friendship
The internal smiles I get from reading this forum while learning to improve my life will probably allow me to live a bit longer… Or at least avoid dementia and mental deterioration. Thanks guys for this.
Though I really can’t help mentioning intermittent fasting/time-restricted feeding as a much easier thing to do than calorie restriction per se as the calorie restriction is an automatic result. And, this would be at the top of my list for healthspan.
Calorie restriction (CR) vs Intermittent Fasting (PF) vs Low Glucose
This is an interesting article comparing CR to PF (intermittent fasting), but their results look like it may be more important to reduce glucose intake.
“As an alternative nutrition model, prolonged intermittent fasting (PF) in humans is defined by the absence of food for more than 12 h. In our previous human studies, CR and PF models were compared and it was concluded that the two models might have differences in signal transduction mechanisms. We have investigated the effects of these models on neurons at the molecular level in this study.”
Effects of Prolonged Intermittent Fasting Model on Energy Metabolism and Mitochondrial Functions in Neurons
