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Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To

David A. Sinclair PhD, Matthew D. LaPlante · 8 HN comments
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Amazon Summary
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A paradigm-shifting book from an acclaimed Harvard Medical School scientist and one of Time ’s most influential people. It’s a seemingly undeniable truth that aging is inevitable. But what if everything we’ve been taught to believe about aging is wrong? What if we could choose our lifespan? In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable.” This eye-opening and provocative work takes us to the frontlines of research that is pushing the boundaries on our perceived scientific limitations, revealing incredible breakthroughs—many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging. The key is activating newly discovered vitality genes, the descendants of an ancient genetic survival circuit that is both the cause of aging and the key to reversing it. Recent experiments in genetic reprogramming suggest that in the near future we may not just be able to feel younger, but actually become younger. Through a page-turning narrative, Dr. Sinclair invites you into the process of scientific discovery and reveals the emerging technologies and simple lifestyle changes—such as intermittent fasting, cold exposure, exercising with the right intensity, and eating less meat—that have been shown to help us live younger and healthier for longer. At once a roadmap for taking charge of our own health destiny and a bold new vision for the future of humankind, Lifespan will forever change the way we think about why we age and what we can do about it.
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
Peter Attia [1] has a great podcast about many aging/healthspan issues. I listen to the free version but there is also a paid version of the podcast with more info.

The book Lifespan [2] from David Sinclair is also a fantastic source. Finally, if you can wade through some of the questionable statements and claims, the book The Longevity Paradox [3] from Steven Gundry does have some useful info.

[1] https://peterattiamd.com/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Paradox-Young-Ripe-Plant/dp...

Dr. Sinclair's book Lifespan (https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...) talks about extending the health span of people. I've been personally taking 1g/day of NMN for almost 3 years now, and I feel like aging has paused or is going backwards slowly.
heymijo
How old are you?

How are you gauging “aging has paused or is going backwards slowly”?

henryw
Mid 30s. Gauging by how my joints feel and how quickly I recover from physical exercise and injuries.
perardi
I’m 38. I’ve beaten the hell out of my poor aging frame. And then fixed a lot of those injuries to my poor aging frame by not playing rugby any more.

All of which to say: there is absolutely no way you are possibly controlling for all variables here. Things off the top of my head that could help with exercise recovery, all of which are more plausible than some poorly tested supplement:

- Changes in exercise type - Changes in exercise duration - Changes in exercise intensity - Changes in exercise form - Weight loss - Sleeping more for better recovery

ljhsiung
He's also launched a podcast-- https://www.youtube.com/c/DavidSinclairPodcast/videos

I find the first 3 episodes to be absolutely stellar and was engrossed the whole hour. Pretty good takeaways.

The more recent ones are a little contentious and, as he himself admits, a little pseudosciency. He even says that these supplements are marginally helpful, and perhaps the most beneficial things is literally to just walk after a meal. Partially as a result, and partially because the recent episodes's concepts weren't explained well, I found myself distracted.

Random-- he makes a comment how the FDA often prematurely bans things e.g. peptides, which greatly hampers researchers' access to these materials.

hourislate
I'm going to save you some money. What really works well and better than taking NMN orally(), eat a natural clean whole food diet (no pufa's or processed food), no alcohol or smoking and walk or do some sort of light exercise for about 30-60 minutes a day.

I am willing to bet it will do more for you than taking NMN.

Peter Attia has discussed this with folks who know a lot more than Sinclair and they have concluded there is no evidence it works. The number one thing you can do to extend lifespan is exercise.

ericmcer
but what if I do all of the above?
hourislate
You would get healthy and waste money on NMN.
hndamien
Where can you get NMN?
henryw
https://www.prohealthlongevity.com/collections/nmn-bulk-and-...?
hourislate
There is no evidence it works taken orally. Save your money.
ck2
Don't bother. Sinclair is considered a quack by even some life-extension enthusiasts.

He owns part of the company that makes patented NMN which is just another form of NR which is a another form of very cheap Niacin.

He also owns part of the company that claims he is rolling back his biological clock.

That's not science, that's marketing and profiteering.

NAD production slows down with age and illness. All he is doing is supplementing what was produced more easily by a younger body.

There are a many other factors to aging, most of which cannot be changed (yet) by science.

czbond
Why disregard someone simply because they own a piece of a company that also supports the goal? I think any rational person would do the same - you believe in something so you start, invest in, or advise a company.
bluechair
I think the comment also said that this person’s views aren’t taken seriously in the aging research community. So the combination of their ideas and a desire to profit from them raises flags.
inglor_cz
I don't think Harvard would let Sinclair have a lab with some 35 people and publish articles under their name if he was a total fraud/quack.

My impression of Sinclair is that he likes public attention too much and often reports on work in progress with too much certainty, but results like this [1] seem to be fairly impressive.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4

ck2
Counterpoint from someone more educated (with a more precise conclusion that he is "not evidence based")

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1492902239312039938.html

inglor_cz
I am doing some experiments with NR (no Sinclair in the business chain AFAIK) and pterostilbene and my ability to exercise has improved noticeably. I am 43 and I used to be fairly sore after a strenuous 60 minute exercise - especially my sinews were bad. This wasn't getting any better with more exercise, actually it was slowly getting worse with age, to the degree that I wasn't able to exercise in two consecutive days and sometimes I had to wait until the third day to go to the gym again. (To be clear, I am neither fat nor riddled with any serious disease.)

Nowadays the small pains and aches go away in a few hours, like when I was some 15 years younger. But if I stop the supplementation, the situation reverts to the old bad standard within a month or so.

I also noticed some effect on my visual acuity.

I know this is N == 1, hard to measure precisely and subject to a possible placebo effect.

ck2
Note I am not disputing NAD supplementation, only the limits of what it can do and who can benefit from it.

The key to NAD supplementation is the people who need it are older or ill.

There are a lot of other processes in such bodies that become deficient too.

None of the supplement methods for NAD, Niacin, NR, NMN will boost levels beyond what your body will use.

This is what the NAD cycle looks like, you can see NA (niacin) vs NR vs NMN are each closer to production but the end result is the same of what ends up in the blood vs organs like liver.

https://www.lifespan.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/NAD_schem...

There are wild arguments, even with scientific rigor, about NR vs NMN ability to get into cells. It is more likely that genetics matters and it varies from person to person and what else is in their diet.

ericmcer
I had a similar response doing a mostly vegan calorie restricted low protein diet. I was blown away because I had always been told protein = recovery, calories = recovery, but I have been able to rock climb pretty hard 6 days a week for the past 4 months now. Keto, general healthy eating, tons of supplements and all the other things I have tried have resulted in maybe 3-4 hard sessions a week and achy joints.
ganeshkrishnan
I am willing to wager that Dr Sinclair is just peddling nonsense to make his million bucks and exit quickly.
gmadsen
considering he leads a research group at Harvard that publishes in high profile journals, you could actually look at the peer reviewed research, instead of relying on your "hunch"
hourislate
It's old news but did you know, He did fuck GSK for 750 million? Basically no one could ever replicate his study. GSK should have done thier homework so boohoo for them but still all is not what it seems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAFnD27ffqE

tim333
Well at least he isn't exiting quickly after having made his million bucks. I sometimes take NMN. I have no idea if it works or not.
Lifespan: Why we age and why we don't have to [0]

It made me realize we probably can stop aging and age related deceases, which changed my view on life.

0. https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...

Seems like many people are new to this concept and feel skeptical so here are some useful resources:

* Kurzgesagt: How to Cure Aging – During Your Lifetime? (7:20) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdpR-TY6QU

* Kurzgesagt: Why Age? Should We End Aging Forever? (6:48) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoJsr4IwCm4

* Why we should cure ageing (11:30) - Heads up, it's a book intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNn-2TXzSaA

* Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old (Book, not yet released in the US) https://andrewsteele.co.uk/ageless/

* Lifespan: Why we age and why we don't have to (book) https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...

* Google talk: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To (55:13) - By the author of the book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nXop2lLDa4

Edit:

* If you wish to contribute to this kind of research make sure to check out SENS: https://www.sens.org/

Maybe you've read the book Lifespan, but the research talked about in it feels far more optimistic than what you've outlined. [1] Certainly there is already a decent amount of money being spent on it, and more and more each year with promising results. [2]

Reading this book, aging feels like an area where we might see huge advances in the next 15-20 years.

There are already really strong results for extending vital life by significant margins in other species, including rhesus monkeys. There are already drugs people take that seem to have some of this effect, though I think currently they come with some dangerous side-effects that might not be worth it if you didn't have the underlying disease the drug was intended for.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...

[2] https://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-779...

keenmaster
Great book. David Sinclair makes a good case for why aging is the primary disease, and increased risk for cancer, heart disease, neurological decline, etc...are symptoms of the same disease. Even a universal cure for cancer would not increase lifespan drastically, because you'd just die from another collection of age-related ailments a few years later. We should try to find a direct cure for aging. Aging research in the past 5-10 years has been promising.
There is a real possibility that in the next few decades some of these therapies might work.

The book Lifespan by Dr David Sinclair is really interesting. Sinclair is a professor at Harvard. He's highly optimistic that something will come of the various ideas looking at slowing aging.

https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...

sbmthakur
He did an AMA on Reddit a few days ago:

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eorio3/hi_im_david_si...

peanutz454
So when it happens, will we stop having kids? Because our current population and lifestyle do not seem sustainable. I only see population increasing and lifestyle being more burdensome on environment.
nbates80
I don't have interest in having kids. But I guess that if I was facing immortality or the prospect of reaching twice my age I would be even less interested on having kids.

I imagine people with access to anti aging therapies would postpone having children further and further.

danielschlaug
Just let immortal people have no more than one kid. That way the population (of immortals) can double at most.
ChrisLomont
Then non-immortals can have as many immortal kids as they want, so immortals can still increase without bound.
maerF0x0
maybe immortal people care even more about the longterm well being of climate / ecosystem?
zhoujianfu
I already did!
anthonypasq
population will plateau
tomerico
Ironically, if people that care about the planet don’t have kids to save the planet, you will be left with more people that don’t care about the planet down the road
newnewpdro
I don't know about you, but some of my teachers and favorite musicians had far more of an impact on my attitudes toward the environment and having children than my parents ever did.

This fallacy that the only way to fix the world is to make kids of your own that will make it better is ridiculous.

mambojumbo
One can only hope that it wont be yet another hyper inflated bubble like ai is now.
ganeshkrishnan
Ai is hardly hyper inflated. Everything from your phone to cars to planes use ai and machine learning one way or the other.
lcnmrn
But it's not actually AI, it's just programmable probability.
bufferoverflow
So is your brain. But it's not even yet programmable.
apta
This is a simplistic, incorrect view of biology.
cscurmudgeon
The brain is not programmable?
Ace17
It's only programmable in the Matrix movie.

Today's real world requires you to practice before saying "I know kung fu".

sudosysgen
It really depends on your definition of programmable, I can see how it could be argued both ways.
GolDDranks
Well, we happen to call that AI nowadays.
wrinkl3
Which is what modern AI is - neat linear algebra that can perform certain tasks that are commonly associated with human cognition.
thelittleone
How and when did this become the definition of AI? I feel like we techies lost an important distinction by simply accepting the marketing appropriation of the term. What do we now call real AI?
shpeedy
It was that way from very beginning. It's Artificial _Intelligence_ , not an Artificial Human.
Rallerbabs
There's a real possibility that some of those therapies might work in the next 6.5 years, as per Greg Bailey @ Juvenescence.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robinseatonjefferson/2019/08/26...

- More time is spent on taking care of loved ones

https://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-amer...

- Less time commuting (companies get better at managing a distributed work force)

- the 50% of people not connected to the internet start to get access

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/18/almost-50...

- wages are driven down globally by this additional 50% coming online creating more backlash in democracies.

- Increasingly countries will use China's great firewall tech to keep out Western influences and grow local internet competitors

- high speed internet gets deployed in war zones with drones and we understand why the US is against Chinese 5G companies.

- high speed internet (5G etc) means that many jobs that couldn't be off-shored are near shored for a mixture of tax and cost savings - taxi drivers, pilots, delivery trucks, fork lifts with a mixture of AI and people

- cashiers become sales people as stores fight against online sales

- percent of people working in manufacturing drops to 6.5% from 10.5%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAPEFANA

- a group of people add 30% to their life span due to drugs that reproduce intermittent fasting and other drugs that seem to work on mice.

https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...

- China goes to 30% of world GDP and US reacts by going to cold war

https://www.statista.com/statistics/270439/chinas-share-of-g...

- Japan builds up its military in reaction to china

- Housing manufacturing and education continue to not have productivity gains.

- Nuclear fusion is still not any closer to wide scale deployment

- Cities in Europe and Asia go E-bike friendly while Americans stick to their cars.

- The muslim world will become more pro-women's rights based on Saudi Arabia's lead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k0SvAEvM-I&vl=en

- Banks will stop touching cash except via ATMs and will convert branches into sales offices to push their online offerings. Goldman Sachs in reaction merges with Revolut.

You should watch Joe Rogan speak with David Sinclair, who researches aging at Harvard, about the latest developments in his field https://youtu.be/ZGLL77wYxe8

Aside from multivitamins and idiosyncratic drugs, Sinclair takes the following supplements every day:

- Resveratrol – 1g in the morning (this is synergistic with NMN)

- Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) – 1g in the morning

- Metformin (prescription drug) – 1g in the evening – except on days when exercising, since metformin reduces muscle growth after exercising

(As an aside, he also engages in intermittent fasting, to reduce his total feeding hours. There’s a theory that intermittent fasting triggers a beneficial stress response whereby your body becomes more “efficient” in a way that prolongs life. Intermittent fasting has been shown to prolong lifespan in mice. Interestingly, resveratrol is expressed in plants as a defense mechanism akin to what intermittent fasting does in humans, and that’s one of the supplements that Sinclair recommends.)

Sinclair is very careful not to recommend that cocktail for anyone, since anti-aging research is still very preliminary. The relevant human trials are underway. However, NMN in particular has had astonishing effects on mice. Mice that took NMN lived significantly longer than other mice. Old mice that took it ran for so long that the measuring device on their running wheel timed out, because they weren’t expected to ever run that long.

In old age, the NMN mice were conspicuously stronger, had more hair, saw better, and were more mentally intact. In short, NMN might reverse the underlying epigenetic causes of aging. Sinclair subscribes to the information theory of aging, where, over time, your epigenome accumulates damage and errors, and protective mechanisms die out. It’s like scratches on an overplayed analog vinyl disc which slowly declines in function and eventually stops playing altogether. You lose a majority of your NAD+ as you get older (NAD+ is fed by NMN), which is problematic because NAD+ feeds biological mechanisms which mitigate informational damage. That’s why supplementing with NMN is theorized to have anti-aging effects.

Sinclair wrote a great book synthesizing aging research if you want to read more about it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501191977/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_awdo_...

eyeball
hopefully it doesn't turn out like the book of that sleep guy, matthew walker

https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

keenmaster
Walker seems to have made some claims without empirical backing. Sinclair on the other hand refers to miracle research in mice and says that they might or might not translate into humans. However, he does explain, at length, how it may work to extend longevity in humans just like it does in mice.

He also gave the aforementioned drug cocktail to his elderly dad and said it seems to have rejuvenated him. His dad is hiking all around Australia, just like he did as a young man. I paid little attention to that particular claim since it is an n=1 anecdote.

moh_maya
Re reservatol:

The jury is out in terms of its efficacy, or lack thereof. [1,2]

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/resveratrol-the-hype-con...

[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diet-rich-resveratrol-of...

Re. David Sinclair [3]:

"Despite his enthusiasm, published scientific research has not yet demonstrated the molecule works in humans as it does in mice. Sinclair, however, has a considerable financial stake in his claims being proven correct, and has lent his scientific prowess to commercializing possible life extension products such as molecules known as “NAD boosters.”

His financial interests include being listed as an inventor on a patent licensed to Elysium Health, a supplement company that sells a NAD booster in pills for $60 a bottle. He’s also an investor in InsideTracker, the company that he says measured his age."

[3] https://khn.org/news/a-fountain-of-youth-pill-sure-if-youre-...

keenmaster
Yep, resveratrol on its own doesn’t seem to do much, which is puzzling given its effect on mice. That’s why I added Sinclair’s claim that it is a synergistic part of his drug cocktail. Let’s hope NMN is different. As for Elysium, Sinclair is not affiliated with them and he said he doesn’t make any money off of supplement sales.
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