Aging

While most deaths are caused by diseases and accidents which are preventable, underlying all of this, there is an issue – aging.

The British scientist Aubrey deGray campaigns to treat aging itself as a disease that can be studied and eventually defeated. To do so, he founded the Methuselah Foundation, which concentrates on regenerative medicine, including 3d-printed organs, studying long-lived animals such as the bowhead whale, and they offer the Methuselah Mouse prize (the MPrize), which offers prizes for the oldest mouse, but more importantly, for the most successful late-onset rejuvenation therapies.

Human cells divide throughout the lifetime of the body. Mistakes can creep into the divisions, though, through DNA duplication problems, losses of DNA through telomere shortening, or external factors such as X-rays or chemotherapy.

When a cell is very damaged, it can go into senescence mode, where the cell no longer divides, but it also doesn’t die. Over time, more and more of your cells will end up like this.

Using the treatments described in this chapter, it is possible you could extend your lifespan by an additional 64%. 20% for the telomere treatment, 20% for NAD+ treatment, and 14% for Caloric Restriction. (1.2*1.2*1.14 = 1.64). Since global human longevity is currently 71.5, this implies a lifespan of 117 years. You will have plenty of time for the next big treatment to appear.

A note before we dive into the details: A lot of marketing goes into selling creams and ointments as “anti-aging”. If you ever considering buying any of that stuff, understand that when you paint a rotting house, you still have a rotting house. This chapter is about how to fix or slow the actual mechanisms that cause aging; it is not about how to get tight skin.