Longevity was discussed a lot here. So, for the hackers and experts here:), how do you help your parents?
Was thinking to give them or suggest to take
Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN): 1g per day (available but only from small firms in Europe)
Resveratrol: 1g per day (available)
Metformin: 800 mg (need a prescription)
Omega3 fat oil
Do you have better ideas?
PS: Got it from David Sinclar. Doctors don't seem to care much about that topic. Actually, started to think about it since, noticed a bit of mental decline and started asking myself what might help against it and in general. Also, might take that stuff for myself as well.
No, seriously:
>> A unique social experiment that brings together elderly people in a retirement community with a group of 4-year-olds. Could this encounter between young and old help transform the lives of the elderly?
https://thetvdb.com/series/the-old-peoples-home-for-4-year-o...
https://thetvdb.com/series/old-peoples-home-for-4-year-olds
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/old-people-s-home-for-4-year-o...
Multiple studies in both the UK and Australia demonstrate increased mobility, memory, communication, happiness, etc in older people when mixed in with young children.
I had a feeling it must be at least partly due to their increased role in child rearing among most families.
This is partly just traditional Chinese culture but probably also comes in part due to the awful working hours most Chinese people tend to face. It's very common to just dump your kids on your parents out there.
It does cause some issues, as the grandparents tend to have more ... traditional parenting approaches (corporal punishment fairly common) but for the elderly themselves it's definitely something they really look forward to in their later years.
probably because they haven't been exposed to a lifetime of processed foods like here in the west.
Encourage them to shorten their feeding window. Perhaps as small as 4-6 hours but even 8 hours would be a big step up from a (typical) 12 hour feeding window.
If you wanted to be more ambitious, any kind of resistance training would be fantastic but not at the expense of the walking.
...
I notice you employing a familiar heuristic: "things doctors don't want to talk about" but I encourage you to embrace an even deeper heuristic:
If there were some natural substance, or plant extract, or pressing from (food) or (some combination of purple berries) that made people live longer, we would all know about. It would be carved into stone tablets and embedded in every religious tradition. It would not be a secret.
People have been watching and cataloging their food inputs for millennia - the pressed extracts of winegrape seeds would not have eluded their notice ...
If there were something that let you live to 200, sure. But trying to answer a question like whether the Mediterranean diet extends life on average by 10% is very, very hard. Even if we had great records of what everyone ate, you'd still have to deal with the fact that people consuming that diet tend to live in the same geographical area and share a lot of other behaviors that could very well affect longevity.
I am 70 and based on my parents and my older siblings I probably have 7 or 8 years left.
Get used to the idea of dying. It's going to happen to you and everyone you know. For the living, quality of life is important. Don't scarifice quality for duration. I want to die before my mind goes. If that means sooner, so be it. When I am dead I won't have regrets, so it's ok.
Don’t bother too much with the medicines and pills. What really matters: daily social interactions (with friends and family members, not random people or nurses/doctors) and a regular schedule of “purposeful” activities to look forward to every week. Bingo every Tuesday, fish dinners on Friday, etc.
If there was a magic pill, that would be great, but don’t think there is any high quality evidence.
There is something involved in NMN, but taking it (or any of the precursors or metabolites) alone doesn't actually seem to reliably cause what they were looking for.
Most likely, it's something like the curcumin vs ground turmeric issue (curcumin doesn't work alone, it combines with another chemical found in turmeric to produce the active chemical, and none of the curcumin supplements work), or with glucoraphanin and myrosinase to produce sulforaphane (popularized by Dr Rhonda Patrick; sulforaphane is short lived, and you need to package them correctly to not self-react in a supplement while it's sitting there on a shelf, so the delivery mechanism is the hard part), or with the flavor of garlic, allicin, another short lived chemical produced by alliin and alliinase (which is why crushing garlic is important instead of slicing, and ground garlic and factory produced minced garlic will never have that magical flavor).
Also, as for Omega 3, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f-CFQxaUY4 Dr Rhonda Patrick interviews Dr Bill Harris; the main take away from this isn't that it works (we all know that already), it's what the dose range is: we're all underdosing.
If you want that "one weird trick that doctors hate", OMAD alone is almost magical. I've been suggesting it to everyone I know just so they can do something easy and simple to get a few free years out of their fleshy meat body. Also, because of OMAD, I now spend less time prepping food, eating food, and other food-related tasks. Even if OMAD had no health effects (positive or negative), I'd keep doing it as it has freed up a surprisingly large amount of time.
[1] https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs... [under the heading "What else do I need to know?"]
- Avoid smoking and hard drugs
- Avoid excessive alcohol consumption
- Avoid fast food, excessive salt and sugar, deep fried dishes
- Avoid excessive stress and worrying
Besides that, focus on the basics:
- Consistent and restful sleep
- Healthy, balanced diet
- Regular exercise
- Novel and mentally-stimulating activities, continuous learning
- Strong social connections (not just online social networks, but actual friends and family they can hang out with in-person)
If you want even more, there have been studies about 5 blue zones where inhabitants regularly reach ages of 100 or more, and 9 habits they follow: https://www.bluezones.com/2016/11/power-9/
1. Move naturally: build exercise into your daily life
2. Purpose: a reason to wake up in the morning
3. Downshift: Routines that shed stress
4. Only eat until you are 80% full. Consider occasionally fasting.
5. Plant and bean-based diet
6. Moderate (1-2 cups/day) consumption of alcohol
7. Faith
8. Close family connections
9. Social circles that support healthy behaviors
That's a big one.
From what I hear, people with active and stressful yet compelling lives/jobs tend to fall apart if they go straight to trying to relax in retirement with nothing to do.
My advice: no drugs, keto/carnivore diet, omad or interminent fasting, resistance training.
Good luck with choosing the correct advice.